October 31, 2024 • 47 mins
Evelyn Malin was the 84-year-old owner of the Dollar Lake Store in tiny Shamrock Township, 130 miles north of Minneapolis. On the morning of February 24, 1998, she was found beaten and strangled to death in the living quarters that were connected to her convenience store. Over a year later, Brian Pippitt was charged with premeditated murder based primarily on the incentivized testimony of two witnesses who later admitted to fabricating their statements. Brian was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody. Once again, miss Connor Hall, the producer for
Wrongful Conviction, filling in for Jason Vlahm. I hope you
enjoy it. On February twenty fourth, nineteen ninety eight, eighty
four year old Minnesotan Evelyn Mallin was discovered in her
ransacked bedroom, strangled and beaten to death. Her small apartment
(00:22):
was attached to her convenience store, but the store was undisturbed,
including any signs of forced entry. There was a broken
basement window, but it appeared to have been broken from
the inside out. Yet, instead of focusing on personal or
business relations with access to keys, the investigation targeted an
Indigenous man named Brian Pippott and four of his male relatives,
(00:47):
despite no evidence connecting them to the scene, credible alibis,
and an equally incredible theory of guilt. One of them
made a statement. Two more pled. One was acquitted, but
Brian wasn't so lucky. This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison,
and now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us
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(01:31):
a future episode call us eight three three two oh
seven four six sixty six.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we have a story
about a group of indigenous men about an hour's drive
north of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, the Malax Band of Vojaboy
to be exact, but the theory of their involvement and
the murder was so lazy and full of holes that
authorities must have known it was also full of something else.
(02:08):
And joining us to tell his story, still in Minnesota
prison is Brian Pippott. Welcome Brian, and to help tell
this story an attorney and investigator from probably the original
innocence organization in this country, Centurion Ministries. Jim Cousins. Welcome, well,
(02:29):
thank you, And before we even begin with Brian's personal history,
I'd like to recognize the history of the Malax Band
of Ojibweh as well as their relations throughout the area
whose roots are on the East coast, but as Europeans
began their continental conquest about five hundred years ago, the
Ojibwe were forced into a nomadic lifestyle. They eventually allied
(02:54):
themselves with the French in the Seven Years War, a
relationship evidenced even by the name Lacks. It's French for
a Thousand Lakes, a reference to the Great Lakes area
in which the Jojubwe eventually settled a little over two
hundred years ago, and where they were later recognized by
the US government as a sovereign nation. Spread among various reservations,
(03:14):
some of which were in Aitkin County, Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Well, Aikin County includes the town or city of Aiken itself,
and about twenty miles from there is a town called McGregor.
That's where there's a small Native American reservation called the
Sandy Lake Reservation. I understand that there's a fair degree
of tension between the white community, law enforcement authorities from
(03:39):
the Aiken County Sheriff's office, and the Native American community.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
That tension has made headlines in recent years as the
current sheriff, Daniel Gaida, it appears, has accepted financial support
from an oil conglomerate called Enbridge, and then it just
so happens that protesters were treated pretty roughly for seeking
to protect clean drinking water in the area where Brian
(04:04):
was raised.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
List McGregor, mister two of malaccs the Sandy Lake Indian Reservation.
We moved up in the late eighties to Sandy Lake
and a mother. She rented a parcel land up there
for a dollar for fifty years and had a house built.
She kept adding on to the house. She wanted a
(04:27):
place for everyone, and we all lived in alsos around
the Sandy Lake area. Had some brothers and they have
all passed, and we had some good times going swimming
in the lakes, going fishing, going hunt trapping with my
uncles in the wintertime, harvesting deer, using everything of the
(04:48):
tier and giving thanks for the deer, and offering tobacco.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Despite ugly efforts to the contrary, the Ojuboy and other
indigenous nations have been able to maintain their culture and
self governance well. Folks like Ojiboy elder Marge Anderson were
able to make strides for their nations with the US government,
like the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of nineteen eighty eight,
which brought much needed economic opportunities to their nation. In fact,
(05:16):
on February twenty third, nineteen ninety eight, Brian had accompanied
his nephew, Michael mus Squattis to an interview at one
of those casinos.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, Mike Squads my sister Anita's son. He had a
job interview that day and upon the radio for I
don't know, thirty dollars or something for some extra money
to go to a casino. I didn't drive at that
time that I had a ride with him and my
other nephew, Brandon.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
By all accounts, the trio returned to the area around
eight thirty PM, and Brian was home for the night
by ten. Then the following morning, February twenty fourth, nineteen
ninety eight, eighty four year old Evelyn Mallin's body was
to discovered in her bedroom in nearby tiny Shamrock Township.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
The building is very small and houses not only her bedroom,
but also a little convenience store that has some three
point two beer and cigarettes and other sundry items. And
piecing together some of the witness testimony, she's probably murdered
the night before, sometime between ten and ten thirty in
(06:24):
the morning, her daughter, Norma Horner went to the store
with her boyfriend Gerald Horsemen, and they knocked on the door.
