Spurned lover or ‘revisionist history’? Trial starts in Madeline Kingsbury’s killing.

MANKATO – Lawyers spent almost 90 minutes inside a Mankato courtroom making their opening cases over whether Adam Fravel is guilty of killing his ex-girlfriend, Madeline Kingsbury, in March 2023.

Fravel, wearing a gray blazer and other dress clothes, appeared largely nonresponsive as his trial started Thursday morning, beginning an anticipated several weeks of testimony from friends, family, neighbors, law enforcement and medical experts.

He is charged with four counts of murder in various degrees, including premeditated first-degree murder and murder while committing domestic abuse with a past pattern of domestic issues. The trial was moved from Winona County because of media coverage and community awareness surrounding the case.

In their opening statements, the state’s special prosecutor Phillip Prokopowicz and Fravel’s lawyer, Zachary Bauer, laid out a rough timeline of Fravel’s relationship with Kingsbury, as well as her disappearance, the search for her and where her body was found.

The shared facts ended there.

Prokopowicz went through Kingsbury’s history with Fravel, beginning with their days as students at Winona State University. He told jurors how they spent seven years together with their two children, ages 5 and 2. He detailed how Kingsbury was last seen alive on Friday, March 31, 2023, with Fravel as they dropped their children off at day care. Security footage there captured her dropping off the children.

“It’s the last photograph of Madeline Kingsbury alive,” Prokopowicz said.

He went through evidence found on Kingsbury’s body connecting her to Fravel — a bath towel wrapped around her jaw and neck that matched a towel seen in photos inside her bathroom. The fitted bed sheet wrapped around her body matches other bedding her family took from Kingsbury’s home shortly after she disappeared. And the black tape holding the sheet to the body matched the color and size of tape found in the garage.

Prokopowicz described the days leading up to Kingsbury’s disappearance and death as fraught with tension over Kingsbury leaving Fravel. He alluded to a history of domestic abuse in Kingsbury and Fravel’s relationship. The prosecutor also pointed to video evidence and testimony showing Fravel’s whereabouts were unknown for 45 minutes that Friday morning.

Bauer, Fravel’s attorney, argued his client was the target of law enforcement who ignored other evidence, including what appeared to be vomit found in the backyard that law enforcement never tested for DNA. Bauer also said the prosecution’s domestic abuse claims were largely exaggerated; no law enforcement record of abuse at their home exists and he asserted Kingsbury’s friends told police about the instances after they had spoken to each other.

Both sides also disagreed on the “Gabby Petito incident” in which Fravel told Kingsbury if she didn’t mind him she’d “end up like Gabby Petito,” the Florida blogger whose boyfriend killed her in 2021. Witnesses will testify Fravel grabbed Kingsbury from behind, shoved her down and told her that, while Bauer said the incident was a bad joke and Fravel had hugged Kingsbury instead.

“This is a case about tunnel vision, about revisionist history, about secret truths,” Bauer said to the jury.

Friends reported Kingsbury had disappeared the night of March 31; police searched Kingsbury and Fravel’s home at that time. Winona police officer Ethan Sense testified Thursday morning that officers found no one at home and no signs of a struggle or forced entry.

Fravel later told police he had used Kingsbury’s van Friday morning shortly after 10 a.m. to move some of his things to his parents’ house in Mabel, Minn., about an hour from Winona. In video interviews introduced as evidence Thursday, Fravel told police he turned around shortly after reaching Choice Township, near Rushford, realizing he had packed the wrong items.

Prokopowicz told the jury video footage along Hwy. 43, which stretches from Winona to Mabel, showed a van matching Kingsbury’s southbound and passing Choice, but didn’t go the other direction for another 45 minutes. The prosecutor said video evidence also shows Fravel had switched license plates on the van with the car he owned.

Fravel later picked up his children from day care and took them to his parents. He took a phone call from Sense that night, telling officers he didn’t know where Kingsbury was.

More than two months later on June 7, Kingsbury’s body was found a few miles from Mabel, about a mile and a half off Hwy. 43 in a culvert near a dirt road. The site is on property Fravel’s father had maintained for the owner for several years, a few miles from Fravel’s parents. A medical examiner found Kingsbury’s body was badly decomposed but ultimately ruled the cause of death as homicidal violence.

Bauer disputed the cause of death, arguing the examiner’s ruling had more to do with how the remains were found rather than physical evidence.

Prosecutors called Sense and Winona police investigator Anita Sobotta as witnesses Thursday, and introduced body-camera footage of interviews Sobotta and other officers conducted with Fravel shortly after Kingsbury was reported missing.

In the interviews, Fravel confirmed he and Kingsbury were separating. He couldn’t account for the 45-minute gap between the times he passed through Choice, at first telling officers he got home after noon then changing his story when officers mentioned text messages he sent and video camera footage.