The Search For Kristin Diede (born Valerie Goebel) and Robert Anderson
We would be interested in speaking with a gentlemen named Victor Larson. Victor was one of Kristin Diede’s neighbors in Bloomington at the time of her and Robert Anderson’s disappearance.
Kristin may have telephoned Victor in Bloomington from Wishek just before she went missing.
We would very much like to come into contact with Victor. If you know Victor Larson please contact us.
I previously wrote that about the uncanny lack of media coverage in North Dakota regarding this case.
The Bismarck Tribune ran its first story about the case last Sunday.
It was front page news on a Sunday. Read it Here
Kristin Joy Diede & Robert Michael Anderson – Bismarck Tribune
This morning, the associated press ticker revealed the following:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Authorities are investigating a human jaw bone found in the Missouri River in Bismarck.
Police say a man wading in the river near a boat landing found the bone Sunday when he stepped on it. The man notified authorities.
Police sent the bone to the state medical examiner, who determined it’s a human bone. A DNA analysis will now be done to try to determine its origin.
We only share this here and now because of the fact that we just days ago announced a $5000 reward for anyone who can lead authorties to the remains of Kristin and Bob.
In 1996, Sandra Mary Jacobson dissapeared in Bismarck, ND. According to information found here, her car was found abandonded the next day at Centennial Beach near the Missouri River.
Today, kristinjoydiede.com in association with the family members of Robert Michael Anderson, announced a new reward in the amount of five thousand dollars for anyone who successfully discovers human remains belonging to either Kristin Joy Diede or Robert Anderson.
Click here for full information.
Or
Print your own flyer to put up in your area. Reward Flyer Download
Many thank to all the businesses in Napoleon, Wishek, Ashely and Ellendale who eagerly agreed to post the flyer for Bob and Kristin last weekend
. You can download, print and post your own poster by clicking Reward Flyer Download
Oct 29, 2015
After dropping her son and daughter off at relatives in Wishek, North Dakota, in 1993, Kristin Diede vanished with her friend Robert Anderson. ND investigators suspect foul play.
First broadcast almost 20 years ago to this day, this seems to be the only TV news coverage of this case. Broadcast in October 0f 1995 by WCCO TV in Minnesota. Click the > Play button. There are a few seconds of static before the video starts.
No arrests have ever been made in this case. Kristin Joy Diede (born Valeri Goebel) and Robert Michael Anderson's bodies have never been found. There have never been any confirmed sightings of them. If you have any information about this case, contact someone: This website. unsufferus@gmail.com Logan County Sheriff's Department 701-754-2495, North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation at 1-800-472-2185 or 701-328-5500
I was busy doing paperwork and these two individuals came into the office . . .
The following interview is an excerpt that took place on Friday September 25th, 2015 between myself and retired North Dakota State Trooper Wes Meidinger. This interview will be published in print in its entirety at a later date.
Twenty-two years ago Robert Anderson and Kristin Diede disappeared from Wishek, ND. Since then, some of the once clean and original factual details regarding the disappearance of Kristin Diede and Robert Anderson have been kicked around a bit. More than kicked around in some cases. In some instances, the original hard facts have been beaten up and embellished and are now instead tagged with faulty jagged edges. An impatient and careless researcher can easily get nicked when haphazardly grasping for any rusty clue that comes along. This creates a dilemma. To not follow every and any lead is to risk overlooking the truth. The downside? Hours (or perhaps years) of looking in the wrong places, following decomposed clues and walking down dead-end paths.
One such detail concerns the last confirmed sightings of Robert Anderson and Kristin Diede. More precisely, there has been some cluttered information regarding an interaction with a North Dakota State Trooper who was said to be one of the last known persons to have interacted with Diede and Anderson. While some have questioned if the event occurred at all, there has also been erroneous information circulating regarding the identity and current whereabouts of this trooper. On top of that, there is speculation about what that meeting was all about and what exactly transpired.
Before this particular detail gets abused and contaminated any further, I felt it was important to secure the facts first hand from the Trooper himself. I finally tracked him down after pursuing a few false leads. He is alive and well and his name is Wes Meidinger.