They knocked on the windows, they didn't get a response.
They went around to the back door. There was a
skeleton key broken off from the inside of the back door,
so they couldn't open it, so they called nine to
one one Aiken County Sheriff's Department. Kicking the back door,
(06:47):
they find Evelyn Male and the victim in her bedroom.
That she was strangled and beaten rather savagely, and there
was fecal matter on her too. Now that may have
been that she evacuated as a result of being strangled
and beaten, but there's some other theories that who the
ever of the assailant was took some vehicle matter from
a little there's a bowl, I mean, there's no indoor
(07:09):
plumbing in the store and through that on her. I
don't know whether that's true or not. But they didn't
see her immediately because her bedroom was ransacked. Things are
thrown all over the place, and she was tossed off
her ben There was a mattress on top of her.
And then they went around throughout the building. They noted
that the front and door locks were locked. They noted
(07:30):
that a basement window was broken, and the store portion
is utterly untouched.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
The back room was ripped apart, like whoever did that
was looking for something particular.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Thereafter, they interviewed Gerald Horseman and Norma Horner. Gerald Horseman
was responsible for some of the inventory in the little store,
and he told them at the time that there was
no beer, no cigarettes missing. Subsequently, Merle Maylon, the victim's son,
came up from his home in New Mexico several days
(08:03):
after the murder. Theoretically there was some cash in a
white envelope that she used to keep that he thought
was missing.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Initially, Gerald Horseman thought so too, as well as a checkbook,
but both turned up. Yet Merle Mallin continued to allege
that other items were missing.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
There was a mention of guns missing, biers, televisions, all
kinds of stuff, and they were flying over the reservation
looking in swamps for the stuff. And then oh no,
this wasn't missing. Miss was a missing. Messing was missing.
At trial he said, oh, we found them money.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
But Merle Malan has always maintained that beer, cigarettes, and
a gun were stolen, which propped up the state's theory
a robbery turned homicide. Despite what Horsemen, who actually kept
the store's inventory, has maintained all along that the store
was undisturbed and no store items were missing. Interestingly, one
(09:01):
of the alternative suspects was Merle's son, Mark Mallan.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
The mourning of the murder, relatives actually pointed toward her grandson,
Mark Maelon and he would help her at the store too,
so he had access to the store and said that
he could be violent, particularly was on something, and that
Evelyn Malan used to give him money, and a couple
of weeks before this incident, Mark Maelan asked her for
(09:29):
four or five hundred dollars and it was one of
the first times when she had refused him money. Others
subsequently had said, we know that he's been rough with
his grandmother before, and he knows where she hides money
in the store, but law enforcement didn't really follow up
on that thread. Another alternative suspect was a man by
the name of Terry Peat. He evidently was somebody that
Evelyn Maylen was afraid of, and she expressed that fear
(09:50):
to some others that bad news is back in town.
He had been released from being incarcerated and he had
asked her to buy some pro pain on credit, and
she had refused. He subsequently perished when his trailer caught fire.
Several months later.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
But before the death of Terry Pete, as well as
the specter of missing cash and dissipated, the rumor mill
in Aiken County was quite active.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
There were rampant rumors, some of which are clearly untrue,
that the assailants cut off her finger to take her
ring off her, the assailants sexually assaulted her. I heard
it was the Miss Squades. I heard it was this person.
I heard it was that person. And so mister Bijurga
from the BCA, which is the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension
(10:36):
the equivalent of an FBI for the state, and Bruce
Beck from the Aiken County Sheriff's Office went over to
interview Michael mss squaddes, Keith MS Squades, and Brandon Miss
Squades as well. They are all the nephews of Brian Pippott.
