Where Is Nichole Rice Now? Inside Her Life After a Jury Decided Her Fate in Her Roommate Anita Knutson's Murder Case

Nichole Rice was arrested and charged with killing her college roommate, Anita Knutson, 15 years after her death.

On June 4, 2007, Knutson’s dad found her body in her bed in her off-campus apartment at Minot State University in North Dakota. She had died from two stab wounds to the chest. 

Then, the case went cold for 15 years before the 2022 Oxygen TV show Cold Justice shed new light on the murder and centered around the theory that Rice murdered her roommate in a fit of rage.

Over a decade after Knutson died, Rice was arrested in March 2022 and vehemently denied killing Knutson. She pleaded not guilty, and her trial began on March 18, 2025. The eventual not guilty verdict on March 26 shocked Knutson’s family and friends.

The 2007 murder and Rice’s trial are featured in a two-hour Dateline special on May 2, which includes interviews with Knutson’s sister, aunt and friends.

Here’s everything to know about Nichole Rice, the alleged murder of her college roommate Anita Knutson and where she is now.

Who is Nichole Rice?

Nichole Rice, whose name at the time of the alleged murder was Nichole Thomas, lived with Anita Knutson in an off-campus apartment. 

Despite being friends, Rice and Knutson allegedly had problems as roommates. After Knutson’s murder, investigators discovered that the roommates were allegedly getting into arguments over alarm clocks and pet fish.

Two of Rice’s former co-workers at an eTelecare call center in Minot later testified that Rice was “very angry” over some of their spats.

“They weren’t getting along,” her former supervisor, Matthew Hansen, said at the trial, according to the Minot Daily News. “Strange things like she was locked out of the wi-fi … She was kind of stuck in a bad spot, she made it seem like.”

Rice’s co-worker, Donna Bjelland, also recalled her “complaining” about her then-roommate.

“She was angry when she sat down complaining about it,” Bjelland said. “She was angry with her I would say on a daily basis. Something was going on. They fought a lot. She said when they got into fights that Anita would go into the bedroom and lock the door. She was very angry.”

Bjelland also recalled in his trial testimony a specific incident in which Knutson allegedly wanted Rice to get rid of her fish tank because of the noises it made, but when Rice refused, Knutson allegedly turned off the filter several times and caused the fish to die.

“That time when she was upset, it was as if Anita had really crossed a line then. This is my interpretation, she had moved from being the worst roommate in the world to being a bad evil person. That was how (Rice) acted,” Bjelland claimed in court.

Rice was initially a “person of interest,” according to investigators, but they didn’t have enough evidence to arrest her until March 2022. She went on to work at the Minot Air Force Base, where she was later arrested, according to local news station KFYR-TV.

Rice was first married to a man with the last name Bakken from 2010 to 2013, per court documents obtained by the Minot Daily News. She went on to marry her current husband, Dallas Rice, in December 2021.

Who was Anita Knutson?

Knutson was born on Sept. 22, 1988, in Orange County, Calif., and was adopted five months later by Gordon and Sharon Knutson, according to the Minot Daily News. The family lived in Anaheim, Calif., for most of her life before moving to Butte, Mont., after her freshman year of high school.

Knutson graduated from Velva High School in 2006 and began studying at Minot State University, pursuing a degree in elementary education. 

“She was joy, beautiful and fun, and everybody loved her,” her sister Anna Knutson said during an October 2022 episode of Cold Justice.

Sharon seconded her daughter’s opinion and said that Knutson was “smart” and “artistic,” while her dad, Gordon, added that she was “independent.” 

“She was a person that always looked out for the ones that were being bullied,” he said in the 2022 episode. 

Knutson’s aunt Karen Leier also said, “There’s nothing bad you could say about her ever. The moment we lost her everything changed.”

Knutson was close with her family and called her parents often, so when Sharon and Gordon didn’t hear from her for a few days, they knew something was wrong, according to NBC. Gordon then drove to his daughter’s apartment to check on her and found her body.

Although investigators had a handful of suspects, the case went cold for 15 years. “I want the person that did it to realize what they did and to who they did it to,” Sharon said on Cold Justice.

