Week one in Morgenstern trial comes to a close

Week one in Morgenstern trial comes to a close

(ABC 6 News) — The trial of Timothy Morgenstern, the former Rochester police officer and speech coach accused of criminal sexual conduct with a  minor, has reached the end of its first week, as the lead detective on the case finally took the stand.

The jury heard almost exclusively from the detective of the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office, learning about his process, reviewing over two hours of interview footage with the alleged victim, and hearing about data pulled from the phones of the alleged victim and Morgenstern.

That data revealed a number of things.

First, text messages were found between the two around the time of the alleged encounter at Morgenstern’s home.

However, those messages were only found on the alleged victim’s phone. No record of those same messages were found on Morgenstern’s phone, indicating they had been deleted, according to the detective.

Additionally, the detective found dozens of explicit images and videos of the alleged victim from March of 2022, saved to her Snapchat account. Those images and videos were what she claimed to have sent to Morgenstern at his request.

However, data pulled from Morgenstern’s found showed no record those requests were made or that he possessed those images and videos on his phone.

The lack of any evidence of communication of a sexual nature on Morgenstern’s phone ultimately led the defense to directly ask the detective if it had every occurred to him that the alleged victim had made up the allegations and created the explicit material without ever actually sending it to Morgenstern.

The detective denied having considered that option.

The lead detective’s testimony is set to continue Monday morning.