Attorneys link Louisiana suspect to case

HALLOCK (AP) -- Kittson County Sheriff Ray Hunt is questioning statements from defense attorneys for murder suspect Donald Blom linking a suspected Louisiana killer to the murder of Julie Holmquist.

Hunt said a construction worker who is suspected of murder in Baton Rouge, La., is just one of many suspects in the abduction and murder of the 16-year-old Hallock girl.

Holmquist was abducted in July 1998 while in-line skating on a road near Hallock in northwestern Minnesota. Her body was found three weeks later in a shallow pond.

In an attempt to disarm prosecution claims in the Katie Poirier case, attorneys for Blom released private investigative documents last week naming the construction worker as one of several possible suspects in her death.

Blom confessed to kidnapping 19-year-old Poirier last May from a Moose Lake convenience store where she worked. He said he strangled her and burned her body on his vacation property near Moose Lake in east-central Minnesota. Bone fragments and a tooth suspected of being hers were found in a fire pit on the property; tests to identify the remains were inconclusive. Blom later recanted his confession.

According to Hunt, Blom's attorneys contend that an investigator in Louisiana said authorities in Kittson County, including a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent, referred to the construction worker as ''our guy,'' meaning they had a primary suspect in Holmquist's murder.

Hunt said he doesn't believe the agent made the comment and said the agent has never shown more interest in this suspect over any of the others.

The bottom line, Hunt said, is that his office has interviewed and investigated the construction worker, and that he has not been ruled out as a suspect.

''But there are also other people that haven't been ruled out either,'' Hunt said. ''We still have work to do on this case, and for us to say that this is our guy would be irresponsible.''

Hunt also questions whether the Louisiana investigator made the ''our guy'' statement.

The construction worker, a suspect in a Louisiana case that is similar to the Holmquist case, allegedly had a marked-up Minnesota map in his glove compartment, investigators said.