The sentence followed Connie Jo Frank’s guilty plea in the 2024 stabbing death of her longtime on-and-off boyfriend, Willard DeGroat.
MOORHEAD, Minn. — Nearly two years after Willard DeGroat was fatally stabbed inside a Moorhead home, his relatives returned to the case in a courtroom, describing the damage left behind before a judge sentenced his former girlfriend, Connie Jo Frank, to 15 years in prison.
The sentencing placed DeGroat’s family at the center of the final stage of a case first known publicly for Frank’s statements to police after the killing. Relatives told the court about the pain they had carried since Aug. 4, 2024, and about the effect of hearing that Frank had told officers she would kill DeGroat again. Frank, who pleaded guilty in June to second-degree murder without intent while committing a felony, apologized before Clay County District Judge Tammy L. Merkins imposed the prison term. The court gave Frank credit for 724 days in custody and ordered $8,940 in restitution.
One of DeGroat’s sisters told the court she had not been able to forgive Frank and remained troubled by the statement attributed to her after the stabbing, according to reporting on the hearing. Another sister spoke about DeGroat’s final calls for help and the suffering his death caused. The statements were made before punishment was announced, giving the family a formal opportunity to describe consequences that could not be measured by the criminal charge or the length of the sentence.
Frank also spoke. She told DeGroat’s family she was sorry and said she missed him. “I’m really sorry to the family,” she said, according to accounts of the hearing. Frank said she was paying for what she had done and described herself as living in “my own hell.” Her apology came almost two years after police said she made a very different statement while being transported to jail, telling officers that she had stabbed DeGroat and that she “would kill him again.”
The sentence resulted from a plea agreement that changed the legal path of the case. Frank originally faced a charge of second-degree murder with intent. In June, she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder without intent while committing a felony, and the intentional-murder count was dismissed. That agreement eliminated the need for a trial on the original allegation and established the offense on which Merkins later sentenced her. Available public reports do not provide enough verified detail to identify the underlying felony beyond the language of the conviction.
Defense attorney Caroline Field urged the court to view Frank’s conduct in the context of the relationship, arguing that Frank was remorseful and saying she had endured abuse. Prosecutors objected when the defense began raising allegations about DeGroat because Frank’s plea included a waiver of a self-defense claim. The allegations raised by the defense were not established as findings in the available record. Frank’s guilty plea, rather than a trial verdict resolving competing accounts of justification, became the legal basis for the sentence.
The confrontation that led to DeGroat’s death began late on Aug. 3 and continued after midnight on Aug. 4, 2024, according to the criminal complaint. Frank and DeGroat had dated on and off for about five years. Frank had recently been staying at her adult son’s residence in north Moorhead. Investigators said DeGroat arrived at the property and was knocking on windows before an argument developed between the two. A second man who lived there told police that he heard them arguing and later saw a physical confrontation.
That witness said he went upstairs to get Frank’s son so the two could intervene. When they returned downstairs, DeGroat had suffered a stab wound to the chest and Frank was gone, according to the complaint. Frank’s son called 911. Officers responding to the home found DeGroat with a wound to his upper chest and recovered what authorities described as a kitchen-style knife. DeGroat was taken to Sanford Medical Center but died shortly after arriving. Contemporary reports identified him as 47 years old; a later Moorhead Police Department annual report listed him as 48.
What happened after the stabbing quickly became a significant part of the prosecution’s account. Frank told detectives that she had taken a knife from a kitchen counter and stabbed DeGroat once in the chest. She said she then went into a nearby yard and hid. Police were already processing the scene when Frank decided to return. Officers detained her at the residence and later transported her to jail.
During that ride, investigators said, Frank made unsolicited statements admitting the stabbing and saying she would do it again. In a later interview, she said she had been tired of DeGroat and told detectives that “someone had to end it,” according to the probable cause affidavit. Those words were repeatedly cited in early coverage of the case and remained important to DeGroat’s relatives at sentencing, where a sister specifically referred to the statement about killing him again when questioning whether she could forgive Frank.
Police said another piece of evidence came from a surveillance system near the home. Investigators reviewed footage in which Frank could be heard yelling shortly before DeGroat was heard calling for someone to contact 911 and saying that he was dying. The complaint combined that recording with the accounts from the two men inside the house, the physical evidence recovered at the scene and Frank’s statements after she returned. Moorhead police later identified the homicide in the department’s 2024 annual report among several significant cases handled that year.
Frank was arrested within hours of the stabbing. At her first court appearance, a judge set bail at $2 million without conditions and also allowed a $100,000 cash option subject to conditions, according to local reporting at the time. She remained in custody as the case moved through Clay County District Court, accumulating the 724 days of jail credit later recognized in the sentencing order. The lengthy pretrial period ended not with jury selection but with the negotiated guilty plea entered in June 2026.
The final judgment carries consequences beyond the announced 15-year term. Reports from the sentencing state that Frank must serve the required prison portion of the sentence before supervised release. She is also permanently prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition and must submit a DNA sample. Restitution of $8,940 was imposed in addition to the prison sentence. Those provisions now define Frank’s legal obligations after the homicide prosecution itself has been resolved.
For DeGroat’s relatives, the sentencing did not erase the events that began in the Moorhead house or the words police said Frank used afterward. Their statements instead marked the final public stage of a case in which an argument, one fatal wound and Frank’s return to the scene led first to an intentional-murder charge and eventually to a guilty plea to a different form of second-degree murder. With Merkins’ sentence imposed, Frank’s criminal case has moved from prosecution to punishment while DeGroat’s family continues to live with his death.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 30, 2026.