One of the most bizarre twists in a murder case in Minnesota history began on the afternoon of November 17, 1977. On that day, two 17-year old boys, Ricky McGuire and his classmate George Dahl, went hunting. McGuire never returned. Dahl claimed their plans had changed and they had gone their separate ways.

In April of 1978, Ricky McGuire’s body was found in the woods near his home. Hennepin County Medical Examiner, Dr. Kenneth Osterberg, performed the autopsy. McGuire had been shot three times in the head and shoulder. Dahl was arrested and pled guilty to the murder. Case closed. Or was it?

Thirty years later, on April Fools Day, 2008, McGuire’s mother received a strange call from Hennepin County explaining that her son’s skull had been found in Kenneth Osterberg’s garage. Unbelievably, when McGuire’s body was buried on April 12, 1978, his head was missing.

It had been packed into a cardboard box along with two other skulls and sent to Osterberg’s home in Mentor, Minnesota where Osterberg’s daughter found it in late 2007. No one seems to know why Osterberg kept the skulls, and the former ME could provide no answers since he died in 2000 and left no explanation.

This week, McGuire’s parents filed a federal lawsuit against the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, the Hennepin County Medical Center, and the OE Larson-Osborne Mortuary that buried the body.

Ricky McGuire’s body was exhumed two years ago and reburied with his skull.