'Nosy' neighbors tell of Iron Range woman's call for help in rape, murder case

VIRGINIA, MINN. – The crime scene unfolded in vintage photographs of a three-bedroom home on a corner lot, displayed on a screen in a courtroom at the St. Louis County Courthouse.

It was a time capsule of paneled walls, decorative linoleum tiles, spider plants, peach schnapps bottles — and Nancy Daugherty's far-flung eyeglasses, an earring she had been wearing on her final night, and a wet pink washcloth that would become key in finding a suspect.

Also photographed: Nancy Daugherty's right hand — nails painted a light color, a ring on her finger — sticking out from the side of the waterbed, her body buried beneath a brightly colored geometric patterned bedspread and blue pillow.

Terry Laber, the final of six witnesses who testified Monday, was the lead BCA agent on Daugherty's long-unsolved murder case. He offered a piece-by-piece decoding of the photographs taken at the scene in the days after Daugherty, 38, was raped and strangled in her bed in her Chisholm home.

The defendant, Michael Allan Carbo Jr., was convicted of crimes related to her death in 2022, but the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the court erred in not allowing Carbo an alternate perpetrator defense.

So far, Carbo — wearing a dark suit coat and blue shirt and occasionally sipping from a disposable cup or poking at the corner of his eye — has gotten barely a mention in the proceedings.

The third day of testimonies centered on Daugherty's neighbors and what they heard the night of her death on what was normally a quiet neighborhood street and what the first officers on the scene discovered the following afternoon. The proceedings closed midway through Laber's testimony.

His team was called in to help the Chisholm Police Department with the case.

Cassandra Spector and Terri Vajdl were just home from a toga party in the early morning of July 16. They were teenagers settling in to bed at Spector's house when they heard an argument and calls for help. They crept outside and stood near the Daugherty home, where the sounds were more muffled. They recalled hearing a "squawk," followed by silence.

Scared, they went back to Spector's house and went to sleep. They described themselves as being "nosy."

"We didn't call the police because we didn't want anyone to know we were listening," Spector told the jury.

Former Chisholm police officer Dan Erickson, testifying via Zoom from Bullhead City, Ariz., because he cannot comfortably travel, recalled seeing Daugherty's fingers beneath the bed covers and removing a pillow from Daugherty's head.

Erickson, who did not testify during the first trial, described the sound Brian Evenson, the defense's alternate perpetrator, made at the discovery.

"It sounded like grief," he told the jury. "I don't know how to describe it other than it was not in any language I understood."

On cross-examination of Erickson and others, the defense hammered on the role that Evenson played in discovering Daugherty's body — building on the idea that he was very involved in preserving the crime scene before they knew a crime occurred and taking the lead on busting into the house.

Nearly 40 years after Daugherty's murder, some of the witnesses are now seniors or dead. Allan Spector, a neighbor who was among the first on the scene, died of COVID symptoms in 2021 — while Carbo was in jail and still awaiting his trial. Floyd Baumann, an oft-referenced BCA agent, died before Carbo was arrested.

Only one witness so far has known Carbo as more than just a name in the Chisholm High School yearbook. Former Chisholm Police Chief Robert Silvestri told the jury, without follow-up, that Carbo had lived next door to him.

Outside of the courtroom, Daugherty's son, Jason Larsen, who is not a witness, said he knew of Carbo, who is a bit older than Larsen. He didn't hang out with him, he said. After his mother was killed, Larsen, who was still in high school, moved to the Twin Cities to live with his father.