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Chapter 4

Coping

On April 23, a grand jury was summoned to decide if there was enough evidence to change the charge from second-degree murder to first degree. It seems as if the lead prosecutor, Pete Orput, wanted to make a name for himself, and rumor was that he wanted to run for attorney general, so this case might gain him the public recognition he might be seeking. It was stated by several locals in the bakery one day that he said this little town was going to make him famous. Upon hearing all this, Byron felt he had been literally bullied by a bunch of thieves and now he was being bullied by the local justice system. Byron wished he had remained overseas in his retirement. The only reason he came back to Little Falls was to take care of his mother, who had broken her hip, so he took an early retirement. He told me, among others, that the most unsafe place for him ended up being Little Falls, Minnesota. The criminal teens who took part in the burglaries of his home were still attending school, running around town, going on with their lives, seemingly without much punishment. Byron Smith had to be relocated out of his own home, and his old opportunities to be a Boy Scout adviser and judge science fairs were no longer a part of his life. They were his life before last Thanksgiving Day. Cody Kasper went to court again on Wednesday because last week he had a test, so the judge rearranged the court schedule to accommodate him. Byron hired a lawyer for his neighbor, Bill, who had been served with a subpoena to appear in front of the grand jury to upgrade his charge. The neighbor was going to be questioned about Byron’s phone call to him on the day after Thanksgiving when Byron asked him to call a lawyer. The prosecutor was allowing this attorney into the courtroom but was not happy with the situation. Meshbesher seemed to think the prosecutor wanted to discredit the neighbor as a witness for the defense or possibly charge him as an accessory. None of us ever knew any details about his previous burglaries. The reason Byron never mentioned anything to us was that he wanted to see if law enforcement was doing their job. If a neighbor had a fifty-thousand-dollar burglary, would one not expect an investigation in the neighborhood to see if any of us had seen a strange car or suspicious people in the neighborhood?