For twenty-five years, seventeen of which were spent in the Wishek area, Wes Meidinger served as a North Dakota State Trooper. Meidinger is the trooper who met Kristin and Robert on the last day they were seen.
Now retired from the force, Trooper Meidinger met with me at his home in Bismarck, North Dakota on the evening of Friday Sept 25th, 2015.
As he recounts events in a no nonsense and matter of fact fashion, Meidinger broadcasts an element of calm stability. After having met him it is not at all difficult to imagine how he served the North Dakota public with a steady demeanor. A demeanor which conveys clearly that he has little to fear, and nothing to hide.
While modern day technology (and the crime that goes with it) has transformed the console of a squad car into something that resembles a lunar landing module, Trooper Meidinger recalled an era of law enforcement that is no longer with us. It was an era when a state trooper had only three radio channels to maneuver and when the flashing light overhead was confined to “off”, “yellow” or “red”.
The following is his account of that Sunday afternoon on August 15th, 1993, the day he became one of the last known persons to have seen or spoken with Kristin Diede and Robert Anderson.
MEIDINGER – It was a Sunday afternoon. It was a weekend I was working. And I had a small office in the Wishek Police department. I was busy doing paperwork and these two individuals came into the office and were inquiring about validity of court orders pertaining to child custody and things of that nature. Now, whether they had a court order or were looking to get one I don’t know. They never showed me a court order but it sounded to me like they had one. And we just spoke briefly and I referred them to the Logan County State Attorney Gerald Kuhn. Whether they contacted? They did not contact him in my presence, whether they did that afterwards? Of course that was in the days before cell phones so they would have had to go to a landline somewhere if they did. Like I say a brief encounter uh Anderson didn’t say a whole lot.
wolner – Ok I was going to ask you about that if he spoke.
MEIDINGER – He didn’t say a lot. Now they didn’t seem like they were agitated or really antagonistic. Nothing indicated that, although I got a sense that there was some, what would you call it? There was some turmoil regarding the custody of the kids. And from what I could gather her intention was to take them with her to Minnesota. Minneapolis area somewhere, suburb I don’t know. It was their intent, as far as I know, to go out to the Diede farm and take them with them.
wolner – And that’s Alvin and Laura Diede’s farm outside of Wishek?
MEIDINGER – Yes. They left. We probably spoke 15 minutes maybe. And I didn’t get to hear anything more about that until, I believe, the Anderson Family started inquiring about who, what, where and what was going on. How much later I don’t know.
wolner – I know the first articles to appear in the Wishek Star Newspaper were published in 1996. Could it have been a full 3 years later?
MEIDINGER – I would have thought it was sooner than that but that was the next indication that there was something wrong. From there, the investigation included the Logan County Sheriff Steve Engelhardt and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent, I’m thinking it was Mike Quinn and I did not participate in that investigation. Those folks are experts on documentation and things like that.
Whether I documented the occurrence I honestly don’t know, if I did it would be in the Jamestown office, I’m not sure, just something brief. Being as it was all verbal without any specific interaction I doubt there is an incident report.
wolner – Did they ever ask you to accompany them or anything like that?
MEIDINGER – No they didn’t.
wolner – Did you happen to see what vehicle they were driving?
MEIDINGER – The office was in a basement, no. I did not see the type of vehicle.
wolner – As far as you know then there was just the two of them, nobody else outside or with them?
MEIDINGER – Yes, as far as I know there was just two of them, they were the only ones that came into the office.
I then asked Trooper Meidinger if Robert and Kristin seemed to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
MEIDINGER – There was no indication that they were intoxicated or anything like that.
We need to thank Trooper Wes Meidinger for his contribution to the continued search for Robert Michael Anderson and Kristin Joy Diede.
You can also contribute! If you have any information pertaining to this case contact the Logan County Sheriff, the North Dakota Bureau of Investigation or send us an email at unsufferus@gmail.com
You can also help by sharing this webpage on social media, Facebook, Twitter etc.
October 27th, 2015
A native of Wishek who was questioned by investigators in the disappearance of Kristin Diede and Robert Anderson, may have lodged near Anderson’s abandoned vehicle.
Kristin Diede and Robert Anderson disappeared from Wishek, ND, in 1993.
