EDGERTON — A 57-year-old edgerton man is being held on $1 million bond in the Johnson County Jail in connection with a 32-year-old rape and murder in Minnesota. Robert Skogstad has been charged by Minnesota authorities in the 1980 rape and stabbing death of 22-year-old medical technician Mary Steinhart.
Minneapolis police Capt. Amelia Huffman told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Wednesday that although there was no DNA tests available at that time, police kept forensic tissue samples from the murder scene and that her department’s cold case squad kept working on the case periodically, although there were no DNA matches in Minnesota crime files. About two years ago, the squad got a hit when the samples were compared with national database, Huffman said. The search matched Skogstad’s DNA from when he was convicted of a rape in California, she said. The two Minneapolis detectives traveled to Kansas to talk to him but he denied involvement in the case, she said. “He … couldn’t explain how his DNA was present at the scene of the crime,” Huffman said at a Wednesday news conference outside the Uptown apartment building where Steinhart died. Steinhart was stabbed 25 times and at the time, authorities said her murder was one of the most violent they had seen. Skogstad was a caretaker at Steinhart’s apartment building but wasn’t a suspect at the time.
Thursday, Sept. 13, 11 a.m.
