Читать книгу Imprisoned by Fear - Kathy Lange - Страница 9

Chapter 2

Settling In

The days that followed Byron’s release from jail resulted in all of us adjusting to having a guest in the house. We had been the third home asked to have Byron live with us and the only one with a child attending the high school. His close neighbor on Elm Street was reluctant because they had grandkids over all the time. That was their reasoning anyway. Another one of Byron’s friends said his wife thought it was okay to have Byron stay in their shop out back, but there were no living quarters. Bruce then asked John, but he needed to discuss with me before he agreed. When I was asked by Bruce to have Byron live with us, my main concern was solely for Dilan. If the kids at school who were grieving about these two classmates found out he was in his home, he might be the target for some type of retaliation or bullying. Drug use also heightened the level of concern. I needed to discuss this with Dilan as he was the one this would affect the most. He always had many friends that came over. He preferred having them here instead of staying elsewhere. I explained to him that he would be very limited to having friends over if Byron lived with us. I explained that this would change his lifestyle for a while, but after thinking only for a second, he told me that he wanted to help Byron in any way he could. This didn’t surprise me. My son has always wanted to help those in need. He is very kindhearted and Byron was someone he looked up to. We knew this would be an adjustment for all of us, including Byron. He was used to working in his huge park of a backyard and living as a single guy. He also was sensitive to smell because when he came into our home on previous occasions, he commented if it had a strong smell of candles I had been making, especially during the Christmas season. I would no longer be able to burn or manufacture candles every day, which was the least of my worries right now.

The first order of business was a neighborhood watch system with the parade of cars that continued to go down Elm Street. Being an expert at video surveillance, he set up a system to have every vehicle that went down Elm Street documented. There seemed to be extra traffic at the end of Elm Street, and there were still suspicions of possible drug activity in that house. Byron was certain that drugs played a part in his burglaries. The next order of business was to retrieve some of his personal belongings from his home. With Bruce still here, but with plans to leave soon, Byron gave him a list each day of the things he would need while living with us. The list included suits and other clothing, personal toiletries, wine (he belonged to a monthly wine club), and his favorite movies. I put a shopping list pad on our refrigerator so Byron could let me know what he wanted for groceries, etc. He wouldn’t be going out himself in public, at least for a while anyway. So Bruce brought over some things from his house. Some were his favorite movies, which included the whole series of Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, TV episodes of Babylon 5, and Max Headroom, along with many foreign movies with subtitles and Academy Award-winning titles. One night, Byron and I watched Lawrence of Arabia, a winner of many academy awards in 1962. It is a four-hour-long movie. I was not a person to ever sit and watch a four-hour movie. John would run away at the thought of a movie that did not contain car crashes or elements of continuous action. Byron had brought over his huge, forty-eight-inch flat-screen TV, and we installed it in our family room downstairs. The TV has surround sound, and it was just like you were in a movie theater. The day he set it up, we all sat down in amazement at the huge screen. We were all ready to watch something right away on this big screen. Byron had his first real laugh in days because all three of us were eagerly sitting on the sofa waiting for him to put a movie in. He said we would have movie night tomorrow, so we had to wait until all his Blu-ray movies were brought over. As his movie collection was slightly different from ours, Dilan was willing to watch a few of these with some interest. I wanted him to feel welcome and safe so was willing to watch some of these old movies he enjoyed. The four-hour-long ones were a bit much for me, though.