A few days later, the van they had been travelling in was found abandoned
100 miles away, in Aberdeen, South Dakota. See full case description here.
According to Chase Anderson, Robert Anderson’s son, investigators told him in 2008 that a native of Wishek, North Dakota, who was involved in an ongoing conflict with Kristin Diede, spent the evening of August 15th or August 16th, 1993 at the Ward Hotel in Aberdeen. The hotel is just one block from the rail road station parking lot where Robert Anderson’s 1979 Dodge van was abandoned. Chase Anderson states that investigators believed in 2008 that, although the vehicle was not reported as abandoned until August 20th 1993, the vehicle may have been observed at that location as early as August 16th by rail road employees.
The native of Wishek stayed at the Ward Hotel on the night of August 15th or August 16th, Chase Anderson recollects. Kristin Diede and Robert Anderson were last seen alive in Wishek on August 15th, 1993.
Chase Anderson also recalls being told that the individual, who was closely associated with Mrs Diede, had been questioned early on about Diede and Anderson’s disappearance and that when investigators asked why a person would drive 100 miles to stay in Aberdeen at that time, the individual said ‘to drink beer and see some strippers.’
When contacted by phone on October 23, 2015, Mark Sayler, Senior Agent at the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation stated that he is unable to comment on this story because the criminal case is still active and ongoing. However, other sources close to the investigation corroborated Anderson’s statement, although they could not confirm the name of the hotel.
When reached by phone this week however, three former employees of the Ward Hotel were unable to recall any story about investigators looking into a hotel guest in the 1993 to 1995 era.
More than two decades after investigators first looked into the matter, a previous owner and manager of the hotel, Sue Tonner, has no recollection of law enforcement inquiring about any lodger. Mrs Tonner noted however that she had employed several college students to manage the front desk at that time, and it is possible investigators spoke with one of those members of her staff and not with her.
A hotel employee, Bonnie Weber, who occasionally worked the front desk, has no recollection of any investigators looking into the matter. Nor had she ever heard such a story from co-workers.
When I reached him by phone, another previous employee of the hotel, David Swain of Aberdeen, offered some insight into the Ward Hotel back in that era, before the building was converted into condominiums.
“I started working there in eighty-two and worked there until ninety-seven. I worked the front desk at first and then in 1987 I started tending bar. Then I managed the bar from 1990 to 1997.
I met a lot of characters. That was quite a hotel to work in. You got such a variety of people at that place. It was still a halfway decent hotel. We had the bankruptcy judge that would stay there. The bus driver, that was back when the buses would still came through Aberdeen. We had a variety of people. We had dancers because they worked down town. Strippers.
You never knew who would walk in. We had the famous trial attorney Gerry Spence. He came into town once, they had moved a trial to Aberdeen and he got someone off on a murder charge. He rented out the whole fifth floor for his crew.”
“So it wasn’t like they were the worst rooms. They were just small. The hotel was built in 1927. There were rooms you could rent without a bathroom and you could get those for like ten bucks. There were all sorts of rooms for all sorts of people. A suite was only 40 bucks.”
I asked David Swain what the guest register and check-in process looked during the time when he worked front desk.
“We had an index card system. When you working the desk, you would write all their information on it and they had like a file turnstile that had the room number on it and you put the card in there so you knew which rooms were occupied. So I suppose they never kept the cards for too long. The only one I ever kept was – I checked in Bob Allison, he was a center- fielder for the Minnesota Twins in the 1960’s. So I kept his card as a souvenir. I should have kept Gerry Spence’s card but I didn’t know who he was really at the time.”
When asked if he remembered if guests were required to show an ID in order to check in, David Swain says: “You know, I think they wrote their name down and that was it. They could have written down anything.”
Kristin Joy Diede and Robert Michael Anderson were never witnessed in Aberdeen together. The fact that they were last seen in Wishek, ND, and the fact that law enforcement believe that they were victims of homicide, would possibly indicate that the van was placed in Aberdeen by the person who murdered Kristin and Robert. If that drive originated in the Wishek area, how did the driver of the van get back to Wishek? Did a killer have an accomplice or co-conspirator?
Did you work at the Ward hotel in 1993? Contact us!