This is within I think a week of the murder.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
And they looked at Keith and checked his body for
scrapes from March. He didn't have any, and they asked
him where he was He was at home and Mike
where he was.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Michael Musquad says what day is this now, Oh, that
was the day I had my interview down at the
Grand Casino. Brandon and my uncle Brian Piptt went with
me as well. The authorities knew this now. They later
interrogated Brandon Misquattis, who was fifteen at the time, in
a very coercive interview where they kept saying to him,
(11:25):
we know you were there. Your relatives have said you
were there. Come clean, and he said, no, I wasn't there.
I wasn't there. I was at the casino. They later
acknowledged that his alibi was correct. So that's the same
alibi that Brian Pippott has. So the alibi was established
quite early on.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Nevertheless, after a year had gone by, Terry Pete had passed,
while Merle Mallin kept the specter of a robbery alive
and the rumor mill led investigators to Brian Pippott, his
nephews Raymond and Keith Musquattis, as well as his cousins
Neil King and Don Hill.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Right after an award had been offered, Don Hill started
a rumor that Brian Pippott said something along the lines of, oh,
she was already dead when I went in there. And
then eventually Don Hill starts naming a few of these
people that ultimately are selected as the assailants. And as
they started to narrow down some of these rumors, they
(12:19):
used tactics of saying to one so and so said
you were there. Now you need to help yourself by
saying you were there and admitting to things, and the
first person to the trough gets the best meal or something.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
That was the line they used, yes live threatening all
your younger kids with long term prison ten.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
And so there was a carousel of interrogations of various
people until they got somebody to say, okay, I was there,
and that was Raymond Musquaddes. He had a couple of
felonies pending, and there had been some rumors about him
being there and not being there, and he is recanted
completely and fully, genuinely, in detail and with specificity. And
(13:05):
if you look at his various statements, I actually have
a chart as to how they changed over time, you
can tell he wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Raymond first said that around seven pm they arrived at
the Dollar Lake store and Brian had kicked in the
front door. Both elements not true, so his story had
to change alongside the state's narrative until they were the same.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
The state's theory is that these five men were driving
around drunk and decided that they were going to go
to the Dollar Lake store. The store was closed with
the allegation is that Keith Musquades was able to get
through a basement window, which by the way, would have
entailed removing panes of glass with the little pieces of
wood that separate the panes, reaching in and removing two
(13:51):
wooden slats that were nailed across the window, Squeeze down
through the window, walk across a sandy basement floor, come
up through a trapdoor, which, as far as we know,
he would have no idea existed.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Everybody forgets to mention that there was a chair on
top of that trap door and it was wedged up
against the window sill. It was in the police report
that the police removed the chair from a trap door
to get down.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
To the basement, so the back door was inoperable, the
front door was dead bolted shut, and their suspects didn't
have access to keys. Yet, this basement entry theory was
still chosen despite its impossibility, and I guess since the
front door was definitely not kicked in Raymond changed his
story from Brian kicking in the front door to an
(14:41):
intoxicated Keith Musquattis wiggling through a jagged basement window. And
remember they examined him just days after the crime, and
he didn't have a scratch.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
He said that Keith Musquades cut himself going through the window,
but Keith Msquades had no cuts on him. There's no
evidence anywhere that anyone went through that window, no fabric,
no blood, no skin. There is some cat blood, so
I guess a cat couldn't get through there without cutting itself.
So he theoretically comes up opens up the trap door.
Raymond says that they all came in and out through
(15:14):
the front door, but we now know that the front
door was locked with a dead bolt, that you needed
a key to operate.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Even with the alleged gymnastics, the theory still doesn't work
without a front door key. But not according to BCA
investigator David Bjurga.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Mister Bjurga was questioned about that locked at the grand jury.
He was asked, you can't get in and out of
that door without locking the dead bold? Is that right?
He said, well, that's right, we don't believe it was locked.
Why do you think that, Well, because Raymond squads and
Don Hill said they went through the door, so it
couldn't have been locked. Well, that's completely circular logic. That's
not saying anything about the forensics or the physics of
(15:49):
the scene.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Again with the door, prosscutter on around and evaded the question, said, well,
I can't go into that because it's from the whole investigation.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
The theory on the door was that the dead bolt
lock wasn't really locked. That was just the lock on
the door handle that you could lock by pulling it shut.
