Missing in Moose Lake : The Katie Poirier Case

As always, thank you for hanging out and remembering Katie Poirier with me today. In May 1999, 19‑year‑old college student Katie Poirier disappeared from the D.J.’s Expressway Conoco convenience store in Moose Lake, Minnesota, where she was working alone on the night shift. A grainy black‑and‑white surveillance tape showed a man gripping the back of her neck and forcing her out of the store at closing time, and when customers arrived later they found the shop empty, the lights still on, and Katie gone.The abduction triggered a massive search and investigation that eventually focused on 55‑year‑old local man Donald Blom, a repeat offender with a long history of kidnapping and sexual assaults. Forensic experts matched a partial, distorted imprint of a missing dental bridge from Blom to a bite mark left in a piece of duct tape used in the kidnapping, a key piece of scientific evidence that helped secure his conviction even though Katie’s remains were never definitively identified. Blom was convicted of kidnapping and murdering Katie and sentenced to life in prison, and her case became nationally known both for the terrifying surveillance footage of her being taken and for the innovative forensic work that finally tied her killer to the crime.