Byron wanted to get his cell phone activated, and he didn’t want to go out yet, even to St. Cloud, so Dilan and I drove to the T-Mobile store at Crossroads Mall in St. Cloud. I wasn’t prepared for all the questions because all I wanted was a little SIM card with a new number to activate his phone. It was an old phone, which he had for a long time, sufficient enough to receive and make calls. A young man asked to help us, and I told him what I needed. He then proceeded to ask for the city we lived in so he could assign the number. By this time, Byron had been in every newspaper from here to Florida. When I said Little Falls, the guy looked at me and said, “Oh my, how are things up there?” inferring to the recent shootings. I played along and said, “Fine.” Then he asked for a name. I thought for a second if I should use my own name or Byron’s. In my thoughts, if I would say his name, they wouldn’t recognize it because Smith was a common name. I was wrong. When I said Byron Smith, he gave me a look of “Oh my gosh, it’s him!” I quickly stated that he was a friend of ours and we were running errands for him. I thanked him for giving him privacy and confidentiality as I was afraid his number might be given out if someone overheard us. I know the T-Mobile guy was in utter shock that he had helped activate Byron Smith’s phone. Dilan looked at me in disbelief that we couldn’t get by with getting a new number for him without someone recognizing his name. As we drove home, Dilan and I decided that we would not tell Byron about the T-Mobile experience. It might worry him for nothing, so we kept it to ourselves. Similar things happened when I stopped at the local coffee shop. His face was plastered on the front page of all the newspapers—the St. Cloud Times, the Brainerd Dispatch, and the Minneapolis Tribune. People were talking about it as I stood in line to get coffee. I heard varied opinions about why he did it and a few opinions that the kids deserved it too. I was standing there silently listening to all the words and thinking if they only knew the whole story. If they only knew he was my neighbor, a person just minding his own business, and that he was living right in my home now. It was all so surreal.

A few days later Byron’s attorney assigned an investigator to his case. Ross drove a black Cadillac and wore bold gold jewelry and black leather cowboy boots. He reminded me of those TV investigators, all calm and cool, dressing really slick. He had interviewed John and I, along with Dilan, and now wanted to concentrate on the burglars. We actually had one of their classmates living in our home for several weeks by the name of Colt. Colt had also helped Byron do some yard work one day last summer. He was a teen with a strained relationship with his single mom. He and Dilan had been friends a couple of years ago but had drifted in different directions. At the beginning of October, a city policeman called me to ask permission to have Colt stay in our home for the night. Colt had an altercation with his mother, and rather than fill out foster home papers, the officer told me that Colt had named our home as a place he wanted to stay. Instead of one night, he ended up staying in our home for six weeks. I had called the officer twice during this time. My phone calls went unreturned. After several weeks, I finally went to his mother and said that she needed to work on a good relationship with her son. The tensions were growing between my son and Colt. He had overstayed his welcome with Dilan. Otherwise, I think he would have lived with us forever. Since Colt was living with us during the October robbery at Byron’s home, and because of his connections to some of the teens involved in the robberies, Byron thought that maybe he could be the one watching his home while he was living at our home. But I would have known if he would have had money or any kind of take from a robbery of that magnitude. The day Byron’s home was burglarized, Colt had been working away from our house with my husband, so he would have had no opportunity to be watching. While Colt was living with us, we went shopping for new clothes, and as Colt was with, I bought both Dilan and Colt new clothes for school. Colt stated that he had never experienced that before. It felt good to do something for someone who appreciated being treated kindly. After Colt had moved back in with his mother, he caught me in the local Walgreens shortly after the shootings and was troubled about the fact these classmates were dead. He had asked me if Byron really killed those kids and what I knew about it. Colt mentioned a couple of other teens that were involved, so Ross, the investigator, was contacted. Ross needed to talk to Colt to find out more information. He asked if I would help. I knew Colt would freeze up and not talk if an investigator was asking about them, so I agreed to call Colt to see if he would come over and hopefully, Colt would tell Ross all that he knew. I texted Colt that Friday night and asked for his help loading music into my computer. He agreed right away and stated that he wanted to pay me back in some way for the clothes I had bought for him. Three hours later, he texted saying that if my wanting him to come over had anything to do with Byron, he was not coming. I wasn’t sure how to handle that, so I waited until the next morning and told him that it didn’t. I felt bad lying to him, but we had to find out the truth. I knew he was protective of his classmates, but the truth needed to be brought forward. So when I picked him up at his home, I explained that I had seen the investigator’s car in the neighborhood and that this investigator had accused Dilan’s band of robbing Byron, which, of course, was not true. Colt agreed that in no way did that happen. We briefly talked about how well he knew the two teens, and then Ross appeared shortly, and after some conversation, he began to tell Ross everything he knew. Colt had seen Cody Kasper and Nick Brady at the mall with a fistful of cash. They were buying new clothes, snowboards, and snowboarding outer wear. He stated that they had a lot of money in their possession and that he had seen it. Ross continued to question him for another half hour. Ross gave a thumbs-up when he left as he had good information to help Byron’s case.

