On December 15, 1978, 36-year-old white female Alice Huling was murdered in her home in Clearwater, Minnesota. The attack occurred in the early morning hours while she and her four children were asleep. The intruder first shot Alice in the kitchen, then proceeded upstairs where her children were sleeping. The killer fatally shot 16-year-old Susan, 13-year-old Wayne, and 12-year-old Patti.
The youngest child, 11-year-old William, survived the attack by hiding and later fleeing to a neighbor's house for help.
The crime scene was brutal and deeply disturbing. Alice, a white woman, had been shot and beaten. Her children were each shot in their beds. William, the surviving child, later testified that he saw a man of medium build, under six feet tall, wearing a stocking cap, standing in the doorway before the shooting began. He was unable to identify the suspect at the time due to poor visibility.
Four days after the murders, law enforcement arrested a man named Joseph Donald Ture Jr. for unrelated charges involving a stolen vehicle. During the arrest, officers discovered a metal bar, a ski mask, and a toy car in his possession. These items were later linked to the Huling case. Ture, a white male born in 1951, was interviewed by investigators but not immediately charged with the murders. He remained a suspect for years.
In 1981, while incarcerated for other crimes, Ture allegedly confessed to fellow inmate Toby Krominga that he had murdered Alice Huling and her children. He described details of the crime that had not been publicly released. A written confession was drafted and signed, though Ture later claimed he had signed blank pages. In 1998, another inmate, Randall Ferguson, reported that Ture had again confessed to the killings, boasting about the trauma inflicted on the surviving child.
Based on these confessions and corroborating evidence, Ture was indicted in 1999 on four counts of first-degree murder. In 2000, he was convicted and sentenced to four consecutive life sentences. The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 2001. Ture remains incarcerated and has been linked to multiple other violent crimes across Minnesota.
