Iron Range man on trial a second time for cold-case murder finally testifies

VIRGINIA, MINN. – After seven days of testimony, the defense called its final surprise witness in what was, until 2020, an Iron Range cold case — the rape and killing of Nancy Daugherty, a 38-year-old mother of two teenagers found dead in her Chisholm home July 16, 1986.

Michael Allan Carbo Jr., accused of killing Daugherty, was sworn in Thursday morning at the St. Louis County Courthouse and was on the stand for more than an hour. This is the first time he’s spoken publicly since he was arrested in 2020 based on DNA evidence that did not exist when Daugherty was found strangled to death in her waterbed.

Carbo testified he does not remember having sex with Daugherty, though his DNA was found in places that indicate he did, and insisted he did not kill her. He was asked by his attorney JD Schmid how he knows for certain he did not kill Daugherty.

“I’m not capable of murdering nobody,” Carbo told the jury. “It’s not me. No way.”

Carbo did not testify in his last trial, where he was found guilty of the crimes related to her death. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled last year that Carbo should have been allowed to use an alternate perpetrator defense that would point to Daugherty’s friend Brian Evenson, who was long a suspect but never charged.

Now with a microphone, Carbo — whose row of supporters overflowed into a second row — told the jury about his high school years and beyond. In 1986 he was sometimes a blackout drinker who smoked marijuana, but hadn’t yet moved on to harder drugs. Over the years he had fallen behind on his classes and dropped out of Chisholm High School midway through his senior year. He eventually got his GED.

Carbo was shy and struggled with talking to girls, he testified. When he drank, he said, he felt like a “badass because I could drink more than anyone else.”

In the decades before Carbo was arrested, he worked as a janitor and on circuit boards, he welded and prepared salmon and rainbow trout for shipping while working at a fish farm. Most of his career has been working with residents of group homes.

Carbo testified he didn’t know he was a suspect when investigators knocked on his door in 2020. He went along with their questions and submitted DNA samples because he “had nothing to hide,” he said.

The defense rested at midday and closing arguments are scheduled for Friday morning. Then the jury will begin deliberations.

In 1986, Daugherty’s daughter Gina Haggard had recently graduated from Chisholm High School and moved to the Twin Cities. For decades she didn’t know if her own life was in danger, she said Thursday after court proceedings. She was left wondering: Did the killer think she knew something? Was it someone she knew?

Haggard has worked hard to keep the case active — including regular check-ins through a progression of police chiefs in Chisholm.

“That’s my mom,” she said of her drive to find the killer.

Haggard remembers how surreal it was to find out in 2020 that investigators had found Carbo, whose DNA matched semen and skin samples at the crime scene. His fingerprint on the toilet lid. She and her husband, Dave Haggard, had to quietly sit on the news for a day.

After the first trial, they told reporters: “Never give up.”

The retrial has meant more time off from work, bringing her adult daughters in to Park Rapids to take care of their animals while she is in Virginia, and finding out ahead of time when to leave the courtroom so she isn’t again faced with crime scene and autopsy photos.

“This is the third time they’re killing Gina’s mom,” Dave Haggard said.

Gina Haggard said her family wanted Carbo to take a plea deal to end the cycle of trials and appeals. They could finally have closure.

But Carbo wouldn’t admit to the murder, she said.

This trial, Haggard has been struck by the way she feels the prosecution has painted her mother as a woman with a lot of men in her life. Haggard, though, remembers her as kind, laid back, supportive of Haggard’s plans to train horses, a good softball player and a great mother.

“The way this trial has been going,” Gina Haggard said, “her rights have been squashed. I’m tired of women taking the blame for rape.”

Whether Carbo is convicted this time, Haggard remains confident that he killed her mother. Still, she would like to see him found guilty again.

“I’d rather have him pay for it,” she said.