She was fun. She was positive.
She was funny.
[woman] He totally had that look
of the wild motorcycle guy living on the edge.
[priest speaking]
She wanted to be with us, but she moved out there to be with him.
We were kept in the dark about all of it.
[man] The supervisor on the scene saw right away
that this is not adding up to me as suicide.
It was something I never dreamed would happen in my family.
She'd still be here if it wasn't for him.
[narrator] After six years together,
Laurie Bursey and Kurt Bird prepared to tie the knot.
[priest speaking]
[kid speaking indistinctly]
[Lynell Tanner] It seemed like a happy occasion.
When they got married, they said some nice vows to each other.
She looked very happy.
I think they both did.
[priest speaking]
[audience applauding]
[Lynell] It was fun.
It wasn't just show up at the wedding and be a guest.
It was... We're putting this wedding on, you know.
Laurie didn't have to put on airs for anybody.
That's my youngest son with Kurt.
That's kind of how he looked most of the time.
He looks like a biker dude. He wasn't polished at all.
Even dressed up for his wedding day.
Kurt was Laurie's third husband.
She was married three times and they were all very different.
[chuckles] Laurie married Dan, her first husband, 1977.
She would have just turned 21 a couple months earlier.
In 1978, she gave birth to her first daughter, Kristin,
and then, 17 months later, she had another daughter, Kelly,
and her third daughter, Kari, was born in 1984.
But Laurie wasn't ready to give up her dancing shoes yet.
[chuckles]
And still wanted to go out and have fun.
Sometimes she would be home with us, and sometimes she just wasn't.
My mom and dad separated and divorced.
[Kelly Bursey chuckles] That's probably why they got divorced.
So then she could get married to her next husband, Dale.
[Laurie speaking]
[Lynell speaking]
[narrator] In 1991,
Laurie takes her second husband, Dale, on a family road trip.
[Kelly] We took a road trip in the RV to Arizona.
It was exciting to be exploring new places
and being all together was a lot of fun.
[all speaking indistinctly]
[Kelly] She was like holding us by our shirts
with the Grand Canyon right there. [laughing]
But I think Mom was searching for happiness,
but they weren't together that long.
[narrator] A few months after the family trip, Laurie and Dale part ways.
[Lynell] I just don't think they were very happy together.
And I think she was looking for a little bit more adventure
'cause that's kind of what she's always done.
We were at one of my husband's softball games,
and that's when she said, "I met somebody new and he looks like a cross
"between Kris Kristofferson and Billy Ray Cyrus."
And I met him and I said, "Well, maybe if I squint my eyes."
I wasn't as besotted by him as she was,
but Kurt, he had the tattoos. He had the motorcycle.
He I totally had that look of the wild motorcycle guy living on the edge.
She maybe had a little bit of a side of her that was excited by that.
[Kelly] I thought he looked like a big, scary guy.
And Kurt was like the true biker type,
you know, with his long hair and the beard and all that stuff.
But then, you talk to him, and, and he's like kind of soft spoken...
[Kurt speaking]
[Kelly] ...kind and gentle, and...
I remember thinking, "Hey, this is cool. "Mom found a good guy."
I felt like he was good for her.
I felt like they were good for each other.
[Lynell] Laurie didn't tell me a lot about Kurt.
I think she thought he was fun to be around.
He used to go to the motorcycle rally in South Dakota.
Sturgis, it's called, when it used to be drug, sex, rock and roll.
He wasn't as easy to just put into a box.
I think the mysteriousness was probably one of the things that attracted her.
It wasn't very long into their relationship
that he switched to the trucker job.
[Kelly] He would drive big loads of stuff.
Like, he'd be gone for maybe days, two weeks at a time,
and be home for short periods and then leave again.
That would bring him all over the country.
She thought it was a fun adventure and she went on runs with him.
It was a way to see America, you know, different parts of the country.
[Kelly] She was excited and happy,
and it was fun for her, the relationship.
But I can remember a few times
when she would complain about Kurt a little bit.
