Arrest made in 2000 killing of Cloquet woman

• Joseph Couture

Joseph Couture was arrested at his Cloquet home on June 15 after two unidentified witnesses told investigators that he had admitted killing Trina Langenbrunner, a 33-year-old mother of three, in 2000.

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The St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office announced late Friday that it has made an arrest in a 12-year-old murder case.

Joseph John Couture of Cloquet was arrested in the Sept. 3, 2000, stabbing death of Trina Langenbrunner. The case was considered one of the most high-profile cold cases in the county.

Couture, 41, is a level three sex offender and is being held in St. Louis County Jail on charges of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Couture was arrested in 1993 on felony burglary charges and faced various misdemeanor charges before a conviction for second-degree sexual conduct in 2006. He had been charged with 11 counts of first-degree sexual conduct with a person under age 13 before pleading to the final charge.

Langenbrunner’s stabbed body was discovered off a rural road in southern St. Louis County. The 33-year-old was the mother of three.

The sheriff’s office provided no other information on the arrest.

In a 2005 interview, Bill Hagenah, a senior special agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Bemidji, talked about how difficult cold cases can be to close.

“Based on circumstances, I think it’s highly likely it was a stranger or somebody who interacted with Trina just in that moment,” Hagenah said at the time. “That makes it difficult. We spent thousands of man-hours over there working that. It has the air of solvability to it, but we’re missing some key elements: witnesses or biological evidence that would be useful to us.”‘

There was a $100,000 reward offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Langenbrunner’s killer.

Langenbrunner’s family asked for privacy Friday night after they received news of the arrest.

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