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No arrests have ever been made in this case. Kristin Joy Diede (born Valeri Goebel) and Robert Michael Anderson's bodies have never been found. There have never been any confirmed sightings of them. If you have any information about this case, contact someone: This website. unsufferus@gmail.com Logan County Sheriff's Department 701-754-2495, North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation at 1-800-472-2185 or 701-328-5500 More * Google map of walk from Ward Hotel to Train Depot * Google map of drive from Wishek to Aberdeen. * One of the last sightings of Kristin and Robert * Interview with Robert's son, Chase Anderson. * The Cold, Frozen voices of Kristin Diede and Robert Anderson * Check back soon to see the only TV news coverage on this case which was broadcast in 1995
Heather has been found!
In a previous post, we expressed interest in getting in touch with any friends of Kristin Diede’s from during her time in Bloomington, Minnesota, in particular a woman named Heather.
Last night we finally received the phone call we have been waiting for and were able to speak to not just Heather, but also an additional friend and neighbor of Kristins and who reported Kristin as missing.
We will be interviewing these individuals soon, both of whom have explicit memories of Kristin’s disappearance.
Check back soon for interviews.
Perhaps you did not even realize at the time that you were helping someone get away with murder. But you know it now. Why not come forward this Christmas and come clean?
Your intentions of wanting to protect the killer can be understood, but enough is enough, don’t you think? North Dakota detectives are standing by and certainly ready to cut you a deal if you come forward.
Come clean this Christmas. Clear your conscience.
Put yourself and everything else, to rest!
Robert Anderson disappeared from Wishek, North Dakota at age 32 in 1993.
Robert Michael Anderson was born on November 14th, 1961 to Aldine and Mathilda Anderson of Hugo, Minnesota. He was the second youngest of seven children. ‘Bob’ would have turned 54 years of age this month.
By all accounts, Bob was a sensitive and care-free soul and his demeanor fluctuated between at least two modes. His primary and most natural manner was that of a quiet and reflective boy and young man. He was also the occasional clown and prankster and was known to have a very rich sense of humor. Bob liked to have a good time and enjoy life.
Bob was close to both of his parents as a young boy and he spent a considerable amount of time playing alone on eight acres of rural Minnesota soil near Hugo, Minnesota. Roaming free throughout the small hobby farm, Bob had access to cattle, horses and several cats which he dearly loved. He loved animals and adored his mixed-breed dog, ‘Elmer’. Bob would often give Elmer a ride around the yard on his bicycle. With all the animals in his life, with his six siblings and two loving parents, Bob probably always felt that, although he enjoyed time to himself, he was never actually, ‘all alone’.
And he also found playmates in siblings and neighborhood kids.
Bob’s younger sister Debbie Villcheck of Minnetonka, Minnesota has fond memories of her older, protective brother. “Once a bunch of us neighborhood kids were planning to have a mud fight at the pit in Hugo”, she explains. “Bob was one of the people picking teams. He picked me first because he could not stand the idea of throwing something at his little sister.”
Vilcheck recalls, “He would spend hour after hour in the sand box. I would join him, that made him happy to talk and teach me what he learned at school or sometimes quietly play with a smile on his face. Bob enjoyed the simple things in life and looked on the bright side. He didn’t have to say a word to speak volumes.”
Bob’s older sister, Diane Kangas of Pillager, Minnesota, reiterates the notion that Bob had a quiet and sensitive side to him, while at the same time being very generous. “He would have really given you the shirt off his back” , Diane explains. It is a quality that is repeated again and again when speaking to his loved ones.
Perhaps these qualities of quiet sensitivity may be partially attributed to his time spent alone around the Anderson homestead. Time spent alone allows the opportunity to observe and to consider. This ability to actually see others is not something we all are capable of. While many of us are free to carry on rather oblivious and ignorant of our surroundings, the quiet and empathic observers of this world modestly sweep up after us, tending to the unseen, the wounded and the neglected. Bob’s was a nurturer of animals and, to a certain extent, of people.
A nurturer perhaps, but he wasn’t a saint and his quiet nature did not prevent him from having a good time in any way.
