Werner Kunkel Taken Into Ice Custody After Release Order

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GRAND FORKS — Werner Kunkel is back behind bars, this time in ICE custody, a day after a judge agreed to release the Devils Lake man after his murder conviction was overturned.

Kunkel, 65, moved to the Grand Forks County Jail on Thursday, Aug. 13, as his fight for freedom now must go through immigration court.

On Wednesday, North Dakota District Judge Ted Sandberg agreed to release Kunkel on a personal recognizance bond on the condition he wear an electronic home monitoring device.

Kunkel's lawyer said staff at the Devils Lake jail had him ready to be released shortly after that hearing.

But then officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement notified the jail Kunkel had an ICE detainer on him.

Kunkel came to the United States from Germany as a child, but his mother never had him become a citizen.

Agents picked him up on Thursday morning. Earlier this year, Kunkel had his murder conviction from 1995 overturned.

He was accused of stabbing Gilbert Fassett nearly 100 times and dumping his body on the Spirit Lake Reservation in 1986. Kunkel was not identified as a suspect in the case for nearly a decade, until jailhouse informants came forward alleging Kunkel had confessed.

In February, District Judge Daniel Narum overturned Kunkel's conviction, saying he could not have been the killer based on the prosecution's evidence at trial and said prosecutors withheld evidence that could have proved Kunkel's innocence.

With prosecutors appealing Narum's ruling and the possibility of a new trial, Kunkel was being held on the $300,000 cash bond originally set in the case. He was moved from the state prison in Jamestown to the Lake Regional Correctional Facility in Devils Lake before being released Wednesday after Sandberg's ruling.

Even though the murder conviction is temporarily off his record, he does have prior convictions federal officials are trying to use to deport him.

A bond hearing is the next step in the immigration process. A judge will determine if Kunkel should be released or held in jail until a deportation hearing is held.

That bond hearing, which will be held in St. Paul, has not been scheduled.