The Mysterious Death of Gary Herbst: A Family’s Dark Secret Unveiled

A Grim Discovery in the Wisconsin Woods

In June 2020, Linda Dane received news that would forever change her understanding of her family’s history. Her long-lost brother, Gary Herbst, who had disappeared seven years earlier at age 57, had finally been found—or at least part of him had. A dog had discovered Gary’s skull in the rural woods of Barron County, Wisconsin, in 2017, but it took three more years and the work of investigative genetic genealogist Robin Espensen to identify the remains. Linda describes the discovery as “eerie,” yet she was grateful to finally learn the truth about what happened to her brother.

Gary had always been a difficult man—stubborn, crabby, and isolated from his extended family. This strained relationship explained why photos of him were scarce and mostly from his younger years. Linda hadn’t spoken to Gary in years when she learned from his wife, Connie, in 2013 that he had vanished, supposedly walking out on Connie and their teenage son, Austin. What struck Linda as particularly strange was that Connie hadn’t reported Gary’s disappearance to police. When pressed by Linda’s family about filing a missing person’s report, Connie offered no reasonable explanation for her inaction. Only after significant urging from relatives did Connie finally file a report with the Elko New Market Police Department in Minnesota, claiming Gary had grabbed a suitcase and left in an older gray Honda, driven by someone she couldn’t identify.

Unraveling the Mystery Through DNA and Detective Work

The breakthrough in identifying Gary’s remains came through cutting-edge genetic genealogy techniques. Robin Espensen from the DNA Doe Project explained that this technology is typically used as a last resort after all other investigative methods have been exhausted. By analyzing DNA matches and constructing detailed family trees, Espensen’s team successfully identified the skull as belonging to Gary Albert Herbst, originally from North-Central Wisconsin. Detective Jeff Nelson from the Barron County Sheriff’s Office then tracked down Connie and Austin, who were both working at a retirement community in South-Central Minnesota.

When Detective Nelson and Special Agent Brent Petersen from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension informed Connie and Austin that Gary’s remains had likely been found, their reactions raised immediate red flags. Both mother and son were unusually stoic, showing none of the expected emotional response one might anticipate upon learning of a loved one’s death. They simply glossed over the news without expressing relief or sadness. During questioning, Connie explained that she hadn’t reported Gary missing because “he left on his own,” suggesting she didn’t think it was necessary. She painted a picture of Gary as a volatile drug user who spent all their money and was generally an unpleasant, angry person. Connie claimed Gary had become physically abusive on occasion, once hitting her hard enough to leave her black and blue, and another time pushing her, which resulted in a broken toe.

Austin’s account of his father’s departure included dramatic details: he heard banging in the master bedroom and discovered his father packing a suitcase in a rage. Gary allegedly told him “I’m leaving” before a mysterious man picked him up in a vehicle. Austin later claimed his father had stolen $5,000 in cash and his mother’s wedding ring. However, investigators quickly noticed inconsistencies in the family’s story. In the original missing person report, Connie said she was home when Gary left, but during the interview, she claimed she was at the library and received a frantic call from Austin. Additionally, Connie mentioned for the first time that Gary had taken her .40 caliber gun—a detail she had never mentioned in the initial report.

Suspicious Stories and Polygraph Results

As the investigation deepened, detectives became increasingly suspicious of both Connie and Austin’s accounts. Several months after the initial interviews, investigators brought them in for a second round of questioning, this time focusing more intensively on the alleged abuse in the household. Austin described himself as his mother’s protector, hating when his father would yell at her and upset her. As questioning continued, Austin increasingly blamed his father’s behavior for his own demise, suggesting that Gary’s anger had pushed someone to kill him. He repeatedly mentioned a mysterious tattooed man in a black shirt who gave him an “uneasy sense” and whom he suspected was involved in his father’s death.

Both Connie and Austin agreed to take polygraph tests. While these tests aren’t generally admissible in court, investigators use them as tools to assess credibility. The results were telling: Connie showed no signs of deception, but Austin clearly did. When confronted by an FBI investigator about the failed polygraph, Austin maintained his story about the sketchy tattooed man in the truck. The investigator pressed hard, suggesting that Austin was either involved with his mother in killing his father or involved with someone else, but Austin continued to deny any involvement. His story kept evolving and morphing with each interview—first simply recalling his dad getting into a vehicle, then later adding elaborate details about a heavily tattooed criminal-looking man driving the vehicle. Investigators believed Austin’s story was rehearsed fiction, but without concrete evidence or a confession, they had no choice but to let both Connie and Austin go.

