Sunday, November 4, 2007

Craig's List Victim Was ELCA Pastor's Daughter

Funeral held Oct. 31 for Katherine Olson, graduate, ELCA's St. Olaf College
November 2, 2007



by Melissa Ramirez Cooper, ELCA News Service

A funeral service was held Oct. 31 for Katherine Ann Olson, 24, who was found dead last week after responding to a baby-sitting job advertised on the Internet site craigslist.com, reported the Star Tribune, Minneapolis-St. Paul. A 19-year-old man from Savage, Minn., has been charged with second-degree murder for allegedly luring Olson to his home, shooting her once in his bedroom and abandoning her body in the trunk of her car at a nearby park, the Star Tribune reported. Olson graduated from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., in 2006. St. Olaf is one of 28 colleges and universities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

"We are broken-hearted, but we will support you and stand beside you as long as this journey takes," the Rev. Craig E. Johnson, bishop, ELCA Minneapolis Area Synod, told the Olson family at the funeral. Johnson also read aloud part of a statement from the Olson family: "The outpouring of grief has come from more places than we can comprehend," and "we are truly surrounded by 'so great a cloud of witnesses.'" Olson's father is the Rev. Rolf E. Olson, pastor of Richfield Lutheran Church, Minneapolis. Richfield Lutheran is a congregation of the ELCA.

The funeral took place at Christ Presbyterian Church, Edina, Minn. More than 1,600 relatives, friends, neighbors and others attended the