http://www.kare11.com/news/ts_article.aspx?storyid=513301

Woman searches for grandfather's killer 32 years after death

A Minnesota woman is refusing to let the murder of her grandfather go unsolved.

Jennifer Harriel's earliest memories are like photographs. The memories are images frozen in time of the man she called 'grandpa.'

"I just remember flying kites with him and just spending quiet time with him. He was a really gentle man," Jennifer says.

Jennifer also remembers a phone call her parents received when she was just five years old. That's when the memories of her grandfather stopped.

"I don't know if there was crying or what, but I knew it was the most terrible thing," Jennifer says.

It was May 13, 1976. Ivend Holen was assistant postmaster in Kimball, Minnesota. He was sorting through packages when one of them exploded. Holen was killed. No one was ever arrested. The explosion remained a mystery.

"We were just very confused and scared," Jennifer says.

She always wanted to know what happened. Finally, more than 30 years after the murder, Holen's granddaughter started her search for information.

She contacted the U.S. Postal Inspection Service this week and learned investigators reopened her grandfather's case, which is a tough one.

Officials say the blast and fire that followed degraded much of the evidence. But investigators say Holen was likely not the mail bomber's target. It's not clear who the package was for. It may have ended up in Kimball by mistake. These details are now getting a fresh look.

"Over the last 32 years, there has been an increase in forensic science technology, DNA," says Inspector J.D. Long with the United States Postal Inspection Service.

And that's a glimmer of hope for Jennifer Harriel, who didn't get the chance to know her grandfather but wishes she could have.

"That part of our lives, our history is missing and I think it needs closure," Jennifer says. "And at the end of the day there will be peace to our family, light to the case and to my grandpa again."

The postal inspection service is still offering a $100,000 reward for information that helps solve the case. Anyone with information should call the case agent at 651-293-3237.

Postal service officials say this is the only case in recent history where a postal worker has been killed by a mail bomb in Minnesota.