Kira Verone Simonian was a 32-year-old Caucasian female and a talented artist pursuing her dream of becoming an art professor. As a graduate student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she had moved from Chicago to Minneapolis with her husband, Matthew Gretz, who worked in marketing for the Target Corporation. Their life together in a south Minneapolis apartment near the college seemed happy to friends and family.
This image was shattered on the evening of June 28, 2007, when an apartment caretaker, intending to fix a broken window screen, used a key to enter her unit and made a gruesome discovery. Kira's bloody remains were found in the living room, just inside the door.
The scene inside the apartment told a story of a violent struggle. Bloodstains were found in the bedroom, kitchen, and living room, suggesting Kira had been trying to escape her attacker. She had been brutally beaten, stabbed approximately 15 times in the chest and neck, and her head had been smashed with a hammer. A bloody knife and a claw-type hammer were left near her body. Initially, a broken window screen and a chair placed in the yard below suggested a burglary gone wrong, but investigators soon noticed that the dust on the window frame was undisturbed, shifting their focus away from a home invasion. A neighbor provided a chilling account of hearing yelling and banging from the couple's apartment around 5 a.m. the previous day, which ended with screams. The neighbor also overheard a man's voice, believed to be Gretz's, repeatedly asking, "Do you love me?".
Suspicion quickly fell upon Kira's husband, Matthew Gretz. Just a short time after the sounds of the struggle were heard by the neighbor, Gretz took a pre-arranged cab to the airport and flew to New York for a business trip. When investigators finally made contact with him and he returned to Minneapolis, they observed fresh cuts and bruises on his hands, arms, and body. The luggage he had taken to New York, which he had arranged to have shipped to Chicago instead of back to Minneapolis, was intercepted by authorities. Inside, they discovered bloodstains that matched both Kira's and his own DNA. Her blood was also found on a watch he wore on the day of her death.
Despite initially casting himself as a grieving husband, Matthew Gretz was arrested on September 5, 2007. He was charged with his wife's murder. Though he maintained his innocence for a time, the evidence against him was substantial. In May 2008, Gretz pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional murder, admitting he stabbed and intentionally killed his wife. He offered no explanation for his actions during his sentencing. Gretz was sentenced to just over 25 years in prison for the brutal killing of his wife.