[Kristin Bursey] When she was on the road with Kurt,
she would call my younger sister.
And then when Kurt was coming back, she'd say, "I have to hang up."
I almost wonder if a part of it was
that he didn't even trust that it was my sister.
Like he thought she was talking to someone else.
[Lynell] When he was on the road, he was always...
wanted to know where she was.
All that calling...
I just never would have put up with that.
But she was in love with him.
She wanted to make it work, so she went along with it.
And then she moved to Detroit Lakes.
I was upset that she was leaving,
but I kind of thought, well, she's almost 40-years-old,
and I guess I thought she could take care of herself.
[narrator] In early 1995, Laurie moves 190 miles away from her family
to live with Kurt in Detroit Lakes,.
[Kelly] I was surprised 'cause at that point
she was pretty invested in us and our lives.
But she is very spontaneous that way.
It does fit with her personality
to just kind of, "Oh, I'm gonna go move here."
[Laurie speaking]
[Kelly] She would come home for things, you know,
for her birthdays and things like that.
She was still a presence in our life.
We were still connected with each other.
She didn't disappear, which I thought she would.
But I think there was a lot that she did not talk about and share.
[Lynell] She wasn't really telling me a lot about Detroit Lakes,
what was going on up there.
That was the time in her life that she didn't share a lot.
And that's why I think it wasn't good.
I think she had demons...
that she fought privately.
She kept information from people that she didn't want them to know.
She was hiding the fact that he was physically assaulting her.
[Lynell] When when they lived in northern Minnesota,
then we didn't see her very often.
Laurie didn't really share what was going on up there.
My guess is that she didn't say a word to anybody.
We're not around on a, like, routine casual basis to just pop in
and It was so much easier to hide things being up there.
[narrator] Now, three years into their relationship,
Laurie becomes increasingly distant from her family.
[Lynell] Laurie got a phone call that Kurt had been picked up
for drunk driving while he was driving his big rig.
And he was at the police station in Saint Cloud.
He could be released if someone could come and pick him up.
Somehow she was able to get there.
In the parking lot of the police station, he assaulted her.
I guess in Kurt's mind, when someone comes to bail you out of jail,
the thing you do is beat the crap out of them in the car afterwards.
He was arrested.
Her face was pretty black and blue.
She didn't tell any of us about that happening.
We were kept in the dark about all of it.
[Kelly] There were so many things that I just...
was sheltered from, you know.
[narrator] In March, 1995,
Kurt is handed two years' probation for the attack on Laurie.
With her family unaware of Kurt's abusive behavior...
Laurie brings him with her to meet Lynell's youngest son.
-[Kurt speaking indistinctly] -[Laurie speaking]
[Kelly] But that's how she was.
If there was a baby in the room,
she stole the baby. [laughs]
[Laurie chuckles]
And that was endearing.
You know, a nice thing for him to say, and I felt like he meant it.
Yeah. I think if she thought he was a monster,
she wouldn't let him around my family.
I don't think it was, uh, abuse, abuse, abuse, abuse, abuse, then, boom.
The kids were hardly ever around him,
so I didn't really have to have that worry.
I was never I thought they were in danger.
That is kind of how I remember...
them together.
You know, nothing really affectionate.
[Kelly] Just kind of interacting with each other in a neutral way.
But she was very good at covering things up.
She was good at hiding ugly truths.
[Lynell] Laurie becoming a grandma was magical to see.
That changed things.
[narrator] In 1997,
Laurie's family expands further, and she moves closer.
[Lynell] They got a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment
that was right on the Mississippi River.
It was a nice area. It was close to all of her kids, close to me.
She didn't tell any of us about that incident in Saint Cloud.
That happened in '95,
she married him three years later in '98.
[inaudible conversation]
[priest speaking]
[audience applauding]
People don't look very happy in that video.
It looks like she is trying to kind of keep up appearances.
It kind of looks like that a little bit.
