Madeline “Maddie” Kingsbury, a 26-year-old mother of two from Winona, Minnesota, vanished without a trace on March 31, 2023, setting off a search that drew national attention.
A Relationship That Began in College
Madeline Kingsbury and Adam Fravel met as students at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota, a small city on the banks of the Mississippi River.
Madeline belonged to a sorority, and Adam belonged to a fraternity, and the two began dating during their time on campus.
Adam’s sister, Teresa, later recalled that Adam seemed outgoing and genuinely interested in getting to know Madeline in those early years, describing him as almost infatuated with her; Teresa said she could tell early on that he genuinely cared for Madeline.
While the couple was still in college, they learned that Madeline was pregnant with their first child. Adam, who had been studying computer science, decided to leave school in order to support the family and found a job soon afterward, one he held for several years until he was laid off during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Rather than leave school herself, Madeline continued her coursework with Adam’s support and went on to graduate from Winona State. The couple later had a second child together, though they never married, and they continued living together in Winona as they raised their children.
After graduating, Madeline took a position at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, working as a clinical research coordinator supporting medical studies at the hospital.
She later decided to further her education and enrolled in a master’s program at the University of Minnesota, completing her first semester of graduate study, during which her father said she was doing very well, shortly before she disappeared.
During roughly the same period, Adam pursued flying lessons in hopes of one day earning his pilot’s license.
Over the years that followed, Madeline balanced full-time work, graduate coursework, and the daily demands of raising two young children, while she and Adam remained together, on and off, for about seven years.
Growing Tension in the Relationship
Despite their years together, those close to the couple said the relationship was frequently difficult. Madeline’s sister, Megan, later said Adam rarely helped with household responsibilities or the children, and Madeline’s stepmother, Kathy, said Madeline often called her in tears describing that same frustration.
About three years before Madeline disappeared, her friend Haley Scott said she witnessed a disturbing moment during a video call with Madeline.
Haley said Adam appeared in the background shouting about the condition of the house, and when Madeline responded, he struck her across the face with an open hand.
In September 2021, roughly a year and a half before Madeline went missing, she confided in Haley about a troubling pattern in Adam’s behavior.
Madeline said Adam had grown fixated on the case of Gabby Petito, a young woman who was killed by her boyfriend during a cross-country trip in 2021, a case that had drawn national media attention at the time.
Madeline told Haley that one night, after she and Adam watched a news program about the Petito case together, he grabbed her by the throat, pinned her down, and told her that if she was not careful, she would end up the same way.
Haley urged Madeline to go to a hospital and document what had happened so she would have evidence to safely leave the relationship, but Madeline never reported the incident to police.
Friends said she was afraid that doing so would lead to Adam’s arrest, and that she wanted to protect him. Madeline’s close friend Katie later said Madeline had become skilled at minimizing what had happened, both to herself and to the people who cared about her.
Madeline did eventually tell her father, David Kingsbury, and her stepmother, Kathy, that Adam had choked her. The two drove to the home Madeline shared with Adam, helped her gather her and the children’s belongings, and brought them back to stay at their own home in Farmington.
Madeline remained with her father and stepmother for three days before deciding to return to Adam, who Kathy said had been upset that she left. At the time, David told Madeline directly that he believed Adam could one day kill her.
Madeline replied that Adam had told her he was only joking when he made the comment about Gabby Petito, and she chose to believe him.
A New Relationship and Plans to Leave
Even as she continued living with Adam, Madeline had begun looking toward a different future. By the spring of 2023, Madeline had told her father that she knew she was in an unhealthy relationship but did not know how to move forward.
Around this time, she joined the dating app Tinder and reconnected with Spencer Sullivan, an Army veteran she had known during her college years through mutual friends.
Spencer had belonged to the same fraternity as Adam, though the two had never been close. Madeline and Spencer began seeing each other in secret, agreeing to keep the relationship private until she was no longer living with Adam.
The relationship was, at times, uncertain, as Madeline told friends she was not sure whether she could fully leave Adam given their two shared children. Madeline’s family and Katie knew about Spencer, but Adam did not know the relationship had resumed.
Weeks before she disappeared, Madeline told Spencer that she loved him, and she told him separately that her relationship with Adam had reached what she described as a point of no return.
About six days before she disappeared, Madeline told Adam about her relationship with Spencer and said she planned to leave him and find her own apartment for herself and the children.
According to her sister, Megan, Adam cried and appeared genuinely hurt by the news. Adam’s siblings, Teresa and Ryan, said they were also saddened by the couple’s breakup, describing Madeline as having become like a sister to them over the years; Teresa said she was shocked to learn Madeline had been seeing Spencer.
Around the same time, Madeline and Spencer began discussing plans for him to help her decorate her new apartment once she moved out. Friends said Spencer had been a steady and positive presence in Madeline’s life during this period.
