Police connected deaths in Burnsville and Hopkins after separate emergency calls exposed a sequence involving four members of the same family.
BURNSVILLE, Minn. — The first killing in a four-person Minnesota family tragedy was the last one police discovered. Hours after officers found three people dead at a Hopkins home daycare, Burnsville police entered another residence and found an older woman whose death investigators say had occurred before the violence at the daycare.
That woman was later identified as 78-year-old Alice Anne Brown. Authorities say her son, 41-year-old Nathan Matthew Brown, killed her at the Burnsville home where he had recently been staying. Investigators say Nathan then went to Hopkins, where his wife, Kristen Ann Brown, operated Brown Bear Childcare from the family residence. Police say he killed Kristen, 41, and their daughter, 7-year-old Evie Ann Brown, before dying by suicide inside the Hopkins home.
The two scenes were discovered through separate emergency responses on Aug. 12. Hopkins police were called shortly after 9 a.m. after a parent arriving for daycare encountered an attack inside Brown Bear. Burnsville officers did not receive their call until 12:23 p.m., when they responded to a report of a stabbing near Maple Island Road and Joplin Avenue. Although Alice’s body was found later in the day, investigators concluded that her death came first in the sequence.
Burnsville police initially had to explain the case without publicly naming the woman they found. Officials said the victim was a close relative of the man involved in the Hopkins deaths and said he had recently been living at her residence. As identification and family information became available, authorities confirmed that Alice was Nathan’s mother. Police said they had connected the cases and did not believe anyone involved remained at large, allowing both communities to understand that the danger had ended even as investigators worked to reconstruct what happened.
The crucial evidence at the Hopkins scene included an eyewitness who arrived while the attack was underway. According to a Hennepin County search warrant, a father came to Brown Bear shortly after 9 a.m. to drop off two children. He used the rear entrance families normally took to reach the daycare area and heard children screaming. Investigators said he entered and saw Nathan attacking Kristen and then Evie. The father gathered his own children and two others, moved them outside and called 911.
Hopkins Police Chief Brent Johnson later said six children other than Evie had been inside the daycare that morning. The parent who encountered the attack brought four of them out, and officers removed the others when they arrived. None of the six was reported physically injured. Authorities have not publicly identified the surviving children because of their ages. Their families later asked for privacy while helping them deal with the emotional effects of what they had experienced.
Police found Kristen and Evie dead in the home. Nathan was found dead elsewhere in the residence from what authorities described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A search warrant said officers also recovered a screwdriver associated with the killings. Police have not released a detailed forensic reconstruction, and there will be no criminal trial in which prosecutors present that evidence to a jury because Nathan died at the scene.
The lack of a future prosecution makes the chronology especially important to the public record. Investigators have had to piece together Nathan’s movements using evidence from the two homes, witness accounts and other records rather than building a case for an arrest. Authorities have established that Alice was killed in Burnsville before the attack in Hopkins, but they have not publicly released the exact time of her death or a complete timeline showing when Nathan left Burnsville and arrived at Brown Bear.
Police also have not announced a definitive motive. Investigators learned that Nathan and Kristen had been experiencing relationship problems before the deaths. Friends and relatives described the couple as separated, and Nathan had been staying with his mother. A daycare parent told investigators that Kristen had recently announced Brown Bear would close because of relationship issues involving Nathan, according to the search warrant. Authorities have not said that the separation or planned daycare closure caused the killings.
The absence of a publicly established motive has prevented officials from reducing the case to a single triggering event. Hopkins police also said there was no known history of calls at the daycare address that gave officers clear warning of what was coming. Public reporting on Nathan’s background did not reveal a serious criminal history that by itself explained the violence. Those gaps have remained significant because the person police identified as responsible cannot be questioned.
The investigation nonetheless documented a family under strain at two different residences. Nathan had moved away from the Hopkins home and was staying with Alice in Burnsville. Kristen remained in Hopkins with Evie and continued operating Brown Bear while preparing to close the business. What happened inside the family before Aug. 12 remains only partly public, and police have avoided presenting unverified assumptions about Nathan’s motives as established findings.
The Hopkins residence had another identity beyond its connection to the Brown family. Kristen had operated Brown Bear Childcare there since 2019, shortly after Evie was born. State records cited after the killings showed a licensed family daycare that could serve as many as 10 children. Kristen described a program involving music, cooking, outings and educational activities. Recent compliance information cited in news reports did not indicate that the daycare itself had been the subject of serious regulatory concerns before the killings.
For the families who used Brown Bear, the connection between the two crime scenes was less immediate than the loss of people they saw every day. Parents described Kristen as a caregiver they trusted deeply and said the Hopkins home had become a second home for their children. Evie had grown up as part of the daycare and was remembered as a friend and familiar older child to youngsters in the program. Several families had known Kristen and Evie for years by the time the attack occurred.
Relatives later worked to make sure Alice’s life was not overshadowed by the attention focused on the daycare. Kristen’s sister, Amanda Paulson, included Alice when speaking publicly about the losses. Alice’s obituary described her as an artist with experience creating floral arrangements and decorations. Family statements reflected an unusually complicated form of grief: three relatives were homicide victims, while police identified a fourth relative, Nathan, as the person who killed them before taking his own life.
Local officials from both cities appeared together as the connection between the cases became clear. Johnson spoke about the emotional effect on Hopkins officers who entered a home containing young children and multiple deaths. Community members later gathered at a vigil to remember Kristen, Evie and Alice. Former daycare families emphasized Kristen’s devotion to children and Evie’s place in their children’s daily lives, shifting some public attention from investigative details to the relationships that had existed before the killings.
The separate police responses in Burnsville and Hopkins therefore produced two different starting points for the same case. Burnsville investigators began with an older woman found dead in a home where her adult son had been staying. Hopkins investigators began with a parent’s emergency call from a functioning daycare where children were arriving for the day. Only after information was compared did authorities publicly establish that the same family connected both locations.
With Nathan dead, investigators can document the route of the violence but may never produce a complete explanation for it. The established sequence begins with Alice Brown in Burnsville and continues with Kristen and Evie Brown at Brown Bear Childcare in Hopkins before ending with Nathan’s death at the daycare residence. Six other children survived. Police have continued completing reports and reviewing evidence, but the unanswered question at the center of the case remains motive rather than identity.
Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.