(ominous music)
- [narrator] a fire leaves one woman dead
And a five-year-old missing.
- I never thought that this would be an arson
To cover up a homicide to cover up an abduction.
- [narrator] a man with a dark past
Becomes the focus of the investigation.
- Coulda heard a pin drop in that room.
We all knew his name.
- It was a shock to everyone.
- [narrator] could one man hold all the clues?
- [man] all right, I'm leaving now.
- He was gonna leave and we wanted to keep him there.
- [narrator] investigators searching for answers
In the interrogation room.
- [detective] stop.
- [man] you said I was free to leave.
- [detective] sit down.
(brooding music) (clock ticking)
- [narrator] every suspect accused of a crime
Has the right to remain silent.
Many agree to be interrogated anyway,
But they can stop the interview at any moment,
Making it a race against time.
Justice hangs in the balance.
(brooding music)
(siren wailing)
(flames crackling)
(faint radio chatter)
- The fire was intense.
It was in a double-wide mobile home,
And those tend to burn very readily.
(hose spraying)
When I arrived on scene,
There was a fair amount of damage.
Some of the windows had been blown out
A distance away from the house.
It appeared that there may have been
Some type of a vapor explosion.
Pressure built up inside.
When gasoline was ignited,
That pushed the glass out from the frame.
There was a bedroom that had some fire damage,
And in that area was where there was
A red plastic gasoline container
That seemed extremely outta place.
Some of these things just didn't seem normal
For a regular fire.
- [anchor] shortly after crews put out the fire
Inside this bemidji mobile home,
Investigators found a body inside.
- Once we looked inside,
We found out that there was a body of a female
And there was a mattress on top of her.
After removing some debris,
It was noticed that her hands were in fact bound
With what appeared to be duct tape.
- It turned it into a homicide investigation at that point
And belief that someone was trying to cover something up
By setting the place on fire.
- Police are investigating the death
At the mobile home as murder
And they are trying to piece together a timeline of events.
(pensive music)
- [paul] our victim at the scene was melissa norby.
- Melissa's cousin had called me that morning
And says, "please tell me it's not true."
And I was like, "what are you talking about?"
And she goes, "melissa's house is on fire."
And I'm like, "what?
"my daughter is over there."
(uneasy music)
- An officer contacted me and said that there was a female
At the barricades that said her daughter
Had spent the night with melissa, so I went out.
I saw amanda.
(uneasy music)
- We searched through again.
We were confident there was no other human remains
In the fire.
- It went from a homicide investigation
To now we had an active missing child case.
- It was discovered that five-year-old
Had been visiting the residence
The evening that the fire occurred.
- The weekend of the 22nd of June, melissa called me.
She said, "can I come get your daughter
"to spend the night with me?"
It was routine.
She would take my kids overnight
And sometimes she would take 'em for three days
Because I trusted her.
- I asked amanda about what their fire safety plan
Would be at home.
I wanted to know what her daughter would do in a fire.
And amanda said that her daughter would go outside
And she would hide.
- [reporter] a team of investigators
And volunteers searched the area,
But they could not find the missing five-year-old.
- We were thinking there was no way
That if we hadn't found her,
We thought that she had been taken.
- I never thought in a million years
That this would be an arson to cover up a homicide
To cover up an abduction.
This girl's been missing
Since roughly 3 o'clock in the morning.
We're worried that time is not on our side.
We're worried that we're gonna be recovering
As opposed to rescuing.
- I was really scared.
You hear about it all the time:
If you don't find your child
Within the first, what, 24 hours,
You probably won't get her back.
My heart dropped to the floor.
I said, "I don't care what you have to do, find her."
- We began to do victimology,
Talking to everyone who may provide us
Some little piece of information about melissa's life.
- [paul] we started to learn more about melissa norby's life
Through interviews with co-workers and her friends.
- Melissa's cousin was interviewed by agents
Regarding melissa's relationships with other males.
