Читать книгу Imprisoned by Fear - Kathy Lange - Страница 8

Chapter 1

The Neighborhood

It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2012, and my fifteen-year-old son, Dilan, was already asking about putting up the Christmas tree. At his age, I was a little surprised at how excited he was for the Christmas season as it seemed a tradition that only little ones got really excited about. It was eight thirty in the morning as I started the decorating process. We had enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with my two older children, Laura and Greg, and my mother-in-law, Colleen. Laura and Greg both live only thirty minutes away but have weekend jobs that keep us from seeing one another as often as we like. I had taken my thirty-minute walk that day as soon as I had the turkey in the oven as the temperature outside was going to take a dramatic drop later in the afternoon. On the way back from my walk around noon, I had noticed an older little red sports car and had wondered who was visiting today. As it was parked on the avenue, not in front of anyone’s home, I wondered which neighbor the car belonged due to its odd parking spot. This car would come to change the lives of myself, my family, and our neighbor forever.

One person in particular was missing for our Thanksgiving celebration. My husband, John, had invited our neighbor, Byron Smith, for the last few years. He had retired from his national security position with the State Department when he moved back to his family home to take care of his elderly mother. I first met Byron in 2009, after his mother passed, when he and my husband visited about restoring a classic car. He seemed quiet, somewhat reserved, but a very interesting conversationalist as he had lived all over the world. His job with the State Department had afforded him opportunities to live in Beijing, Cairo, Moscow, Tokyo, cities in Germany, West Africa, and many more. Each job assignment lasted three years, and then he would move on to the next embassy to install a new security system. This was not a career conducive to having a wife and children and might be part of the reason he never married. Byron was not a tall or muscular man, but spoke gently and owned a thick head of hair for a sixty-four-year-old man. I admired his intelligence, but aside from being gifted intellectually, his gentleness spoke through his wanting to care for his mother, who had passed away a few months after his retirement. He came from a family of four children. Byron was the second son. His two younger sisters were not close to him or their parents in their adult life, although one lived only thirty miles from the family home, which was now his with the passing of both parents. Byron inherited the home, and he and his older brother split the family assets. Their father had purchased stock from working at Minnesota Power, and that stock had doubled in the 1980s. Both parents lived very frugal lives, I was told, as I had never met them. When we moved to the Riverwood neighborhood in 1997, I knew of an elderly woman down the street but never had the opportunity to meet her. Their home was somewhat secluded from the rest in the neighborhood. You could see the detached garage, which Byron used as a shop to work on small projects. His father, Ted, short for Edwin, was a maintenance supervisor for the local electrical plant, a caring father, and husband to his wife, Ida. The children grew up in the fifties and sixties, going on family vacations and spending quality time together. Ted was a teacher to his children, and they did what was expected of them and were taught good behavior. Byron talked very lovingly about his mother. He once told me that his mother had called the mother of a girl he wanted to date so she could get to know the family first, as mothers would do sometimes, and he didn’t much care for that. I said that I had to side with his mom, because I would do the same thing. All the family photos showed them as a very close and active family. The only bad thing I had ever heard him say about his mom was that she was too lenient with the youngest daughter. She always made excuses for her tardiness or lack of ambition. Ida was also in the armed forces, along with Ted, so military life was embedded within the family. After Ida died and Byron was no longer a caregiver, he and my husband began to talk back and forth in the neighborhood and build a friendship. That Thanksgiving Day in 2012, Byron had declined our invitation and stated that he had not been feeling well. We later learned how very true that was. John had said that he had been acting differently for the past several weeks as several offers to go to bologna days, where one ate all the bologna your stomach could hold on a given weekday, were refused. Byron would regularly stop over to chat, but it had been at least ten days since he had walked over. Soon we would learn why.

As I started decorating the Christmas tree, I was surprised to see several police cars headed down Elm Street toward Byron’s home. His home is at the dead-end of Elm Street with a straight view from our living room window. After several cars, came several more, and soon it was a frenzy of law enforcement vehicles in the neighborhood heading down Elm Street. Then it came, a large van with the lettering BCSU—Bemidji Crime Scene Unit. As my thoughts collected in a panic, I went to find John and told him that he needed to call Byron right away. Something terrible had happened to him. John tried his home phone. There was no answer. He called his cell number. No answer. It was a stream of law enforcement vehicles headed down Elm Street. As we watched for several hours as more came and some left, a large white suburban drove into our driveway, and two police officials knocked on our door asking questions about what we had seen in the neighborhood on Thanksgiving. I told them right away that we were friends of Byron and I did not have a bad word to say about him. By this time, through social media, we had learned that two teens were shot in a basement as they broke into someone’s home. The deputy and investigator flashed their badges, then sat down, turned on a recorder, and informed me that they wanted to record my statement. I had seen the strange red car parked on the avenue around noon on Thanksgiving and just explained that it was parked in an odd spot. These officials seemed interested in what time I noticed that car parked and when I had first seen it. They recorded my answers and went out to talk with John, who was with some of the other neighbors gathered outside. They talked with John for several minutes, asked questions, and then left. They gave no further indication of what actually had happened at Byron’s home. As we wondered about our friend, Facebook was a source of information about the two teenagers that had been shot and killed burglarizing a home on Thanksgiving. My heart sank as I discovered that the red car was the car of the teens and our friend was now in jail for shooting them as they broke into his home.