There's no merit to that whatsoever. The first responders all
reported that door locked. The crime scene photograph shows that
the dead bolt door locked. I had a forensic locksmith
examined that photograph. He said, that's clearly a dead bolt
(16:24):
and it's clearly locked. And when they took photographs of
the lock when they disassembled it, they didn't show the
actual bolt portion of it because that would show you
that what you see in that photograph a dead bolt
clearly locked. There's no real getting around that. Now they've
lost the lock.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
However, Raymond was not aware of those damning specifics in
real life or in the statements he was making.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
He said that he stayed in the car but he
heard a crash. They come out with beer and cigarettes,
and Brian comes out with some kind of bag with
what they thought was a weapon in it, and the
theory is that they then went back to Raymond's father's
house and Keith Musquades and Brian Pippott confessed that they
had killed Evelyn malon Or when she came out of
(17:10):
her bedroom, but she didn't come out of her.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Bedroom, according to other interviewees. BCA investigator David Bijerga routinely
inserted this unfounded element into his questioning that the victim
had discovered the assailants in the store and so they
had to put her down, but the store was undisturbed,
no signs of a struggle, according to both police reports
and Gerald Horseman, who also maintained that no store items
(17:34):
were missing. But instead Raymond conformed his statement to include
unsubstantiated claims from Merle Mallin, the father of the only
alternative suspect, about a stolen gun, cigarettes and beer. Mallin
also testified that his mother wasn't able to lock the door,
something that it appears he forgot, he had said when
interviewed years later by a post conviction investigator, and again
(17:56):
at a two thousand and six PCR hearing when he
said that she could in fact lock the door. And
there's even more nonsense to unravel.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Ramus Squade said they went to an abandoned house that
used to be his father's on the Sandy Lake Reservation,
which was probably abandoned the last time he had been
there years ago, but has since been remodeled and had
residents in it. He said that they were all driving
a gold Toronado, but no such car existed, so almost nothing,
he said, matched with reality.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
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Speaker 4 (18:55):
That was a reference that was a year later or something,
and it was a significant time for me to remember anything.
So I told him, well, I don't know where I was.
And it wasn't until I read the report and my
mother came to visit me and she said, oh, yeah,
that's that day that I had loaned a then for
(19:17):
the job interview, and then you wrote along, and I said, oh, yeah, okay,
well I would have a pond ticket for that data.
And I called my investigator and he went over there
and he's sure enough, there was that pon ticket. And
it wasn't until later on that I was getting the
discovery papers that I realized that the beats, Mike and
(19:40):
Brandon and my mother all confirmed my alibi.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, in all likelihood this was you know, somebody that
was related to her or had access to a key, right.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
Yeah. I remember sitting in the shell and reading a
discovery and I said, huh, this is an inside job.
And the police didn't pick up on that. They didn't
pick up on the doors being locked, didn't pick up
on the chair being on top of the trap door,
even the tops he had report, Well, this person had
(20:12):
a lot of anger towards her.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
But that, along with the gaping holes in Raymond's and
the state's narrative, appear to have been ignored, as Raymond
was offered five years and his other charges dropped to
become the state star witness against his four relatives.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Keith Msquades, Brian and Neil King denied having anything to
do with it and deny that to this day. They
did get a sort of confession from Don Hill, except
for it kept changing and changing and changing. He was
going to testify and he would get five years and
they would forgive some sexual assault pilonies. He never did
testify because they recognized that nothing this guy said was true,
(20:50):
even though he still got the deal, which was I
think less than five years. Same with Raymond.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Meanwhile, Brian, Neil and Keith awaited trial in jail, with
proceedings take plays between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand
and one.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Keith msquades he had a first degree sexual assault case
pending against him. They dismissed that in exchange for his
Alfred plea on the murder. I think it was manslaughter.
He had nothing to do with it. He has an
alibi as well. But he takes this plea on the
theory that you know, I might be able to survive
prison better if I'm a murderer as opposed to sexual assault.