On Christmas Eve, our tradition was to head to Crosby to John’s mom’s home. We celebrate with her and the rest of the Lange family. Bruce was still in town, so he and Byron would spend Christmas Eve together at our home. Before we headed to Crosby, I had some gifts I had bought for both Byron and Bruce. I had bought Byron a new gray-and-white flannel shirt and also found a book he wanted to read called The Purpose Driven Life. He said one of the inmates in the county jail had a copy and he started to read but never finished. I had found it in a second-hand shop for two dollars. Since Byron was such a frugal person anyway, he would appreciate that fact. I gave each of them their Christmas gifts, and we left for Crosby.

The next morning, we started out early to celebrate with my side of the family in South Dakota. It was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive, but the time there was always full of love, laughter, and noise. There were about forty of us when we all got together. We had a nice dinner, played a dice game to exchange gifts, and then headed for home about five o’clock. My family had asked about the shootings, of course. It had been in their local paper too. John had told them the whole story so far—what we knew anyway. He did not tell anyone that he was living with us. My brother, Dan, seemed the most concerned for our safety, but he, like many others, had only heard what the news media reported. John and I had agreed that we would not tell anyone that he was living with us. When we got back home, Byron and Bruce had spent Christmas afternoon together and were in the middle of cooking a dinner for all of us. Byron had watched the parade of cars that were still going down Elm Street. He was amazed that twenty-seven cars spent the Christmas holiday observing a crime scene. We all had a glass of wine and toasted Christmas as best we could.

Bruce left several days later. He wanted to get back to celebrate Christmas at his daughter’s home, where he had to abruptly leave over Thanksgiving when Byron summoned him to Little Falls. On February 5, 2013, Cody Kasper appeared in court charged with two counts aiding and abetting burglary. Byron received the letter last week, and his attorney said he would appear on his behalf. Cody Kasper’s guilty plea was entered on April 26, 2013. He confessed to being the lookout on three different occasions. During the summer of 2012, he and Nick Brady went to Byron’s and stole cash and a Nikon camera. He told the court that Nick went in and he hid in the pine trees so he could see if anyone was approaching the home. They again went to the Smith residence between the eleventh and seventeenth of October. He again acted as a lookout, and Nick entered the garage to steal a chainsaw, copper wire, and a gas siphoning kit. He also stated that they left some things in the trees because they couldn’t carry everything, but they would come back at a later date to pick up. When asked if he assisted in carrying items to the car, he said, “No.” They each had cell phones with the lines of communication open in case anyone approached the residence. He was sentenced to ninety days of electronic home monitoring and probation. If he committed any further crimes before he was age twenty-five, his juvenile criminal record would remain with him forever.

That day while in my office, a writer, Terry Lehrke, from the Morrison County Record asked if I could let her know when things were happening with Byron’s case. Her husband had met Byron a few months back in his work at the Minnesota DNR. Terry had been very supportive of Byron and had also agreed not to print our names if we told her any information. She was very respectful of the fact that this was a stressful time, and she commented that “I have to live in this town too,” so writing carefully was important to her. I had not even thought of alerting her to this new event. Of course, the fact that these teens had been burglarizing Byron for many months should give the public more understanding of his reaction. I tried to convince Byron that he needed to submit a nice picture of himself for this article. This was his chance for the public to see him as a good guy instead of through an awful mug shot. Byron kept refusing, telling me that he was planning to go to a professional photographer and didn’t want to have a picture that would not be as nice because it would be permanently used. I tried to explain that there was no time for that. This was already Wednesday, and the paper would get printed on Friday. I even asked if he would do me this favor and just let me scan his driver’s license picture, but no deal.