Nick Brady and Haile Kifer were teens unknown to me even though I had a son who went to Little Falls High School and knew who they were. Their Facebook pages appeared to show that they were very troubled teens, obviously as they were breaking into someone’s home on a holiday. Rumors from schoolmates spread that Haile had recently been in rehab for chemical dependency. Another rumor insisted that she had moved away from her parents and had been living with a boyfriend right after she turned eighteen. Nick had the reputation of being a bully. He had been attending school in Pillager, a town thirty miles from Little Falls, and had been living with his grandparents. His Facebook page showed him holding a gun, and it wasn’t a hunting picture. His best friend, Cody Kasper, was said to have gone on this burglarizing mission along with the other two, but an invitation from a friend, Logan, to go snowboarding trumped the burglary. Little did he realize then that decision saved his life that day. Cody had been hired by Byron to do yard work during the summer of 2011. John said that Byron had been talking about what a great kid he was and how he wanted to teach him to deer hunt with a bow and arrow and what a hard worker he was. Cody happened to be at our home one day, and when my son got home from school, he asked what that kid was doing in our yard. John had hired him to stack some wood, along with another young man, Colt, who was a classmate of Dilan’s at the time. Dilan was very upset with his dad for hiring Cody. He stated that Cody had a bad reputation and seemed to always find trouble. Dilan was so adamant about Cody John immediately told Cody he was done working.

On October 27, 2012, Byron had gone to St. Cloud, a thirty-mile trip, and was gone for about six hours. When he arrived home, he noticed the door to the basement had been kicked in and as he entered, every drawer had been overturned, and every room upstairs had been turned upside down. He called the police right away. A deputy, Jamie Luberts, arrived thirty minutes later. After the deputy reviewed the scene and left, Byron later discovered a shoe print from the door panel that had been knocked out. It was the print of a skateboard-type shoe, so it was determined by Byron himself that the burglars were likely younger in age, not adults. He actually took the shoe print from the door to the sheriff’s office on the following Monday as the deputy had missed this piece of evidence. He spent about one and a half hours at the sheriff’s department waiting to show the deputy this piece of evidence. During that time, he talked with another deputy about the hopelessness, the despair, and the fear he had felt in the last several months due to missing guns and cash. The deputy stated that “if they want to get in, they’ll find a way.” This was not the first break-in to Byron’s home. The first known burglary started in July that summer with about three thousand dollars in cash stolen. He had recently decided to pay for things with more cash and less credit cards. He had not reported the theft because he knew there would be nothing that could be done about it, and a small part of him thought maybe he had misplaced it. Someone had gained entry without force, saw the envelope of cash, and helped themselves. Many times as he did yard work on his acreage, he would leave the house unlocked, as many of us do in our seemingly safe, quiet neighborhood. But in September, he also noticed that a new chainsaw had gone missing from his garage, among other small tools. Again, he thought maybe he misplaced the items. Then he realized, around the beginning of October, a couple of guns his father had purchased long ago in the upstairs closet were not there. He was unsettled and didn’t know what to think. He kept wondering if he had misplaced the items, so he never reported anything at that time. During this time, he had also been frightened by the ringing of his doorbell at strange times during the night. When he got up to answer and turned the light on, there was no one at the door. Then came October 27. Not only was thirty-two thousand dollars’ worth of gold coins and cash taken, but also his father’s 1962 Rolex watch given to him by the French government for being a POW, a camera he purchased overseas with a one-of-a-kind lens attached that was worth about six thousand dollars, and a video camera. He believed that thieves who steal guns use guns. His panic turned to sheer fear as he went to Walmart and Iron Hills Pawn to replace the stolen rifle and shotgun. Byron gave the deputy a list of all the neighbors to question that might have seen something that day. None of the neighbors even knew about this break-in at the time as that deputy assigned to investigate never contacted any of the close neighbors or notified any of us to be on our guard for possible burglars in the neighborhood. Byron was in constant fear of his own life as not only did they take sentimental valuables but these thieves also had his guns and ammunition. The garage of his other property adjacent to his family home had also been broken into on the same day in October, the door kicked in and tools taken, just as the door had been kicked in at his other home. It was obvious that a pattern was emerging, and it was not if they would come back but when. He dared not leave his home for fear of it being burglarized again. And he was fearful of staying there, as he knew the burglars were getting more violent and they now had his weapons. Every break-in had occurred when he was not at home, seemingly in broad daylight. Who was watching to know when he left his home so burglars could come in and take whatever they wanted? He started sleeping with a pistol and carried it all times while on his property. Since he didn’t have a permit, he left it at the end of his driveway when he went to the grocery store. He started taking sleeping pills for the first time in his life. He could only sleep about three hours each night even with the sleep aids. Was there someone in the neighborhood watching him leave? Since his home was at the dead-end of Elm Street, only a few neighbors could see his comings and his goings. Pine trees sheltered the house, so it was hidden from street view. No one would ever see suspicious activity. During the past several months, unusual doorbell ringing was concerning. This had happened so many times that he reversed the tone, so that instead of ding dong, it rang dong ding. He did this because he thought he was dreaming and this would convince him otherwise. He was correct. He knew by early October that when the doorbell rang, it went dong ding and he was not dreaming this. He knew someone was wondering if he was home or not. If he wasn’t home at night, burglars would be then free to do another home invasion. Several of the other neighbors had stated they heard their doorbell ring in the middle of the night too. On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Byron cleaned out a space in his garage to store his 1969 Nova. John had told him about the recent vandalism in Swanville, a nearby town in Morrison County, in which car windshields had been broken to steal contents in cars on the main street. He feared that the same people committing those crimes were possibly breaking into his home. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, he cleaned out another stall to store his SUV. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, he continued to secure two motorcycles into the same garage to protect against vandalism or theft. As he was cleaning, moving, and storing, Byron noticed a flicker of light near his home. He sped off at once, running toward his house for fear it was being robbed again. When he discovered no one at his home, he continued to move more items in the garage.

