On the morning Michelle Lee Newell went missing Aug. 29, a friend and neighbor of the Vadnais Heights woman found something slipped inside her tennis shoes.
"Stocking stuffers," Carolyn Bain said Thursday, chuckling as she recalled the gifts. Lip gloss, a pair of socks, stickers, other small trinkets. It wasn't rare for Newell to surprise people with little presents, she added. Sometimes they'd be tucked in someone's pocket. Other times left on a table.
"She would always do that kind of thing," Bain said. "Whatever she could do to make you smile, that's what she would do."
The two women had plans to spend time together later that night, but that didn't happen. Newell was last seen that morning by an acquaintance inside her Vadnais Heights apartment, according to the Ramsey County sheriff's office.
That person was Timothy James Barr, the man now charged in Newell's death, Bain said. Bain lives in the apartment below Newell's and said the two women were close friends.
Details of the case .....