By: Max Jasper

In late June 2023, a mail theft investigation in Burnsville, Minnesota, took an unexpected turn when officers were looking into stolen checks and fraudulent documents belonging to 82-year-old Sandra Viola Mitteness. 

But when they tried reaching her, they were unable to find her. 

They were able to reach her 54-year-old son, Troy Michael Mitteness. Investigators questioned Mitteness about the whereabouts of his mother and noticed that Mitteness’ story changed almost immediately. 

He first claimed that his mother was staying in Milbank, South Dakota. Then, he said she passed away a year prior, on June 14, 2022. 

But when investigators found an obituary for her, the funeral home denied ever handling her remains. 

The investigation quickly shifted from a financial crime to a missing person case centered on Mitteness. 

Due to Mitteness’ conflicting stories, investigators hooked him up to a polygraph test and then shared with him the results of the test a few hours later. 

After the test, Mitteness was feeling confident about the results; however, he scored as a “deception indicated,” which means that Mitteness wasn’t being “fully honest” with investigators and showed signs of deception. 

So investigators asked him for the truth, and Mitteness said that he and his mother had a “blow-out,” and that their fight wasn’t physical and “more mental than anything,” and that he would “never hurt” his mother. He also added that he appreciated his mother for taking care of him when he was in an accident in 2011. 

Investigators then mentioned when they asked Mitteness the question of, “Did you physically harm that woman?” in reference to his mother, the results of the polygraph indicated that he was being deceptive. 

In response to that, Mitteness said that he thought the question was in regard to mental harm, not physical harm. 

Mitteness then revealed that he called his mother “many horrible names” that a son shouldn’t call his mother. 

Investigators then told Mitteness what they thought may have happened and urged Mitteness to get the “secret off his chest.” 

Mitteness refused to do so, saying that he would “cut off his hand” before he killed his mother and called his mother “his best friend.” 

Investigators then brought up witness accounts of texts that Mitteness sent them about his mother falling down the stairs and breaking bones. Mitteness admitted that was truthful and then told investigators that he brought her to the hospital, but then said he did not bring her to the hospital because she “broke her wrist” and that nobody brought her there. 

Investigators then told Mitteness that in his texts to witnesses, he mentioned that she had broken her shoulder and wrist, then went to the hospital, but she had COVID, so witnesses couldn’t go see her. Mitteness then stated that he brought her to Ridges Hospital in Burnsville around the same time he sent witnesses the text about his mother’s injuries. 

Mitteness then stated that his mother went to a care facility in Alexandria and then told witnesses that she died there because he wanted it “out of his life.” 

Four days later, Mitteness said that his mother returned home, and then four days after that, they had the “blow-out” fight and left the house, telling his mother to “be gone by the time he got back,” and returned to the home and that a man came and picked her up. Investigators then inquired if Mitteness’ mother had gotten injured anywhere in the Burnsville home, and he said that she had “fallen down” a few times and that his dog, Cody, bit her a couple times as well. 

Investigators then reminded Mitteness about the results of his polygraph test, and Mitteness agreed to “tell them everything” as long as they let him see his dog and “have a smoke.” They agreed to this; however, they told Mitteness that they had been aware of the car his mother drove, a gold Oldsmobile, and that Mitteness had sold it to a friend, and that this friend sold it to a co-worker in Nebraska a week prior to the interrogation. 

Investigators then told Mitteness that they had recovered the Oldsmobile from Nebraska and found “disturbing evidence” inside the vehicle as well as inside Mitteness’ Burnsville home. Mitteness then admitted to knowledge of his mother’s whereabouts, denying that he killed her and saying that she “broke her nose” after she fell down the stairs and then died in the recliner on the main floor of the house. When investigators asked for more information, Mitteness refused to share anything else and pushed for going back to his home and holding his dog “one last time.” Investigators told Mitteness that he wasn’t in any position to be “calling the shots” and reminded him about how truthful and upfront they had been with him, and that all they wanted to do was ensure that Mitteness’ mother would be able to rest next to Darren, Mitteness’ brother who passed away in 1994. 

Mitteness then told investigators that his mother laying next to Darren “wasn’t possible” because there was a dismemberment in the garage and that he first stabbed his mother on her bed. When investigators asked Mitteness to elaborate on that, he continued pushing to see his dog and smoke, revealing to investigators that he “murdered his mother” and knew he would be imprisoned for life. 

After some additional negotiating regarding whether or not he could see his dog and smoke for one last time, Mitteness was stunned to hear that there was blood in his mother’s car because he put her body in his car in plastic tubs and then returned his car to the dealership he purchased it from. 

Investigators then inquired if Mitteness had used any tools to kill his mother, and Mitteness said that he had, and that they were two saws, one tree shear, and a shovel, and that he had thrown them in a ditch on the way out to his brother’s grave. 

Mitteness then admitted that he left some additional tools and a tub with his mother’s body parts in an abandoned rest stop near Willmar on Highway 7 behind a dumpster. Investigators inquired if that was the only location with tubs with Mitteness’ mother’s body parts, and he denied that and said that he threw additional body parts in a pond in St. Bonifacius at 5 a.m. 

When asked about motives regarding the murder of his mother, Mitteness said it was “all about money” and that when his brother Darren had died, she received money and turned it into a certificate of deposit (CD) and “banked” it in Willmar. When the CD was up, Mitteness claimed he “added to it” and that it was “a pretty decent amount of money.” However, when his mother moved to Burnsville, he cashed in the CD because he “wasn’t working” and was pretending to be doing so. He also added that she had a safe-deposit box at Kensington Bank in Willmar and that she was “very adamant” about going to check on the CDs, which had a value of $200,000. Realizing that she would see that he had spent a good chunk of her CD on a car, furniture, and the dog, he knew he was in trouble, so he searched on his phone, “How do you kill an elderly woman without poisoning them?” and then put a shower curtain underneath her bed and brought a large knife at 3 a.m. and slit her throat and “chopped it on the side,” and because her skin was “real thin,” it just about “pulled her apart.” 

The dog then woke up and heard the commotion upstairs, so Mitteness let him outside to go to the bathroom while he smoked. After that, he dragged his mother’s body into the bathroom and put her body in the tub and ran it, and then spent a few days sawing her body parts off, putting them in separate tubs, and then tossing them out the window on his drive up to Appleton a few days later, making stops at his brother’s, father’s, and grandparents’ graves, telling them he was “sorry” for what he did to his mother. 

Mitteness then drove back to Burnsville and did his mother’s banking online and deposited money orders into her checking account and the cards with cash into his account. He then admitted his sole reason for killing his mother was because he knew she’d be “so ashamed” if she had known he had cashed in her CDs and took all the money out of her safe-deposit box. 

Investigators then asked Mitteness to clarify what he had been spending his mother’s money on, and he said that he had been spending it “foolishly,” on clothes from Macy’s, and that made his mother suspicious, so she wanted to drive up to the bank in Willmar to check on her money. 

He was ultimately convicted for the murder and dismemberment of his mother, charged with second-degree murder. However, a Dakota County grand jury upgraded the charges due to the extent of his planning and his online searches. On Aug. 13, 2025, the jury found him guilty of premeditated first-degree murder and intentional second-degree murder. He was then sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The full video of Mitteness’ s interrogation can be found on the Midwest Crime YouTube channel.