She was kind of out celebrating with us and we were having fun,
and I feel like Kurt was kind of on the sidelines.
But at the time, I was happy for her and thinking that things
were going in a really good direction.
Being an over-the-road truck driver,
he was not home very much.
Long-term relationships were not something she was very good at.
So it seemed like, well, this is perfect.
He's gone all the time, so good. It works.
[narrator] As Kurt spends more time out on the road,
Laurie turns to her family for company.
[Kayla Smith] I can just remember so many nights
and summer days spent sitting on my parent's deck,
and there's very few memories that Laurie wasn't sitting out there with us.
And if she came with Kurt, everyone tolerated Kurt because they loved Laurie.
But if I could avoid being around him, I...
He made me super uncomfortable.
One time we were in the kitchen and Kurt comes upstairs
and had very little interaction with me.
But then all of a sudden took this knife out.
And started doing this, and, and started chasing me around the kitchen.
It was so bizarre.
He did stop fairly quickly,
but then it was kind of like, he walked away, as if nothing really happened.
Laurie was there, and I think looked confused and concerned.
But then also tried to laugh it off as, that's just him being silly.
He's just trying to play with you.
[narrator] In 2002, Kurt's behavior escalates.
[Lynell] There was an incident where she called her friend
and said, "Come over, He's choking me."
And she went over there.
Laurie was able to get out of the apartment
and come down and get in her friend's car.
And she had barely even shut the door,
and said to her friend, "Don't tell Lynell."
So she didn't want me to know.
She knows me and knows that if I had known
there would have been some action taken, whether she wanted it or not.
Why, when the incident happened in Saint Cloud,
wasn't that a, "Oh, this man is bad news.
I need to end this"?
But she married him after that.
[priest speaking]
[Lynell] It's mind blowing.
I think she thought she was invincible or something.
I guess if I'd ever had an inkling
that I thought he would physically harm her,
that would have been a red flag.
But I didn't have that.
[Kelly] What really is disturbing is that this seemed
like a very just normal relationship.
[Kristin] I'm sure whatever she maybe experienced,
that we didn't see that we didn't know about...
I'm sure she believed he would get better because she did love him.
But he got more and more controlling.
I don't think she felt she was in danger.
[Lynell] In 2003,
unbeknownst to us, Laurie was experiencing some pretty bad depression.
And she just had that side of herself that she didn't, she just didn't share.
I got a call from Kurt one day,
and he said Laurie didn't show up at work today
and her boss is looking for her and he was on the road.
So I said, "Oh, okay, I'll drive over to her apartment."
It was only 15 minutes away.
I found her on the couch.
And I was afraid to touch her
because I was afraid her body would be cold.
[narrator] Lynell discovers Laurie unconscious on the couch,
surrounded by empty pill bottles.
[Lynell] She had ingested pills.
We didn't know what. The pill bottle didn't have a label on it.
It was empty. There was two of them.
And so we called the paramedics.
We were scared.
We didn't know what she had taken.
[narrator] For a number of days
Laurie remains unconscious in hospital.
When the nurse said, "Squeeze my hand," and she squeezed.
I remember calling my mom and I said, "She squeezed the nurse's hand.
She's still in there."
We were so happy.
Finally, she kind of seemed to be a little more awake.
I said, "Laurie, what did you take?"
She said, "88."
"88 what?"
"Muscle relaxers."
This was not a cry for help.
There was a note saying the songs that she wanted played at her funeral.
She said, "I'm so ashamed.
And I can't stop gambling."
I didn't even know she was gambling.
She was just avoiding things.
She was avoiding the unhappiness of her marriage.
When Kurt finally came back into town,
he actually went to the hospital
and started bitching at her, and saying,
"I don't think our insurance is going to pay for this."
She told me that.
The fact that she shared that incident at the hospital was pretty telling.
She was letting me see now that side of how he was treating her.
And so she asked if she could move in with us
when she got out of the hospital.
[narrator] In 2003,
Laurie moves in with her sister, Lynell.