I met Steve Meshbesher for the first time on February 7, 2013. He wanted to spend the day in Little Falls to see how our family lived, where Byron was staying for now, and reenact the shootings with Byron. By this time, Byron had been living in our home since December 18. We all went over to Byron’s home as Steve wanted to inspect the window that was broken and go over the details of that Thanksgiving Day. Steve seemed very polished and confident, as an experienced lawyer would be. He was standing outside Byron’s home when we drove up. He looked at me and then looked at John, whom he had met before, and asked if I was really his wife. “How long have you been with him?” he asked me in a surprising tone. My husband and I are polar opposites. John is very outspoken and bold. He says whatever is on his mind, with no filter, and I try to balance all that with calm and quiet. As Steve talked with Byron, he came face-to-face in Byron’s personal space, telling him that the prosecutor would be hard on him, would anger him, and would prove that he shot the kids out of anger instead of fear. He pulled on Byron’s zippered-down overcoat as if to anger him right there. He was in Byron’s face while he was explaining how hard it would be to prove him innocent of the charges. He explained to Byron that he should be thankful to have such good friends and then turned to John and then pointed at me and told Byron to “listen to her.” I am not quite sure what he actually even meant by that, but I was quite surprised by such firmness with his client. After they headed down the basement to reenact the crime scene, I left. I didn’t care to go downstairs, and I got the impression that Byron was uncomfortable with us hearing the audio for the first time. Byron had been so frightened of being killed by his own guns he made an audio so someone would find it in case he was killed by burglars. He wanted to ensure there was some evidence in case that occurred. Security was his career, thus the recording. Unfortunately, this recording became the focal point of his trial. People’s emotional response was immediate. Any reenactment of death is ugly. The recording revealed a desperate man in anguish, who, alone, was forced to deal with a situation that would be incomprehensible to anyone.

For several days, I had been contemplating about telling my boss that Byron Smith was living in our home. I was always on alert, afraid someone would find out. And even worse, my fear was if students in the high school knew he was living in our home, Dilan’s school life would be negatively impacted. Would they bully him or make it impossible for him to attend school? The teachers in the high school, Dilan stated, for the most part, seemed very sympathetic toward the teens even though they were killed committing a crime. Dilan had come home one day and was feeling upset because they were selling bracelets in memory of Nick and Haile. He was asked to buy one and refused. I told him we would not be spending any money on bracelets and he was right to refuse such a purchase.

One day I received a call from a friend of mine later that morning. She was upset with me because I had told the investigator something she had mentioned while we had lunch one day. It was about Nick Brady and what a bully he was on the bus. He basically controlled the bus atmosphere by instilling threats and fear on the other riders. When I mentioned this to Ross, the investigator working with Meshbesher, he thought it important information. When he called my friend, she was livid about being called about it. She was so upset that she stated we couldn’t be friends anymore. Furthermore, she stated that Byron was going to jail for a long time. “There are commandments: Thou shalt not kill.” She was telling me how she and a friend sat and cried about being asked some questions by an investigator. I could feel I was losing a friend over my support of another. I hung up with her and had a small meltdown myself. I closed my office door, and the tears started streaming for several minutes. All the stress from this situation, from the media, and from supporting our neighbor all came to a head. If God could have placed me on a different part of the earth, I wanted to go now. I did not want to cause my friend all this distress, but I also would not be judged by helping someone in their darkest hour. Her ultimatum that I could no longer be her friend if I supported Byron Smith ended the friendship. These situations are so difficult because everyone has such strong opinions and judgments are formed only by what media has printed. John was in the local Walmart and a friend approached him in the store and a near-physical encounter ensued because of his support for Byron. There is so much more to the story, and not all residents were understanding nor wanted to. Friendships were lost and might never be repaired.

Over the next weekend, we had a visitor to our home unexpectedly. It was John’s longtime friend, Irv. We call him Elvis because he loved Elvis Presley and imitated him by quoting and breaking out in an Elvis song every chance he got. When he came to the door, Byron quickly ran to his bedroom. At this point, he didn’t want anyone to know where he was or to be seen here. As soon as Irv stepped in the door, he says, “Quick, let me in before I get shot.” And then he started laughing. I just smiled a little knowing that Byron could very well hear what he said as his bedroom was one wall away. Irv went on to talk a little about the incident, and then we quickly changed the subject to other things. I quickly needed to get him out of the house, so I suggested lunch at a nearby restaurant and I would treat. He took the offer, and we averted any further conversations to the restaurant. The same scenario happened the next weekend. Some other friends dropped by on a moment’s notice, just to visit. Byron quickly went to his bedroom and shut the door. To avoid uncomfortable conversations, we did the same and went to a local restaurant to spend time with our friends and give Byron some comfort level.