Nick Brady and Haile Kifer had entered his home on Thanksgiving Day by breaking a bedroom window. Nick was the first to enter. Byron had installed surveillance cameras after the October burglaries upon the recommendation of the deputy. The cameras showed Nick Brady casing the house, trying to get in through doors, and then noticing the camera and trying to turn it away from him. Byron had locked and dead bolted all doors and windows in order to deter anyone from entering. This was an everyday habit. Since October 27, he set up an audio recorder every day to record any sound of a burglary. With his extensive background installing security systems, his ultimate fear was that he might die a violent death one day and wanted a recording so police had some clues to the crime. He had become a prisoner in his own home. It was likely that someone watching, possibly in the neighborhood, had to have notified Nick and Haile as they saw Byron leave in his silver pickup, undoubtedly, they thought for a Thanksgiving dinner with friends. Byron had to pass over twenty homes with his truck that morning. Was there someone watching him leave? He left his yard to move his pickup that day to continue his moving and storing and also to prevent that vehicle from the dangers of vandalism. The garage he was moving things for storage was about a quarter mile from his home, so at times his property would not be visible to him. As he left his yard around 11:30 a.m., he stopped to chat with a neighbor, Bill, for a few minutes and then proceeded to park his vehicle a few blocks away from his home. The camera showed Byron walking back into his home at 11:45 a.m. Nick Brady was first seen on the camera at 12:35 p.m. During this time, Nick had parked his red car on the avenue, and both had to walk down along the edge of the pine trees that bordered Byron’s properties. Their walk would take about five minutes, but they would go unnoticed by any neighbors due to the thickness of the pine trees. Before proceeding to more cleaning and storing, he decided to sit down and read for a while. His reading area was downstairs, in which he had a comfy wingback chair between bookshelves. There were many windows facing the river side of his home, so the sunlight during the middle of the day was perfect for reading. He had been sitting for about thirty minutes when suddenly he heard a doorknob rattle. He heard footsteps on his wooden deck and saw the shadow of a person peering through the large picture window of where he sat. He heard another doorknob rattle. All doors and windows were locked. All doors were dead bolted, so there was no way they could get in. His thoughts were, Please, go away, just go away. The monitors to the video cameras were in another room, but he dared not get up from his chair to risk being seen. Then he heard the shattering sound of glass breaking and footsteps above him. He thought to himself, This is going to be bad. His cell phone was out of minutes and had been for a month. He had been too afraid to drive to St. Cloud to buy minutes for it. He then heard footsteps that started down the stairs toward him. They hadn’t stopped in any of the rooms upstairs. The footsteps did not pause and were coming directly down to him. As he sat frozen, he reached for his replacement rifle. As the figure further descended the stairs, he shot. Afraid they had his own guns, he took a shot in the hip of this person coming to him. A young male dropped and fell to the bottom of the stairs. He could now see his face and didn’t recognize him, but thought he looked about twenty-six years old. What he did recognize were the shoes that had fallen off when he fell. They looked like the same footprint as the door from the break-in in October. They were a skateboard-style shoe, and Byron was familiar with them as he wore this style while hiking. Nick Brady started getting up after the first shot and coming toward Byron. He shot again, this time at his chest, but it didn’t seem to affect him as he still came toward Byron with a mad, mean look on his face, and then he held up both hands at Byron with both middle fingers pointing straight up at him! The threat continued. Byron shot at his hands and head, and it was over. Nick Brady was no longer a threat. He sat down to catch his