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Member Back to Top Post by Graveyardbride on Mother of Murdered Girls Confronts Suspected Killer on His Deathbed



Forty-five years ago today, Labor Day 1974, Mary Reker, 15, and her sister Sue, 12, left their home in St. Cloud, Minn., and walked to a nearby store to purchase school supplies. Despite the efforts of law enforcement and intense media coverage for 45 years, no one has ever been charged with the murders of the two girls.



Rita Reker thought she would go to her grave without ever knowing what happened to her daughters, but now, she believes she finally has the answer. “I felt my only hope was that there would be a deathbed confession,” Mrs. Reker confided. “That’s honestly how I felt. That’s where it was all going to end. I just hoped that I would live long enough to see that.”



In May 2017, she received a phone call advising her long-time suspect Herb Notch was on his deathbed at St. Cloud Hospital, where he was dying of liver failure from decades of drinking. “I wanted to confront him,” she said. “I knew I had to do that.”



Police zeroed in on Notch two years after the murders of the Reker girls when he was arrested for a strikingly similar crime. “It makes him somebody that we really are interested in,” Lt. Victor Weiss of the Stearns County Sheriff’s Department revealed during an interview. “He’s been on our radar since at least 1976.” Over the years, Notch was questioned and even submitted to polygraph examinations on two occasions.



On September 25, 1976, Notch and James A. Wagner kidnapped 14-year old Sue Dukowitz, who was working at a St. Cloud convenience store, took her to a gravel pit outside town and sexually assaulted her. Then, to Wagner’s surprise, Notch pulled out a knife and stabbed the girl. Both boys thought she was dead, but the young teenager survived. “He had no remorse at all,” Wagner recalled. “None. Like hitting a bug on your windshield.”



Later, Wagner agreed to an audio-only interview with KMSP, provided his voice was disguised, during which he said he would never forget the last time he talked with Notch. It was in the 1980s while the two were still in prison for their attack on Dukowitz. “The guy was hissing like a snake and talking about he wants to kill everybody,” Wagner recalled.



This wasn’t the first time Notch had “hissed” at someone. Russ Platz and a friend discovered the bodies of the Reker sisters, and he knew Notch, both from the alternative school they attended and working as baggers at Zayre – the store where the Reker sisters were shopping the day they disappeared. According to Platz, he had a gut feeling Notch might have been involved early on. Notch, he claimed, was always playing with a knife and on days he [Notch] didn’t have to work at the store, he would sit in his car in the Zayre’s parking lot and just stare at people. One day Platz made the mistake of asking Notch about the murders. “I said, ‘Herb, did you know about this or have anything to do with that?’ I don’t remember which way I worded it, but he went ‘hissssssss’ and that was the only response I got out of him.” Platz contacted law enforcement about his bizarre encounter with Notch and police confirmed Platz’s account.



In 2016, Fox 9 Investigators attempted to interview Notch for a story about the Reker case, but when Notch answered the phone and found out what the reporter wanted, he snapped, “Don’t bother me any fucking more!” and hung up.



The Fox 9 investigators sifted through old police and court records and discovered similarities between the Reker and Dukowitz cases that hadn’t been made public. Notch was also accused of attacks on two other women in the 1980s and 90s.



There was a psychiatric evaluation in the files indicating Notch had “a fearlessly savage quality about him.” He was also described as “a very dangerous person … in the right situation, a homicidal individual.”



After the program aired, strange things began to happen: A woman who knew Notch through one of his relatives said he started calling and requesting she send him photos in her bathing suit and saying he wanted to go away on a trip with her. He also rambled on about the TV special, insisting he passed a lie detector test, but never denying involvement in the killings. The lady was so traumatized by the calls that she called the sheriff’s office, which later confirmed her account of Notch’s overtures.



As for the polygraph test Notch bragged about passing, Weiss said, “I would tell you the lie detector test was more inconclusive than anything.”



* * *

“Your program last fall just opened up a whole area,” Rita Reker told a Fox9 special in 2017. “We found out a lot of new things we hadn’t known before.”



Mrs. Reker was determined to visit Notch in person after learning he had been admitted to the hospital and she agreed to wear a wire to record their conversation.



Marty Reker, her son, and deputies waited nearby as she entered Room 549 South. “I walked in and I told him I was the mother of Mary and Susanne and that I had waited 42 years for this,” she recalled. “I needed some answers.”



It took a few moments for Notch to realize who the lady was beside his bed. “He just pointed right at me and said ‘I give you my word I didn’t do it,’” she said. “He was totally in denial. I found him to be very angry, a very hard and very bitter person. There was no sense of remorse at all.”



She continued talking to him, hoping he might offer some clues concerning the murders.



“Another thing that he said to me that I thought was really strange: ‘Why can’t you just put it behind you?’ I told him, ‘Because they were my children and as long as I was alive, I was going to be searching for their killer.” And then he said something which might be interpreted as a hint of a confession: “I’m going to hell.”



Mrs. Reker told the dying man she had been praying for him over the past four decades. “I said, ‘You’ve got a few days left. You can make your peace with God before you die.’ He just said, ‘I’m going to hell and I don’t do church.’ After that he got really angry with me and he said, ‘You’re starting to piss me off.’”



The confrontation between the 82-year old mother and suspected killer of her daughters lasted only 21 minutes. “I came out of there just numb,” she admitted. “For me, my search is over. I have no doubt that he was the person who killed them.”



A week later, on May 11, 2017, Herb Notch died at the age of 58. Still, there is no physical evidence linking him to the murders of Mary and Susanne Reker.



Following the suspected killer’s death, Marty Reker remarked, “It’s not all done – it’s getting closer, but if there isn’t anymore after this, that would be okay.”



* * *

Rita Reker, now 83-years-old, still lives in St. Cloud. Her husband Fred died in 2012, and Marty, her only son, died this past 4th of July at the age of 55. She has now outlived three of her five children, with only her daughters Betsy and Leah left. Mrs. Reker credits her strong Catholic faith as the rudder that has guided her through these decades of heartbreak.



Though there’s a strong possibility the murders of Mary and Sue Reker will never be solved, looking into the cold eyes of Herb Notch brought their distraught mother some sense of peace. “I guess I had to see who my children faced in the last moments of their life,” she said. “There was nothing left of him to be fearful of.”



* * *



Obituary of Herb Notch



Herbert Daniels Notch Jr. (above) was born October 5, 1958, in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He died May 11, 2017, at St. Cloud Hospital.



He was baptized and confirmed at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church and received his secondary education in the ALC in St. Cloud. He enlisted in the United States Navy, serving as a fireman recruit in San Diego, California, before his honorable discharge in June of 1976. He made his living painting and shingling. In his leisure time, he enjoyed fishing, music, camping and spending time outdoors. He particularly loved the company of his granddaughter.



Herb is survived by Melissa, his girlfriend of 25 years; his children: Heather Notch, McKenzie Notch and Justin Schmitz; his granddaughter ZaRiyah Nickaboine; mother Joyce Notch; sister Pam Burns; brothers Steve and Tom Notch; son-in-law Marcus Nickaboine; godson Anthony Notch; nieces and nephews; and family friends Cass Ellingboe and Tom Fossell.



He was preceded in death by his father Herbert Notch Sr., brother Michael Notch, and “brother from another mother” Steve Studdard.



Sources: Jeff Baillon, KMSP, January 4, 2018; "Diary Entry Best Clue to 42-Year-Old Labor Day Murders," WhatLiesBeyond, September 5, 2016; Wing-Bain Funeral Home, Granite Falls, Minnesota; and Williams Dingmann Funeral Homes, Sauk Rapids, Minnesota.