Rural Blooming Prairie woman pleads not guilty to 1st and 2nd degree murder charges

A rural Blooming Prairie woman accused of shooting and killing her husband before killing another woman after running from authorities in a cross-country manhunt entered a not guilty plea to murder charges Tuesday in Owatonna. 

58-year old Lois Riess appeared remotely Tuesday from the Steele County Adult Detention Center in Owatonna and pleaded not guilty to charges of 1st and 2nd degree murder in the shooting death of her husband, 54-year old David Riess at their rural Blooming Prairie home in March of 2018. Riess pleaded guilty to fatally shooting 59-year old Pamela Hutchinson of Bradenton, Florida at her Fort Meyers Beach condo in April of 2019 so she could assume her identity and was returned to her home state of Minnesota to face trial on allegations that she killed her husband in 2018.

Riess was sentenced to life in prison for the shooting death of Hutchinson.