Joseph Ture

Victims

6 CONVICTIONS across three trials: Diane Edwards in 1981, Marlys Wohlenhaus in 1999, and Alice Huling and three of her children in 2000. Further attacks are attributed to him and were never charged. A fifth Huling child, twelve-year-old Billy, hid under his bed and survived

Years active

1978 - 1979

Location

Washington County, Minnesota, USA

Method

Shooting / Beating with an axe

Status

Convicted of the murder of nineteen-year-old Diane Edwards and sentenced to life imprisonment on September 23, 1981. In 1999 a Washington County jury convicted him of the 1979 murder of eighteen-year-old Marlys Wohlenhaus, and in 2000 a Stearns County jury convicted him of FOUR MORE, the 1978 killings of Alice Huling and three of her four children at their farmhouse near Sauk Centre. THE HULING CASE WAS BROKEN BY A CELLMATE, Timothy Vollmer, whom he told about the killings, and by a fifth Huling child, TWELVE-YEAR-OLD BILLY, WHO HID UNDER HIS BED AND SURVIVED. He received consecutive life terms. He DIED ON SEPTEMBER 4, 2024 at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Oak Park Heights, aged seventy-three, having spent more than forty years in custody.

Ture was born in 1951 in Minnesota.

In 1978 Alice Huling and three of her four children were shot dead at their farmhouse near Cold Spring, in Stearns County. A fifth child survived by hiding. The case went unsolved for two decades. Marlys Wohlenhaus, eighteen, and Diane Edwards, nineteen, are also named in the record.

In 1980 he abducted and killed Diane Edwards, a nineteen-year-old waitress, and he was convicted of that murder and sentenced to life imprisonment on September 23, 1981.

In 1999 and 2000 the Huling case was reopened and he was charged with the four killings. A Stearns County grand jury indicted him and he was convicted in 2000, receiving further life terms. The evidence included the surviving daughter's identification and accounts he had given to other prisoners.

The figure of six or more covers those five deaths and further attacks attributed to him.

The interval is the substance of it: a family of four killed in 1978, a case that stayed open for twenty-two years, and a man already serving life for a different murder throughout. The surviving child was in the house.