The day before she disappeared, Madeline called Katie in tears, saying Adam had been hovering over her while she tried to work from home and making pointed comments about another man raising his children.
She told Katie she felt threatened by his behavior. Madeline left the house that day and went to stay at Katie’s home before continuing on to Spencer’s house in Winona, where she helped him celebrate his birthday.
She brought him doughnuts to share, a small Star Wars Lego set, and a birthday card. Spencer later recalled that as she left, she paused on his front steps, turned back, and waved before heading home; it turned out to be the last time he saw her in person.
About a month before she disappeared, Madeline told another friend, Lauren DeBois, that if anything ever happened to her or to her children, Adam would be responsible, and that she would never leave her children under any circumstances. Lauren later shared this conversation with investigators after Madeline went missing.
The Day Madeline Disappeared
On the morning of Friday, March 31, 2023, Madeline and Adam dropped their two children off at daycare around 8 a.m., a visit later confirmed by the daycare’s surveillance video, among the last images recorded of Madeline before she disappeared.
At 8:15 a.m., Madeline exchanged a lighthearted text message with her sister Megan, sending her a funny picture and joking back and forth with her. It turned out to be the last contact anyone had with her.
According to the account Adam later gave police, the couple returned home after the drop-off, and Madeline went down to a home office in the basement to work before her shift at the Mayo Clinic.
Adam said he then left the house, borrowing Madeline’s blue minivan to haul boxes to his parents’ home in Mabel, Minnesota, about an hour south of Winona, traveling along Highway 43.
He told investigators that partway through the drive, near the township of Choice, Minnesota, he realized the boxes loaded in the van were actually meant for storage rather than for his parents’ house, so he turned the vehicle around and headed back to Winona.
Adam said he arrived back at the house around 11:30 a.m. and saw his own car still parked in the driveway. He said he texted Madeline several times that afternoon asking about dinner plans and whether she would be picking up the children, but he received no response.
Believing she had carpooled to work, Adam went alone to pick up the children from daycare around 4:20 or 4:30 p.m., a trip also captured on the daycare’s surveillance video, which investigators said supported this part of his account, and he brought the children to his parents’ home in Mabel.
Concern within Madeline’s family began building as the day went on. In the afternoon, her mother, Krista Hultgren, realized she had not heard from her daughter and reached out to Megan, though Megan was not yet overly concerned and did not respond right away.
That evening, David Kingsbury also tried without success to reach Madeline by phone. Megan, who was traveling and hours away from Winona at the time, later messaged Adam directly to ask whether he had heard from Madeline; he replied that he was concerned as well, since he also had not been able to reach her.
Megan then contacted Katie and asked her to check on Madeline’s house. Katie found no one home and called the Winona Police Department to file a missing person report, but she was told a report could not be filed until 24 hours had passed since Madeline was last seen.
Megan later said she began crying once it became clear her sister could not be found.
The Search, Investigation, and Arrest
What followed was an intensive, monthslong search and investigation. The next morning, April 1, with Madeline still missing, her family filed a missing person report with police.
Officers said publicly that they believed Madeline’s disappearance was involuntary and suspicious and that they were using every resource available to locate her. David Kingsbury said the family remained hopeful that investigators would leave no possibility unexamined.
Adam also posted a message on Facebook asking for the public’s help, writing in part that anyone who had seen Madeline should contact the Winona Police Department, him, or any member of her family.
During a police interview that day, investigators noted fresh scratches on Adam’s face; his sister later said he told her the marks had come from a friend’s dog. That same day, police searched the Winona home Madeline shared with Adam.
They found no obvious signs of a struggle, but Madeline’s purse, jacket, and credit cards remained inside the house.
Authorities set up a search command center in Winona to coordinate volunteer efforts, and Winona Mayor Scott Sherman said Krista embraced him upon her arrival there, a moment he later described as showing both fear and concern.
Sherman, an avid cyclist familiar with the area’s back roads, personally joined ground searches in the days that followed.
As investigators reviewed surveillance footage from homes and businesses along Highway 43, they identified a blue minivan matching Madeline’s vehicle traveling the route Adam had described.
The footage tracked the vehicle until around noon, after which it could not be located for roughly 45 minutes in the area around Choice, Minnesota, the same stretch of road where Adam said he had turned around. That gap in the footage did not match the timeline he had given police.
Family members also told investigators about Madeline’s relationship with Spencer Sullivan, prompting detectives to bring him in for an interview.
Spencer said he had known of Madeline’s relationship with Adam through mutual friends on social media before the two reconnected, and that he had been at work on the morning of March 31.
He voluntarily surrendered his phone so investigators could check his account against the timeline, and within days, police confirmed his alibi and returned his phone.