Her cousin told the agents that she was aware
That melissa had been seeing a male recently
From the bemidji area.
- Melissa referred to him as jake.
She was also able to provide
That this individual also owned a food truck.
- We called the city clerk looking for
Food truck licensees,
And she told us jake's eats is owned by jacob kinn.
You coulda heard a pin drop in that room.
We all knew his name.
- It was like a light bulb went off
Because we were familiar with him in investigations.
- [rob] jacob kinn had child pornography convictions.
He had tried to purchase a young girl online
For photographing purposes.
- Based on his past history,
Based on his relationship with melissa,
Jacob kinn was likely our guy.
He was on probation at the time of this investigation.
We asked the probation officer to call him and say,
"you know how these things work.
"every time a kid goes missing,
"they always look at the people
"who are on probation for similar crimes.
"just come on in, it's not a big deal.
"you'll be excluded very quickly,"
The whole idea of making it a very nonchalant encounter.
The first thing we do,
We reach out to the cell phone company
And begin to get locations for jacob's cell phone.
- We wanted to know exactly where he was.
(brooding music)
(door opening)
(clock ticking)
- Agent gherardi and agent museus had been tasked
With interviewing mr. Kinn
When he arrived at the law enforcement center that night,
Largely because they didn't know him,
They didn't have any connection to him.
- When kinn first came in,
It was important for us to just establish rapport with him.
That was my goal, not challenge him or get him upset
That he would walk out of the interview room.
- He didn't know that melissa had talked to her cousin
About jacob being back in her life, so he probably thought
That we weren't aware of that information.
- As we're interviewing jacob
And we know because we've talked to all these other people
Who say they're in a relationship,
They know each other, they know each other well,
And I'm watching to see how he is gonna answer the question,
He is distancing himself from her,
And there's only one reason why.
(clock ticking)
(brooding music)
- [anchor] deadly house fire yesterday morning.
Fire started around 3:30 in the morning.
- Police in bemidji search for a five-year-old girl.
- [anchor] she was last seen wearing a black shirt,
A pink skirt, and a pink bandage on her arm.
(brooding music continuing)
(clock ticking)
- We want him to lock in his timeframe,
Establish his timeline on where he was
And who he had been with.
- We just wanna keep him talking
Because the more he talks, the more comfortable he is.
So, when we do ask the hard questions,
He feels comfortable enough
With our relationship to answer them.
- There was very little eye contact.
He held a defensive posture.
He became defensive over very basic questions
To establish alibi, when these were questions
That most people would have no problem answering.
- Having that prior knowledge
Of where his cell phone location was
And he started to give us a different story of his location-
- Okay.
He had no knowledge that we had his cell phone location
Prior to the interview.
He told us that he had been fishing by northome, minnesota,
But his actual location was
Near bigfork, minnesota,
And those two locations were approximately 30 miles apart.
So, we knew that was likely a lie,
But lies are just as good as the truth in our business,
Especially when we can prove that he's lying.
- His story about going to where he was at
Was just a blatant lie.
- At this point, I'm not confronting him on those lies,
I'm just letting him talk.
I'm fairly laid back.
You'll see that my legs are kinda stretched out,
My arms are crossed.
In fact, I'm pretending to sound somewhat disinterested.
And the reason for that is I'm gathering information.
The more information we're gathering,
The more relationship-building is occurring.
- Okay.
- He's already told us some stuff
That contradicts what he told us before.
"I didn't have a way to get ahold of her,"
But she's flirty in her text messages?
Once we felt we got all that information from him,
It was time to start confronting him
On what we actually knew
And to find out why he doesn't wanna go there.
(brooding music)
- Tonight, the investigation continues.
- [reporter] five-year-old was discovered missing
After a fatal mobile home fire.
(brooding music continuing)
(clock ticking)
- There is a time in which the investigators determine
We are moving from an interview to a confrontation.
