Iron Range cold case trial redux begins this week with defense pointing to different suspect

A Chisholm man whose murder conviction in a decades-old cold case was reversed by the Minnesota Supreme Court last year will be back in court this week for a new jury trial — one where defense attorneys will now be allowed to direct suspicion toward a different man.

In 2022, Michael Allan Carbo Jr., 56, was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder in the killing of Nancy Daugherty, a 38-year-old mother of two who in 1986 had immediate plans to leave the Iron Range to further her paramedic training in Minneapolis. Daugherty was found dead in the bed of her modest Chisholm home, a victim of strangulation and sexual assault.

This past May, the state high court ruled in a split decision that the St. Louis County District Court erred in not allowing Carbo an alternate-perpetrator defense.

The defense gave the court letters that had passed between Daugherty’s romantic interest-turned-friend Brian Evenson, who she worked alongside on the town’s ambulance crew but who had since left town. He had seen her in her final hours. His vehicle was parked at her home; A previous sexual relationship provided a motive, they said.

And at one point decades ago, Evenson said to a law enforcement official:

“You know the human mind is a strange thing, and I’ve often wondered, geez, did I wake up in the middle of the night, drive over there and kill her, go back to bed and not know it?”

Evenson was a suspect for decades, though never charged or arrested. Before the initial trial started, Judge Robert C. Friday ruled that the defense could not point to him.

“If the jury had heard the evidence that had an inherent tendency to connect [Evenson] to the actual commission of the murder, along with the evidence of motive and threats, and the damaging potential had been fully realized, we cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that a reasonable jury would have reached the same verdict,” according to the decision.

The Minnesota Supreme Court was split in its decision, but the majority’s decision was that Carbo was denied “the opportunity to present a complete case and abused its discretion,” according to the filing.

They sent it back to district court in Hibbing, where jury selection starts early this week.

On Daugherty’s last night, she met Evenson for drinks at a pizza parlor-bar in Chisholm’s downtown. He brought her home, lingered a bit, drove to his family’s home, drank a glass of milk and went to bed. He had plans to help move some of Daugherty’s belongings into storage in the morning, said Evenson, who contacted the Minnesota Star Tribune last year to share his story.

Daugherty didn’t respond when he knocked the next morning. The doors were locked and, uncharacteristically, her shades were drawn. He spent the early part of the day door knocking and calling until a neighbor intervened about suspicious sounds his daughter and a friend heard from her house in the middle of the night.

They looked more closely at Daugherty’s property, where the grass was matted and her keys were lying in the yard. There was vomit. They found her in her bed beneath blankets and pillows.

Evenson was among the last to see her alive and he was in the group of men who found her dead the next day. He was the one who first touched her cold fingers.

The case was cold for decades. Reward money went unclaimed. More than 100 suspects were considered, including Evenson. Investigators traveled as far as Texas in their search for the killer. There was a break in 2020, by way of a genealogical database, that pointed to Carbo. Investigators made a DNA match to Carbo through a bag they saw him toss into his garbage can.

Carbo had never been a suspect. He was living in Chisholm. He is a father, and friends and family submitted letters to the court asking for leniency toward the man they said could not have done this. He was a high school student at the time, had attended alongside Daugherty’s children, and lived about a mile away.

During his first trial, his attorneys argued that he had sex with Daugherty, but didn’t remember it. He claimed he didn’t kill her. A forensic scientist testified that his DNA was in her bed and under her fingernails. Another testified that his thumbprint was found in her bathroom.

Carbo originally received a life sentence with a chance to petition for parole in 17 years and was incarcerated at a correctional facility in Rush City, Minn., until he was moved to the St. Louis County Jail this past summer to await his new trial. His bail was set at $350,000 with conditions.

Evenson, who lives in Climax, Minn., has long claimed innocence.

“I want to start off by saying I did not kill Nancy,” he said last year, while seated his kitchen table — empty save for a small red-and-blue toy ambulance at the center, a gift from Daugherty when he finished school to become a paramedic.

Last May, the husband of Daugherty’s daughter, Gina Haggard, said they did not want to endure a new trial. They believed Carbo was guilty.

In recent weeks, Evenson had a look at court documents, where he is often referenced through his initials.

“It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” Evenson said Friday. “There are good days and bad days.”

Though he is not on trial, he is expected to be among the first witnesses to testify during the new trial — as he did in the last one.

In 2022, he visited Daugherty’s grave after the trial ended and felt a great weight lifted, he said.

“I thought this whole thing was behind me,” he said.

The trial is expected to last several weeks.