breath. He was frozen, and blood was pumping rapidly and heavily into his ears. The adrenalin was out of control. Blood was starting to flow on the carpet, so he got a tarp from his shop area that he used for logs for his wood burner and placed the body on the tarp. He sat back down to catch his breath for several minutes. When almost ready to call for assistance, the sound of more footsteps was heard above him. Was another intruder entering his home? The window was already broken. They could crawl in without making a sound. With the sound of gunshots still ringing in his ears, he saw another figure descending down the stairs. Byron took another shot at a black-hooded figure coming downstairs. He shot in the head so there would be little chance of another physical encounter. This time a second figure dropped to the foot of the stairs. This person looked thin, dressed in black pants and a black hoodie with the drawstring tied so tight around the face that only the eyes and nose were showing. The black sweatshirt had a Hard Candy logo in pink letters. He noticed black leather gloves. She had obviously put some thought into her day’s activities with her large pink tote bag, yet empty, except for her glass pipe. (Byron did not look in the bag. This pipe was noted in law enforcement reports.) She was gasping, “Oh my god, oh my god.” He placed the gun to her head, and it seemed to him that she laughed because at that moment, the gun jammed. The only other weapon that remained close to him was a small .22 rifle, so he shot her again in the head, and she was still gasping. His thoughts turned to more people coming down the stairs. He moved her body next to the other. He didn’t want to look at these intruders, but as he moved the girl’s body, he noticed she was still gasping. Because he didn’t want her to suffer, he shot her again. His thoughts now were that more intruders must be coming. He thought the girl was a neighbor that he had suspected of stealing from him previously over the years. But now Byron started to wonder if there were additional burglars. He thought maybe the girl’s dad would be coming after her or maybe he was in on all the burglaries that had been happening this summer. He was frozen and wondering who was coming next. He felt abandoned by law enforcement because they had done little to no follow-up on these attacks on this home. The one follow-up visit that was done was a short conversation with Deputy Luberts, who fiddled with this radio after a few minutes, said he had to leave, got in his car, turned on the lights, and left in a sudden hurry. Byron noticed that by the time he went passed onto Highway 10 alongside his house, the lights on his car had already been turned off. Byron had suggested to Luberts that there might be some drug traffic on his street, which was when the deputy suddenly had to leave. He had shown Luberts the installed cameras on his property because there was “nothing else they could do.” Now he had shot two people who entered his home to steal once again and was now wondering what window had been broken. Who else was coming through the broken window? Was there anyone else coming in the house? His thoughts were now that there might be more coming. He sat there in the corner of another room in his basement waiting in fear, doing nothing, but waiting for more to come. He stayed hidden for the next twenty-four hours when he finally felt safe enough to go upstairs. His cell phone had no minutes due to his reluctance to leave his home for fear of another break-in. His landline phone was in the kitchen upstairs, so he crouched to the kitchen counter in case anyone was watching yet and reached for the phone. He called his neighbor, Bill, and asked him to contact a lawyer and asked if he wanted to come over. He told him that the burglaries were finally solved. Byron wasn’t sure at this time if other intruders were still on his property, so he didn’t want to alert other burglars to law enforcement, so he asked for no sirens. Law enforcement arrived about an hour after the call was made to the sheriff’s office. Byron came out with his hands up to show he had no weapon and invited them into his home. After showing the two deputies the bodies, Byron was placed in a sheriff’s car within sixteen minutes.

