Bob CollinsWhen Katherine “Cassie” Gordon was killed on I-394 in Golden Valley last week, it wasn’t the first time she saw the business end of a police officer’s gun, according to her brother.
The Star Tribune reports the woman tried to get help eight weeks earlier from Fairview Southdale Hospital after telling police the “spirit” of Satan was inside her, but the hospital, citing privacy policy, isn’t saying what treatment she received, if any.
That information has gotten her brother, David Stollbrack, wondering what else was in his sister’s head and when it all started to go wrong for her? He says he hadn’t seen her for some time, but knew she had been troubled. Today, he says, he’s been thinking about an incident following the 1972 killing of Minneapolis police officer Inno Suek, that he says his sister occasionally talked about.
“My family went on vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday. While we were away, (brothers)Michael, Johnny, and Cassie were home and a guy named Frank Gavenda committed a liquor store robbery, and killed an off-duty cop. As the search went on, they came over to my family home because he was associated with my brother, Johnny. They came to the door and knocked on the door. Cassiee came to the door and they said, ‘Open the door! We’re looking for Frank.'”
“She said, ‘Do you have a warrant?'”
“The cop drew his pistol, banging on the glass, pointed it at her and said, ‘Open the door, bitch, or I’m going to blow you away.’ And you know what? I don’t think that ever went away. Was that the voices in her head that wouldn’t go away? The demons? She was only 18 then,” he recalled.
“All I know is she was successful. Very smart, and very beautiful and when she wanted to do something, she got it done,” he said.
Mr. Stollbrack says his sister had been driving back and forth between Minnesota and California. “She raised a good family,” he said, noting a son is a music producer in California.
