Murder Suspect Held in Dallas Confesses to ‘Perfect Crime'

A man called Minneapolis police this week to confess to killing his girlfriend in October and staging her suicide.
 
John M. King, 50, has now been charged with second-degree murder. He called local police from Texas on Saturday and turned himself in to authorities in Dallas.
 
Minneapolis police said King told them he and Pam Sjogren, 51, got into a fight and she poked him in the eye. King said he put her in a sleeper hold, maybe breaking her neck, until she passed out.
 
The criminal charges said that since Sjogren had threatened suicide before, King left her body hanging from a rope in her duplex garage. He left an upturned wooden step ladder at her feet.
 
The Hennepin County medical examiner ruled her death a suicide and King disappeared -- until Saturday when he called the Minneapolis Police Department's Third Precinct. He confessed to the killing and said he wanted to turn himself in.
 
Court records indicate he told investigators he didn't want Sjogren's children to think she had killed herself.
 
"It's an unusual case to have somebody come in three months later and confess to the crime, but he felt guilty and wanted to do the right thing," said Lt. Richard Zimmerman, head of the Minneapolis homicide unit.
 
Zimmerman said investigators have found evidence to corroborate King's story.
 
King was in custody Thursday and couldn't be reached for comment. He was awaiting extradition to Minnesota.
 
Christian Hallanger, who said he had lived across the street from Sjogren's duplex for 10 years, said neighbors "were always surprised that she killed herself because she was a strong and assertive woman."
 
When questioned by Minneapolis detectives, court records indicate King gave a statement describing the death and his decision to stage a suicide after he found a rope in the garage that already had a slipknot.