March | 2015 | PROBABLE CAUSE

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announced yesterday that a woman who was murdered 35 years ago in Blue Earth has finally been identified.

Michelle Yvette Busha of Bay City, Texas, was 18 years old when she was murdered in Minnesota and had been missing ever since.

On May 30, 1980, Busha’s nude and decomposing body was discovered badly beaten in a ravine off Interstate 90, east of Blue Earth, MN, in Faribault County. A cord was wrapped around her neck, indicating that she died of strangulation. Busha was reported missing in Texas on May 9.

Nine years later Robert Leroy Nelson, a former Minnesota State Patrol trooper, confessed to her murder. Authorities say Busha was hitchhiking when Nelson picked her up. Nelson was given a life sentence in Texas for Busha’s murder and for other charges stemming from child molestation.

On Aug. 12, 2014, as part of the BCA’s effort to ID unidentified human remains, “Jane Doe’s” body was exhumed. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created a new sketch based on a new scull scan and x-rays from the original autopsy. BCA forensic scientists obtained a complete mitochondrial DNA profile and a partial nuclear DNA profile, which led to Busha’s identity.

Credit must also be given to her parents who submitted a DNA sample to the FBI’s National Missing Person DNA database years ago. The program was initiated in 2000 to assist in the identification of missing persons and unidentified remains. Without that sample, a match could not have been made.

The message is clear. Parents who have missing children should submit a DNA sample to the FBI’s national database.

FBI agents finally arrested Robert Durst last Saturday at a New Orleans hotel for the murder of Susan Berman, which occurred 15 years ago.

Better late than never.

Thanks to the HBO documentary about Durst’s links to three killings, the victims’ families will finally achieve some justice from a system that has utterly failed to do its job.

In 1982, Robert Durst claimed that his wife, Kathleen, had suddenly disappeared from their cottage in South Salem, New York. No one was ever charged and her body has never been found.

In 2000, Susan Berman, Durst’s spokeswoman, was killed at her home near Beverly Hills with a bullet to the back of her head just before New York investigators prepared to question her in the disappearance of Durst’s wife.

After Berman’s death, Durst moved to Texas, where he lived as a mute woman in a boarding house until his arrest in 2001 after dismembered parts of the body of his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, were found floating in Galveston Bay. Durst claimed he shot Black in self-defense. Despite admitting that he dismembered Black’s body before dumping the remains, Durst was, unbelievably, acquitted of murder.

But the injustice that allowed a sociopath like Robert Durst to remain free for all these years while he continued to murder is not solely the fault of the justice system.

Durst is the oldest son of the late real estate mogul Seymour Durst whose Durst Corporation manages the World Trade Center and is reportedly worth $4 billion. Robert became estranged from his family when his brother Douglas was chosen instead of him to run the family business.

Despite Douglas’ fears that Robert would kill him, and the restraining orders family members took out against Robert, the Durst family spent thousands on high-priced lawyers that allowed Robert to beat the murder charge against him and to remain free.

People can argue all they want about the right to an adequate defense, but while the family’s money and power protected them, their defense of this sociopath ultimately led to the unnecessary deaths of others. For that they should be ashamed.