- It was a balance at how hard should we push him
And confront him on what we know.
- Jake remains in the same position he has been
In this entire interview.
Every chance that he gets to say, "I didn't do it,"
He's saying, "I didn't do it."
- We're at a stalemate here.
There were several times
Where paul or I would leave the room.
Sometimes we find people confess better
To one person than two.
(clock ticking)
We started asking very pointed questions
And questions that challenged his alibi
And challenged him, his story to us,
Getting him to try to account
For the information that we know.
- The frustration level increased with him,
Being uncomfortable answering questions.
You could see that in his demeanor.
Paul and I both leave the room,
And that was a time in which we wanted to make sure
We'd covered all our bases.
(brooding music)
- When jacob kinn had shown up at the sheriff's department,
We observed right away that his boots were wet,
His pants were wet.
We walked outside and took a look at his vehicle
And saw flower material and weeds,
So it looked like he'd been driving off of the road.
- Jacob parked right in front of the law enforcement center.
His vehicle looked like it had been driving out in a field,
Certainly not to a resort to go fishing like he said he was.
- We said, "all right, let's do a search warrant
"on the vehicle.
"let's do a search warrant on his person and for his house."
- The atmosphere at the police department at that point
Was like a full-court press.
Everybody is high-intensity.
We're aware of the clock. (clock ticking)
If we don't find her in the first 24 hours,
The chances of her being alive are pretty much none.
- We'd step outta the room,
Not only to get advice on what to ask next
But what's jacob's body language looking like
Without us in the room?
He appeared stressed.
He appeared as though this was the last place
He wanted to be.
(door opening)
- He was gonna leave and we wanted to keep him there.
- I don't wanna hold him in the room
Because then constitutionally it looks like a detention.
We're still waiting for search warrants.
We're still waiting for other pieces of information.
We wanna keep him in that room.
So, we kinda walk this fine line,
Hoping that he stays there willingly.
(door opening)
- [jake answers indistinctly]
- He probably thought the gas can went up in the fire
And was surprised that there was actually
A gas can fully intact still at the fire scene.
The confrontation of, "we think that you abducted
"the five-year-old," occurs right here.
- [paul] um...
We all knew that jacob kinn was likely our guy.
We were very aware of the urgency
And the time that we didn't have.
We wanna keep him in that room
To gather the evidence to find this little girl.
(dramatic music)
(brooding music)
- We knew that we'd put the pressure on
And he wants to leave.
We have opted to try to keep him there
In order to get the search warrant signed.
- We're awaiting the signature
From a judge on the search warrants.
I made the decision that he needs to stay here.
Legally, we're able to detain him for a short period of time
Waiting for that search warrant to get signed.
- At this point in the interview, he's had enough.
I believe he's read between the lines
That we know far more than what he believed we knew.
- [chad speaking indistinctly]
You're wrestling around in your head.
It's like, "we should just arrest him,
Put him behind bars."
And then it was, "do I have enough to arrest him?"
But with the investigative team there,
It was, "all right, we're gonna let him walk."
- We just didn't feel that there was probably enough
To hold him at the time.
- We watched jacob kinn walk out of our police department,
Not in handcuffs but a free man.
He wasn't ready to confess.
And time is not on our side,
But we had other officers and agents
Investigating his vehicle,
And it was evident to them that he'd been somewhere rural,
And we were interested in where that was.
- Part of the problem with the data
That we got from the cell phone was it landed
Out in the middle of a very rural area in bigfork.
- We took the latitude and longitude coordinates
Provided by the verizon telephone company.
We're able to map those coordinates,
And it put the cell phone
As to possibly being 5.2 miles northeast
Of the cell phone tower in bigfork, minnesota.
- [rob] we were doing a map reconnaissance of the area,
Checking to see what other houses might be in the area.
We found a property listed to a relative of jacob
That was right in alignment
With where that phone ping showed up at.
We knew we had to go check.
