A Neighbor’s Security Camera Helped Solve The Disappearance And Murder Of A Minnesota Woman

Kira Steger was a beloved 30-year-old store clerk carving out a career for herself in a clothing store at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. Her customers and coworkers loved her, and at the end of each shift she went home to Jeff Trevino, her husband of three years.

On Feb. 13, 2013, Kira worked her normal shift at the clothing store before meeting Jeff in the mall for dinner. The pair went bowling after dinner and then went home to watch a movie.

Two days later, on Feb. 15, she was a no-call, no-show at work — something that had never happened. One of her coworkers called Jeff, who told her that Kira had left their home the morning of Feb. 14 but hadn’t come home. He told the concerned coworker that assumed she’d stayed the night with a friend — something she often did — but he called the police once he realized she didn’t make it to work.

Investigators went to the mall to view security footage and see if anybody had followed the couple when they left after their date, but all they recovered was footage of the pair walking together before getting into Kira’s white car and leaving the mall’s parking garage.

Authorities also canvassed Jeff and Kira’s neighborhood and realized that one of the residents had a security camera that constantly panned the street. While the view of Jeff and Kira’s home wasn’t great, it still provided an important clue: around 2 a.m. on Feb. 14, a white car backed into the driveway at Jeff and Kira’s home. Around 9 a.m. that same day, the white car left.

As police were interviewing neighbors, the security guards at the mall were calling a tow truck to come and get a white car that had been abandoned in the parking deck for far too long. The car, it turned out, was Kira’s, and there was blood on the trunk.

Again, investigators zeroed in on the mall’s security cameras to figure out who dumped the car in the parking garage and when. It was painstaking to sift through, but soon a clear timeline came into focus: it was Jeff, and he’d done more than just park Kira’s car at the mall.

Armed with security footage from the mall and from the neighbor, police determined that Jeff had driven Kira’s white car to the Mall of America on Feb. 14 and left it there before walking to the taxi stand and catching a cab back to his neighborhood. Their theory was bolstered when Kira’s lifeless body was found in the nearby Mississippi River. She was nude and had a head injury and a broken finger. But what had provoked him?

Kira’s cell phone records revealed that she’d been in a relationship with one of the district managers for her clothing store. She had texted the manager all night the night of her date with Jeff. The texts stopped mid-conversation just before midnight that night. It is then that police believed Jeff caught Kira texting, grew angry, and hit her in the head before smothering her to death. The surveillance footage at 2 a.m. was when authorities believed he loaded her body in the trunk before dumping it in the river.

Taking her car to the mall later that morning was simply to provide the illusion that Kira was alive and well.

Almost two years after Kira’s death, Trevino was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 27.5 years in prison. He is currently at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Faribault, Minnesota. His earliest expected release date is June 26, 2031.

For more on this case, stream See No Evil: “Silent Screams” on discovery+.