When Wendy Poulsen’s teenage daughter, Dani, started appearing out — operating with the unsuitable crowd, utilizing marijuana and dropping out of highschool — the anxious mother started to secretly monitor her whereabouts.
The workplace supervisor invested in a monitoring gadget and hid it within the trunk of the 18-year-old’s automotive. As she informed The Publish: “It gave me a little bit of peace of thoughts.”
She had extra cause than most to resort to such a measure – Poulsen’s youthful brother, Scott, immediately vanished on the age of 25. It took police greater than two years to seek out some remains of his body. The investigation is now a chilly case.
Tragically, regardless of Poulsen’s greatest efforts to rein in her daughter, Dani’s life additionally got here to a distressing, untimely finish. She died of a fentanyl overdose on Sept. 1, 2019, shortly earlier than her 19th birthday.
“She was my the whole lot,” the mother of Minneapolis, Minn., stated, including, “There are occasions after I can’t work out tips on how to preserve residing.”
However she is comforted by the truth that she was in a position to monitor down her daughter’s physique rapidly — and later determine her killer — with the gadget.
“In any other case,” she stated, “We’d have needed to seek for her and it may have taken years, prefer it did with my brother.”
Poulsen adopted Dani from Kazakhstan along with her now ex-husband, Gerald Sommerfeld, 61, when she was six months outdated. She stated their longed-for little one had a contented upbringing, earned A grades in school and practiced sports activities like snowboarding, karate and rugby.
“She had such enormous hopes and desires for the longer term,” Poulsen added. “At first, she wished to be an architect after which she considered being [an agent] within the FBI.”
Nonetheless, Dani’s character began to unravel as soon as a buddy launched her to marijuana – a substance Poulsen labeled her “gateway drug” – and he or she turned troubled and anxious. Dani confessed that she felt “deserted” by her organic dad and mom.
Her schooling deteriorated and he or she misplaced curiosity in her traditional actions, although she nonetheless developed a expertise for tattoo design. Dani had her Muslim identify, Aruzhan, which interprets as “stunning soul,” etched in Arabic on her physique along with the coordinates of her birthplace in Central Asia. In her last years, the promising artist deliberate to open her personal tattoo salon.
However after Dani was busted for DUI in 2017, Poulsen turned desperately anxious one thing horrible would occur to her. She tried to put in location apps comparable to Life360 on the teenager’s telephone, however her daughter saved deleting them. So, within the early summer time of 2019, Poulsen tried a brand new trick. She stashed a 3-inch-by-2-inch SafeTrack gadget, which may monitor her location and driving pace, beneath the carpet within the trunk of Dani’s automobile. Every now and then, she covertly recharged the battery and put it again within the automotive.
Sadly, lower than three months after taking such drastic motion, Poulsen’s worst nightmare got here true. She was visiting her household’s distant cabin for the weekend when she turned anxious as a result of Dani wasn’t answering calls or texts. She’d assured her mother that she would principally be staying at residence to take care of their 5 canine. One thing was up.
“I obtained sicker in my abdomen because the hours glided by,” the mother stated. She checked the tracker which confirmed Dani’s automotive was parked in a suburb of the Twin Cities. In a panic, she requested her daughter’s greatest buddy, Skylar, to try to discover the SUV. Skylar noticed the automobile however noticed no person inside.
The following morning, she obtained the stunning information from Katti’s husband, Dustin, that Dani had been discovered useless within the passenger seat of her Ford Edge. It had been too darkish for Skylar to have seen her physique slumped within the seat eight hours earlier.
“Dustin informed me: ‘She’s gone,’” recalled Poulsen, who’d left the cabin to frantically drive the 4 hours again to Minneapolis. “I barely bear in mind what I stated or did.”
The police arrived on the scene of the crime and used information from the tracker to determine the place Dani had gone in her last hours. They recognized the deal with she had final visited as the house of Calvonzo Burnett. He was often known as a criminal with a previous document together with the battery of his pregnant girlfriend in 2011. Later, it was established that Burnett had provided the deadly fentanyl, a Class A narcotic that is 50 times stronger than heroin.
In December 2019, Jordan Knudson, one other 18-year-old from one other Minneapolis suburb, died after Burnett additionally provided him with fentanyl. After a manhunt, Burnett was arrested and charged with the killing of each Jordan and Dani in early February 2020.
Information from Poulsen’s monitoring gadget was offered as proof in Burnett’s October 2020 conviction for inflicting the deaths of Dani and Jordan. His legal professionals negotiated a plea deal and he was sentenced to 5 years — to run concurrently — on two counts of third-degree homicide.
Burnett’s sentence gave a small quantity of solace to Poulsen and Jordan’s mother, Susan Kundson-Walker. “The tracker couldn’t assist me management Dani’s conduct and I knew it wasn’t going to cease her from doing one thing [risky],” stated Poulsen, who’d paid an annual subscription charge of round $240 for its use. “But it surely confirmed probably the most worth ultimately recreation.”
Burnett maintained his innocence at earlier hearings and insulted Dani’s reminiscence by calling her “that silly bitch.” However, earlier than the decide decided his punishment, Poulsen learn her affect assertion in court docket. As he was escorted out by guards, Burnett, now 30, regarded her within the eye, pulled down his [COVID] masks and stated: “I’m actually, actually sorry.”
“[The apology] was probably the most therapeutic factor in the complete course of,” Poulsen stated. “Dani made a selection and he didn’t do that alone, however having him take some accountability for [her death] made a distinction to me.”
Sadly, Poulsen’s 77-year-old mom, Susan, has obtained no clarification or closure concerning the lack of her son, Scott. No person is aware of what occurred to him after he disappeared from Susan’s home in Racine, Wisc., in July 1991. It wasn’t till September 1993 that moose hunters within the Canadian province of Manitoba (at the very least 1,000 miles from Racine) stumbled throughout a couple of of his belongings and a leg bone. DNA assessments proved the femur was Scott’s, and the Mounties haven’t dominated out foul play, Poulsen stated.
“For years, Mother stated ‘I’ll by no means be capable of love somebody [as much as Scott] once more,” Poulsen recalled. “However that was earlier than she met Dani.”
Now, two-and-a-half years after her daughter died, the divorcee has develop into an advocate for fogeys — whose belief of their children may be misplaced like hers as soon as was — by urging them to maintain an in depth eye on their kids, even when it means utilizing monitoring gear.
Poulsen, who now has a reproduction of her daughter’s “stunning soul” tattoo on her forearm, concluded: “I hope different households could also be helped by my story and be spared the ache and heartache that we’re going by way of.”