- Grabbed my vehicle, my squad, a pair of boots,
Got a full tank of gas, and we made the drive to bigfork.
(ominous music)
- When we got close to the area up in bigfork,
It was just starting to get light out.
We were looking for any spots
Where a vehicle mighta pulled off or turned around.
- It had rained the night before.
And as we were driving up to the intersection
Of township road 288, which was a dirt road
Heading west off of the paved two-lane road
That we were driving on,
We could see a set of vehicle tracks.
To us, it looked like the tire tracks
Were very similar to jacob kinn's tracks on his jeep
That we had looked at previously.
(pensive music)
- It was exactly what we had traveled to bigfork to find.
- We got to the west end of the township road
And saw that the tire tracks had come on out of a field road
That also proceeded west and down a hill
And into a low area.
We parked the squad and proceeded on foot.
- The grass was about knee-high.
And we followed the tracks,
It was probably at least a half-mile walk.
I was afraid that we were gonna find a little girl's body
Somewhere along that trail.
- [don] as we got up over the rise,
On the top of the field we could see a pickup camper
Tucked back into the woods.
The tracks pulled right up to the south side of the camper.
- I walked up to the camper, and the door was tied tight
With a big wad of electrical tape.
I was nervous when I opened up the camper door.
I didn't know what we were gonna find.
(rising uneasy music)
(brooding music)
- We got up to the camper,
And around the door of the camper
You could see that somebody had placed electrical tape
Around the doorknob to prevent the door from being opened.
And rob looked at me, and I said,
"rob, just go ahead and open it."
And that's when we found her.
- Don was right next to me.
"turn on your cell phone," he said.
We didn't have body cameras and stuff at the time.
I saw a little girl sitting on a bed,
Looked like she had just woke up...
Sitting there, 10 fingers, 10 toes.
- Finding that little girl alive,
I don't know if words can describe it.
We had a text thread going on to share information.
Don took a picture of me and little girl
And put it on that text thread.
- 6:15 a.M. Was when I got the call from don.
He said, "we have her."
And I said, "alive?"
He said, "alive."
- That was fantastic.
Never woulda believed it.
- When I saw that text, it still... (sniffling)
- It was amazing that we were able to find her alive.
- They had called me and said, "we have your daughter.
"she is safe.
"she is asking for her mom."
(laughing) I mean, I just wanna hold her,
I wanna hug her, I want her in my arms.
(uneasy music)
- [don] she told us her name, her mother's name.
We could see that she had tape around her legs,
That she had tape around her arms.
- And she told us about the man that put her there.
- She told us all these little bits
Of describing information that described jacob kinn to us.
- I'd received a text from don newhouse
That says, "she's alive, arrest him."
- Jacob william kinn,
Age 32, was identified as a person of interest.
- I woke up to a picture of a girl
That we had been looking for for, now, 26-27 hours
Alive and well in an agent's arms.
"she's alive, arrest him."
- And now we're like, "where is jacob right now?
"we need to find him and put cuffs on him."
(tense music)
- Police found jacob kinn driving his dad's pickup,
Traveling back to where he had held her captive.
They captured him and interviewed him again
At the sheriff's office in grand rapids.
(brooding music)
- Our goal was, "let's reconfirm his story
"that he had no connection with melissa norby,"
And have him continue to deny that.
(clock ticking)
- He was very smug in appearance,
Said very little.
And I truly think when agent gherardi and I
Walked into that interview room,
He had no idea we knew what we knew.
- He was, "why am I under arrest?
"what changed from a couple hours ago?"
So, I just wanted to settle him down
And let's move on from there.
- Having kinn retell us his denial
Of him not being around melissa
Was to head off any type of story
That he might try to create
Or explain his actions when you're in court.
- I had the photo that don and rob had sent me
And I just said I'm just gonna let him know he's caught.
(rising suspenseful music)
- That was a moment I won't forget.
- You coulda heard a pin drop
When agent gherardi pulled his phone out
And brought up that picture.