The thieves had broken in through a west bedroom window, which would be undetectable to any neighbor as it faced the Mississippi River. It was Byron’s bedroom window, where he had a huge shelf of record albums, hundreds of them. One of his passions was music, and this was one of his extensive collections. Byron was proud of his well-built family home. Byron was close to older brother, Bruce. Bruce was semiretired now and had once lived on a ChrisCraft boat in a California marina for several years. He now had residence in California, but he also spent much of his time with his daughter in Pennsylvania. Bruce is six feet, four inches, thin, with a very deep voice, a contrast to his soft-spoken, much shorter younger brother. Bruce commanded a presence with not only his height but his graying hair and a gray moustache. He could remind some of the Monopoly man, professional and smart. Bruce had been married but was now divorced and had two children that he raised as a single father. He was a grandfather to four grandchildren. His daughter’s husband had died suddenly at a young age while she was pregnant with their second child. Bruce was a proud grandfather and was enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday with them when Byron called to summon him to Little Falls as something bad had happened and come as quickly as possible. Bruce was on a plane the next day without even knowing that his younger brother had shot two burglars that day in their family home.

After Bruce’s arrival, the Lange home was constantly filled with the drama of the shootings. Byron had been sitting in jail now for two days. They had arrested him because the sheriff thought he had gone “above and beyond defending his home.” The prosecutor’s office referred to the incident as a cold-blooded killing. They had taken him into custody on that Friday afternoon. Bruce was there to help his brother sort out this mess and get him out of jail at some point. For now, he was safer there. The community was stunned. They were upset that these “innocent-looking” kids had been killed. Their angelic-like faces were splashed all over every news media outlet. Even from the Sacramento Daily newspaper to one in the corner of Florida. They were splashed on every TV newscast in the state, plus some nationally as well. Byron’s mug shot was shown alongside, looking, of course, like a space alien, but of course he hadn’t slept for thirty hours. The media was literally camped on our street in front of our house. They were everywhere. Bruce finally put a locked gate at the foot of the driveway so all the lookers would not come directly up to the house. As Bruce took up residence in the family home, John and I walked over to Byron’s house to discuss the events with Bruce and bring him up to date. It felt uncomfortable being in that presence with all the drama that was surrounding the home. We sat in the kitchen. It looked like it always had, everything neat and tidy. As I sat there, I kept thinking that two people had just died here. It seemed eerie to be present there after what had just occurred a few days before. Bruce was amazingly comfortable in his family home. But he said that the incident didn’t happen to him and he didn’t know all the details yet. My cell phone rang while we were talking with Bruce. It was my son, Dilan. “Mom, Channel 5 is here. Can we talk to them?” I told him to wait and I would be right there. I knew five of his good friends were spending time at our house. They were all stunned that this had happened and were trying to figure it all out and talk with one another. Most of his friends knew Byron and understood his fear. They had no time or much compassion for the two who were killed. Dilan’s friends knew them to be the kids that were in trouble in school. The Channel 5 news guy wanted to interview the kids and get their reaction, of course, to this tragic event. As they saw me driving from Byron’s home, they were determined to get pictures of the house where it had happened. The news reporter asked about what had happened and what I knew, but I didn’t really know anything at that point. I was still stunned myself about what had happened in our neighborhood. I agreed to an interview at the time because I didn’t want Dilan’s friends on TV at that point. I stated that Byron was not the type of person to hurt anyone. He wanted to help kids, not harm. My son’s band had practice sessions there all last summer in 2011. He volunteered his garage for this. This was a tragedy for everyone involved. A couple of the other kids said a few things about how Nick was always in trouble and was considered a bully on the school bus he rode. The news reporter didn’t leave from there. He was insistent upon driving down to the house. I told him to leave Byron’s family alone, but he didn’t listen. He drove right down there, and five minutes later he was back. Bruce had told him to leave at once, along with a few other choice words. He wasn’t tolerating any of the drama.

John happened to be downtown when he heard people talking about Byron and how crazy he was and that these kids had crashed into his garage and he shot them outside. The rumors were running rampant, like they do in a small town. John was upset that all these bad things were being said about his friend. As he got home and there were more news media camped in the street, he invited Channel 11 (KARE-TV) in our home to talk about the real Byron, the Byron that he knew as his good friend. They set up a camera right in our kitchen and threw questions at him for about thirty minutes. John wanted the public to know that Byron was a nice guy. Mission accomplished, except they put his name in the clip when it aired and our home phone lit up like a Christmas tree. Every newspaper and TV station wanted an interview with him and also Byron’s brother. There were the crazed people that called, too. A few calls were very threatening, as we were supporting “the killer”. The callers would curse at us through our phone for supporting him. Every night as I got home from work, the media watched us and called our phone for more information. It was like having the paparazzi all the time for the next ten days. We finally disconnected our home number to stop the threatening calls. As I went to work at the local hospital, I knew people were talking about how my husband was supporting our neighbor. Some were supportive, though, but the wounds were still fresh. We later learned that Nick Brady often wore a bulletproof vest to school, almost every day. He was proud of it and called it his friend. The public wanted to know why Byron waited so long to call someone for help. Why didn’t he just wound them? Not many knew that he had been burglarized many times before and had lost faith in law enforcement all together. He had been offered little help from the Morrison County sheriff’s office other than install cameras so next time they came, they would have clues.

