Jury Finds Wartnick Liable in the Orchid Murder, Awards Betty Nachtsheim $2.35 Million

On the morning of May 24, 1973, Robert Nachtsheim arrived at his own Minneapolis wholesale florist business and was fatally shot by an unknown assailant. Police found a large box of orchids upside down on the floor near his body, an unusual detail that gave the killing a name it would carry for decades: the Orchid Murder. Minneapolis police and the Hennepin County District Attorney's office investigated the case at length. No charges were ever filed, no one was convicted, and the murder remained officially unsolved.

Betty Nachtsheim, Robert's widow, had no recourse through the criminal courts. She also faced a civil barrier. Minnesota's wrongful death statute then required that any action be filed within three years of the act causing death, a deadline that had long expired. The situation changed in 1983, when the state legislature amended the statute to remove the limitations period for claims based on murder. Betty Nachtsheim filed her civil wrongful death action against Norman Wartnick in 1984, more than a decade after her husband's death.

Wartnick had been a shareholder and officer at Midwest Florist Supply Co., Nachtsheim's former employer. Nachtsheim had left the company nine months before the shooting. Yet less than two weeks before the murder, Wartnick paid the premium to renew a "key man" life insurance policy on Nachtsheim's life with Prudential Insurance Company, even though Nachtsheim was no longer employed there. The renewal, which carried no apparent legitimate business justification, became a focal point of the civil case.

In April 1986, the wrongful death and unjust enrichment claims were consolidated and tried before a jury in Hennepin County District Court. Ron Meshbesher of Meshbesher and Spence represented Betty Nachtsheim. There was no criminal conviction to rely on, no identified triggerman, and a killing that investigators had never officially closed. Meshbesher built the case on circumstantial evidence, centering the insurance policy and Wartnick's prior relationship with the victim as proof of motive and procurement, asking the jury to find liability on a civil preponderance standard.

The jury found Wartnick liable and awarded $2,350,000 in damages: $350,000 in compensatory damages and $2,000,000 in punitive damages. Wartnick appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which affirmed the verdict in 1987. The civil judgment stood as the only formal finding of liability ever connected to the Orchid Murder, reached without a parallel criminal conviction and nearly thirteen years after Robert Nachtsheim was killed.