Mankato authorities arrested a homeless man in Blue Earth County Tuesday in connection with a 25-year-old Pennsylvania homicide case.
The news struck a chord in Rock County after authorities said the suspect listed Magnolia as his most recent address.
Charles Cook, 61, is suspected of shooting 76-year-old Myrtle McGill in her White Township kitchen and stealing her car in December 1991.
DNA evidence collected from a cigarette in that car was linked to Cook after a 2007 “hit” in the criminal justice system database.
Since then, Cook had used several different names and lived in various locations around the country before his motorhome broke down last summer on Interstate 90 near Magnolia.
‘Angels or killers?’
According to lifelong Magnolia resident Marvin Kroontje, Cook ended up in the city campground behind his house in the summer of 2015.
“Steve Auch towed him off the interstate, and they had a dispute of some kind right off the bat, so the Auchs have had nothing to do with him since he got here,” Kroontje said.
He, like others, helped Cook out of the goodness of his heart.
“He was pleasant, and people were good to him,” Kroontje said. “You try to help someone who’s between a rock and a hard place.”
He said Cook had arranged for a replacement engine for his motorhome through a local mechanic, and Kroontje said his temporary backdoor neighbor worked diligently through the summer to get the motorhome running.
“He’d borrow tools from me, and he’d always bring them back,” he said. “And every so often he’d ask for a ride to Luverne, and he’d offer to pay, but I never accepted a dime.”
He said other Magnolia residents provided transportation to Luverne, and Cook sometimes used Heartland Express for rides.
“He had money coming in from a savings account or disability,” Kroontje said, adding that Cook had a post office box at the Magnolia post office.
“He paid for his campground stay, and after he left town, he called the mayor to arrange for the final payment and to apologize for the mess he left behind — and there was a mess.”
He said he later heard that Cook’s motorhome left Magnolia and made it as far as Worthington before it broke down and was towed there.
Kroontje said when the news broke last week about a Magnolia resident being a murder suspect, he didn’t immediately think of Cook. But when the name and photo were released Friday, Kroontje’s heart sank.
“I was kind of shocked it was him,” he said. “I think everyone was pretty puzzled by it.”
But then, Kroontje added, the town really didn’t have long to get to know him. “He wasn’t really from Magnolia.”
From the brief conversations with Kroontje, Cook claimed to be a Vietnam veteran and a skilled welder. His most recent employment was reportedly in the oilfields of North Dakota where he said he suffered a work-related injury — burns on his legs — that prompted him to leave there.
Kroontje said his experience with Cook has been a sad reminder to all small-town residents along the I-90 corridor to be cautious with strangers.
“The moral of the story is if someone breaks down on the interstate, don’t tow them to Magnolia,” he said chuckling.
“It’s like my son told me, ‘Sometimes you entertain angels unaware, sometimes you entertain killers.’”
Following is the chain of events that led to Cook’s arrest last week:
Shortly before the 1991 shooting, Cook had been released from Pennsylvania prison after a drug conviction. As a condition of his parole, he was supposed to have checked into a halfway house in Philadelphia.
Instead, authorities there say he boarded a bus to head west, but got off in Indiana County and needed a way to get to the Pittsburgh bus station. So, investigators surmise, Cook killed McGill and took her car.
In 1998 and 1999 he was convicted of several crimes in Washington State and was extradited back to Pennsylvania in 2000 to serve the remainder of the sentence.
He was paroled a second time in 2004 and from then on “was known to be very transient,” according to Pennsylvania investigators.
Though he listed Magnolia, Minnesota, as his last known address, Cook had been living in a motorhome, traveling from town to town.
“The suspect was, at most, a temporary resident of Magnolia, having resided there for a short time last summer, leaving the area last fall (2015),” Assistant Rock County Attorney Jeff Haubrich said Tuesday. “There is no public safety risk to any area residents.”
According to Pennsylvania authorities, Cook’s addresses in the past 10 years have included Ohio, North Dakota, California and multiple locations in Minnesota.
He has also been identified under other names and birthdates. Among them are Charles Johnson, Ralph Johnson and Charles Wright.
Investigators interacted with law enforcement agencies in these areas and visited several locations in an attempt to locate Cook over the years.
Cook was last registered as an adult sex offender, sexual predator, in Illinois where he listed his address as “out of state Magnolia, Minnesota.”
In December 2015 he was arrested and released in Worthington where he was reportedly homeless, living in a disabled motorhome.
On March 8, 2016, Pennsylvania troopers traveled to Minnesota to locate and interview Cook, who provided a DNA sample that later confirmed he was the contributor of the DNA found on the cigarette in the 1991 homicide investigation.
Based on this evidence, a warrant was issued for Cook’s arrest, which reportedly took place Tuesday, Oct. 18, in Blue Earth County, according to a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Police.
The specific location of the arrest is unclear and Cook’s current location is unclear.
“Cook is currently in secure custody at an undisclosed location in Minnesota on unrelated charges and will be extradited to Indiana County as soon as possible,” Pennsylvania authorities said Friday.