WARREN, Minn. — On Oct. 26, 1996, Veronica “Voni” Safranski left Mick’s Bar in Warren, in northwest Minnesota.
She never came home.
Twenty years later, culverts have been searched, hundreds of acres of forests walked by law enforcement and volunteers, and psychics debunked, but no one is any closer to knowing what happened that night.
Safranski’s oldest daughter, now Angie Pence, was 20 years old that night. She turned 21 two days later, while enrolled at the University of North Dakota.
“I felt like I was on autopilot,” she said of the months after the disappearance.
At the time, she and her siblings, Melanie, Lisa and Dustin, lost many friends who didn’t know what to say to them, she said, and they battled to remain resilient and maintain hope.
“We’ve been such a strong family unit through it all,” she said.
Pence said her father, Edmund Safranski, held the kids together in the aftermath of her mother’s disappearance.
Today, Pence said she and her siblings are leading good lives. All are married and each have three children. She moved to Billings, Mont., with her husband about a year and a half ago. They like it there. Through hard times, she said the family thinks of the white rose, a traditional symbol of reverence, love and strength that became a favorite of Safranski when her son, Bradley, died.
But her mind still wanders back to 1996, especially this week.
Over the years, she said a list of about 20 scenarios still goes through her head, each with a different explanation of what transpired that night two decades ago.
“We never got closure,” Pence said.
She said the recent breakthrough in the Jacob Wetterling case picked on the scab for her sisters. After Jacob’s body was discovered, she said one of her sisters put up her mother’s case on Facebook, imploring friends and neighbors to keep it on their mind. She said the Wetterling case scared her and brought up the conflict of wanting closure but knowing that the outcome likely would be sad.
“They worried and they fought and they never gave up, and now they’re crushed,” Pence said of the Wetterling family, saying they were mourning for the first time after discovering their son was murdered this year.
“It’s a cold case, but it can still stay warm in our community,” Pence said.
STILL LOOKING
At the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office in Warren, the case is very much alive. A poster of Safranski is on a glass window in the foyer — it’s been there since 1996. Another poster offers a $15,000 reward for information leading to her location.
Through the lobby and into an old office space for deputies lie more reminders. Next to the desk of Chief Deputy John Tinnes, three large boxes are stacked, each labeled “Safranski” and full of notes and tips collected over the years. Next to the boxes, three large binders are stuffed with more of the same.
Tinnes and Sheriff Jason Boman said there are at least five more boxes in storage.
“We get tips every now and then,” said Boman, who was a young deputy in 1996.
Just last week, Boman said, he got a tip that sounded promising. A man tilling a field near Argyle, where Safranski lived, called. He’d found what he thought was a moccasin in the field. Boman got excited, he said, thinking it might be something. He drove out to the farm and checked out the find, which he said turned out to be a man’s shoe.
“The guy told me ‘I feel dumb,’” Boman said. “But I told him not to feel dumb. If you don’t call us, we won’t know.”
Tinnes joined the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office in 1996, just a month before the disappearance. Boman had joined the office a year before. They helped search the area when the case broke out. Twenty years later, Tinnes keeps the files on the case close to his desk.
“I don’t want to have it be forgotten,” he said.
He said they get about one to three tips a year, and that they always look into them.
“We want it solved more than anybody but the family,” Tinnes said. “I can’t imagine what they’re going through.”
ONE DAY
Pence said the worst part is feeling that somebody knows something about the case and won’t come forward.
She feels the man who left Mick’s Bar with her mother 20 years ago is that person. There was a Halloween party at Mick’s Bar that night. Safranski was dressed in a Native American costume. She left with a man in his 1977 black Dodge Power Wagon, according to authorities. That man was not charged in her disappearance. No one ever has been.
“We know he was a bad man,” Pence said. “We know he was involved in her life before that.”
That man is Kevin Scott Skjerven, and he was investigated and cleared by law enforcement.
He was convicted of fourth-degree sexual conduct in Minnesota in 1988 and served 22 months in prison, according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
When reached by the Grand Forks Herald, Skjerven said the media tried to portray him as guilty, but he said he cooperated with law enforcement and did nothing wrong.
“She like followed me out the door,” Skjerven said of Oct. 26, 1996.
He said she told him her friends had left her there.
“I just tried to help someone out,” Skjerven said. “I’ve been doing that my whole life.”
Skjerven said he didn’t remember much about what happened that night when asked where the two went afterward.
Mick’s Bar hasn’t changed much in the 20 years since Safranski was last there. On a crisp afternoon in October, Charles Mock sits at the bar. He was at Mick’s the night Safranski disappeared, too. He said the bar back then was in a horseshoe, and the pool room in the back used to be a dining room. Other than that, the place is the same.
The case remains the same, too. But that could change at any time, authorities say. One of these days that shoe in the field might lead to something, and a family’s questions may be answered.
“We get all these tips, and they never seem to pan out,” Tinnes said. “But one day it will.”