Long Prairie

He was standing beside that car at about half past four in the morning, while a woman who'd just promised her producer she'd be at work soon was exiting her apartment.

Jodi Husentrout was born on June 5, 1968, in Long Prairie, Minnesota, the youngest of three daughters.

Her father, Morris, passed away when she was a teenager, and her mother, Jane, raised the girls in a town of about 3,000 people.

Jodi was the kind of kid who told people in high school exactly what she planned to be, which was a television news anchor, and then went and did it.

It's also important to remember that the white van, at least according to the evidence we have publicly, may not have been involved at all.

The most recent chapter opened with a tip that was already old.

In June 2007, a woman who'd grown up with Jody in Long Prairie contacted a website dedicated to the case with suspicions about her ex-husband, a man named Brad Millerburn.

She said she'd already gone to Mason City Police the year before, but nothing visible happened.

You just Google them? You can Google them.

There's one in Long Prairie.

There's one in, I think there's one in Sauk Center.

There's one in Motley.

She was, by every account, easy to root for.

She had grown up in Long Prairie, Minnesota, the youngest of three sisters by almost 20 years, a late and adored baby who lost her father at 13 and stayed close to her mother.

Close enough to nickname her Teddy Bear.

She was a natural athlete, two-time state champion golfer.

Xcel Energy says a higher return helps attract investment needed to build and maintain infrastructure.

About 80 Haitian immigrants at a meatpacking plant in Long Prairie were recently laid off because of immigration policy changes.

Matthew Holding Eagle III reports.

The Trump administration's immigration changes have also forced about 300 Haitians living in the central Minnesota town into hiding.

Many fear being sent back to Haiti.

Reverend Dale Moen has been working with immigrant communities and says many Haitians moved to Long Prairie because of the meatpacking plant.

Some of them lost their job, and it was in part because they lost their temporary protective status, but it was also because the meatpacking industry, the beef are in low supply, and so they didn't need their help.

Moen says he's helped organize food, medicine, and legal help for Haitian community members.

Well, this is not something you'd remember, but when were you born and where? Were you born in a hospital? Were you born at home? Were you born when your mother was working in the middle of a shift?

November 7th, 1951, I was born in Long Prairie, Minnesota.

and we lived there for the first couple of years.

I think we moved down when I was like three or four.

Lived in one place when I was three and another place when I was four.

Actually my first, Bob, you brought out something I haven't thought about in years.

So we moved down from Long Prairie to Minneapolis.

I believe I was either about to turn four or already was four.

There were some family ties to central Minnesota, but folks from other states across the country.

And then to the idea of majority-minority populations in some of our communities, Long Prairie is a town of about 5,000 in Todd County, north of St.

Cloud, about an hour west of Little Falls, that we have really supported a number of entrepreneurs, Hispanic, Latino entrepreneurs, to buy buildings, to start businesses, to revitalize a lot of downtown storefronts, to create workforce opportunities.

in a town that has really seen a resurgence of community building and growth and opportunity in large part because of how the populations and the demographics have shifted.

Yeah, I, I just don't know.

L- as I said, and I've, I've mentioned this on the show before, I was born in Long Prairie, Minnesota.

I was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I love Minnesota.

But before we get into where the investigation led, let's just take it back a little bit and talk about who Jodi was.

So Jodi was born on June 5th, 1968 in Long Prairie, Minnesota.

She was the youngest of three girls.

Jodi's father, Maurice, was a World War II veteran who now worked for Kraft Foods.

Her mother, Imogen, had left her job at a local telephone company to be a full-time mom.

Now, Long Prairie is a tiny town.

Tiny town.

Tiny town.