40 Years Later, New Suspect Identified In Kimball Bombing
KIMBALL, Minn. -- Friday marks 40 years since a bomb rocked a small Minnesota town and took the life of the assistant postmaster. Someone sent that bomb in the mail in Kimball. Ivend Holen, 60, died in the blast as he sorted through packages that May morning.
No arrest has ever been made in the case.
But investigators aren't ruling out a man once named a suspect in Jacob Wetterling's disappearance.
Even a 5-year-old could understand the severity of that phone call. Jennifer Harriel remembers it as the moment her grandpa was gone.
"You don't forget that," she said.
Holen went to work as assistant postmaster in Kimball on May 13, 1976. As he sorted mail at 6:42 a.m. a bomb exploded -- the blast so strong it blew glass across the street.
Holen died on the way to St. Cloud Hospital. Forty years later there's been no motive, no arrests and no answers.
"We need to have closure in our family. My dad needs to know what happened. His brothers. Everybody needs to know," Harriel said.
But on this somber anniversary there is new hope after a local author passed on new clues and a name they've never heard before.
"It's definitely interesting," Harriel said.
A man once considered a suspect in another Stearns County case 13 years after the bombing: The kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling.
Police arrested Duane Hart three months after Jacob went missing.
A Stearns County Deputy for 32 years, Bob Kunkel is now 73 and retired.
"Duane Hart didn't have rhyme or reason for anything from what I remember of him," Kunkel said.
He can still recall a few run-ins with Hart in his time on the force. He says he arrested Hart for writing bad checks, then for dragging a horse behind his truck, breaking its legs.
But it's what Hart said during one of those arrests just weeks before the post office bomb went off he won't forget.
"'I'm gonna blow you right out of your house and you won't even know it happened,'" Kunkel recalled.
Investigators can't say for sure that Holen wasn't the intended target that morning.
But in this town of 600 it's always been widely believed he was not. The exploding package was set in the pile for Route 1, where 300 people live just north of Kimball.
"This was Route 1, yeah," Kunkel said.
Kunkel says back then he heard he may have been the target. But when Hart was interviewed, he told investigators he didn't remember Kunkel's name.
He says it never went any further.
Hart is currently committed to Minnesota's sex offender program for molesting dozens of men and young boys. One of his victims told WCCO in the '80s he would often brag about being the guy responsible for the Kimball bomb, claiming he'd gotten away with it.
It was Holen's granddaughter who pushed to open the case eight years ago. Now, she's wishing another year won't pass without the news they've waited so long for.
"We need to solve it and move on and celebrate grandpa's life," she said.
A private investigator interviewed Hart in prison in 1990. He admitted that the FBI removed bomb-making materials from his house in 1976. Hart also said he was a demolition expert in the Vietnam War, planting bombs to blow up enemy barracks.
The Postal Inspection Service is handling the case. A spokesperson said they won't say anything one way or the other because of the ongoing investigation. WCCO did reach out to Hart but he declined our request for an interview.
There is a $100,000 reward offered in this case.
Postal authorities are still asking anyone with information about the incident to contact the 24-hour National Law Enforcement Communication Center at 877-876-2455 or postal inspector Kate Nichols at 612-884-7880.