On February 9, 2013, the article came out in the Morrison County Record identifying Cody Kasper and Nick Brady as two of the teens who burglarized Byron several times. The public would finally know that these kids were attacking him and his property. This should affect a change in the community’s attitude, especially those feeling sorry for burglars. The county prosecutor was finally bringing charges on Nick’s friend Cody Kasper. Cody had been questioned by the police a few days after the shootings. The initial evidence came from his cell phone, and then he started confessing to some things. Cody claimed to never have been in the house but acted as the lookout. He could now blame his friend, who was dead and couldn’t speak for himself. According to Cody, Nick bought him an ATV with all the cash they took from Byron, along with clothes and shoes. Colt had seen them in the mall in St. Cloud with a fistful of cash. The news article also had quotes from Meshbesher saying, “If you can’t be safe in your own home, where can you be safe?” Public safety was a responsibility of the sheriff. Sheriff Wetzel had retained an attorney to get a raise from the county commissioners the previous year. He believed his salary wasn’t in line with other sheriffs in Minnesota, so he sued Morrison County for a raise. Also, Mr. Kosovich, one of the county attorneys, misinformed the Record about the October break-in being solved. The sheriff’s department didn’t solve anything. Byron Smith was left to protect and defend himself, and that’s how the burglaries were solved. Byron Smith received no help from the sheriff’s department under Wetzel’s leadership. As noted earlier, Byron had been thawing out a turkey for Thanksgiving. When he was taken into custody, the turkey was left thawing in his shop. A couple of days later when a neighbor visited Byron in jail, he told him to get the turkey and take it down to John and Kathy’s. When the neighbor went to retrieve the turkey exactly where Byron had left it, the turkey was not there. The pail with slightly pinkish water was there, but not the turkey. The only people who had been in Byron’s house were members of law enforcement. To this day, the mystery of who took the turkey is still not solved, and when the BCA was asked about it, Chad Museus claimed to know nothing about it. Again, where did the turkey go? They were the only ones with access to the property. What else was taken and not reported? Byron had stated that he was questioned by the deputy about something around Nick’s waist and something in the girl’s boot. Did they take something else to insure Byron’s conviction? Who would ever know what was taken or who took it? The sheriff had another search warrant about six days after they had finished with the crime scene. Bruce, Byron’s brother, had left the property, and they brought the warrant over to one of the neighbors. They assumed the neighbor had the key to Byron’s home now as they knew Bruce had left (which had only been a few hours ago). The neighbor told them that he didn’t have a key. At this same time, Bruce had a cancelled flight, so he came back and was able to monitor the deputies as they took more computer equipment out of Byron’s home. Byron thought it was because they were looking for dirt on him. Byron did not have a Facebook account, nor did he do text messages, so he believed they were looking for electronic messages he sent that might have incriminated him. For instance, if he would have been on Facebook talking to a friend about the break-ins and had written something like, “I’m going to kill whoever is doing this,” that would give the sheriff all the evidence they needed to prosecute him fully. Byron said they could take anything they wanted to out of that house, and there would never be anything found that would incriminate him in that regard. But this was a day to be thankful for as there was finally public knowledge of another side to his story.

Before Byron retired to bed last night, he said he was going to get up early in the morning and check on his home. There had been a snowstorm that day, but he was going to get up at 4:00 a.m. to do some work there. I thought this unusual, but I was sure he was remembering many projects and things unfinished that used to be part of his normal routine. I was worried about this because John would be gone all day and I would be at work and he was going all alone. When I got home from work, he was not back yet. I asked Dilan to walk down to his home with me. I didn’t feel comfortable going alone in case something had happened, although I didn’t know what. We walked all the way down Elm Street in the heavy snow and just missed him as he had taken another path back to our home. I asked him how his day went, and he said it was time for him to get out of there. “My home is like a shipwreck,” he said. He said he called his brother while there, and they had a long talk, which helped. I was glad he did that as I wondered what he was going to do there all day long. Maybe he needed to come to terms with what happened there. He said he could never live there again. He was going to board up the windows, and people would know it was just an abandoned home. That is sad, that his family home endured such a tragedy that no more happiness could be found there. The bad choices of two young people on Thanksgiving trickle down to forever change the lives of so many people.