If Bob Anderson ‘the boy’ liked fishing, then Bob Anderson ‘the man’ enjoyed fishing, working on cars and drinking beer. Bob had a talent for working with his hands and was a skilled auto body mechanic. Some might say that Bob was a very good mechanic but a fantastic beer drinker.
Having a good time while drinking beer seems to be a recurring theme when talking to Bob’s friends and family. In fact, Bob’s drinking was a sometimes considered to be a problem.
“One of the things that bothered me about his drinking was that his beer can never touched his lips.” says John Anderson, Bob’s older brother. “He would crack open a beer, put his head back as far as he could and hold his beer about two inches above his mouth and just dump the whole thing. He was drinking a case a beer in a day and I told him he needed to get a handle on his drinking.”
They say I’m crazy but I have a good time,
I’m just looking for clues at the scene of the crime,
Life’s been good to me so far.
Lyrics Joe Walsh/The Eagles – A song that Bob liked.
Bob met Pam Larson in the late eighties and they were married in September of 1987. The couple had two children together, a daughter born 1988 and a son, Chase, born 1990. They divorced in 1992, the year before Bob went missing from Wishek, North Dakota with Kristin Diede.
Pam Larson remembers Bob’s great talent working with automobiles and she also recalls the beer drinking, noting that as their relationship was on its last legs, he could easily drink a half or whole case of beer a night.
During his, post divorce era, Bob lived for awhile with his nephew Travis Nelson.
“We loved to party”, says Nelson. “We were young and we would party and go fishing and have a good time. We worked on cars and we drank quite a bit. That was Bob’s life for awhile. Just having a good time.”
Travis Nelson also remembers his uncle as a man always willing to help others. “I remember one time, I ran into Kristin Diede at the bar. She was there drinking with some guys and Bob was not with her. Turns out, Bob was at Kristin’s apartment watching her kids for her while she was out having fun”.
Bob also lived for a time with his older brother John Anderson, adopting the occasional tom cat and inviting it into John’s home.
Says John Anderson, “I lived with him for a short period of time. Everybody loved him. He enjoyed himself. He liked eating, he liked drinking. Put a fishing pole and a beer in his hands and he was content. He liked outdoors sports, he was a typical northland guy. He did not take life too seriously. But he was a very skilled auto mechanic and liked working with his hands. By nature he was quiet but when he was drinking he was a hoot.”
Bob perhaps did not take life seriously enough on some fronts. While he never got into any real legal trouble, (and is not known to have been violent) he could cut an occasional corner once in awhile. John recalls that Bob did some moonlighting fixing cars for friends and was known to be a bit reckless with the flammable chemicals he worked with, always a cigarette hanging from his lips. “I thought I might come home someday to hear that the garage had blown up”.
And he was a clown at times. “We used to go the movies together sometimes. Bob would take a king size bucket of popcorn out of the garbage or something and punch eye-holes in it and put it over his head. Then he would walk around flirting with girls and say ‘I bet you want to know what I look like don’t you?’. I used to get such a kick out of that. This was after a couple beers when he would loosen up.”
Yet, behind all his happy-go-lucky shinanigens, was perhaps the ‘real’ Bob, that quiet introvert that had spent time alone on the family homestead, the boy who loved animals. When he was not adopting stray cats in the neighborhood he was content snowmobiling, fishing or just talking to his sister on the phone. His inner world was likely much more dynamic, deep and complex than what his personality ever presented to the outside world, at least in a sober state. And he did take some things very seriously. Says John Anderson:
“There was some speculation when Bob went missing that he would have perhaps taken off and moved to Canada or something. I knew for a fact that he would not do that and I’ll tell you why. I’d seen the way that Bob loved his children, and I knew for a fact that someone that had that much affection for his kids would never leave them. He had his flaws and faults but he was a loving father and very proud to be a father.”
Although not an excuse, but at the very least an explanation, at some level, Bob probably used alcohol to help find a passageway from his inner world to the galaxy outside where he could flirt with girls and make people laugh.
This happens to be the classic Scandinavian mode of operation and if Bob’s Swedish and Norwegian forefathers passed anything on to him, it was this. The Scandinavians that immigrated into Minnesota came from a world where boasting, bragging or carrying on is frowned upon and where emotions are expected to be processed internally, quietly and modestly. This is manageable for some, for awhile, but when alcohol is introduced into the algorithm, the wheels fall off and the introvert must step aside and let the soul breathe for awhile.
