Connie Jo Frank admitted second-degree murder without intent after initially facing an intentional-murder charge in Willard DeGroat’s 2024 death.
MOORHEAD, Minn. — A murder prosecution that began with an allegation that Connie Jo Frank intentionally killed her longtime boyfriend ended on a different legal footing, with Frank sentenced to 15 years after pleading guilty to second-degree murder without intent while committing a felony.
The plea agreement is central to the outcome of the Clay County case. Frank had been charged after the August 2024 death of Willard DeGroat, whose fatal stabbing followed an argument at a north Moorhead residence. Rather than take the original second-degree murder-with-intent charge to trial, Frank pleaded guilty in June 2026 to second-degree murder without intent while committing a felony. Prosecutors dismissed the intentional-murder charge as part of the agreement, and District Judge Tammy L. Merkins later imposed the 15-year sentence. The court awarded 724 days of custody credit and ordered $8,940 in restitution.
The resolution means the public record must be read differently from the allegations filed when Frank was first arrested. Early court documents described what investigators believed happened and included statements attributed to Frank, but an accusation is not a conviction. The guilty plea established responsibility for the offense to which Frank admitted. The dismissed intentional-murder count no longer defines the conviction. Public reports reviewed for this story do not identify the underlying felony in enough detail to safely characterize it beyond the wording used for the plea.
That distinction does not change the central fact of the case: DeGroat died after being stabbed in the chest at the Moorhead residence shortly after midnight on Aug. 4, 2024. Officers responded to a 911 call and found him with an upper-chest wound. He was taken to Sanford Medical Center and pronounced dead shortly afterward. Investigators recovered a kitchen-style knife. Moorhead police later listed the killing in the department’s annual summary of high-profile 2024 cases.
At the time, witnesses gave police a picture of an argument that escalated inside the home. Frank and DeGroat had dated on and off for about five years, according to the criminal complaint. Frank had recently been staying with her adult son. Another man living at the house said he heard the pair arguing and then saw a physical confrontation. He left the immediate area to get Frank’s son so the two men could intervene. When they returned, DeGroat had been stabbed and Frank had left.
Frank’s own account, as summarized by investigators, added the most direct description of the stabbing. Police said she told detectives that DeGroat had come to the residence and knocked on windows before the argument. Frank said she became tired of him and made a remark that “someone had to end it.” According to the probable cause affidavit, she acknowledged taking a knife from a kitchen counter and stabbing DeGroat once in the chest. Those statements were attributed to Frank in the charging documents and became part of the evidence supporting the original prosecution.
But Frank’s conduct after the stabbing was almost as significant to the public account as what happened inside the house. Investigators said she left the residence and hid in a neighbor’s yard. Rather than remain away, she eventually returned while officers were still working at the scene. Police detained her, and during the trip to jail she made unsolicited remarks that included an admission to the stabbing and the statement, “I would kill him again,” according to the affidavit.
Investigators also said a nearby surveillance system captured audio connected to the confrontation. Frank could be heard yelling shortly before DeGroat was heard asking for someone to call 911 and saying he was dying, authorities said. The recording did not stand alone. Police also had the accounts of the men at the residence, the knife recovered there, Frank’s return to the scene and the statements attributed to her after the arrest. Taken together, those elements were described in court records and news reports as the basis for the case that moved forward in Clay County.
The first stage of the prosecution reflected the seriousness of the initial allegation. Local reporting said a judge set Frank’s bail at $2 million without conditions while also allowing a $100,000 cash-bail option with conditions. She stayed in custody for much of the period between her arrest and final sentencing. That time produced the 724 days of credit Merkins later applied against the prison term. The long pretrial interval also meant that almost two years separated DeGroat’s death from the hearing at which the case was finally resolved.
Sentencing brought issues into the courtroom that were different from the factual allegations in the complaint. Defense attorney Caroline Field told the judge that Frank regretted DeGroat’s death and raised allegations that Frank had suffered abuse in the relationship. Prosecutors objected as the defense discussed those claims because the plea agreement included a waiver of self-defense. The available sources do not establish the abuse allegations as findings of fact. The court was not conducting a trial to decide whether Frank had acted in lawful self-defense; it was imposing punishment after her guilty plea.
DeGroat’s relatives approached the hearing from another perspective. Family members described grief that had continued since his death and focused in part on the statement police said Frank made about killing him again. One sister said she had not found forgiveness and questioned the implications of such a statement. Another spoke about the memory of DeGroat’s final calls for help. Their comments put a personal dimension on a proceeding otherwise defined by statutory charge language, plea negotiations, custody credit and the number of years in the sentence.
Frank then addressed the family herself. She apologized and said she missed DeGroat. “I’m really sorry to the family,” she said, according to reporting from the hearing. She told relatives she was paying for the killing and described herself as being in “my own hell.” The remarks did not erase the earlier comments recorded in the police account, but they became part of the record of the sentencing hearing and were offered by the defense as evidence of remorse.
Merkins’ judgment did more than set the length of imprisonment. Frank was also permanently barred from possessing firearms or ammunition and ordered to submit a DNA sample. Reports of the sentence state that the prison term will be followed by the applicable supervised-release portion after she serves the required incarceration period. The restitution order remains part of the judgment as well.
The legal journey from accusation to conviction is therefore as important as the chronology of the stabbing itself. Frank was arrested in 2024 under an allegation of intentional second-degree murder after DeGroat’s death. By June 2026, she had agreed to a plea to a different second-degree murder offense, giving up a self-defense claim while prosecutors dismissed the intentional count. One month later, the court imposed 15 years. That sentence, rather than the more serious allegation contained in the original charge, is now the controlling resolution of the case.
The prosecution is no longer awaiting a jury’s decision. Frank stands convicted by her own guilty plea, and the sentence issued by Merkins governs what comes next. For DeGroat’s family, the formal end of the case arrived after nearly two years of hearings and custody for Frank. For the court record, it ends with a second-degree murder conviction, 15 years of imprisonment, restitution and the additional restrictions ordered at sentencing.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 30, 2026.