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DISPATCHER: 10-7, investigation.
FIREMAN: When I arrived on scene,
there was a fair amount of damage.
And it appeared that there may have been
some type of a vapor explosion.
Pressure built up inside when gasoline
was ignited that pushed the glass out from the frame.
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There was a bedroom that had some fire damage.
And in that area was where there was
a red plastic gasoline container that
seemed extremely out of place.
Some of these things just didn't seem normal for a regular fire.
Once we looked inside, we found out
that there was a body of a female,
and there was a mattress on top of her.
After removing some debris, it was noticed
that her hands were, in fact, bound with what
appeared to be duct tape.
PAUL GHERARDI: It turned it into a homicide investigation
at that point and belief that someone
was trying to cover something up by setting the place on fire.
Our victim at the scene was Melissa Norby.
AMANDA: Melissa's cousin had called me that morning
and says, please tell me it's not true.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
And she goes, Melissa's house is on fire.
And I'm like, what?
My daughter is over there.
MICHELLE LEFFELMAN: An officer contacted me and said
that there was a female at the barricades
that said her daughter had spent the night with Melissa.
So I went out.
I saw Amanda.
FIREMAN: We searched through again.
We were confident there was no other human remains
in the fire.
ROB FRAIK: It went from a homicide investigation
to now we had an active missing child case.
INVESTIGATOR: This girl's been missing since roughly 3 o'clock
in the morning.
We're worried that time is not on our side.
Melissa's cousin was interviewed
by agents regarding Melissa's relationships with other males.
Her cousin told the agents that she was aware
that Melissa had been seeing a male
recently from the Bemidji area.
Melissa referred to him as Jake.
She was also able to provide that this individual also
owned a--
like, a food truck.
INVESTIGATOR: We called the city clerk looking
for our food truck licensees.
And she told us Jake's Eats is owned by Jacob Kinn.
We all knew his name.
DON NEWHOUSE: Jacob Kinn had child pornography convictions.
He had tried to purchase a young girl online
for photographing purposes.
INVESTIGATOR: Based on his past history, based
on his relationship with Melissa,
Jacob Kinn was likely our guy.
The first thing we do, we reach out to the cell phone company
and begin to get locations for Jacob's cell phone.
PAUL GHERARDI: And he didn't know
that Melissa had talked to her cousin about Jacob
being back in her life.
So he probably thought that we weren't
aware of that information.
He told us that he had been fishing by Northome, Minnesota.
But his actual location was near Bigfork, Minnesota.
And those two locations were approximately 30 miles apart.
So we knew that was likely a lie.
He's already told us some stuff that contradicts
what he told us before.
I didn't have a way to get a hold of her,
but she's flirty in her text messages?
When Jacob Kinn had showed up the sheriff's department,
we observed right away that his boots were wet,
his pants were wet.
We walked outside and took a look at his vehicle and saw
flower material and weeds.
So it looked like he had been driving off of the road.
ROB FRAIK: Jacob parked right in front
of the law enforcement center.
His vehicle looked like he had been driving out
in a field, certainly not to a resort
to go fishing like he said he was.
He probably thought the gas can went up in the fire
and was surprised that there was actually a gas can fully intact
still at the fire scene.
Yeah.
ROB FRAIK: Part of the problem with the data
that we got from the cell phone was
it landed out in the middle of a very rural area in Bigfork.
DON NEWHOUSE: We took the latitude
and longitude coordinates provided by the Verizon
telephone company.
We were able to map those coordinates,
and it put the cell phone as to possibly being
5.2 miles northeast of the cell phone tower
in Bigfork, Minnesota.
ROB FRAIK: We found a property listed to a relative of Jacob
that was right in alignment with where
that phone ping showed up at.
We were looking for any spots where a vehicle might have
pulled off or turned around.
DON NEWHOUSE: It had rained the night before.
And as we're driving up to the intersection of Township Road
288, which is a dirt road heading west
off of the paved two-lane road that we were driving on,
we could see a set of vehicle tracks.
To us, it looked like the tire tracks
were very similar to Jacob Kinn's tracks on his Jeep
that we had looked at previously.
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When we got to the west end of the Township Road
and saw that the tire tracks had come on
out of a field road that also proceeded west and down a hill
and into a low area.
We parked the squad and proceeded on foot.
ROB FRAIK: The grass was about knee high,
and we followed the tracks.
It was probably at least a half mile walk.
I was afraid that we were going to find a little girl's body
somewhere along that trail.
DON NEWHOUSE: As we got up over the rise
on the top of the field, we could see a pickup camper
tucked back into the woods.
The tracks pulled right up to the south side of the camper.
ROB FRAIK: I walked up to the camper,
and the door was tied tight with a big wad of electrical tape.
I was nervous and I opened up the camper door.
I didn't know what we were going to find.
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GIRL: Hi.
ROB FRAIK: Don was right next to me.
"Turn on your cell phone," he said.
We didn't have body cameras and stuff at the time.
I saw a little girl sitting on a bed.
Looked like she had just woke up.
ROB FRAIK: Finding that little girl alive,
I don't know if words can describe it.
PAUL GHERARDI: 6:15 AM is when I got the call from Don.
He said, we have her.
I said, alive?
He said, alive.
It was fantastic.
Never would have believed it.
DON NEWHOUSE: She told us all these little bits
of describing information that described Jacob Kinn to us.
As investigators got through Jacob Kinn's phone and Melissa
Norby's phone, there was information
that they had planned this together,
that Jacob would have a relationship with her
if she gave him access to a child.
WOMAN: Melissa being involved to the extent
that she was, it was a shock to everyone.
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