I kind of thought that he's not home a lot,
and she didn't want to be alone.
So it made sense to go live with other people,
you know, while she is getting better.
But he did not like it when my mom was with Lynell.
Kurt was very much concerned about what she was doing
and where she was and calling a ton,
especially when she was at my Aunt Lynell's house.
[Kayla] I could overhear her talking to him on the phone
and constantly answering questions as to where she's going,
who she's going to be with, what they're doing.
And a lot of times, it would just be her and my mom
going out to do something.
But then she'd get off the phone,
her and my mom would leave.
And then he would start calling the house phone.
As if it's like she was lying
and he was going to catch her.
And she was really there.
[Lynell] I remember one time it was the incessant calling,
and I called him back, I said,
"Kurt, quit calling us. I don't know where she is.
Stop it!"
[narrator] With the support of her family,
Laurie starts to recover
and pushes back against Kurt's controlling behavior.
Laurie's got the blonde just in the little front bang area. [chuckles]
But she looks healthy.
During this time, she was going back and forth
a little bit to the apartment.
I don't know if he was really winning her back
or she was tired of being dependent on other people.
And he was out of town most of the time.
Why not just move back there?
[narrator] In early 2005, Laurie is back living with Kurt,
when a new job quickly spurs her on to make a change.
So things were really starting to come together for her.
And I think she was settling in finally.
Just, like, more of a career, which I was happy about.
And I think she finally knew
what was important in her life.
And Kurt didn't really have a role.
She outgrew him.
She was in a good place, enjoying her life, making plans for the future.
[Kayla] There was a plan that she was going to move out.
She was pretty direct.
Just openly talking about it at my parents' house
that she was going to move in with her friend and her husband.
[Lynell] She was leaving him the 1st of June.
But arrangements she had made fell apart.
And it was pushed off till August.
And I think there was finally a realization on his part
that she was moving on.
[narrator] The weekend before the big move becomes a reality,
Laurie has a few days away with Lynell.
[Lynell] The Friday night before we went,
my mom and I got a phone call from Kurt.
He was on the road, and he said,
"I think Laurie just took some pills."
And my mom and I were just beside ourselves.
We cried all of the 15-minute drive to Laurie's apartment.
We get to her apartment.
She's in the living room, folding laundry.
And I said, "Are you okay?"
She said, "Yeah."
I said, "Kurt just called and said
he thought you overdosed on some pills of his."
And she said, "I don't know what's going on with him."
[narrator] Despite Kurt's manipulative behavior,
Laurie continues with her family weekend plans.
[Lynell] And then, at my lake place over the weekend,
there was the weird phone calls.
Laurie was talking to him, and then she'd hang up and say,
"Wow. He's really saying some weird stuff."
He had said to her that he had had a dream,
and in that dream, Laurie shot him with a gun.
She said, "I wonder if he's using meth again."
I was like, "He uses meth?"
I didn't know that.
[narrator] With the weekend over, Laurie returns home
to find Kurt is back from a work trip.
The night we came back from my lake place on that Sunday,
he was at the apartment.
And my husband got a strange feeling
when he put his hand out to say,
"Well, I'll see you later, Kurt. Take care."
And Kurt was very, very quiet.
He was very, very somber and quiet.
[narrator] Laurie is alone when she goes over to Lynell's for dinner.
[Lynell] Monday night, we were all together at my house.
We had a lasagna dinner.
And, uh, we were all just milling about.
But Laurie was telling people about the weird phone calls.
They're all saying, "I don't think it's a good idea
for you to go home tonight."
And she laughed it off.
She hugged me goodbye and said,
"I think they've been watching too much Law & Order SVU."
That Friday night phone call from him was so strange.
Looking back, that was probably a sign
that we should have been worried.
Hindsight is 20/20.
[dispatcher speaking]
[man speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[man speaking]
-[dialing] -[line ringing]
[dispatcher speaking]
[man speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[man speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[man] Hold on, hold on.