Sadly for the Knutson family, her brother Daniel died by suicide in 2013, as Anna told Dateline two years later. 

“What haunts me most about the death of my sister is that whoever killed her, also took the life of my brother that very day,” Anna said. “After she was killed, he was never the same.”

Why was Nichole Rice arrested?

Nearly 15 years after Knutson’s death, her roommate, Nichole Rice, was arrested for her alleged murder on March 16, 2022. 

The Minot Police Department said in a press conference that day that their partnership with Cold Justice helped shed new light on the case, according to KFYR-TV. Investigators specifically cited inconsistencies with Rice’s alibi and two alleged confessions Rice made while intoxicated.  

She was arrested and charged with a Class AA felony murder in the death of Knutson and entered a plea of not guilty. Her trial began nearly a year after her arrest on March 18, 2025, in Grand Forks, N.D.

Prosecutors claimed that Rice killed Knutson in a fit of rage amid their contentious living situation and Knutson’s alarm clock going off. The prosecution team also brought in two witnesses who claimed that Rice drunkenly confessed to killing Knutson, per the Minot Daily News. Rice’s friend Kristina Holler testified and claimed that she had confessed to the killing while crying during a house party in 2008.

“I’m not 100 percent word for word, but that she had gotten into an argument with her, and stabbed her,” Holler said on the stand, while claiming that the roommates had gotten into an argument over an alarm clock.

Rice’s ex-boyfriend William May also took the stand and alleged that she had also confided in him about the murder when she was “belligerently drunk” at a party in 2008.

“We were playing video games, and Nichole and I were sitting on the couch,” he said, according to the Minot Daily News. “Someone in the kitchen was talking about it, that’s when it was stated.”

“The comment was that, from Nichole Rice, it was that she had did it, that she had killed Anita,” May claimed.

Despite both May and Holler saying they thought they told police about the incidents, there was no record of them giving the police statements. Rice’s attorney argued that prosecutors were unable to prove Rice’s whereabouts at the time of the murder and that their roommate squabbles were not significant enough for Rice to kill her.

The trial ended on March 24, 2025, and the jury began deliberations the following day, per KX News.

What was Nichole Rice’s verdict?

The jury deliberated for less than six hours over the course of two days, from March 25 to March 26, in Rice’s case. 

On the second day, the judge read that the jury had found her not guilty. Rice was surrounded by her legal team and her family at the time of the reading and immediately started weeping with her face in her hands. Her lawyers and family members also celebrated by screaming and hugging each other, per a video from the courtroom. 

After Rice was freed, she was seen holding hands and praying with her family and friends outside the courtroom, per a TikTok posted by Court TV Live.

Knutson’s sister, Anna, later expressed her disappointment in the decision and told KFYR-TV in a statement, “I spent the last week reliving some of the hardest parts of the last 18 years of my life, and in those 18 years, one thing I’ve learned is that a not guilty verdict does not mean innocence. I cannot say the same for many of the people in that room, but my conscience is clear.”

Where is Nichole Rice Now?

Shortly after Rice’s name was cleared, she and her team faced backlash for their emotional reaction in the courtroom. Her attorneys later issued an apology, noting they may have “offended” people.

“Our team has been working tirelessly for three years to prepare for this trial,” the Sand Law team wrote on Facebook on April 1. “During that time, we became extremely close to our client’s family.”

They added, “When the verdict was read, we reacted emotionally. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended, especially to Anita Knutson’s family. The loss of Anita is heartbreaking and we in no way intended disrespect.”

Rice’s husband, Dallas Rice, supported her from the beginning of the trial when they held hands while entering her pretrial arraignment, where she pleaded not guilty in September 2022, according to KX News. 

The couple, who wed in December 2021, seemed to stay strong throughout the trial, since Dallas was seen cheering during Rice’s acquittal in March. 

The case will also be investigated again on TV — Rice’s trial and Knutson’s alleged murder are at the center of a two-hour May 2 episode of Dateline titled “Murder in Minot.”