Neighbors’ Disturbing Recollections

Detective Nelson’s investigation took a significant turn when he canvassed Gary’s old neighborhood. Ironically, every single neighbor remembered Gary vividly—and universally described him as mean, horrible, and in the words of many, “the biggest asshole you’ll ever meet.” The stories they shared painted a picture of a man who weaponized petty harassment against his neighbors. When angry at someone, Gary would set up his pipe organ with large speakers in the windows and blast music into their homes. In winter, he would use his snowblower in the middle of the night to deliberately fill neighbors’ yards with snow. His behavior was calculated, psychological warfare designed to assert power and control.

Neighbors Chad and Kaia Kraml, whose house was directly behind the Herbst home, described Gary as “an evil person.” He regularly yelled at their two daughters and was once caught secretly recording them on video. Chad discovered a red light from a camcorder in Gary’s back window and confronted him, but Gary stared back defiantly, making it clear he wanted Chad to know he was recording. Chad filed a police report about the incident. Kaia felt that Gary wanted power over people and exercised that power by psychologically tormenting neighbors. Another neighbor, Jason Grimm, recalled Gary screaming at him about snow blowing times, claiming it would flood his basement. While Jason never personally feared Gary—considering him “all bark, no bite”—Kaia absolutely felt he was dangerous.

The neighbors also provided crucial information about suspicious activity around the time of Gary’s disappearance. Chad and Kaia remembered a night with intense thunder and lightning when they looked out their window around midnight and saw a truck backed right up to the Herbsts’ sliding glass door—highly unusual because Gary was obsessive about his yard and never allowed vehicles on it. Through their windows, they could see directly into the Herbst house and witnessed Austin and Connie scrubbing floors in the middle of the night and loading large garbage bags into Gary’s truck. They also saw them carrying out a carpet or rug and throwing it in the back of the truck. Kaia turned to Chad and said, “What is going on?” Chad’s response was chilling: “Kaia, I think they finally killed him.”

Physical Evidence and the Cadaver Dog

The investigation received another major break when investigators obtained a search warrant for the former Herbst house and brought in a cadaver dog named Radar, handled by police officer Dan Moldenhauer. The new owner, Dee Hamlin, had already noticed something disturbing—a large red stain in the lower corner of a bedroom wall before closets were installed. When Radar entered the house, her behavior immediately indicated the presence of human remains. In the garage, Radar concentrated heavily against a wall and on brick behind drywall and boxes. Inside the house, she moved methodically from room to room before slowing down in the basement, going straight to the room with the red stain and alerting at the corner where a closet door stood.

Radar also showed significant interest in the sliding glass back door area, repeatedly checking walls before sitting—the signal that she had detected human remains odor. Crime scene investigators tested the spots with luminol, which indicated the presence of blood in all the areas where Radar had alerted. For Detective Nelson, this evidence corroborated what the neighbors had witnessed and strongly suggested that Gary was murdered inside that house. Armed with this evidence, investigators called Connie and Austin in for a third interview, confronting them with the blood evidence and witness accounts of the suspicious nighttime cleaning and the rolled-up rug being loaded into the pickup truck.

Connie tried to explain away the blood by saying Gary, who was a machinist, often worked on projects and sometimes cut his fingers. When investigators pointed out that the blood was “a bit more significant than just a little cut on the finger,” Connie claimed she wouldn’t know about that. She denied knowledge of any rolled-up rug, despite neighbors’ testimony. Captain Phil Nawrocki from the Scott County Sheriff’s Office, who was present at the interrogation, noted that Connie’s body language suggested she was defeated but continued to deny everything. She remained very soft-spoken and never got rattled, even though she clearly knew that evidence was mounting against her and Austin. When pressed about abuse, Connie admitted Gary hit her once, then added, “Not that I didn’t probably deserve it. Cause I got pushed too far.”

The Confession and Arrest

Austin underwent another polygraph, which he failed again. When confronted by FBI investigators and Detective Nelson, Austin was directly asked if he pulled the trigger and shot his father in the back of the head. Despite repeated questioning, Austin never answered. Investigators strategically allowed both Connie and Austin to leave the police station, knowing they could arrest them later when ready. After reviewing all the evidence—including the cadaver dog alerts, luminol-positive blood evidence, neighbor testimony, and the inconsistent stories—investigators believed they had enough for prosecutors, though there was some reluctance because they lacked a confession and the case was purely circumstantial.

On November 19, 2020, at around 7 a.m., Connie (then 62 years old) and Austin (26 years old) were taken into custody and eventually charged with second-degree murder. This time, Austin was ready to talk. After more than four hours of interrogation, Austin finally broke, saying “I might as well tell you what I did.” He confessed: “On that day, when my mom came home, he flew off the handle… So, I grabbed the gun… and ended the problem.” Austin told investigators everything about what happened and later agreed to share his story exclusively with “48 Hours,” providing disturbing details about his childhood and the events leading up to his father’s death.

