Court Transcripts Detail Lange Case

Transcripts from Justice Lange’s probable cause hearing now shed some light on what happened during the time Lange and her baby, Tyr, was missing. In the court session, Detective Jason Falk of the Stutsman County Sheriff’s Office explained the circumstances surrounding the case. He said on June 28, the sheriff’s office took a report of a missing person, child endangerment-type of a situation. The father of the child called and reported that his girlfriend, the mother of the child, had taken off in a vehicle that she didn't own, his vehicle that he was buying. Carrington Police listed the vehicle as stolen. On July 6, an individual found Lange walking on a gravel road southeast of Woodworth. The individual transported Lange to her grandparent’s home, where law enforcement was called and Lange was taken to a Carrington hospital. Falk and a special agent conducted an interview with Lange in the hospital that same day. She told authorities that, on the third or fourth day, the baby was not waking up and that she went into the water and was splashing water on the baby to revive him, and that the slough she was by was really muddy and when she walked back up she didn't have the baby anymore. When questioned whether or not the baby was dead and in the water, she answered yes to both questions. On day two of searching, a subsequent interview was done with Lange, in which she admitted the baby didn’t die in the water—rather, it died in her arms. Her admission of using meth four a couple of days didn’t initially happen, but later she admitted to shooting up right before she left with baby Tyr. Preliminary autopsy results show Tyr died of malnutrition. The court found probably cause for both child neglect and manslaughter. She is being held at the Stutsman County Correctional Center and will have a preliminary hearing on September 5.