The search for a missing St. Paul woman has ended with her remains found and her boyfriend charged with murder.
Manijeh “Mani” Starren, 33, was reported missing to police by her father on May 1. She last had contact with her family around April 21.
Investigators believe Joseph Steven Jorgenson, 40, dismembered Starren, according to the criminal complaint filed against him Friday.
As police investigated, they learned of another woman who is missing and asked on Friday for anyone with information to contact St. Paul police.
Fanta Xayavong, 33, was last seen with Jorgenson in July 2021, possibly in Shoreview, said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul police spokesman. She hadn’t been reported missing, so police recently started a missing person investigation.
The relationship between Xayavong and Jorgenson is under investigation.
“We’re concerned for her safety also,” Ernster said.
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Jorgenson made a brief court appearance Friday afternoon on the murder charge and shook his head from side to side as Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Isabella Eastwood ticked off information from the complaint and asked that bail be set at $5 million, which Judge Timothy Carey approved.
Eastwood noted that Jorgenson was in court Thursday, charged with arson Wednesday for allegedly setting a fire at his Maplewood apartment when SWAT team officers arrived Monday.
“What we didn’t know is why,” Eastwood said of the fire. “Today we learned” he was trying to cover up blood, she continued.
The criminal complaint spells out evidence that Starren had previously been assaulted; video surveillance that showed her fleeing her apartment and Jorgenson getting her back inside; blood found in Starren’s apartment; video of Jorgenson carrying bags from Starren’s apartment; a foul odor that people smelled coming from Jorgenson’s apartment; and Jorgenson’s cellphone being in the area of a Woodbury storage facility where Starren’s remains were found.
Jorgenson didn’t speak in court Friday, other than to provide his name, and a defense attorney reserved a bail argument for another day.
“Our hearts go out to the victim’s family and friends,” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said in a statement. “The tireless work of our partners in law enforcement, especially the St. Paul Police Department, made charging this tragic and horrific case possible.”
What surveillance video showed
Starren was a mother of three who made friends everywhere she went, a friend said earlier this week.
Her brother, Noah Starren, thanked officers “for following every lead.”
“Mani Nicole my beautiful sister you will be missed greatly!” he wrote on social media. “Heaven has gotten a new angel and we haven’t stopped looking and found you to bring you home! … Hope you are sitting with grandpa fishing and watching dolphins up there fly high!”
Starren lived on East Seventh Street near Johnson Parkway in St. Paul and an apartment manager told police that her boyfriend was “Joe,” who investigators identified as Jorgenson. On May 24, investigators learned that apartment management found surveillance video of Starren and Jorgenson from a camera situated by her apartment.
It showed that Starren ran from her apartment on April 21. Jorgenson ran after Starren, grabbed her, turned her around and pushed her back into her apartment, according to the complaint.
“She does not come out,” Ernster said of what video showed. “Jorgenson is the only one that comes out of the unit. And Mani is never seen again until we find her in Woodbury.”
Surveillance video showed Jorgenson coming and going from Starren’s apartment between April 21 and April 28, accessing Starren’s apartment with a key 28 times during that timeframe. Video from April 28 showed Jorgenson carrying two duffel bags and a suitcase from the apartment, which he loaded into a pickup truck and then drove off, the complaint said.
Blood found in apartment search
An officer went into Starren’s apartment with a property manager. There was a window screen from a bedroom window on the floor. A TV had a cracked screen and the manager said it wasn’t previously cracked. The glass to the microwave was broken and a foam pad on Starren’s mattress had a large hole of material that had been cut and removed from it. There were red stains at the foot of the bed.
Crime scene technicians found evidence of large amounts of blood in the living room and the kitchen on May 25. “It was apparent that someone had attempted to clean up the blood,” the complaint said.
Preliminary analysis indicated the blood was Starren’s.
Police obtained search warrants for Jorgenson’s cellphone and for his Facebook account. They found that Jorgenson sent Starren a message on April 5 that said she owed him because she called police on him twice. “Very clear I was of that being punishable by hanging,” the complaint said of what he wrote.
A neighbor told investigators that she previously saw Starren with a black eye and red marks on her neck; the date or timeframe wasn’t indicated in the complaint. She asked if Starren had been assaulted and Starren said she had. The neighbor offered to call police, but Starren asked her not to, saying, “It will just make things worse,” according to the complaint.
Police also talked to a man who Starren had a child with. He said she usually didn’t go more than eight hours without calling to check on their son, but she’d last called him April 21 and he was very concerned.
Starren had told the man that “Joe once wrapped a rope around her neck and ‘things got out of hand’ and she ran from the apartment,” the complaint said. He “was under the impression that the incident (Starren) mentioned happened weeks before they spoke of it.”
Google searches for ‘Jugular,’ ‘missing person report’
Starren’s financial records and video showed Jorgenson used her bank card to buy items after she was last seen April 21.
On May 9 and 11, Jorgenson bought a cleaning bucket, plastic wrap, paper towels, garbage bags, liquid cleaner and latex gloves, the complaint said.
With another search warrant, investigators found Jorgenson used Google on April 21 to search “Jugular”; searched on May 1, the day she was reported missing, “What do police do with a missing person’s report”; searched on May 3, “How to clear cookies from android phone” and searched on June 4, “Lime for soil,” said the complaint, which noted lime can be used to speed up a body’s decomposition process and to reduce the smell.
SWAT officers went to Jorgenson’s Maplewood apartment on Century Avenue, near Upper Afton Road, on Monday to carry out a search warrant.
Jorgenson barricaded himself in a bedroom, started a fire, fought with officers and tried to disarm one, according to arson and other charges filed against him Wednesday.
A woman in Jorgenson’s apartment when police arrived had multiple bruises and scratches, and her neck was red. She told investigators that Jorgenson had strangled her and threatened to kill her, saying something like, “The neighbors won’t hear you scream,” the complaint said.
An apartment manager told officers they received several complaints about a “foul smell” coming from the apartment around May 15 or 16.
On May 18, the manager and a maintenance employee went to the apartment to inspect it. Jorgenson “physically denied access to a bedroom where the smell seemed to be coming from,” the complaint said. The employees told him and his roommate they needed to clean the apartment within a week.
Soon after, the two apartment employees saw Jorgenson carrying and dragging large duffel bags out of the apartment and “commented to each other that it looked like Jorgenson was ‘carrying a dead body,'” the complaint said.
Jorgenson’s roommate told police he has a traumatic brain injury that took away his sense of smell. He said he works Monday through Friday and had little interaction with Jorgenson or women he brought back to the apartment.
Remains found in storage unit
Forensic processing of Jorgenson’s apartment turned up a large pool of blood in the front closet, the same place where the “foul odor” came from. It soaked through the carpet and carpet pad. There was also blood in the same closet where Jorgenson tried to start a fire, the complaint said.
Investigators reviewed Jorgenson’s cellphone locations and found that his phone had “pinged” in the area of a storage unit in Woodbury on Weir Drive and Tamarack Road. Someone using Jorgenson’s roommate’s name began renting a unit on May 5 and a code assigned to access the unit was used May 18.
On Wednesday, investigators found human remains in two coolers and a bag in the storage unit. Investigators again reviewed video from Starren’s apartment building.
“In further review, it is believed Jorgenson dismembered (Starren) at her apartment and carried out her remains in the various bags,” the complaint said.
The Ramsey County medical examiner’s office confirmed on Thursday they were Starren’s, based on her tattoos and dental records. The medical examiner’s office ruled her death a homicide, and the cause is pending further testing and evaluation.
