Manny Collins’ father charged in teen’s grisly murder, hiding body in Elk River landfill

A Columbia Heights man was charged Wednesday with using a knife to murder his teenage son before discarding the remains, which were found several weeks later in an Elk River landfill.

Jordan Dupree Collins Sr., 38, was charged in Anoka County District Court with second-degree murder on allegations that on May 8 he decapitated 16-year-old Jordan “Manny” Collins Jr., whose body was recovered by searchers on June 28.

The criminal complaint does not reveal a motive in the killing.

Collins Sr. was arrested Monday and appeared in court Wednesday. He remains jailed in lieu of $2 million bail.

Prosecutor Jasmin Quiggle argued for the high bail, calling Collins Sr. “a risk to public safety” who was arrested with a large amount of cash and plans to leave Minnesota.

His attorney, Kayla McKeeth, said her client wished to exercise his right to a speedy trial. A tentative trial date of Aug. 4 was set by Judge Jenny Walker Jasper, who said the grisly allegations “were beyond serious.”

Collins Sr., who appeared in court behind a window, said little during the proceeding and avoided eye contact with the gallery, which was filled with friends and supporters of the teen’s mother, Ashley Berry.

Asked by the judge whether he read the complaint, Collins Sr. replied, “Yes, I did.”

Some of Manny Collins’ relatives attended the hearing. They declined to be interviewed afterward, but they were heard saying “coward, coward, coward” while in a courthouse elevator.

According to the complaint:

Berry reported to police on May 12 that her son was missing and had not been heard from him since May 8, when he responded to a text from her. She said he had been living with his father in Columbia Heights.

Berry said Collins Sr. told her their son left his residence early in the afternoon on May 8, intending to take a bus to St. Paul to visit his grandmother and his girlfriend. Manny Collins never saw either of them. On the day his son was reported missing, the father gave the same account to law enforcement.

The girlfriend told investigators that her last contact with Manny Collins was while he was at his father’s home on May 8, and they chatted on a video call that lasted until she fell asleep about 2:30 a.m.

On May 15, law enforcement searched Collins Sr.’s apartment. They found bloody items in garbage bags in a living room closet and several butcher or hunting-style knives in a bedroom closet.

A mattress on the floor was missing a piece of its underside covering. Also missing was a piece of carpet under the mattress and its padding.

On May 17, test results on blood stains collected during the search yielded a DNA match from a personal item of Manny Collins’. A second visit to the apartment turned up evidence of blood on the bedroom wall, later determined to have come from the teenager.

Investigators reviewed surveillance video from May 13 of a garbage truck emptying a large trash bin behind the apartment building. What they saw in the video resulted in a search of the landfill that started on June 4 and focused where that bin’s contents would have been emptied. The teenager’s remains were found 3½ weeks later.

Collins Sr. spoke with investigators again on June 20 after being spotted making a transaction at a bank. He said his son left the apartment on May 10, not May 8 as he previously said, to visit his grandmother in St. Paul. He said he had tried to call his son a couple of times after not hearing from him.

On Monday, before his arrest that day, Collins Sr. spoke again to law enforcement and said he cut the mattress and carpeting while cleaning up his own blood. However, the blood on those items was Manny Collins’. Investigators found no blood in the home matching Collins Sr.

The father said the knives found in his residence were his, and he used them to butcher goats and sheep.

Preliminary autopsy results found that Manny Collins suffered “decapitation by knife,” the complaint read.

At the time of his apprehension, Collins Sr. had with him a curved knife with a leather sheath and $1,300 in cash.

While the search for her son pressed on, Ashley Berry said Manny Collins had been spending time at his father’s home to receive help with math homework. She said Collins Sr. had just re-entered his son’s life after a “rocky” period.

Berry said her son attended St. Paul Public Schools online, loved basketball and skateboarding and worked at a gym.

She said he was a “good kid with a good soul who uplifted people.”