St. Paul Police Department Sgt. Dan Zebro, left, and Sgt. Shawn Shanley talk about the as-yet-unsolved murder of Andrew Joseph Rehberger at this home in St. Paul on Tuesday, July 3, 2018. Rehberger, 25, was murdered in his rented home in St. Paul's North End in November of 2016. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

A whiteboard hangs on a wall in the St. Paul police homicide unit on July 3, 2018, listing unsolved cases. By its very nature, police work is often grim, but St. Paul officers say some of the cases haunt them more than others. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

St. Paul Police Sgt. Tom Arnold talks about the yet-unsolved 2016 murder of Clifford Edward Sykes at the scene of the murder in St. Paul on Tuesday, July 3, 2018. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

St. Paul police Sgt. Nichole Sipes holds the case file for the unsolved rape of a 5-year-old girl, who was waiting for a school bus in St. Paul's North End in May 2016. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

St. Paul Police sergeants, from left, Shawn Shanley, Jake Peterson and Tom Arnold, talk about some of the unsolved cases listed on a whiteboard on a wall in the St. Paul police homicide unit on Tuesday, July 3, 2018. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)



Officer Jon Sherwood -- one of St. Paul's most senior officers with 32 years of experience -- stands in front of the Blue Memorial Wall, which honors St. Paul officers fallen in the line of duty. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Plaques honoring Ron Ryan Jr. and Timothy Jones are seen on the Blue Memorial Wall that honors fallen St. Paul police officers. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

A whiteboard hangs on a wall in the St. Paul police homicide unit headquarters, listing unsolved cases.

It’s just above Sgt. Tom Arnold’s desk, and he can’t help but glance at it every day, a reminder of work still undone. But Arnold and his colleagues don’t need to see the names in black and white to remember.

“We think about them all the time, really,” Arnold said recently of the killings of two men they’ve worked hard to solve.

Police work is often grim, but St. Paul officers say some cases haunt them more than others.

Among them are two homicides that happened in close proximity, as well as a child raped by a stranger, a woman who died after a hit-and-run, and two officers killed in the line of duty.

For most of the cases, officers are looking for tips from the public that they hope will help to finally solve them.

2 MEN KILLED WITHIN 24 HOURS — SOMEONE KNOWS WHO DID IT

Every time homicide investigators Sgt. Dan Zebro and Tom Arnold are in St. Paul’s North End, they talk about the killings of Andrew Rehberger and Clifford Sykes in November 2016. But the men are never far from their minds.

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With the investigations underway, police have not previously publicly said much about the homicides. But they now say they strongly suspect the same man killed Sykes and Rehberger.

Sykes, 65, and Rehberger, 25, lived about a block and a half from each other, and each were slain where they lived. They died of traumatic injuries, which police are not detailing.

“They are true victims,” said Senior Cmdr. Tina McNamara, who heads the homicide unit, adding that investigators discovered nothing in the men’s lives that put them at risk for being killed.

On Nov. 6, 2016, at 10:30 p.m., officers were sent to a home on West Rose Avenue, between Park and Sylvan streets, across from Sylvan Park. An upstairs resident heard a commotion and thought the bottom unit was being broken into, according to a search warrant affidavit. Officers found that Rehberger, who was a renter in the home, had been killed.

Investigators went to Rehberger’s workplace in Coon Rapids; he was a machinist. They talked with about 30 people, along with friends and family, and learned he was the kind of person who “was the farthest from being in the position of being murdered,” Zebro said.

Police heard about Rehberger being a hard worker who had a creative side that drew him to music and photography.

The day after Rehberger was killed, a visiting nurse found Sykes dead in his home on East Geranium Avenue, between Sylvan and Abell streets. Sykes, who owned his home for about 25 years, was well-liked by neighbors.

“He lived alone,” Arnold said. “By our estimation, it was almost a sad life that he was living, really, and then it was pretty horrible how it ended. And I think about that all the time.”

Sykes grew up in a foster family, and Arnold said he could find no other family members to notify of his death — which troubled him — though investigators say giving death notifications is the most painful part of their jobs. The homicide unit reviews all deaths in St. Paul, other than hospice patients or people who die at hospitals and retirement homes.