Austin’s Account: Abuse, Fear, and Murder

In his interview with “48 Hours,” Austin described his father as vindictive to an extreme he’d never seen in anyone else—cruel, petty, and violent. He claimed the fear began early, by age six or seven. Austin alleged his father had put out a cigarette on his arm when he was a child, picked him up by the throat and threw him down a flight of stairs, and regularly abused his mother even more brutally—physically assaulting her weekly or even daily, always with demeaning and negative words. Austin claimed he once saw his father punch his mother in the face, leaving her black and blue with blood leaking from her mouth the next day.

Austin, who was just 19 years old on the day of the murder—July 8, 2013—described what he says happened. The day started normally; he was playing video games when his father came home from work after drinking. Around 2 or 3 p.m., his mother arrived home, and she and Gary got into an argument about money with lots of yelling. Austin says he tried to protect his mother before she left for the public library. His father was lying half-asleep on the couch when Austin noticed crumpled skirting. When he lifted it, he saw a firearm—a pistol that his father had never brought into the living room before. Austin says in that moment, he knew his mother’s life was in danger, and by extension, his own: “Oh, my God, he’s going to kill her.”

Austin claims he reached under the couch, grabbed the gun, pointed it at his sleeping father, and pulled the trigger. He described the experience as surreal—the bang, his hearing popping, and then immediate numbness. When asked what it was like to kill his father, Austin said it “broke” him and changed who he was irrevocably. Yet he also felt relief, knowing he would never again have to fear for his mother’s life or his own. He called his mother at the library to come home. When she arrived and saw the scene, she was stunned like he was. Austin wrapped his father’s body in a rug, placed it in the trunk of their car, and drove with his mother into neighboring Wisconsin—about a two-hour drive—without speaking. They pulled onto a field next to trees and dumped Gary’s body, with Austin figuring that wildlife—bears and foxes—would devour the body and scatter the bones so nobody would ever know.

Justice and Controversy: The Sentencing

Prosecutors Mike Groh and Sarah Wendorf acknowledged they had information that Gary was not pleasant to be around, but argued that being unpleasant doesn’t rise to the level of being a domestic abuser. With no evidence that Austin acted in self-defense—Gary was sleeping on the couch at the time—they charged Austin and Connie with second-degree murder. Austin pleaded guilty in what prosecutors called a “straight plea,” meaning no promises were made about sentencing. Connie pleaded guilty to “aiding an offender—accomplice after the fact” for helping dispose of the body and cover up the crime.

Prosecutors questioned whether there was more to Connie’s role than Austin admitted, wondering if she might have actually pulled the trigger herself. They noted that investigators could never confirm Connie was at the library as claimed, and they found no evidence to support Austin and Connie’s claims of physical abuse—no police reports, no reports to friends or family members. When confronted with this, Austin acknowledged he couldn’t refute the lack of evidence, admitting it was all hearsay. He claimed they never reported the abuse because Gary had threatened to find and kill them if they tried to have him arrested or flee.

At Austin’s sentencing hearing in June 2021, prosecutors requested 30 years in prison, arguing he deserved the highest sentence because of the callous way Gary was killed and his body was treated. However, Judge Caroline Lennon found Austin’s claims credible, stating in her ruling that she believed Austin felt his father was going to kill his mother and that Austin “felt an underlying obligation to protect his mother.” She sentenced him to just 12 years and six months, with eligibility for release in 2029. Gary’s sister Linda Dane found the sentence shockingly light, saying it didn’t seem “very relevant to someone’s life.”

For Connie’s sentencing eight months later, prosecutors recommended 57 months (almost five years), but the judge sentenced her to only two years and three months. Under Minnesota sentencing guidelines, Connie served just three months behind bars before being released in May 2022. The lenient sentences sparked controversy, with prosecutors arguing that if such justice is allowed, nobody is safe because anyone can claim abuse as justification for murder. Yet some of Gary’s former neighbors expressed sympathy for Austin and Connie, with Chad Kraml saying he felt sad they were caught and didn’t want them to be, believing they weren’t a danger to society. Neighbor Jason Grimm even said he hoped Austin was doing well and offered to help him when he gets out, calling the 12-and-a-half-year sentence “a little bit excessive.”

Austin told “48 Hours” that he believes there were many reasons why his act was justifiable and that under the same circumstances, he would shoot his father again. However, he also expressed shame that his happiness came at the cost of “the ultimate act of violence,” making him wonder what kind of person he is. Looking toward his eventual release, Austin said his only goal in life is to leave behind a legacy worth remembering—something other than being known as the man who killed his father. This tragic case raises profound questions about domestic abuse, self-defense, the justice system, and whether Austin Herbst was a victim who became a killer out of desperation, or a murderer who callously eliminated his difficult father and fabricated an abuse narrative to justify his crime.