A woman in Minnesota is being charged with murder after she is said to have shot and killed an old man. She is also accused of cleaning up the crime scene and hiding the body.
A news release from the Dakota County attorney’s office on July 24 said that several witnesses in Burnsville, Minnesota, told police that 25-year-old Josephine Powers shot Michael Riccio, who is 70 years old.
On July 18, Powers was the first person to report the shooting. She told police that a man named “Witness 4” had shot Riccio on July 9, while her father was on a two-week holiday.
Authorities say that Powers and Riccio had a fight that made her throw things at him before she finally shot him, which is different from what Powers said at first. Police said in a criminal complaint made on Wednesday that a witness said she “freaked out and ran around the house” before calling for help to clean up the blood.
The attorney’s office also said that Powers and a friend who was only named “Mike” in court documents asked a man named Christopher Hawkins to help her “move a package from her home in exchange for a pickup truck.” This happened days after Riccio was allegedly killed.
After agreeing to help, Hawkins went to Powers’ house in the suburbs of Minneapolis and saw blood all over the place. He also saw “what he thought was a body wrapped in garbage bags and rugs.” According to the court papers, Powers later told him what had happened and admitted that he had shot Riccio.
As Hawkins told police, “Powers told him a guy was f—ing with her and she couldn’t take it anymore, so she shot him.” This is what the court papers say. “Powers told him she shot the guy with a pistol that had been given to her by a friend who was present when the shooting happened.”
The attorney’s office said Hawkins then took the body to a shed in Minneapolis.
After a few days, Powers’ dad went back to their house and told the police that he thought there was brown paint on the walls and that he saw a “tall, white male in his house wearing a ‘hazmat’ suit [who was] cleaning up the brown point and removing portions of the carpet from the basement floor,” according to court documents.
In a different day, Powers’ dad also smelled “bleach and ammonia in the house.” Later, one of Powers’ friends told him what had happened while he was gone.
The attorney’s office said that when police later found Hawkins’ shed and checked it, they found Riccio’s body inside a gray plastic container. An autopsy showed that the person had died from a single gunshot wound to the head. The death was officially classified as a murder.
Jail records show that Hawkins is being held at the Hennepin County Jail right now for another case.
Based on the charges against Powers, she was given a $1 million bail. She was charged with second-degree intentional murder. She is due back in court on August 1.