“There’s nothing worse than telling a mother she lost her child,” McNamara said. “You sure can’t forget that sound — that cry is something so horrible, and you can’t get it out of your head.”

Investigators often build connections with the families, and they continue to hear from relatives in unsolved cases. Homicide investigator Sgt. Shawn Shanley speaks regularly with Rehberger’s parents, who struggle to understand his loss, and he provides them any updates he can.

And even after a case goes through the court system, families still reach out to investigators.

The father of a 23-year-old man who was fatally shot in a St. Paul law firm calls or sends Arnold a text message around the holidays. Arnold and Zebro also still talk with the family of a 17-year-old who was shot in a car. Arnold was struck by how much the girl reminded him of his daughter.

Police continue to look through evidence in the homicides of Sykes and Rehberger.

“We’re closing in, and we want justice for their family,” McNamara said. “… We know that if somebody comes forward and gives us information, we can go forward with successful prosecution.”

One clue that could jog someone’s memory: The man who killed Rehberger stole his car, a white Chevrolet sedan, and it was found on fire on St. Paul’s West Side within hours, McNamara said.

They also believe the suspect stopped in businesses before and after the killings, and that he talked to people who hold information and haven’t come forward with it, McNamara said.

Police ask anyone with information to call the homicide unit at 651-266-5650.

5-YEAR-OLD ‘BRUTALLY VICTIMIZED,’ SEARCH FOR SUSPECT CONTINUES

What happened to a 5-year-old girl two years ago is so heartbreaking that Sgt. Nichole Sipes says she doesn’t know how anyone could hear about it and not be outraged.

The girl was waiting for her school bus at Park Street and Cook Avenue the morning of May 2, 2016, when a stranger approached and — despite her telling him she didn’t want to go with him — he led her away. He beat and raped her. The assailant struck the girl in the head, and police believe she was unconscious at some point during the attack.

Afterward, the girl ran toward a passing school bus, which stopped for her. She got on the bus but was crying too much to talk and had a bloody nose, so the case was initially reported as a girl in need of medical attention.

It wasn’t until later that police learned of the sexual assault, and they were never able to pinpoint the crime scene, though evidence suggested it happened outdoors. Sipes said she’s talked to an FBI agent who pointed out the case also was a child abduction, but “we got her back.”

Police have not made an arrest.

“One of the things that I think is concerning is that you have a 5-year-old who was brutally victimized, and that person’s not been caught,” Sipes said. “So not only do we not have any sort of justice … but we have no closure for the family. Then there’s always the concern that we have somebody out there that committed this crime. Where are they now?”

Police have DNA evidence and it’s checked weekly through a nationwide database, as additional offenders’ DNA is added, but they haven’t found a match, Sipes said.

Sipes, who became a sex-crimes investigator in October, took over the case from the initial investigators, though she still talks with them about their work on it. The case file is so large that she’s created a smaller file in which she puts new ideas to pursue.

The original investigators told Sipes about how many times they thought they’d identified a suspect, only to rule them out.

“They said, ‘You’re going to get your hopes up and you’re going to get your hopes crushed,’ and they’re exactly right because we also thought we came close,” Sipes said. “It is crushing because I think, of all the cases right now that are open, active investigations, this is probably the one that haunts everybody the most. This was a child … who had something horrific happen and we just can’t take that away from her.”

Sipes, who was previously assigned to the department’s family-violence unit, said her work is not the type that family or friends want to chat with her about. People cringe if they hear about a child who wound up with 17 broken bones at the hands of an adult who was supposed to be caring for them, she said.

She deals with the horror of her cases by talking with other investigators and staying focused on solving them. For the 5-year-old who was attacked, Sipes thinks they will find answers by getting a DNA match or getting someone to come forward with information.

The girl gave a description of her attacker, but police have said people shouldn’t take much stock in it because her head injury may have affected her memory. She said he had caramel-colored skin and his eyes were a light color (they might have been gray, green or blue), and that he was skinny and not very tall.

Sipes thinks the male could have been 12 to 16 years old at the time or someone with the mental capacity of a person in that age range. He likely lived in the neighborhood or frequented the area.

