Murder and Mystery at Wolf Lake

Fatal house fires.  

Unsolved disappearances.  

Allegations of family murder.  

Human skulls as plant pots.

All in the same blog post.

50 year-old Bernard Rusness and 41-year-old Peggy McKay lived with their eight-year-old son Brian in Wolf Lake, Minnesota, a tiny farming community.  The couple both worked at a car dealership in Fargo, North Dakota.  Although all their friends and neighbors believed Bernard and Peggy were married, such was not the case.  In fact, Bernard was still legally wed to another woman, although they had long been separated.  The family lived quietly and did little socializing.  In a rural community where "everyone knew everyone," very few knew the Rusness household.   Despite this unusual reticence, the couple were regarded as decent, inoffensive people who were devoted to their young son.

"Minneapolis Star Tribune," March 6, 1983, via Newspapers.com

April 3, 1976, was a seemingly unremarkable day.  Bernard and Peggy spent the morning grocery shopping.  Around 4 p.m., Bernard was seen leveling his driveway.  At 11:30 p.m. a neighbor, Kevin Mickelson, was driving past the Rusness home when he saw it was on fire.  Other neighbors had already called the Fire Department, but by the time the flames were noticed, it was already too late to be of any help.  The house and everything in it was completely destroyed.  Curiously, the cause of the blaze was apparently never determined.  No one knew where the residents of the house were at the time of the fire.

When the ashes of what had once been the Rusness home were examined, the question of the whereabouts of little Brian Rusness was tragically answered when his charred body was found.  It was assumed that he had been asleep in his bed when the fire broke out, leaving him no time to escape.  It does not seem to have ever been established if Brian died before or during the fire.  Also found were the corpses of the family's two dogs, as well as a human skull.  (It was soon learned that Peggy had used the skull as a planter.)  The mystery lay in what was not found on the scene: namely, any trace of Bernard and Peggy.  Not only were their bodies missing--all of their clothing and luggage was gone as well.

This startling detail led investigators to the most obvious conclusion:  that the couple had, for whatever unknown diabolical reasons, murdered their son, set the house on fire in order to try to cover the deed, and fled.  However, all who had known the pair vehemently rejected this theory.  Bernard and Peggy had adored their son, and McKay in particular was a careful and protective parent.  Friends and relatives were united in their belief that it was impossible to picture either of them harming Brian.

It was also pointed out that the couple had just finished remodeling their house.  The very day of the fire, Bernard had started to install a sound system in his four-wheel drive.  Both their vehicles were still on the scene, and their joint bank account was untouched.  All of this argued against the idea that the pair had voluntarily vanished.

So, what did happen to Bernard Rusness and Peggy McKay?  Who started the fire, and why?  There have been any number of theories attempting to answer these questions, each of them weirder than the last.  Bernard's adult son, Ben Rusness, blamed authorities for conducting a slipshod investigation.  He believed the couple had been kidnapped, although he (publicly, at least) professed to have no idea who would have wanted to harm them.  In 1983, Margaret Rusness, Bernard's legal wife, expressed her opinion that the couple was dead.  She noted that she had not heard from Bernard since the fire, even though he used to regularly phone her.  She added the somewhat odd comment that the whole matter should be allowed to rest.

Others pointed to the fact that a strange religious cult was believed to have been living near Wolf Lake.  Although there is no evidence that either Bernard or Peggy was in any way associated with the group, it was speculated that they might have somehow run afoul of the cultists.  However, nothing was ever found to back up this rather lurid idea.  Local authorities believed the pair survived the fire, but aside from that, they could offer no theories about what had happened.

In 1983, Ben Rusness told a reporter from the Minneapolis "Star Tribune" that he had no idea what became of his father and Peggy, or if the couple was living or dead.  "They may not be alive, but something had to happen to them.  I've got to know."

Unfortunately, to date, the disappearance of Bernard Rusness and Peggy McKay is still unsolved.  As far as I can tell, we don't even know whose skull was being used as a planter.