As days went by, the media was still present in the neighborhood. Bruce had agreed to let one newspaper reporter from the Star Tribune photograph the outside of the home and the window that they had broken to gain entry. Our home was a gathering of our neighborhood to try to determine how this happened and who did what. The kids in school were talking too. It was evident that these teens had been in Byron’s home before. Nick and Haile had broken into a home on the south end of town the night before. This home was in the same neighborhood of Haile Kifer’s parents. It was the home of a retired teacher who had been out of the country and came home to a broken glass door with house in disarray. They had stolen his prescription medications, among other various items and collectibles. The hugest piece of the puzzle was trying to figure out how those kids knew he had left his house, thinking he was going to be gone all day. Someone in our neighborhood must have been watching. He suspected a neighbor girl whose parents lived next to Byron’s property. He believed she had come to his property before. When she was about thirteen or fourteen years old, she had left evidence of a smoked joint in one of his cars outside his garage. It was rumored that she had taken some clothing and had worn to school a military jacket with the name Smith embroidered right on it. Byron had seen a trail of clothing leading from his house back to her house and had realized his jacket was missing. He didn’t call the police due to the evidence of marijuana in that car on his property. He worried about getting charged with possession of an illegal drug. I actually had fired this same girl from babysitting as jewelry and makeup had been missing from our home during the time she was babysitting. She had denied this, of course, but I planted some makeup in my bathroom one day, just to see if she would take it. Well, she took the bait, and I confronted her, which she denied, but never asked her to babysit again. John also found about fifty cigarettes butts in our garage behind the grill that were also left by her. No one else in our home smoked. She had the opportunity to watch Byron’s entering and leaving every time he left his property.

Meanwhile at work, I tried to stay focused even though this tragedy was all over the news. My husband’s public support of Byron was all over the news. Our community was in judgment. And it seemed most were horrified with Byron shooting two teenagers. I had been to church the Sunday after all this happened. When the pastor prayed for the two teens and not for Byron, I could hardly stand to be there. I thought about getting up and walking out. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I could barely sit there any longer. I was deciding, “Should I just leave or listen to more prayers about criminals?” I happened to notice the President of our hospital and his wife in the back. I was still in shock when I spoke with them after the service. He and his wife had been out of town until last night and had not heard any news. The next morning, he came into my office to ask if I was okay. I know when I spoke with them on that Sunday, I was in shock and overcome with sadness that this had happened. Our hospital offered many services to their employees, such as counseling. I thanked him but was partly embarrassed about my open and honest talk with him in church. But the feelings and emotions were raw and real. It was hard to focus at work, but it was a refuge away from the people in my home every day trying to figure out this mess. I would come home to strange people discussing the shooting and guns. This Thanksgiving tragedy was in my home constantly. I couldn’t get away from it.

Bruce had been working with the local sheriff’s department to protect the property from further vandals. He stayed overnight there even though I offered him our home. I admired his strength for doing that. But after all, that was his family home too. He was protecting it from all the cars who went sightseeing down Elm Street. There were hundreds every day that just went to the driveway and had to turn around because it was a dead-end street. This lasted for weeks. It was a parade of constant traffic down Elm Street. My husband and I did not visit Byron in jail, but Bruce said he was doing as well as could be expected. The first night he was there, Bruce said that he thanked the jailer because he finally felt safe somewhere, because he hadn’t felt safe in his own home for months. After a few weeks, though, and as the news media somewhat dissipated, Byron felt safe to be out. I had written a letter to him in jail as we had no other communication during this time. I wanted him to know that he was our friend and both John and I supported him. My letter stated that there were people that understood his reaction to the burglary and that Dilan’s friends were also concerned about him. I told him about all the rumors that had been exaggerated about him and John came to his defense without hesitation. John was steadfast in his support of his friend. The letter to him was encouraging but didn’t bring forth what we had learned about the two who had broken into his home. I ended the letter with offering him support and help in whatever he needed. Bruce had hired Steve Meshbesher, a notable defense attorney from Minneapolis. Mesbesher had represented some of the Vikings football team players in a sexual assault case in this area and had a reputation for winning. His father, Ron, had been the defense attorney for Marjorie Caldwell, the Duluth heiress who had been accused of conspiracy to kill her mother, Elisabeth Congdon, at the Glensheen Mansion in Duluth in 1977. Ron had won an acquittal in that case, and Steve had worked on that case with his father as a young attorney. Meshbesher had requested a bail hearing on December 18, and Judge Doug Anderson agreed to release him for fifty thousand dollars cash as long as he would relinquish his passport and stay in the state of Minnesota. Bruce set things in motion to get bail money. He called me in my office at the end of that day and was having trouble getting a check cashed to get fifty thousand dollars in cash. No bank would cash a Morgan Stanley check until it had cleared the bank it was written on, which would take about ten days. He had called me to ask if my bank would take this check if I cashed it. I doubted this because you would have to be a credit union member, but I would inquire for him. It was almost 4:00 p.m., so I went downstairs to ask the president of the credit union if she could help. I had worked with Margurite before. She purchased my homemade candles from me, a business I started about ten years ago. As I entered her office, I closed both of her doors so no one would hear my request. “The things I get myself into,” I first said. I told her that Byron Smith’s brother had a check to cash for his bail and was having trouble cashing it right away. He wanted to get Byron out of jail for Christmas. I told her he needed fifty thousand dollars in cash.