“If anyone looks back on that time and thinks, ‘I wish I would have called the police about somebody I suspected,’ call now,” Sipes urged. The number is 651-266-5685.

A DRIVER RAN OVER A WOMAN AND KEPT ON GOING

The driver who ran over a 49-year-old woman on St. Paul’s University Avenue knew he or she did something wrong — surveillance video shows the driver initially braking before driving away, said Sgt. Valarie Namen.

Then, as squad lights could be seen coming into view from the distance, the driver “shoots across two lanes of traffic” to turn right onto Dale Street, said Namen, who has been investigating since Antoinette “Toni” Boxer was killed in the hit-and-run crash in 2015.

Police collected video from locations in the area and were able to identify the vehicle as an approximately 2002 Honda Accord, gray or silver, with four doors.

But they had little else to go on. Neither the videos nor witnesses indicated whether the driver was male or female, and they didn’t get the license plate number.

“This is the case that sticks with me the most,” Namen said. “The biggest thing for me is the family, and I just can’t imagine what they’re going through as far as knowing that somebody killed their mom and hasn’t had the decency to come forward and say: ‘You know what? It was me. I’m sorry, I panicked,’ or whatever the case was.”

At about 9:45 p.m. on Oct. 27, 2015, passers-by saw Boxer unconscious on University Avenue, just west of Mackubin Street. They initially thought she may have been hit by a light-rail train, though she had not been.

It’s unknown whether Boxer fell and hit her head or whether she passed out, Namen said. About five people went to try to help Boxer.

“They were trying to flag down cars to get them to go around when this car just comes through and they jumped out of the way,” just avoiding being struck by the car, Namen said. The car ran over Boxer, and the mother of five died of a brain injury the next day.

Namen said she hopes more people will come forward with tips — the number to call is 651-266-5728 — but she’s retiring this month after 20 years as a St. Paul police officer and she thinks the case will probably be taken over by another investigator.

Like the Boxer case, Namen said there are others she will always remember: She responded to a 2006 crash at the Snelling Avenue exit of Interstate 94 and can still picture the driver pinned in the vehicle. He and his 9-year-old son died at the scene.

And, when she was a newer officer, Namen was one of the first to arrive when 17-year-old Tony Basta was shot as he rode his bicycle by the Mississippi River in 2000. The 19-year-old convicted of shooting Basta, who didn’t know him, said he meant to scare someone, but not kill.

“I can’t forget this poor kid taking his last breaths in my arms,” Namen said.

OFFICERS’ MURDERS NEVER FAR FROM HIS MIND

For Officer Jon Sherwood, the day that haunts him is the one that also keeps him going.

Sherwood — one of St. Paul’s most senior officers with 32 years of experience — was with Officer Tim Jones on Aug. 26, 1994, as they searched for the man who fatally shot their fellow officer, Ron Ryan Jr., that day.

Sherwood last saw Jones heading down the driveway at Parkway Little League when Sherwood was called away to search in a different area. As Sherwood drove, he learned another officer had been shot. The man who killed Ryan, Guy Harvey Baker, also had shot and killed Jones and his K-9, Laser. Baker pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and is serving two life terms in prison.

Sherwood, who is assigned to the East Side, thinks about Ryan and Jones as he patrols. He said other places also trigger memories as he drives past.

He remembers the time, years ago, when he responded to an apartment around Christmas — “the apartment was neat as a pin, there’s presents under the tree,” Sherwood said — and there by the tree a man had fatally shot his wife before killing himself. Three young children were uninjured in another room.

“It was just absolutely frigidly cold outside and we wrapped these babies up in blankets to get them out to a car and get them out of there,” Sherwood said.

Sherwood grew up on St. Paul’s East Side, as did Ryan and Jones. And Jones, who was older than Sherwood, had been his mentor in the K-9 unit.

“Both of those guys — big personalities,” said Sherwood, who is planning to retire in October. “They worked hard and I’ve tried to honor those two by going out and doing what I was supposed to do and helping the younger guys. … It’s my own way of honoring their sacrifice.”