(21:25):
So he takes an Alfred plea. But then he tries
to withdraw his plea within I think two weeks, and
that's denied, so he serves I think fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
So only Neil and Brian couldn't be coerced into a
plea deal.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Neil King has tried first, and he is acquitted by
the judge at the conclusion of the state's evidence on
two grounds. One that the only incriminating testimony against him
was Raymond Musquaddes, who was an accomplice, and in Minnesota
you need corroborating evidence in addition to accomplice evidence. And
the other thing is that Raymond squad said Neil King
(22:02):
he was drunk in the backseat of the car. So
there was no clear evidence that, even under Raymond's story,
that Neil King had gone in and participated in the
actual homicide or burglary. But in any event, he was
acquitted based on the principle that there was no corroborating evidence.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
So the state right away started interviewing all my cellmates
and trying to threaten them and getting them to say
something against.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Me, and they found jail house snitch.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
The jail house snitch is a guy by the name
of Peter Arnaldi. It's a longtime con man, fraudster. And
so Brian been told this guy knows his way around
the court system. And Brian said, I've been wrongfully charged here.
I mean, I said, what should I do, and he
showed him the criminal complaint.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I asked him to look at it and I tell
him what I'm being charged with, and then he said, well,
I'm gonna take this to the room, and I'm thinking, okay, well, no,
I'm going to need that back side grab it back.
And that's the last I'm not saying there until a
couple of years later when he was strolls into the
courtroom wearing the street clothes and I didn't know that
(23:08):
he was in federal custody for bank robbers and they
had a player's system and then work it to his advantage.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Peter Arnaldi subsequently says that Brian confessed this crime to me.
The majority of what he attests to was in the
criminal complaint which Brian had showed him, but he completely
misconstrued it. He said they stuffed Kleenex in her mouth
to stifle her screams, and he got that because the
(23:38):
criminal complaint in the autopsy said that she had soft
tissue injuries around her mouth.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Wow. But the county Attorney, Bradley Rhodes felt comfortable presenting
this vailure in reading comprehension as corroborating evidence Rhodes has
since been disbarred for unrelated reasons. In addition, Brian's original
judge had become ill, resulting in a mistrial and a
(24:04):
change of venue. Then his original attorney, Chris Davis, chose
this moment to retire.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
So they appointed me another attorney, that attorney who had
never tried a murder case. I had a new investigator.
I think that was his first case. So I had
two people that really didn't know much about how to
present a case.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Tom Murtha, he was the defense counsel in this case
where he was a year and a half out of
law school. This case was dumped on and there was
a change of venue, so it was up in International Falls,
right on the Canadian border. So he had to drive
up there in a station wagon with the files in
the back without much support.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
And I think they knew what they were doing. Minnesota's
prejudice against state of Americans, and the farther you go
up north, the more prendice there. They had me at
the tip of the state.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Here's an interesting thing too, Before where the trial started,
the judge brought the prosecutor in and Tom Earth and
Brian in and said, look, can we do a deal here.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Prosecutor said, well, we'll take life off the table and
we'll give you seventeen or eighteen years something like that.
And then the judge because, well, i'll tell you this,
I don't care what he's coffering you. I'll give you
seven years. And I already had two years in. I thought,
well three years left, and I said, well, that's an
(25:28):
excellent deal. And if I was guilty, I would take it.
But I'm not guilty, and I can't see myself admitting
to something that I didn't do.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So they moved ahead with trial in January two thousand
and one, presenting the now congealed but still erroneous narrative
through Raymond Asquattis, and to impeach him. Brian urged Tom
Murtha to ask about the condition of the house to
which they'd allegedly fled in the aftermath.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
And he described it as a hold, born out, born
down party house. The windows broke, red, shag carpeting, brown experior,
and the house was enhing like that, and it been remodeled.
My brother was living in there with his girlfriend Mary
(26:14):
Bleagan at the time, so that couldn't have been possible.
The police knew this the sheriff say this, Yet.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
This false narrative was still presented. Unfortunately, Tommrtha had not
yet uncovered all the internal inconsistencies and blatant falsehoods, including
the basement entry theory.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
The forensic technician from the BCA who testified to that
did so in an extremely superficial way. He just said
the point of entry was this window. There was no
analysis done. Two different experts have reviewed the forensics and
the physical evidence surrounding that window independently. They came to
the conclusion that the window entry was staged, that the
(26:58):
wooden slats were pried off the inside with a tool.