Around the same time, Haley Scott and others reached out to Madeline’s sorority network and to news outlets in an effort to broaden public awareness of the case.
Two days after Madeline disappeared, on April 2, her sister Megan posted a video on TikTok asking the public for help finding her.
She recorded it moments after stepping out of the shower, later saying she had not stopped to think about her appearance because she was focused only on reaching people who might help.
In it, she pleaded directly with viewers, saying Madeline was her best friend and her little sister and that they needed help bringing her home. The post drew more than half a million views, and on a single day afterward, nearly 1,000 people signed up to join the search.
The response allowed law enforcement to significantly expand its efforts, with volunteers traveling from Winona and nearby communities to search on foot, in vehicles, on the water, and in the air.
Megan joined these ground searches herself, saying she often spoke aloud to Madeline while walking the search routes in the hope she might somehow be heard.
In the weeks that followed, Megan continued posting regular updates online as the investigation stretched from weeks into months without a resolution. She later said she had wanted to be the one to find her sister, so that no one else in the family would have to.
Detectives also questioned Adam directly about the history of his relationship with Madeline. He denied that the two had ever had a physical altercation, and although he admitted making comments that compared Madeline to Gabby Petito, he said he had meant them as a joke.
Investigators later found a saved screenshot on Madeline’s phone of a text conversation in which she told Adam she was not comfortable that he had put his hands around her neck and pushed her down in front of their children. Adam had responded that she would adjust.
Four days after Madeline went missing, her parents were granted temporary custody of her two children, meaning the children would live with their grandparents while the investigation continued.
About ten days after Madeline disappeared, in mid-April 2023, police received a tip that Adam had been seen carrying a shovel in his family’s utility vehicle near his parents’ home.
Investigators seized the vehicle, and cadaver dogs, which are trained to detect the scent of human remains, alerted to a scent both inside the vehicle and on the shovel itself.
Two days later, Adam released a statement through his attorneys saying he had cooperated with law enforcement at every turn, denying any involvement in Madeline’s disappearance, and expressing his wish that the mother of his 5-year-old and 2-year-old children be found and brought home safely.
Thirty-five days after Madeline vanished, in early May 2023, friends and family gathered at a local church to remember her.
David Kingsbury addressed the crowd, saying Madeline had not simply vanished and that someone likely knew something about what had happened to her. He urged the public to keep searching and appealed to anyone with information to come forward.
Sixty-eight days after Madeline disappeared, on the morning of June 7, 2023, Megan posted her usual daily update online asking the public to keep spreading the word about her sister.
Later that day, a sheriff’s deputy discovered human remains along a rural road in Fillmore County, Minnesota, located southeast of Winona.
Though the remains had not yet been formally identified by the medical examiner, investigators said they were confident they belonged to Madeline, and her mother, Krista, said she collapsed upon hearing the news.
The following day, Winona’s police chief confirmed the remains belonged to Madeline Kingsbury, and Adam Fravel was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Katie’s reaction to the news was captured on her home security camera.
According to the criminal complaint, the formal document filed by prosecutors outlining the charges against him, Madeline’s remains were wrapped in a gray fitted bed sheet secured with black duct tape, with a towel wrapped around her head.
The complaint stated the sheet appeared to match a set that had been kept at the home Madeline had shared with Adam.
The rural road where she was found had, at one point, been maintained by the Fravel family, and the location was near the same area tied to the unexplained 45-minute gap in Adam’s timeline from the day she disappeared.
A small marker was later placed near the site. Madeline’s autopsy listed her cause of death as homicidal violence.
In October 2023, Adam was indicted on additional first-degree murder charges, meaning a grand jury found sufficient evidence to formally add a more serious charge than the second-degree murder count he initially faced.
In a search warrant, a court-authorized document tied to the case, investigators alleged that Adam had been in financial distress due to his dependence on Madeline’s income, a reliance dating back to his pandemic-era layoff, and that he was upset about the end of their relationship.
Investigators also noted that Madeline had a death benefit, a payout similar to life insurance, worth $170,000 through her employer but had not named a beneficiary.
Separately, investigators said surveillance cameras Adam had installed inside the home appeared to have been forcibly removed weeks before the couple was expected to move, even though the couple had reportedly been planning that move together before their relationship ended.
Adam’s defense attorneys asked a judge to suppress his police interview, arguing he had not been read his Miranda rights, the warnings police must give suspects about their right to remain silent and to an attorney before questioning.
In preliminary hearings held ahead of trial, his attorneys also argued there was not enough evidence to support the first-degree murder charge.
Adam’s sister, Teresa, and his brother, Ryan, said they believed he was innocent and that they felt dismissed whenever they tried to offer investigators alternative explanations.
They said the cadaver dogs may have reacted to the shovel because their father had used it to move a dead raccoon the weekend before it was seized.