[Kurt speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
-[Kurt speaking] -[dispatcher speaking]
[Kurt speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[Kurt speaking]
[narrator] Champlin Police Department are immediately dispatched
to the home of Kurt and Laurie Bird.
When officers encounter Kurt in the parking lot,
he tells a different version of events to the 911 call.
And he stated that they had some disputes
during the early morning hours of that day,
that there was a struggle, that she had the weapon,
and that he took the weapon from her.
And she was shot.
The supervisor on the scene saw right away
that this is not adding up to be a suicide.
[narrator] Suspicious of Kurt's story,
he is detained in the back of a patrol vehicle
while officers enter the apartment to see if Laurie is still alive,
and if they can save her.
[Wagman] But once they were inside,
they did find Laurie lying in the bed.
And it was very obvious she had been deceased for quite a while.
The officers are experienced.
And from what they could tell from her injuries,
from where the weapon was located
and how her body was on the bed,
they were able to determine that this is not a suicide.
It wasn't accidental.
At that point, Mr. Bird was placed under arrest.
He was taken to our police department for processing.
[narrator] Laurie's family are yet to be notified of the morning's events,
when Lynell receives a call.
[Lynell] So my mom called me.
She got a phone call at my house from Kurt's ex
asking "Is Laurie there?"
Kurt had called her early that morning
and was rambling on about stuff that was weird.
He said something along the lines to her like, "I think I shot Laurie."
And I haven't heard from Laurie yet.
So I said, "Okay, I'm going to drive over to the apartment."
Parked in the little road there,
right outside this sliding glass door.
And a police officer met me in the living room,
and he said, "Ma'am, you can't be here."
I said, "Well, is my sister okay?"
Because I heard shot, I didn't hear killed.
She was gone.
It was something I never ever dreamed would happen in my family.
That happens with other families, not mine.
[Kelly] When I'm thinking about the day she died,
I remember it was just so painful.
It was so painful.
And then all that aftermath.
It was just really scary. Like, what happened?
Someone shot her?
Did she shoot herself? Like, who did--
It was just such a big, chaotic mystery.
But my brain was like, "Wait, no. She's gonna be okay, though, right?"
You know, to protect me, it felt like it just made it not real, even.
It doesn't even seem real.
[narrator] As news of Laurie's death spreads around her family,
Detective Wagman starts his investigation.
When I went into the unit,
it did not seem to be in any disarray.
It looked like any other residence,
apartment building in the city.
When I look at Laurie, my first impression was she was sound asleep.
And she's just laying on her stomach,
and her head tilted to the left,
as if she was sleeping.
You could see that things did not match
to what was being told by Kurt that there was a struggle.
You're collecting everything that you can, you know, for this puzzle,
every piece, to see how it puts together.
We're going to specifically look at the body.
We want to look at how she's positioned,
the blood, where this weapon is
and where the entrance wound would have been.
To me, it looked like somebody had moved her arm
after she had been there for a while,
and had placed her arm above her head.
There was a lot of things that just didn't look right.
We find a spent round in the bed.
We also found a live round.
Bullets sitting on the dresser.
We found a lot of evidence which did not match up with the story
that we're being told.
It does not fit.
[narrator] With the evidence mounting,
Detective Wagman interviews Kurt.
I wanted him to talk to us, I wanted to get his story.
We wanted to talk to him,
so you'll notice there was no pressure.
But I was slightly concerned
that he was going to lawyer up on us
the more he thought about it.
-[Wagman speaking] -[Kurt speaking]
I was expecting more emotion from the start.
You know, this is somebody that he was married to,
and he knows she's gone,
and I was expecting more.
What type of emotion, anger or tears?
I don't know.
[Wagman] His demeanor did change when we started putting
more of a pressure on him
because it, kind of, morphed into an interrogation.
We're hoping to get more answers from him.
Because I know what happened to her.
I just want him to tell us how it happened.
[Wagman speaking]
Finally, at the end here, he's telling us, you know, "Enough."
