Son who searched ‘how to kill elderly person,’ left pieces of his mom’s body in ‘tote bins’ along highway learns fate

A 58-year-old man in Minnesota will spend the remainder of his days behind bars for killing and dismembering his mother after she learned that he was stealing from her, then cutting up her remains and dropping “tote bins” filled with her dismembered body parts in various ditches along a state highway.

Dakota County District Judge Richelle M. Wahi on Tuesday ordered Troy M. Mitteness to serve a life sentence without the possibility for parole for the 2022 slaying of Sandra Viola Mitteness, authorities announced.

According to a news release from the Dakota County Attorney’s Office, the sentence was handed down after a jury found Troy Mitteness guilty of first- and second-degree murder earlier this month in connection with the 82-year-old woman’s brutal death.

“I want to extend my gratitude to everyone involved in this case, particularly the jurors who were exposed to and had to consider some very grisly facts,” County Attorney Kathy Keena said in a statement following the sentencing. “I’m deeply appreciative of your verdict and hard work throughout the trial.”

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Following Troy Mitteness’ July 2023 arrest, Keena told Law&Crime that the case was “one of the most horrific and disturbing” she had experienced in more than three decades as a prosecutor.

As previously reported, officers with the Burnsville Police Department in June 2023 were investigating reports of mail theft allegedly committed by Troy Mitteness when they learned that some of the proceeds from the theft had been deposited into his mother Sandra Mitteness’ bank account. When detectives tried to speak with her, Troy Mitteness initially told them she was in South Dakota, then claimed she had actually died on June 14, 2022.

Police executed a search warrant on the home Troy Mitteness and his mother shared where they found an obituary indicating Sandra Mitteness had died on that date, but when they contacted the funeral home, workers there denied ever providing postmortem care or funeral services for Sandra Mitteness.

Several family members explained to police they had not seen Sandra Mitteness in about a year and believed she was dead — because that was what Troy Mitteness told them. Troy Mitteness said that his mother had fallen down the stairs in June 2022 and was hospitalized, but could not be visited because she had COVID-19. He claimed she died shortly after the purported fall, police say.

After claiming his mother had died, Troy Mitteness sold her car. Investigators tracked the vehicle down and performed forensic tests which “gave preliminary indications of the presence of blood in the trunk.”

A subsequent search warrant on the Mitteness home revealed the presence of blood on the stairs, police said. Officers also say they found a mattress and box spring that both had “large dark red stains” on them.

In a post-Miranda interview with detectives, Troy Mitteness confessed to killing his mother because “he had spent all of her money and she was becoming suspicious and wanted to see her finances.” He even said that prior to the murder he went online to research “how to kill an elderly person without poison” before deciding to stab her in her sleep. He further said that he researched “the best spots to stab someone to make their death quick and painless,” per a probable cause affidavit.

“He told the detectives that he killed the Victim on June 2, 2022, in his Burnsville, Dakota County home, by stabbing her in the neck with a large kitchen knife. After she had been dead for a couple of days, Defendant dismembered her body and placed her body parts in multiple different large plastic tote bins that he had in his garage,” the document states. “He then drove with the bins in his car from Burnsville toward Appleton, Minnesota, and discarded parts of the Victim’s body by throwing them in the ditch as he drove. Defendant advised that he did this because he did not want to get caught. Defendant advised that he had discarded two of the plastic totes behind a dumpster at an abandoned rest stop on Highway 7 towards Willmar, Minnesota.”

Officers were able to recover the bins left at the rest stop, which they said matched similar bins found in Troy Mitteness’ garage while executing the search warrant.

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