[chris]

Moe Maurice Gibbs was convicted of murdering 22-year-old Mindy Morgenstern in her Valley City, North Dakota, apartment and was sentenced on December 17, 2007, to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Morgenstern, a Valley City State University student from New Salem, North Dakota, lived in an off-campus apartment. At about 9 p.m. on September 13, 2006, she was found dead inside her front door with a cloth belt around her neck. Her throat had been cut, two kitchen knives were beside her, and Pine-Sol had been poured over her upper torso and face. The cause of death was recorded as an incised wound of the neck and asphyxia. Material was recovered from under the fingernails of her left hand.

Gibbs, 34 at the time of the killing, worked as a correctional officer at the Barnes County jail and lived in the same building with his wife and 15-month-old stepdaughter. Investigators canvassed the building and collected residents' DNA to rule them out. DNA under Morgenstern's left-hand fingernails matched Gibbs, and trial testimony described the amount as consistent with fairly vigorous physical contact, such as a struggle. DNA on the knives, rubber gloves and a hair found in her hand excluded him as a contributor. Gibbs had scratches and a gouge on his hands, which he attributed to moving boxes and a car seat on different days.

During a videotaped police interview on September 20, 2006, Gibbs repeatedly denied involvement and said he had helped carry laundry into Morgenstern's apartment. He was arrested at the end of the roughly two-and-a-half-hour interview and charged with murder. Trial testimony described a phone call days after his arrest in which his former wife, Christina Judd, said Gibbs told her that Morgenstern "must have just picked it up off the door or the walls or something," referring to the DNA. The same DNA profile matched evidence from an unsolved 2004 rape in Fargo.

Gibbs's first murder trial, heard by a jury in Minot, ended in the summer of 2007 with the jury deadlocked 6 to 6. A second trial was held in October and November 2007 before a Burleigh County jury. Gibbs did not testify and called four witnesses, including DNA and image analysis experts. After about 27 hours of deliberation, the jury convicted him of murder on November 20, 2007. Southeast Judicial District Judge John Paulson called the evidence overwhelming when imposing the life sentence. Gibbs did not admit to the killing and told the court it was "a terrible crime that should never have happened."

Gibbs separately pleaded guilty to the 2004 Fargo rape, reported at the time as carrying a 12-year sentence, and to six felony counts of sexual assault involving five female inmates at the Barnes County jail. The assault agreement was reported as 25 years with 10 years suspended, to run concurrently with the rape sentence, though the prosecutor said he would seek to have the assault time served consecutively. The North Dakota Supreme Court affirmed the murder conviction 5 to 0 on April 2, 2009, in State v. Gibbs, 2009 ND 44. It rejected arguments involving funding for defense experts, prosecution statements he said commented on his decision not to testify, exclusion of the videotaped interview under the doctrine of completeness, and sufficiency of the evidence. In September 2010, United States District Judge Ralph Erickson dismissed Gibbs's federal petition alleging judicial misconduct, an improper police investigation and inadequate representation because it was filed after the one-year deadline following his appeal. Gibbs is serving life without parole.

The video is police interview-room footage of the interview itself. It runs about 141 minutes, roughly 140 minutes, and opens with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved.

[chris]

Part 2 of 3 of the recording described above.

[chris]

Part 3 of 3 of the recording described above.