A photo of Madeline Kingsbury stood at the front of a room alongside law enforcement during a news conference at Winona City Hall in 2023. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

MANKATO – Krista Hultgren remembers how frantic her daughter sounded on the phone in September 2021.

Her daughter, Madeline Kingsbury, called her shortly after Kingsbury’s then-boyfriend, Adam Fravel, allegedly came up behind Kingsbury while she was getting her children ready for day care, grabbed her by the neck and pushed her down onto a couch, telling her, “I can make you disappear like Gabby Petito.”

“It was shocking to me,” Hultgren said.

Hultgren and other members of Kingsbury’s family testified in court Tuesday against Fravel, who is charged in Kingsbury’s March 2023 death. Kingsbury’s disappearance from her Winona house drew national attention as thousands searched for her. Her body was found more than two months later in a culvert near a rural dirt road one county away.

Prosecutors are trying to show the Petito incident — referring to the Florida blogger whose boyfriend killed her and hid her body in 2021 — fits a pattern of domestic abuse within the on-again-off-again relationship Fravel and Kingsbury shared. But Fravel’s attorneys say the incident was a joke; Fravel told Madeline as much, according to Hultgren and David Kingsbury, Madeline’s father.

“I didn’t find it very humorous,” David Kingsbury said.

Both David Kingsbury and Hultgren said they heard from Madeline shortly after Fravel grabbed her; David described the incident as Fravel choking her. David told the court Madeline was sobbing and hysterical in a phone call to him. Cathy Kingsbury, David’s wife and Madeline’s stepmother, said she could hear Madeline over the phone.

David and his wife, Cathy, drove to Winona shortly after to meet with Madeline and her children outside a restaurant. They went with Madeline back to the house she shared with Fravel to gather personal effects before bringing her and the children back to David and Cathy’s home in Farmington.

Madeline and the children stayed for only a few days before returning home.

David Kingsbury told the court he urged Madeline to file a police report over the incident, but she never did. Kingsbury said he thought Madeline “tempered her description” of the incident after she had time to think about her future with Fravel, as well as how leaving him would affect their children’s relationship with him.

“He was really good at gaslighting her,” David said, using a term for manipulating someone to question their own thoughts or reality.

Fravel’s attorneys later objected to the term gaslighting, arguing it was a psychological definition that non-experts aren’t qualified to use. Winona County District Judge Nancy Buytendorp prosecutors should caution witnesses not to use the word to describe Fravel’s behavior toward Madeline.

Family members also testified about Madeline’s struggles in her relationship with Fravel. They said she often complained that he never helped out around the house, financially or with the children. And in the days leading up to her disappearance, Fravel followed and loomed over Madeline around the house, constantly asking whether she was speaking to another man, her parents testified.

At one point, Madeline and Fravel lived with David and Cathy just before Madeline’s son was born toward the end of 2020. David Kingsbury and Fravel argued, and the father later kicked Fravel out of the house, a month before Madeline gave birth to her son. Madeline Kingsbury stayed with her father and stepmother for three or four months before returning to Fravel.

Yet witnesses including Spencer Sullivan, the man Kingsbury planned to leave Fravel for, testified they never saw Fravel hurt or berate Madeline in person. Aside from marks Cathy saw on Madeline’s neck after the Gabby Petito incident, no witness said they saw bruises on Kingsbury.

Fravel’s trial started earlier this month as prosecutors try to prove he murdered Madeline shortly after she told him she was leaving him for another man and moving out of the house.

Prosecutors allege Fravel relied on Madeline financially and didn’t want to see his children grow up with another parent. Fravel’s attorneys say he and Madeline were an on-again-off-again couple who mutually agreed to separate after he found out Madeline was seeing someone else.

The defense argues Fravel has been singled out by law enforcement in Madeline’s disappearance and unfairly charged in her death. Fravel’s attorney Zach Bauer claims the investigation has been shoddy.

Prosecutors have called 64 witnesses to testify against Fravel as of Tuesday.

On Monday, investigators with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Winona Police Department shared details on how Kingsbury’s body was found, as well as evidence collected against Fravel. That included testimony on DNA testing, as well as photos of bruises and minor cuts Fravel had a week after Madeline disappeared.

BCA agent Joe Swenson told the court he found logs had been stacked atop Madeline’s body in the culvert where she was found in June 2023.

But Swenson also testified that evidence from Madeline’s autopsy was put into paper bags, and he later found the bags in standing water. In addition, BCA agents didn’t compare the fitted bed sheet wrapped around Madeline’s body to other bedding in her home.

Swenson said a fiber analysis couldn’t be completed at the BCA, though there were one or two places in southeast Minnesota that could have done the analysis. He didn’t say why the BCA never did the analysis.

Similarly, black tape and scissors investigators found in Madeline’s garage in April 2023 appear to match black tape found on her body two months later. Investigators didn’t collect the tape at the time as it wasn’t part of their warrant to search the house; Bauer pointed out they could have gotten another warrant but never did.

Winona Sgt. Adam Brommerich told the court he took DNA samples from Fravel shortly after Madeline disappeared. Brommerich also took pictures of light scratches on Fravel’s face, as well as yellowed bruises on Fravel’s chest and left arm on April 6 — almost a week after Madeline disappeared.

BCA forensic scientists couldn’t positively identify DNA on most of the items found on Kingsbury’s body, except for a towel wrapped around her face. Forensic scientist Claire Beyer told the court the towel had a mixture of DNA that likely came from Fravel and Kingsbury.

Prosecutors say the towel likely came from the bathroom in Kingsbury and Fravel’s home.