“Do you even have fifty thousand dollars cash in this bank?” I asked. She smiled and said, “Of course I can help you, but you have him sign the check over to you because you are the member. You are assured that it is good, right?”

“Yes, it’s good, that’s not a problem.” I told her that I would bring Bruce with me tomorrow morning to do the transaction. When I called Bruce and told him that my bank was good with this, he was elated and thankful. “I’ll be right over,” he said. He wanted discuss the details of the transaction.

Tuesdays were my days that I worked at the Albany Hospital. It was a thirty-five-mile drive that I enjoyed every Tuesday and Thursday. I told Bruce that we could go to the bank at 8:30 a.m. He would pick me up so we could get this cash, and then he could bring me back home so I could leave for work and then he could get Byron out of jail. We drove past the jail to see if any media were still camped out from the night before. News reports revealed they were all camped out waiting, finally, for a new picture of the famous Byron Smith. None of the news media actually knew what he really looked like beyond an awful mug shot. As we drove to the back of the jail, there didn’t seem to be any sign of news media. Bruce had a plan, though, to get his big parka and sunglasses and make a fast dash for the car. As we arrived at the bank, I knocked on her door as Margurite was finishing a phone call. She was usually not in this early as she worked later than most bankers. I felt a little uneasy as the other employees were staring at Bruce, the extremely tall, gray-haired man in his long, black wool coat. He definitely looked like a high-priced lawyer or some professional corporate executive, someone really important that was not usually seen around Little Falls. The cash was placed in a regular-size money bag, and I was somewhat astonished at how small a space fifty thousand dollars in cash actually took. After all, how often do you see that much cash? We sat in her office, and Bruce signed the Morgan Stanley check, and then I put my signature on the back as well. She asked me if I wanted to count the cash back. She had it in bundles of ten thousand dollars each. Five bundles fit snug into the zippered bag. I thanked Margurite for helping. Byron would have had to wait until after Christmas to be out of jail, and Bruce didn’t want him spending the Christmas holiday there, nor did Byron want to stay any longer. Margurite was asking Bruce questions about him. She said it wasn’t for her to judge him, or for anyone that matter to judge when you don’t know the whole story. My respect for her grew that day. If only everyone else thought that. She had asked where Byron would be staying then, and as she looked at me for an answer, I told my first white lie of many that I would tell people about where he would be living. I don’t know if it was fear of random people knowing or my own fear of what might happen if people found out his location. Most of my fear generated from the Little Falls High School where Dilan attended daily and how the kids, who were burglars, seemed to be memorialized. I told Margurite that I didn’t know and that Bruce and his attorney were talking about living arrangements. Steve Meshbesher was a very prominent name in the field of law and he didn’t come cheap—one hundred thousand dollars retainer to start. Meshbesher explicitly stated that he didn’t want Byron back in his home. Bruce and I had this discussion the night before about where Byron would stay. He couldn’t, of course, go back home. The scene was not cleaned, and investigators (from his defense team) still needed to view it. We left the bank, and as quickly as I wanted to get out of there without being seen, only one employee noticed me with the tall, black-coated, strange man. Hopefully she would ask no questions. Bruce drove me back home so I could begin my work day.

When I got home from work that afternoon, I walked into the back door to be greeted with a big hug from Byron. It was a tight hug from someone who was very thankful to be free. He had been in jail since November 23, and it was now December 18. All were gathered in my kitchen discussing the events and telling Byron what had been discovered about the teens that he had shot and that they were part of a small gang of kids who dabbled in drugs that had been robbing him over and over and over. He couldn’t believe that he had been betrayed by Cody Kasper, someone that he had wanted to teach him to deer hunt, and hired to do yard work. He was astonished beyond belief as we told him who the attackers on his home had been. Attackers was Byron’s word for the teens. It was how he felt about who they were. He had sat in jail knowing virtually nothing about the two intruders. His first words, as he contemplated all the information, were, “How can we teach kids ethical behavior?” His purpose in life was still the mission he had always lived by, teaching kids to be successful and proud of their accomplishments. How ironic that these teens would pick his home to burglarize and how ironic it was that his occupation had been international protection when he personally needed protection when he moved back to his hometown. He had always felt safe all over the world, but he had to come back to his hometown to feel unsafe.

