A bloody scene, unplugged night lights and locked door. Who killed Anna Marie Korynta? (2024)

GRAND FORKS — Part of Kari Simmers died when she found her aunt — Anna Marie Korynta — murdered in their downtown Grand Forks apartment and, almost 37 years later, she still can’t make sense of the brutal stabbing.

“I can’t imagine anybody doing that,” Simmers told the Grand Forks Herald recently. “Annie was a sweet, sweet person. She was the person that loved everybody. She was kind. It didn’t make sense.”

Originally from Fisher, Minnesota, 19-year-old Korynta relocated to Grand Forks, moving in with her 18-year-old niece, Simmers, in early 1987. So close in age, the two were more like sisters, Simmers said.

“We were excited,” she said. “We had our little apartment. We were working; we were going to school.”

The young women had been living on their own for just a few months when, after midnight on May 11, Simmers returned home from babysitting to find Korynta dead on her bedroom floor.

Decades later, no one has been arrested for the murder.

“Every day, it’s in the back of my memory,” she said. “I’m crazy from it — it shattered me. Half of me died that night when she died.”

Still, Simmers remains hopeful that if information continues to be brought to the public, someday, someone might just come forward.

“That’s why I talk to people,” she said. “If it triggers something, and somebody says something …”

Simmers knows nothing will bring Korynta back, or make sense of a senseless crime, but she hopes finding the killer will provide her family some closure.

“It’s not going to take away the pain, and the sorrow and missing her so much,” she said. “But maybe we could direct our anger to somebody, if that makes sense.”

May 10, 1987, was Mother’s Day. While Korynta’s family spent the day at Maple Lake, she decided to stay in town, taking a shift at Hugo’s in East Grand Forks, where she was employed as a checker, according to Grand Forks Herald archives.

Kari Simmers spent most of the day with Doug Simmers — then her boyfriend, now her husband — and his family. She planned to be home that evening, but her plans changed when she was asked to babysit.

“I was supposed to be home Sunday night,” she said.

Even now she questions whether Korynta’s murderer originally had another target in mind.

“I always wondered — was it meant for me?” Simmers said.

Simmers tried to call Korynta multiple times throughout the evening. They hadn’t spoken since Friday night, due to opposite work schedules, so Simmers wanted to give an update about her plans, as well as confirm that Korynta made it home from work.

Her calls went unanswered.

Arriving home, Simmers unlocked the door and walked inside, yelling for her aunt. It was strange, she said, because the lights were off — and the night lights had been pulled from the wall.

“They were always plugged in,” Simmers said. “We didn’t like to come home to a dark apartment.”

Being two young women, living alone for the first time, they were very cautious, she said. The door was always locked, night lights always on.

Simmers made her way through the apartment, walking through the kitchen, living room and finally into Korynta’s bedroom.

“I almost fell over her,” she said. “She was laying on the floor, reaching for the telephone.”

There was blood splattered everywhere, Simmers said. Her aunt’s nightshirt, once blue, was red. All Simmers remembers is screaming — not touching or shaking Korynta, just screaming.

Then she reached for the phone.

“I couldn’t remember ‘911,’ ” Simmers said. “I just dialed zero.”

The operator didn’t answer, so Simmers called her boyfriend. In shock, all she could keep saying was, “Annie’s all bloody,” before hanging up, she said.

“I ran out screaming, jumped in the car, and I went to Doug’s house,” Simmers said. “Well, Doug jumped on his motorcycle and went the other way, (down) the other road to the apartment. He walked in, and he saw her.”

After checking for a pulse, Doug Simmers called 911, and waited.

At the beginning of the investigation, Simmers was questioned by the police in a way that made her think they suspected she was involved in the crime.

“At first, the way they were treating it was like I killed her, and that it was a love triangle or something,” she said. “Oh, it was terrible. They put me in a room — with a light and everything — and just sat and yelled at me. (They were) trying to break me.”

Korynta, though, was in no place to be romantically involved with anyone, Simmers said. She was grieving, because one month before her death, her fiancé — Peter Jason Steinhofer — was killed in a car crash. He’d proposed earlier that same day.

“She loved Pete so much,” Simmers said. “He was a good guy.”

Simmers understood she had to be questioned, but the angle police seemed to be taking made her concerned about what it meant for the investigation — they seemed to have such little information to go on.

“It just broke my heart,” she said. “It felt like they didn’t have a flippin’ clue.”

The evidence — at least what’s publicly available — remains scant.

According to archival Grand Forks Herald coverage of the crime, police suspected Korynta’s time of death to be around 7:30 p.m. May 10, 1987 — one hour after she would have arrived home from Red Pepper, where she went for dinner after work.

Korynta suffered multiple stab wounds to the torso, hands and back, Simmers said. The murder weapon was believed to be a long blade knife.

Lt. Jeremy Moe, from the Grand Forks Police Department, declined to comment on whether the suspected murder weapon was ever located. He answered very few questions about the crime, citing the investigation’s integrity.

However, there were pieces of information he declined to confirm that were printed in archival news coverage and corroborated by Simmers, such as the fact there were no signs of sexual assault or forced entry into the apartment.

“(Police) say it was somebody that we knew,” she said. “Some people say it was an old boyfriend, but I can’t imagine somebody being that mad, because she wasn’t fighting with anybody. I mean, this is violent. It was a violent, violent crime, the police said, because she was stabbed so many times.”

Moe confirmed there is a person of interest; however, no one has been arrested for the crime and he wouldn’t comment on whether the person is still alive. Additionally, they’re only a person of interest — someone Moe considers to be an individual police would like more information from — rather than a formal suspect, which he thinks requires more evidence.

“I think the police know who it is,” Simmers said. “They don’t have proof.”

She suspects technology wasn’t advanced enough to catch Korynta’s killer back then, and Grand Forks police were perhaps unprepared to handle the crime.

“When I ran back in there — after Doug’s mom and dad dropped me off — there were police walking all over,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many, because I don’t remember, but I know (they) should’ve framed that off right away, and not had anybody even in the house.”

Simmers doesn’t remember there being blood anywhere in the home other than the bedroom, not even smeared on the light switches or night lights. She never heard of any fingerprints being found, either. Whatever evidence remained after the crime, she believes, was lost in the 1997 flood.

Simmers does think, though, that there must be a witness. Based on the suspected time of death, and the time of year, it would’ve been light out when the killer left her home.

“They had to be covered in blood when they left,” she said. “Somebody would’ve had to have seen them.”

Moe said the GFPD received a call about the case as recently as last year, though the tip was unsubstantiated. He reminds the public the agency is always looking for information about unsolved cases, and that whether the tip feels important or not, to let police make that determination.

“If there’s some information, give it to us, and we’ll figure out what we can do with it,” he said.

The worst-case scenario is that someone out there has crucial information they either assumed was unimportant or the police already knew, he said. At this point, all new tests have been completed on existing evidence, and it seems new information is the only way the case will move forward.

“It’s terrifying — because the person is still out there,” Simmers said. “How does it never, ever, ever, ever come out? I don’t know.”