Legal drama swirls ahead of retrial for kidnapping and murder of Twin Cities real estate agent

Nearly six years after an elaborate plot culminated with the kidnapping and murder of a Minneapolis real estate agent, the alleged mastermind will stand trial again — the latest chapter in a saga involving several defendants, reversed convictions and drug smuggling allegations leveled against a defense attorney.

Lyndon Wiggins, who was serving life in prison before his 2022 murder convictions were thrown out by the Minnesota Supreme Court over faulty jury instructions, is back in Hennepin County District Court accused of playing a key role in the execution of 28-year-old Monique Baugh.

The retrial figures to be exhaustive. It has taken more than a week to land on the necessary 16 jurors for the trial. Court documents show the potential witness list at well over 150 names, with both sides intending to call alleged co-conspirators in the crime that shocked Minnesotans for its ruthlessness.

Baugh, whose daughters were 3 and 1 years old when she was killed, was kidnapped after being lured to a fake real estate showing on New Year’s Eve in 2019. The kidnappers scheduled the showing because they were searching for Jon Mitchell-Momoh, Baugh’s boyfriend and father of their children. The crime allegedly was a murder-for-hire scheme because Wiggins and Mitchell-Momoh were arguing over a record label contract. Baugh was put into a U-Haul truck for hours and pressed for Mitchell-Momoh’s address.

The killers arrived and shot Mitchell-Momoh three times while his children were inside the house. He survived.

Baugh was executed, shot three times while her hands were bound with duct tape. Her body was dumped in a north Minneapolis alley. When police found her she was scratched and bruised and had a chipped tooth, with her acrylic fingernails ripped off.

Four people were charged: Wiggins, Cedric Berry, Berry Davis and Elsa Segura.

Berry and Davis were tried together as the shooters. Their convictions were built off jury instructions that they “acted with the intent to kill Monique Baugh” and that it was premeditated.

Wiggins and Segura, who had a romantic relationship, were tried separately. Their cases featured hybrid jury instructions that said the jury could find them guilty of the same crimes as Berry and Davis as long as Wiggins, Segura “or another (or others) caused the death of Monique Baugh.”

Their attorneys objected to those instructions at trial and appealed the convictions to the state Supreme Court.

In separate opinions, the court reversed the convictions, ruling those instructions misstated the law and played a role in the guilty verdicts. The court said there was “overwhelming evidence that Berry and Davis kidnapped and murdered Baugh” but the jury was allowed to convict Wiggins and Segura without proving they were directly liable for aiding and abetting the kidnapping and killing.

Last year, Segura pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping to create great bodily harm. She admitted to setting the plan in motion that led to Baugh’s death. Segura, a former Hennepin County probation officer, said she set up the fake real estate showing with Baugh using a burner phone. Segura previously had testified that she didn’t know Baugh was going to be kidnapped and killed. Her murder charges were dropped and, instead of a life sentence, she received 20 years in prison. Segura is serving her time in Shakopee and is due to be released in 2033.

For the family and friends of Baugh, this will be the fourth trial they have endured. Her parents, Wanda Williams Baugh and Frank Baugh, have consistently said in court that the people convicted in their daughter’s killing were “the purest form of evil” and have not shown any remorse for their actions.

After their daughter was killed, they took over custody of their granddaughters.

On top of the intensity of retrying such a notable case, additional legal drama has swirled after a search warrant was filed in Hennepin County this year alleging that Wiggins’ attorney, Sarah Gad, sneaked legal paperwork soaked in cocaine and fentanyl to Wiggins inside the county jail.

Gad has vehemently denied those allegations, saying the investigation is built on sham science and that the warrant was leaked by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office as part of an “orchestrated smear campaign” against her and her client.

The warrant was filed on a Monday in February and multiple news outlets, including the Minnesota Star Tribune, reported on the investigation. Gad told the Star Tribune at the time, “I would never engage in such conduct. I am at a loss for words.”

In the buildup to Wiggins’ retrial, Gad filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that media coverage, public statements from Hennepin County officials and prosecutorial conduct had continually undermined Wiggins’ ability to receive a fair trial.

At a tense pretrial hearing, Gad said the attorney-client privilege afforded to Wiggins had been trampled. She said reams of documents including notebooks with private communications between Wiggins and Gad were taken by deputies at the jail and had not been returned. She said Wiggins could not actively participate in his defense because he could no longer have paper in his jail cell. She also indicated that information could be shared with assistant Hennepin County attorneys Paige Starkey and Chris Filipski, who are trying the case for the state.

“The searches and the case are inextricably intertwined,” Gad told Judge Mark Kappelhoff, who is overseeing the trial. Gad argued the situation was unprecedented.

Starkey and Filipski said the accusation that they had been given any information about an active law enforcement investigation was ludicrous. They said they would sign affidavits that they have no information about the search or anything recovered from Wiggins’ jail cell.

Kappelhoff acknowledged the serious and unique nature of the situation. He ultimately ruled the Sheriff’s Office needed to return seized materials to Wiggins that were related to his retrial, but denied the motion to dismiss the case because of pretrial publicity.