The next day, I talked with Ann, who had lived across the street from the Kaspers when they rented a home in her neighborhood for about a year. She read the local paper and couldn’t believe all the things those teens had taken from Byron’s house over the last year. She also has a son in high school and asked him if Cody Kasper was in school now that he went to court last week. Of course I knew he was back in school because at his hearing, the judge had only demanded that he keep away from Mr. Smith’s property and behave in school. I wonder what his school day was like being named in the local paper as the thief that introduced his best friend to Byron Smith’s property and then was shot to death. Ann stated that she had called the police to the Kasper home nineteen times for suspicious and bad behavior. There was noise and suspicious traffic in and out of their driveway, which looked like possible drug involvement. She also noted the day the ATV (that Nick had purchased for Cody) came into their neighborhood. An elderly lady was taking a walk, and Cody and Nick were spinning wheelies and swerving down the street with this ATV. Ann called the police and was told there was nothing they could do. One day Cody’s little brother had come over to her house as he had been left home alone after school for hours. He was only in the second grade. There was not a mom in this home. It was near dinnertime, and Ann’s youngest child was telling her that the young boy didn’t have any food to eat, so he was invited to eat with them. Around bedtime, the boy walked home, assuming Cody or his dad would have come home by now. They could see the curtains were open to the house, and the boy could be seen jumping on the sofa and then running to the window possibly to see if his dad was returning home. Finally, at 11:00 p.m., the dad got home. Ann was so glad when they finally left the neighborhood. She had been starting a petition to get that family out of the neighborhood, and they finally left last summer. Her interactions with Cody Kasper led her to believe that he was a con artist and a manipulator. He would come across charming and delightful, but it was a disguise. He was the same with Byron. Byron actually liked him so much that he wanted to take him under his wing and teach him to deer hunt. Byron was deceived by him too. Ann was very concerned that Cody should pay for his crimes and agreed to talk to Byron’s investigator, Ross. Another fact she told about were all the items the Kasper family had left behind when they moved out of the neighborhood: knives stuck in trees, garbage in plastic bags left in the woods. Not wanting her kids exposed to anything harmful, she picked up everything. She agreed to talk with Ross and explain everything that happened in the neighborhood. The next hearing date for Cody was February 26, 2013.

People at work came up to me today and were shocked by the local news article. Not many had known that Byron’s home had been robbed so many times. As you read the story, it’s so astonishing about how much he went through, the memories they stole, and the fear those kids instilled in him. Cody, of course, was blaming most of it on his dead friend. He also stated that he was just the lookout guy while Nick broke in. It’s likely that he confessed only to a small portion of what they actually did. As Byron read the article, he discovered things he didn’t even realize he was missing. As a music collector, his basement was filled with thousands of album covers. He purchased many things overseas because, for the most part, they were a lot cheaper. One of those items was an SUV, which he rarely drove. He had it custom-ordered in Germany while working over there, and it had all the features he wanted on a vehicle, plus it was less expensive to buy it overseas than to buy in the United States.

A letter came to Byron for another hearing on a juvenile who was also involved, Jesse Kriesel. He was found with one of Byron’s guns in his garage. Since he had been in trouble before and not allowed to have weapons at age sixteen, this was a felony charge and would be heard on March 20 at the Morrison County Courthouse.

At dinner one night, I started to ask Byron about his work with the Boy Scouts, just to make dinner conversation. I knew he had been quite involved with different troops and went on out-of-town trips to be an adviser to them. I was curious as to what he talked about with the scouts and what specific advice he gave to them. He began to talk about how he made the boys think about their goals in life and finished by saying, “I ask them what they would be most proud of when they’re 25, 45, and then what will you be proud of when you are 65.” He started to cry and could not finish talking. I felt bad that I had stirred such emotion in him. But I knew that he was almost 65 and was not feeling proud at that moment of the situation that he had been placed in. Out of concern for his emotional state, I mentioned this incident to his attorney. I felt it important that a jury know who Byron really is and who he was before this happened. Unfortunately, none of that was allowed in the trial.