They also suggested investigators look more closely at Spencer Sullivan, though police had already cleared him after confirming his alibi and reviewing his phone.
Looking back, Megan said she had chosen not to push Madeline to talk before she was ready to share what was happening in her relationship, adding that Adam had maintained a strong hold over Madeline and the children that made leaving especially difficult.
The Kingsbury family said they were speaking publicly about the case in hopes of helping prevent similar situations for others. David Kingsbury said that regardless of the case’s outcome, he would always carry the reality of being the father of a murdered daughter.
A Winona County judge later moved the trial to Blue Earth County after ruling that extensive local media coverage made seating an impartial jury in Winona itself unworkable, and even in the new venue, jury selection took roughly ten days before both sides agreed on twelve jurors and five alternates.
Opening statements followed on October 17, 2024. Over the three-week trial, prosecutors argued Fravel had the motive, means, and opportunity to kill Madeline, describing him as jealous after learning she planned to leave him for another man and pointing to his continued financial dependence on her.
Friends and family again testified about the pattern of abuse in the relationship. Fravel did not testify in his own defense; his attorneys called five witnesses, including two law enforcement officers, Fravel’s brother, and neighbors from both the Winona home and his parents’ property in Mabel.
On November 7, 2024, after about ten hours of deliberation spread across two days, the jury convicted Fravel on all four counts he faced: premeditated first-degree murder, first-degree murder involving a past pattern of domestic abuse, and two counts of second-degree murder, one involving intent and one tied to an underlying felony.
Winona Police Chief Tom Williams called the case a major undertaking for his department and said officers were relieved by the verdict.
David Kingsbury told reporters afterward, “There’s no joy here,” adding that the family felt some relief at the result even though it would not bring Madeline back.
Fravel was sentenced on December 17, 2024, in a Winona County courtroom that was livestreamed at the family’s request, receiving the mandatory penalty for premeditated first-degree murder: life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Krista Hultgren and David Kingsbury both gave victim impact statements describing the lasting toll of Madeline’s death on their family and on her two young children. When the judge asked whether he wished to speak, Fravel said only, “I never caused harm to Maddie and I am innocent.”
Fravel appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, arguing that trial errors had denied him a fair hearing and that prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to support three of his four convictions; he did not challenge the fourth, an unintentional second-degree murder count.
On April 29, 2026, the court declined to overturn the convictions, issuing a lengthy opinion finding the trial evidence sufficient to establish premeditation, intent to kill, and an extreme disregard for human life, and ruling that the trial court had properly allowed expert testimony on domestic-violence patterns and the medical examiner’s findings.
The ruling denied Fravel a new trial and effectively closed off his state-level appeals. The Madeline Kingsbury Foundation, created after her death, responded that “justice for Madeline has once again prevailed.”
Remembering Madeline Kingsbury
Those who knew Madeline Kingsbury described her as kind, quirky, caring, and deeply devoted to her family.
Her relatives called her a bright and hardworking young woman who balanced a demanding job, graduate school, and the raising of two young children, and who never let those responsibilities diminish her warmth toward the people around her.
Friends remembered her as generous and thoughtful, the kind of person who showed up for the people she loved, whether that meant surprising a friend with a small gift for no particular reason or standing beside someone through a difficult day.
At a gathering held to honor her memory, her friend Katie described her as the kindest and most beautiful soul she had known, saying that even the brightest days felt dimmer without her.
At Winona State University, Madeline was remembered among her sorority sisters as a loyal and supportive friend, and Winona’s mayor, Scott Sherman, later said he had come to think of her as a daughter of the city she had made her home.
Colleagues at the Mayo Clinic recalled her dedication to her work as a clinical research coordinator, and those who knew her at the University of Minnesota noted her commitment to her studies even while raising two young children.
To her children, family members said, she was everything: a mother who worked hard to build a stable and loving home for them.
Those closest to her said that above every other role she held, being a mother mattered to her most, and that her children remained her central focus through even the most difficult periods of her life.
Madeline’s sister, Megan, described the two of them as confidants who relied on each other throughout their lives, saying their bond went well beyond the ordinary closeness of siblings.
Since Madeline’s death, her family has established the Madeline Kingsbury Foundation, known as “When Joy Trickles In,” to fund education and support resources for victims of domestic abuse, and they have also adopted a stretch of highway in her honor so that her name continues to reach the public.
Friends and family often said that Madeline mattered to everyone who knew her, and that she had been, to many of the people in her life, a best friend.
Members of her family said the outpouring of support from strangers throughout the search had itself become part of how they wanted to remember her, a reflection of how many lives she had touched.
In the end, those who loved Madeline Kingsbury said they wanted her to be remembered, above all else, as someone who mattered.
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