History of Events Leading Up to November 22, 2012

1 In early June of 2012, Cody Kasper, along with Nick Brady, drove Brady’s red car up to the Smith property looking for work. They had previously made other visits but didn’t find Smith at home. Byron turned them away as he was going to do all his yard work himself that year.

2 Shortly after that, Byron was hearing his doorbell ring between midnight and 2:00 a.m. about once a week. When he got up to answer, no one could be seen. This continued through September and increased to two times each week. He could see no one when he turned on the lights to check the door.

3 During the first week of July, $3,200 in cash was stolen from his home. Byron thought he might have misplaced it so didn’t report it, plus it would be impossible to recover. (Later he noted that when he was doing yard work, he left his home unlocked and would not have noted persons entering his home if he was working down by the river.)

4 During late summer of 2012, he noticed many misplaced/missing items, later to be found stolen. He went to an annual Boy Scout weekend, where friends noticed him nervous and withdrawn but said nothing. These friends were from Avon, Elk River, and a professor of Environmental Science at SCSU. In mid-September, he missed a regional scout meeting for the first time due to the fear he was being burglarized. Around September 10, he noticed two missing guns. The paranoia really set in, and Byron was afraid to leave his house, afraid to leave tools on his work bench. He began installing dead bolts, locking vehicles inside the garage, and hiding valuables and went to Walmart to purchase the missing rifle and Iron Hills Pawn to replace the shotgun.

5 In early October, he reversed the doorbell tone to verify that he was not dreaming when the doorbell rang. When it rang in reverse for the first time, he knew he was not dreaming and the doorbell ringing was intentional, but he still could not see anyone. He finally knew that someone was wanting to know if he was home or not.

6 The weekend of October 14, 2012, he had to go out of town. Upon his return, he noticed a new Stihl chainsaw was missing along with some copper wire. He still wondered if he had put the chainsaw in another location as he had been moving things around. Cody Kasper admitted in court that they had been to his property that weekend and there was too much to carry, so they hid some things in the pine trees, only to come back later. This rash of misplaced items had become an epidemic, and desperate frustration set in. By compulsively locking everything, Byron felt somewhat safe. That changed on October 27, 2012, with a violent break-in. A dead-bolted door to the basement was kicked in to gain entry. Stolen were $32,000 worth of gold coins and jewelry, a $6,000 special-order Nikon camera and lens he had recently purchased, war medals, and his father’s Rolex watch gifted to him by the French government.

7 On Monday, October 29, 2012, Byron spent one and a half hours in the ready room at the sheriff’s office in Morrison County. He waited for Jamie Luberts, who was the assigned investigator. Byron brought in the door panel as additional evidence that the deputy had left behind when he observed the scene. While waiting, Byron discussed at length the break-ins, being afraid and hopeless with the receptionist and other deputy there at the time. That deputy stated, “If they really want to get you, they will always find some way in.” After almost two hours, it appeared that Luberts was not coming in, so Byron left.

8 The Monday before Thanksgiving, Byron cleaned out a space in the three-car garage to store his 1969 Nova, working on only four hours of sleep each night and carrying a pistol for protection. On Tuesday, he made room in another stall to store his SUV. On Wednesday, he asked a neighbor to assist him in pushing his two motorcycles into the same garage. (Motorcycles were being rebuilt, so not running at the time.) John had mentioned to Byron that the town of Swanville had had about $100,000 damage to cars in which windshields were broken to gain entry to steal items in cars. This detail made him more nervous about his own vehicles along with his own break-in.

9 On Thanksgiving, Byron planned to continue cleaning and put away various items in the two-car garage. Since he needed room to work, his silver truck had to be moved outside. Feeling serious threats of vandalism, he felt it risky to leave anything outside his home. He moved the truck in front of a highway patrol’s home about two blocks away, where he thought it would be the safest outside.

10 On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Byron told his neighbor, Bill, to retrieve the twenty-pound turkey he had thawing in a large pail of ice water in his shop and take it to the Lange’s. He had declined their standard Thanksgiving dinner invitation that year. When Bill entered the shop, he found the large pail of pinkish water right where Byron said it was, but no turkey in it. There had been no one on the property in those two days except for law enforcement and an assistant county attorney. Where did the turkey go?

11 Byron was bewildered by unusual questioning when he showed Deputy Luberts the bodies of the home invaders. He had been asked by Deputy Luberts repeatedly if he had seen “something on the boy’s waist.” This was immediately after law enforcement arrived to his home on that Friday after Thanksgiving. The deputy also asked if he had noticed anything on the girl’s boot. That same deputy left the room to make a phone call in a hushed voice. Both Nick and Haile were labeled as unarmed when they entered the Smith home. However, friends of Nick Brady claim that he had stolen a bulletproof vest and had worn it to school, bragging to many about it, and also never left home without it. Why would the deputy ask these questions to Byron if there wasn’t something there in the first place?