I'll remember this forever.
He stared at that phone and looked at that photo.
You can see him writhe in the chair a little bit,
And he knew at that moment that we had him.
- They put that piece of evidence in front of him
And he shut down.
That was really something to see.
- I try to play on his emotions.
"tell us where you're at, tell us what's happened.
"let us fill in those gaps."
- He's actually smart enough to just say,
"I wanna talk to an attorney."
However, we had enough evidence
That we knew what had happened anyway.
(pensive music)
- As investigators got through jacob kinn's phone
And melissa norby's phone,
There was information that they had planned this together,
That jacob would have a relationship with her
If she gave him access to a child.
The plot thickened again.
It was like how many times can this case
Have a twist and turn like that?
- [heather] melissa being involved
To the extent that she was, it was a shock to everyone.
(uneasy music)
- After the initial investigation and the arrest,
We found a string of text messages
That showed that this whole abduction was planned out,
Orchestrated, and discussed amongst melissa and jacob.
We couldn't believe it.
- It really felt like we were in some movie.
The plot just changed on us.
- [rob] it was very shocking.
- [reporter] authorities later learned
That norby had been working with this man, jacob kinn.
He had previously been arrested for child pornography
And soon became the number-one suspect.
- Melissa had communicated to jacob kinn
That if they did do a staged abduction,
That he would have to hurt her,
To make it look like she was assaulted
So that the police would believe
That she was a victim as well
And that a stranger had abducted this girl.
- Obviously, melissa didn't consent to her death.
He put that twist in there on his own.
Jacob kinn wanted the little girl for himself,
And his avenue to do that was through melissa norby.
It was just another chapter in jacob kinn's sick mind.
- This mother trusted her with her child,
And she took total advantage of that and betrayed it
Because she wanted to have a relationship
With someone who obviously did not value her.
- It just didn't make sense to me.
The melissa that I knew was loving, caring, protective,
And then you find out
That she actually helped plan this and...
I just don't get how a mother can do that.
(sober music)
- As a police officer, I see victims of domestic abuse.
Victims are manipulated in a way
That preys on their self-worth.
He made her feel so inadequate
That she allowed him to abuse her family friend.
She went to some pretty disgusting lengths
To feel loved by somebody.
- He should be in prison for the rest of his life.
(sober music continuing)
- As far as I'm concerned, I don't know if jacob kinn
Could be sentenced for long enough.
But that plea deal kept a little girl
From having to get up on the stand and testify
And relive what happened.
- Today, my daughter, she's thriving.
She's stubborn, she's pushy and bossy,
She is a normal 11-year-old child.
- [girl] see, she's trying to get on my head. (laughing)
- Where'd she go? - She's over here.
- She is amazing.
Definitely my strength.
- [paul] this case is a career case for me.
It's had a big impact in my life.
This interview, looking back at it now,
I realize how important it was.
- Jacob was hard to interview
Because it was hard to play to his emotions.
- He controlled the interview so much
With his defensive responses to our questions,
Yet the longer he talked-
- The closer we got to recovering her.
Every word out of his mouth was a piece of evidence.
- [chad] the fact that we were able to recover her alive
Is nothing but amazing.
- This, I think, will forever be the number-one case
That I've ever worked on,
Just because we were able to bring her home, you know?
We got her back.
(somber music)
- Today, if you go out to bigfork, minnesota,
Where we processed the camper scene,
You can still see the camper tucked back into the woods.
Pretty disturbing.
- To look at the vastness of the area in and around bigfork
And to find this little camper,
It was basically a needle in a haystack.
Just never woulda believed it.
- We go into law enforcement to help people
And to put bad people away.
To be able to do both in the same day,
It was a really good feeling.
- There was no apology from kinn in court,
The judge sentencing him to 52 years in prison.
- Everybody that helped bring her home, thank you so much.
You guys are my heroes.
If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have her today.