The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Local News

July 20, 2007

Convicted killer denied new trial

Thomas Rhodes imprisoned for death of wife

By Dan Nienaber

MANKATO — A former Mankato man serving a life sentence for a 1998 murder conviction has lost a second request for a new trial.

Thomas Daniel Rhodes, 48, was convicted in July 1998 of murdering his wife, Jane, while the couple was vacationing in Spicer with their children nearly two years earlier. Rhodes was charged with the murder by Kandiyohi County prosecutors months after a fisherman found Jane Rhodes’ bruised body in Green Lake on Aug. 3, 1996. That was the day after Thomas Rhodes reported his wife had fallen off their jet boat during a late-night ride.

One of the key points prosecutors made for charging Rhodes was that his wife’s body was found nearly a mile away from where he had told investigators she fell in. Evidence that Rhodes had purchased a large life insurance policy for his wife shortly before the vacation also was used as evidence against him during his trial in Willmar.

Rhodes appealed the conviction in 2003, claiming there was insufficient evidence and that his attorney, Michael Colich, didn’t provide an adequate defense. He also named two new witnesses and the testimony of a doctor who questioned a medical examiners conclusions that Jane Rhodes was likely forced out of the boat and hit by its hull more than once before she drowned.

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that there was sufficient evidence for a murder conviction, testimony from the new witnesses would not have changed the outcome of the trial and that Colich did provide and adequate defense.

On Dec. 1, Rhodes filed a request for a new trial in Kandiyohi County District Court. The request was based on an affidavit from a person who served as a juror at his trial and new evidence that resulted from a plane that was found in Green Lake in 2004. The request was denied without a hearing, which resulted in Rhodes appealing the decision to the Supreme Court.

The affidavit said the juror believed Rhodes should get a new trial based on information the juror had read about Rhodes’ first appeal. The new evidence cited newspaper stories that reported a plane that had crashed in the Green Lake in 1958 was finally found 46 years later. It was found on the opposite side of the lake from where the body of the plane’s pilot had been found two weeks after the crash.

Rhodes argued that refuted testimony from experts at his trial. They had said his wife’s body couldn’t have floated a mile away from where she fell off the boat during the 13 hours it took searchers to find it.

The juror’s affidavit did little more than express “second thoughts about the verdict” and the plane discovery could not be used as new evidence, the Supreme Court said in its ruling upholding the District Court decision.

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