There's tool marks that the muntains that separate the panes
were removed and placed neatly in a spot where they
wouldn't have fallen. Two panes of glass were removed and
placed outside. The other pane was broken, but the glass
from that was actually in the window well, which means
it was broken from the inside. And then there was
(27:20):
large pieces of that pane that were placed again not
where they would have fallen, in fact where they could
not have fallen.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
So it appears that someone broke this window out from
the inside. It may have been staged or maybe had
nothing to do with this crime at all. It's unclear.
But what is clear is the implausibility of an unscathed
entrance through this basement window.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
There was a screw protruding into the area of the
window that you would have caught something on if you
had gone through there. Where the muntains were broken, there
were pointed pieces that would have caught somebody's fabric if
they had gone through there. There was no footprints or
any sign that anybody landed on the boxes below. Nothing
(28:04):
from the window well, which had leaves and pine needles
and so forth, was discovered beneath the window. There's no
set of footprints that lead from the window over to
the trap door. So there's no forensic evidence supporting the
idea that somebody went through this window other than the
window was open, and all of the forensic evidence is
(28:26):
that nobody did in fact go through the window. No
part of that case with Stan's scrutiny in any respect forensically,
physically the objective evidence.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And let's not forget the chair blocking the trap door,
or the currently misplaced dead bolt that was locked and
required a key, which would have destroyed the state's theory,
but none of it was discovered by his trial attorney
and pointed out to the jury.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
And fairness to Tom Mirtha, he had not tried to
fell any case before. I'm not even sure he tried
any cases before, but he did put on a defense.
He called Michael Musquade says to the alibi the pawnshop
operator to authenticate the pawn shop ticket.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
I had a charge accounts to get gas at the
local gas station in town. I had a bart tab.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
And then the prosecute tried to argue that he fabricated
this alibi while he was awaiting trial with his relatives. Unfortunately,
his attorney at the time didn't make the point that
they knew about this alibi back in March of nineteen
ninety eight, so he didn't fabricate it. And they said, well,
when we asked him about what he was doing that day,
he didn't come up with the alibi. And Brian's answer
(29:34):
to that is, I didn't know exactly what day this
murder occurred. I had nothing to do with it, so
I didn't necessarily put together that I was at the
casino until my nephews told me that and my mother Agnes.
Chief said, hey, wait a minute, you don't you have
a pawn receipt from that day.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
None of that came in, and they call the head
of security for Malax Casino and he says, yeah, we
don't have any record of at Aime at the casino.
And that was all just for show because they knew
that no records exist because they were changing the security
(30:09):
systems at that time. There was no evidence linking me
to any of us to the crime, no motivation at
they said, motivate didn't have a factor in Minnesota courts,
and the only thing I had was my nephew testifying
and that jail house.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
In foremant, Peter Arnaldi said that Brian felt a great
deal of remorse about what had happened, that they had
killed this lady as part of a burglary, and he
was going to try and get his relatives to conjure
an alibi for him, and that they arrived in his
mother's van and they had gone in and robbed the
(30:45):
place of beer and cigarettes and murdered Evelyn mail It.
He did have to admit that Brian had showed him
the criminal complaint and that's, of course where the soft
tissue injuries were disclosed which were not Kleenex, and.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Alas seemed like he was a professional. Even I thought, Wow,
this guy, he really sounds like what he's talking about.
If I was a jurior, I believe. I think we
impeached Arnuldy and it really didn't add to the jury.
They you, now, like Native Americans up there in northern
Minnesota was at the tip of the state. They don't
(31:20):
even like outfighters.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
I mean, did you have hope that when they came
back from you know, deliberation, that things might go your way.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
No, my attorney did, and then he said, well, what
are you going to do when you get out? I said, well,
this thing is not over it. I looked at the
jury and then read their micro expression. I'm not planning
on anything. And I believe it was three days later
that they came back to guilty verdict. And I think
(31:48):
the judge was so mad at me that I didn't
take his seven year offer that he gave me a
double maximum of two light sentences without stility of paroles.
(32:16):
I got sent to fill Water Prison and I guars
a treaty. According to here, crime and mane was a
heinous crime against an old lady, so didn't treat me
very fairly. I ended up in the hole quite a bit.