Bob met Kristin Diede sometime in the Spring of 1993. Exactly how or when is not known but it has been said that they met in a bar in downtown Minneapolis and considering what we know about him, it is not difficult to imagine that Bob met Kristin in a drinking establishment.
All these attributes that make up Robert Michael Anderson, the careful and caring observer and protector, his sensitive nature, his ability to read a room and make people laugh, they all become almost unbearable to consider (at least for this writer) when put into the context of Bob’s experiences with Kristin Diede and whatever truth took place in Wishek, North Dakota in August of 1993.
Bob could spot a wounded creature a million light years away and he would be one of the first to intervene and to help. The fact that Bob Anderson came into Kristin Diede’s life and to her aid is no coincidence.
Kristin Diede had literally been wounded, both physically and emotionally when Bob first met her that spring. According to a WCCO TV news broadcast, Kristin was being counseled by the Cornerstone domestic violence program in Bloomington, MN, and her ex-husband had recently been charged and convicted of assaulting her.
If we place Kristin Diede and Bob Anderson in into the same room, then they are destined to interact. They are in a way made for each other. They are perhaps doomed together. Kristin, like a lost and beaten stray cat, needed all the help she could get and Bob was the man to help her.
It is heartbreaking to consider what was going through Bob’s mind on the weekend of August 14th and 15th of that year. The environment of Wishek, North Dakota, was foreign to him. He stood out, an obvious outsider. Things were not exactly going smoothly by all accounts. According to the WCCO TV News broadcast, Kristin had called friends in Minnesota stating she was having trouble getting her kids back. Kristin and Robert even made a stop at the local police department to speak with a State Trooper.
Bob’s own insightful and intuitive nature certainly presented to him a disturbing premonition of bad things to come. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Bob was starting to feel like he was suddenly ‘all alone’. At the very least, he realized that he was somewhere he should not be.
After many years of trying to find answers to what had happened to their son, Mathilda and Aldine passed away just three days apart in January of 2015. If the truth can set you free, then Bob’s parents perhaps never saw another day of complete freedom after August 15th, 1993 when Bob vanished from their embrace forever. They never received the answers they were looking for and never were granted the truth. Instead, they were destined to live in the captivity of a parent’s nightmare.
If they had given up hope of seeing Bob again in this life, then perhaps, in the end, Aldine and Mathilda rejoiced in the freedom of being reunited with him in the next.
When speaking with Bob’s friends and loved ones I was told that he loved lots of different types of music. There did not seem to be any one artist or genre that he was obsessed with. Bob probably enjoyed music as he enjoyed life, simply and as it came to him. I’ve take the liberty to choose a couple songs for his birthday. I am hoping he would have liked them.
Happy Birthday Bob. I’ve not learned everything about you, but I can tell you that you are missed by many!
This live performance of the song Mayonnaise by The Smashing Pumpkins, took place and was recorded the night before Bob and Kristin disappeared, on Saturday August 14th, 1993 in Chicago,
As I view the Smashing Pumpkin fans in the crowd in this video, as they sing and scream along, so full of joy and so inebriated on life and music, I can also see Bob at the exact same moment in Wishek, North Dakota, less than 24 hours before he vanished, enjoying to the fullest whatever moment was at hand.
Fool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it
Doomed . . .
Mother weep the years I’m missing
All our time can’t be given
Back . . .
This was the record release party for the pumpkins album Siamese Dream which would become a type of Soundtrack for many young people in the 1990’s.
This particular song was performed in the first encore of that show, which would probably place it around eleven pm central time. A topic for another post perhaps, but it is tempting to consider what Bob and Kristin were doing at exactly the moment when this video was shot. I am guessing Bob and Kristin were perhaps out at one of Wishek’s watering holes. (There are reported sightings of them in bars that weekend) They are possibly feeling good by this hour, anticipating getting out of Wishek the next day.
Track Two – I shall be released by Bob Dylan
Performed by Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, Neil Diamond, Bobby Charles, The Staple Singers, and Eric Clapton.
