Bismarck Tribune

By VIRGINIABy VIRGINIAGRANTIER

NEW SALEM - At the same time, all at once, everyone in the Family Hair Care shop in New Salem, started bawling Friday afternoon - all five of them, said Tina Grade, 39, co-owner of the shop.

Because they all heard what they had been waiting a long time to hear.

The television was on for a specific reason, and Friday afternoon the news came on.

A verdict in the Moe Gibbs case. Guilty. When they heard "guilty," that's when the crying started.

"We knew Mindy didn't die in vain," said Grade, explaining her tears, which started falling again just talking about it. "He's not going to hurt anyone else."

Mindy Morgenstern, 22, a Valley City State University student when she was found dead in her apartment in September 2006, was raised in New Salem. She would come to the shop in her high school days almost every day with her best friend, Ashley Kunz, who is the daughter of Sandy Kunz, the other co-owner of the hair salon.

Sandy Kunz said her reaction to the verdict was "Thank God … Mindy didn't die for nothing."

She said she's glad Gibbs will pay for what he did, but she said she also feels sorry for him.

"I do think he's a very sick man,"she said. "He must be a very sick man to have done something like that.'

Ashley Kunz, 23, now a Headstart teacher in Mandan, said Friday in a phone call that she was driving to Valley City when she heard the news on the radio.

She started crying and feeling like "it's finally over … It was such a stressful time."

Kunz said about three weeks before her friend's death, she and Mindy had a discussion about what they would do if they were ever attacked by someone.

She said they both agreed they would scratch, claw, dig their fingers in - whatever they had to do get away. She said when she heard about the amount of Gibbs' DNA under Morgenstern's fingernails, she was sure Gibbs had done the crime, because she knew that's exactly what Morgenstern had tried to do to get away.

At The Field bar in New Salem, people interviewed expressed relief it was over.

Mitch Thiel, 42, of New Salem, a second cousin of Morgenstern's, said the community and family needed closure.

"It's about time," he said. "It's been a major thing on everybody's mind."

He remembers his cousin as a giving person who would do anything for anyone.

Donna Baltzer, 50, bartender at The Field, said she was happy about the verdict.

"It's kind of over for the family," she said.

Toby Backsen, 60, of New Salem, who knows the Morgensterns and said Mindy was a well-liked person, said Gibbs got what he deserved.

At the Arrowhead Inn in New Salem, Julie Boreen, 49, inn owner, said her sister-in-law was close friends with Mindy, and had been really worried that Gibbs might get off.

Angie Weingarten, 24, of Valley City, a college friend of Mindy's, said she cried when she heard the verdict - out of relief.

And she said she still thinks about a vivid dream she had of Mindy coming to her dressed in white.

She told Weingarten to "tell Moe I forgive him," and when Weingarten asked her to repeat what she said, Mindy wrote on a piece of white paper the word "forgive."

Weingarten said she interpreted that as meaning it was OK to pray for Gibbs for what he had done, because she said she would never consider telling Gibbs about Mindy's forgiveness message.

"No way," she said. "Just because of what he had done to her."

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com)