By Paul Walsh paul.walsh@startribune.com
Nearly 33 years after a woman was repeatedly stabbed to death in her Uptown bedroom, a 58-year-old man has admitted to the crime, authorities said Thursday.
Robert Skogstad, of Edgerton, Kan., pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Mary C. Steinhart, then 22, of Minneapolis.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said it's the oldest cold case his office has successfully prosecuted.
Skogstad, the former caretaker of his victim's apartment building, became a suspect thanks to a DNA hit as part of a cold-case investigation carried out by the Minneapolis Police Department and the county attorney's office. He was arrested and charged in September 2012.
Skogstad, who remains jailed, will be sentenced Jan. 3 and is expected to receive 11 years and one month in prison, the length that sentencing guidelines called for in 1980 for second-degree murder.
In pleading guilty, Skogstad admitted that on Nov. 25, 1980, he stabbed Steinhart in the head, chest and abdomen. Steinhart's sister found her dead on the floor of the bedroom inside the lower-level apartment in the 3200 block of Girard Avenue S.
Steinhart, a medical technician at a downtown Minneapolis urology clinic, had missed work for two days. Steinhart and her sister had moved from Grand Rapids, Minn., two years earlier.
