A dead horse and crash debris were still strewn along a country road when a woman in a black jacket approached a sheriff’s deputy and said she had been driving the SUV that struck an Amish buggy.
Deputies took her statement but grew suspicious. Petersen matched the witness description of the driver as a blond woman, but wasn’t she supposed to be wearing a red-and-black Hy-Vee shirt? And why was a second, similar-looking blond woman spotted at the crash site?
A deputy had turned on his digital recorder and left it running in the cab of his truck. What investigators ultimately concluded shocked people in this corner of southeastern Minnesota, an area of rolling farmland marked by the bluffs of the Mississippi River and the city of Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic.
Officials filed felony charges this month against Sarah Petersen—and her identical twin sister, Samantha. Authorities allege that the sisters hatched a plot to switch places and pretend Sarah had been driving during the deadly crash to spare Samantha, who was high on methamphetamine, from prison.