Minneapolis police and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office have deployed more than a dozen law enforcement officers to the North Side after the latest violence there: the killing of artist and community activist Susan Spiller.
Homicide detectives continued to canvass the Lind-Bohanon block where Spiller lived, interviewing neighbors and searching for clues that could lead to her killer.
Police spokesman John Elder declined to say where in the house the body was found or whether anything was stolen. Officials said that Spiller was stabbed or beaten and that the crime scene was a particularly grisly one.
Spiller's son, Jason, 40, called the police sometime before 9 a.m., after he found the back door of her modest wood-frame house on the 5100 block of Dupont Avenue North had been kicked in.
One neighbor, Glen Schave, told detectives that he woke about 3:45 a.m. Thursday to let his dog out, and saw a "bigger SUV or pickup" truck parked in the alley behind Spiller's house, with its lights on. Thinking nothing of it at the time, he went inside without calling police.
Another nearby resident said that a recent altercation with a troubled neighbor had left Spiller shaken and fearful. The neighbor declined to provide her name for fear of retaliation.
Several neighbors scoffed at the official assertion that the home invasion was an isolated incident, pointing to several other similar break-ins in the area in recent years.
Earlier that morning, an unidentified 42-year-old man was fatally wounded in a shooting outside a Willard-Hay home that left another man seriously wounded. Police have released few details about the man's death, which has garnered little media attention, prompting criticism that case isn't being taken as seriously.
