(KSTP) – Bob Selbitschka may remember May 20, 1996 more vividly than any other day of his life.

She was 17 and preparing to start a summer job in Valleyfair next week when she received a late-night call from her friend Tabitha Juetten, asking her to come to her home on First Street in Little Falls.

Tabitha was 19 and pregnant, and she feared that her estranged husband, Robert Juetten, who had just been released from prison, might return home despite an active protection order against him.

“We stayed awake until 3:30 a.m.,” Selbitschka said. “I didn’t want to sleep… I was scared.”

These fears were only realized hours later when Robert Juetten burst in and stabbed both Bob and Tabitha while they slept in separate rooms.

“I didn’t even know he stabbed me, it happened so fast,” Selbitschka said.

A nearly seven-hour standoff with police ensued while Juetten took Bob and Tabitha hostage.

“I looked at him and he looked like he was possessed,” Selbitschka said.

After hours of negotiations, Juetten let Bob go. Bob managed to crawl to the ambulance, which took him to hospital with a life-threatening stab wound to his leg.

Tabitha and her unborn baby did not survive.

Robert Juetten was eventually arrested, charged, and convicted of murder and kidnapping.

Nearly 30 years later, Bob Selbitschka said authorities never returned the property he was forced to leave at the scene. He contacted 5 INVESTIGATES to share his story for the first time in hopes of finding a solution.

“Evidence” was not returned

Selbitschka said he and his mother first sought to reclaim his property while he was being treated at a local hospital for a stab wound in his leg.

“I had my ID, I had my social security card,” Selbitschka said of the property left at the First Street home. “I just wanted my stuff back.”

But like everything else at the scene, Selbitschka says authorities told her mother they were evidence in the criminal case against Robert Juetten.

When Selbitschka’s mother approached the Social Security Administration about a replacement card for her son, Selbitschka says they encountered another obstacle.

“’What happened to him?'” Selbitschka said. “they asked,” he said. “My mother said, ‘They said this was evidence in this case.’ he said. Then they said, ‘You have to take it back.'”

But Selbitschka says investigators never returned his property; It’s an oversight that continues to cause problems into his adulthood, when he applies for jobs.

“They asked me for my ID and then my social security card,” Selbitschka said. “When I told them, ‘I don’t have any,’ they asked me why…it’s always a complicated story.”

A familiar story

Selbitschka says he has already lost hope of getting his property back 5 INVESTIGATES’ report came to his attention at the beginning of this year.

In April, the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office ordered Jackson’s car returned to him, but only After 5 RESEARCH I started asking questions.

“It looked really familiar,” Selbitschka said. “Knowing that there are other people out there trying to get their stuff back made me think: Can I get my stuff back too?”

Selbitschka asked the same question when Robert Juetten’s life sentence came up for review at the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Liz Richard’s team at DOC’s Victim Services and Restorative Justice office offered to help.

“We have a lot of cases when it comes to parole review hearings and we hear about family members never getting their property back,” Richards said.

Emails show DOC staff attempted to connect Selbitschka with other attorneys and referred questions about that property to the Morrison County Sheriff’s Office.

“We talked to at least some local officials and got them to go back and look at the archives,” Richards said. “The answer was that they no longer owned the property.”

Don’t get an answer

Morrison County Sheriff Shawn Larsen declined 5 INVESTIGATES’ requests for an interview, but said in a statement that he reviewed “more than 1,000 pages of reports” on the case and determined there was “no record” of his agency seizing Bob Selbitschka’s wallet.

Larsen added that some of Selbitschka’s clothing “was sent to BCA,” but a spokesperson for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension told 5 INVESTIGATES that the same evidence bag was later returned to Morrison County in October 1996.

The Sheriff’s Office granted access to 5 INVESTIGATIONS to review the case file, which includes dozens of never-before-seen photos of the crime scene.

Selbitschka believes the photo of the living room where he was stabbed shows an item on the coffee table that may have been his wallet, but he now admits he may never know exactly what happened to it.

“My thoughts on this? This is just shoddy work, you know what I mean?” Selbitschka said. “They really didn’t do anything about it. “They didn’t pay much attention to what they did with it.”

But her decision to finally speak out about the ordeal wasn’t in vain.

5 INVESTIGATES says that after Selbitschka began asking questions about her story, she began receiving help that was not previously possible, including treatment for nerve damage in her leg.

And after her Social Security card was officially confirmed “lost,” Selbitschka was finally issued a new card.

She says she hopes her story will also lead to the kind of lasting help for young victims of violent crime that could have helped her as she struggled to come to terms with the trauma she experienced in her youth.

“I hope they are a little more compassionate,” Selbitschka said. “Listen to some of these victims.”

Robert Juetten continues to serve a life sentence. His next review before the DOC Supervised Release Board is scheduled for June 2026.