Him speaking to us, goal one, matched.
He didn't lawyer up.
Uh, goal two, he gave us a story, you know.
How false it was, how many lies it has?
Doesn't matter. We've got his story.
And, uh, Laurie was able to tell us different.
We rely a lot on the medical examiner for more answers.
So I attended the autopsy.
Their autopsy showed from the starring around the entrance wound
that the barrel was placed directly against her skull.
It wasn't held back, it wasn't a struggle.
He had placed it up against her skull, and he pulled the trigger.
That's key evidence.
She's laying on her stomach.
She's got a pillow between her legs.
She has her left arm possibly up over her head.
Her right arm is along her side.
She's sound asleep.
[gunshot]
He shoots her while she was sleeping.
[narrator] With compelling evidence against Kurt,
Detective Wagman moves to charge for second-degree murder.
[Debbie Russell] The initial charge went out
as second degree intentional murder,
which is, basically, Mr. Bird had the gun, fired it,
killed Mrs. Bird with intent.
But we were looking at two potential counts of first-degree murder,
one involving premeditation,
and the other involving a past pattern of domestic abuse.
When we were looking for evidence, we came upon an incident,
I believe it was 1995,
that was in St. Cloud, Minnesota,
where a community service officer
actually witnessed Mr. Bird assaulting Mrs. Bird
in a vehicle in the parking lot
outside of the St. Cloud Police Department.
We also learned of other incidents
where Mrs. Bird called a friend
and asked her to come get her
because Mr. Bird had attempted to strangle her.
If she's laying there asleep on her bed,
the steps that Mr. Bird is going to take in terms of picking up a gun,
loading the gun...
[gunshot]
...putting the gun in her hand after the fact,
each one of those decisions, that's premeditation.
When you add Mrs. Bird was planning to move out,
and she was planning to end this relationship once and for all,
we have strong evidence that goes to premeditation.
So I then needed to present this case to a grand jury
in order to get those first-degree murder charges added.
[narrator] The grand jury agrees
with Assistant District Attorney Debbie Russell.
And six months after Laurie's murder, she faces Kurt at trial.
[Russell] When we got to trial and he was testifying,
he acted as we saw in the police interview,
not taking any accountability
and certainly not remembering anything.
[Kelly] It was hard to sit through the trial and see him there.
I remember him standing up and saying,
"The only people who know what happened that night is Laurie and me and God.
And I didn't do it."
And that just, kind of, disgusted me.
I'm still sorting my feelings out about all this,
but she'd still be here if it wasn't for him.
I think when you see nothing from someone, that's more insulting.
[Russell] In looking back at my closing argument,
I was telling this jury that Kurt Bird is a liar,
and he lied in his interview to police,
and he lied when he was on the stand.
I had to also tell the jury there was no struggle.
She was asleep.
By this point, I was so enraged
that we were here and we were doing all of this
because the evidence was so overwhelming.
It's never easy waiting on a verdict.
But thankfully, he was found guilty
of the two counts of first-degree murder.
First-degree murder premeditated
and first-degree murder with a past pattern of domestic abuse.
Kurt Bird was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
There is an automatic right of appeal,
and that appeal was denied.
Nothing anybody does brings her back.
Nothing.
No verdict, no arrests. Nothing.
[Kelly] I don't have the capacity for hatred or anger or any of that.
But I do wish he would have taken some responsibility for what he did.
We always have choices between good and evil.
That day, he chose evil.
[Lynell] I think of Laurie often, and I miss her terribly.
People were drawn to her and wanted to be around her.
She was fun, she was positive.
She was funny.
She was kind.
And I wish so much that she was still here.
I have such good memories.
[Kristin] When I think about my mom now,
I like to laugh about her embarrassing me
every second that she could.
She'll never be old, you know? [chuckles] I think
it's something that comforts me.
She was young at heart and she will be young forever.
♪♪
I had a feeling something bad would happen.
But I never thought it would have been this.
We have a suspected killer inside room 210.
♪♪