WINONA, Minn. – The finding of the body Maddi Kingsbury near Mabel provided “probable cause” to arrest her one-time paramour and father of her children, said Winona Police Chief Tom Williams at a news conference. Adam Fravel was arrested in Mabel less than 24 hours before the news conference and booked in Winona for second-degree murder. Williams was clear that the booking charge was only a law-enforcement recommendation to Winona County Attorney Karin Sonneman. It is Sonneman as a prosecutor who will base a so-called “formal charge” with the court based on police-generated evidence. The issue of how the arrest of Fravel was justified was raised by a reporter at the news conference: Why second-degree, not first-degree murder? As a matter of law, first-degree murder involves intention but not premeditation, but Williams wouldn’t get into those distinctions. He repeatedly limited an explanation to the arrest flowing from deductions from telephone and online communications and forensics. The chief didn’t use the term “circumstantial evidence” nor the term “hard evidence.” What circumstances are known?
> The body of Maddi Kingsbury was found near Mabel, where Fravel’s parents live and where he’s been staying since Maddi disappeared March 31.
> Fravel never produced details of errands he claimed he was running n Maddi’s minivan in a 2-1/2 period the day she disappeared.
> The minivan was spotted by surveillance cameras traveling from Winona and back on the major highway connecting Winona and Mabel, although the driver could not be identified on the videos.
> Fravel and Kingsbury, according to her family, were in the process of breaking up.
> There was no forensic evidence of murder in Fravel and Kingsbury’s Winona townhouse nor in her minivan.
Since the disappearance, Chief Williams had called Maddi an “endangered missing person.” He also had called the disappearance “involuntary and suspicious.” Until the arrest Wednesday, the chief had insisted that Fravel was nether a “suspect” nor a “person of interest,” even through investigators were keeping eyes on his movements and activities.
Police Chief Tom Williams.
New status for case. For 10 weeks the chief insisted that Fravel was not a suspect. Now Fravel’s in jail. What happened?
Fravel. A software engineer and amateur aviation enthusiast. Fravel, 29, and Maddi Kingsbury, who would now be 27, met as undergraduates at Winona State University. He was studying computer science and graduated in 2016. She was studying public health and graduated in 2019. She gave birth their first child in 2018 and a second child in 2021.