Newly surfaced police and court files, publicly dubbed the “Dunlap Files,” are once again turning up the heat on the 1995 killing of Pillsbury marketing manager Anne Barber Dunlap. This week a Hennepin County grand jury pored over testimony and decades‑old records tied to the case but ultimately did not return any charges.
Grand jury review brought new testimony
KARE 11 reports that the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office convened a grand jury in February 2026 to force key witnesses to testify and to examine records that had been sealed for years. According to that reporting, jurors declined to indict after hearing the evidence, and prosecutors have not commented on what was presented behind closed doors.
Insurance fight and a lead investigator's warning
Federal court filings from a 1997 lawsuit show that Brad Dunlap increased life insurance coverage on his wife to about $1 million in August 1995, and that the insurer later argued the policy had been obtained through fraud. In those filings, lead investigator Sgt. David Voss wrote that “there is no plausible alternative explanation to Anne Dunlap's death other than the conclusion that Bradley Dunlap is the murderer.” Casemine shows those statements were central to the insurer's effort to withhold the payout.
How the slaying played out
Anne Dunlap was reported missing on December 30, 1995. Two days later, authorities located her car in the Lake Street Kmart parking lot and found her body in the trunk. The wounds to her neck and head led investigators to focus on the possibility of someone she knew rather than a random attacker. CBS Minnesota has reviewed the original coverage and the family’s long effort to keep the case in the public eye.
Forensics, newly unsealed files, and lingering questions
According to records described in recent reporting, forensic testing identified drops of Anne's blood, confirmed by DNA, on the garage floor at the Barber residence, on a fireplace log and on the door leading from the garage into the house. The medical examiner's report noted no evidence of sexual assault and no defensive wounds, details that have fueled competing timelines about where and when the fatal attack took place. These specifics appear in newly unsealed materials highlighted by KARE 11.
Witnesses and re‑interviews
Public records and cold‑case coverage note that a former coworker told investigators she had a relationship with Brad Dunlap around the time of Anne’s disappearance and later gave additional statements to detectives. Those shifts in testimony, combined with newly disclosed police and court records, were among the reasons prosecutors sought to compel witnesses to appear before the grand jury. A local cold‑case site has gathered many of those documents and timelines in one place. Defrosting Cold Cases summarizes the unsealed files and interviews.
What a grand jury ruling means
When a grand jury decides not to indict, it means jurors did not find that the prosecutor’s presentation established probable cause at that particular time. It is not the same thing as an acquittal or a finding of innocence. Grand juries serve as a screening tool, and prosecutors can pause, look for additional evidence and, in many jurisdictions, bring a case back if new admissible evidence emerges. For a plain‑language breakdown of how the process works, see FindLaw.
For now, the Dunlap case remains one of Minneapolis’s most notorious unsolved homicides, and investigators say it is still open. Family members and cold‑case detectives hope that the newly public “Dunlap Files” and renewed attention will generate fresh tips that might finally move the investigation forward.
