BAXTER — Heartland Animal Rescue Team (HART) was vandalized early Tuesday morning with the words “Killers” and “U Kill” spray-painted on the building.

Baxter Police Chief Jim Exsted said someone broke into the HART building and did extensive property damage. Exsted said the suspect also released all the dogs that were in the impound area of the animal rescue shelter.

Fortunately, with the help of one of the impound dogs — a pit bull named “Angel” — all the dogs, but one were rescued and brought back to HART.

Couple’s death ruled a murder-suicide in structure fire

The death of a Lake Edward Township couple — whose bodies were found April 30 in their residence during a structure fire — was ruled a murder-suicide, Crow Wing County Sheriff Todd Dahl said Tuesday.

Dahl said preliminary reports from the Ramsey County Medical Examiner relating to the deaths of Kenneth Alan Ponsness, 56, and Kathleen Marie Ponsness, 57, ruled Kathleen’s death as a homicide and Kenneth’s death as a suicide.

Even though life right now is not going the way Carol Kenyon hoped it would go, the Brainerd mom feels truly blessed.

This Mother’s Day she is the proud mother of two back-to-back fraternal twins. Kenyon and Joe Poegel have their girls Tabitha and Anna Poegel, who will be 2 years old on July 7 — and then their infant sons, Eli and Benjiman, who were born on March 30.

Almost five years after Steven Bernard Radke was convicted for the murder of his father-in-law, the Minnesota Supreme Court has taken up his appeal.

Radke was convicted Feb. 12, 2009, of shooting and killing his father-in-law, Darrell Buesgens, on June 20, 2007, at Buesgens’ rural Emily home. The conviction on a criminal charge of premeditated first-degree murder meant a life sentence in prison for Radke.