I felt tough, kind of targeted. You passed the time
by working, doing anything you can, staying as busy as
(32:40):
you can't. I do that right now. I developed a routine,
a routine that I fall every day and really go
off course. I just stayed as busy as I can
and it helps pass the time.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Of course, part of that time was passed by appealing
his conviction, which was upheld, but his sentence was ruled
to be improper and he was resenced to one life
term with parole eligibility. Meanwhile, he filed for post conviction
relief and was granted a hearing in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
The evidence that was presented there was they said there
was a false evidence about the door lock, that Merle
Malin testified that she wasn't able to lock the door
at the trial, but then he admitted that she could
lock the door, so that was one element. They had
an ineffective assistance of council claim. They had an outdated
from Keith Musquade saying that he wasn't there and that
(33:33):
he knew that Brian came back from the casino that
night at ten something. Then there was a victim's advocate
who had talked to Ray on the phone at some
time after the trial, and Ray had said, I just
told him what they wanted to hear to get out
of this, but they couldn't find him testify. A guy
by the name of Craig Lacari was housed with Brian
(33:54):
Pippott and Peter Arnaldi, and he said that Arnaldi had
told him that Brian's that he was innocent, that he
had never said anything about Brian confessing.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
We pointed out the flaws and our nullity's testimony, saying
that there was toilet paper steps in her mouth and
I complained for soft tissue injuries and somehow he converted
that into tissue paper being put in her mouth, and
they ignored it.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
That was an affidavid from Lacari. The judge wouldn't rid
him out. They didn't have Peter Arnaldi testify, They didn't
have all the forensic experts that we've assembled testified. They
didn't have Neil King testify. So it was really a
pretty tepid presentation, and it was denied and appealed and denied.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
At which point Brian began looking for meaningful pro bono help.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Brian Pippott had written to Centurion, so I went out
with two other members and we interviewed him, and everything
he told me turned out to be true. It took
me quite a long time to find Ramus Squades, but
when I found him, he was forthcoming about his having
not told the truth. I also found Peter Arnaldi initially said, well,
you know they raped her, and I said, Peter, I
(35:08):
have the autopsy report. Whoever did this didn't raper? He said,
oh my god, I always thought that you know these
you know, he wasn't charitable about what he called them,
went in and raped this old lady. He said, I
think I have it all wrong.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Perhaps this was just how Arnaldi internally justified his false
testimony for personal gain. Either way, Jim continued his investigation,
moving on to Neil King.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Neil King, he said the basis of his defense was
that he was drunk in the backseat of the car,
and that wasn't even really the truth. He wasn't even
there at all, But he didn't want that disrupted. He
felt that Brian Pipptt had implicated him, so he didn't
want to help him, even though that wasn't the truth.
But he gave us a declaration saying he wasn't there
at all. Keith Musquades gave us a declaration saying he
wasn't there at all. And then I have this forensic evidence,
(35:53):
lock Smith, the two different crime scene specialists, and so
I put together an application to the CRU in January
of two thousand twenty two. It was about seventy five
pages long, doing an analysis of the different stories that
Raymond told, showing photographs of the lock and the store
supported that with an eight hundred page appendix. So the
CRU took the application, they started their own investigation. There's
(36:16):
a couple of aspects of that I think we're worth
mentioning too, and that is Jim Rats, the County Attorney
at the onset of the CRI investigation, signed a memorandum
of understanding with the Attorney General's Office and CRU, and
from what I understand, he asked for a phrase in
that memorandum of understanding that said, I'm paraphrasing him in
(36:37):
the event that I don't want to support the recommendation
of the CRU, as the county attorney, if I don't
want to execute that recommendation. Then in that event, I
agree that I will surrender jurisdiction to the Attorney General's Office.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
So it's fair to assume that the county attorney waived
jurisdiction and that the Attorney General's Office Conviction Review Unit
has the final say.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
And I have to say that their investigation is astonishing
and how thorough it is. They were able to get
in to interview Don Hill in the psychiatric facility, something
I was not able to do. They reviewed literally thousands
of documents. They interviewed either twenty five or twenty six witnesses,
recorded interviews. There was no leading questions. They discovered an
(37:21):
alibi witness for Keith Musquades, who I was unable to find.
They interviewed the forensic specialists, they retained an expert of
their own with respect to the false confession, and ultimately
they issued a report that was one hundred and eighty
pages long with nine hundred footnotes to source materials. And
the guy who did the majority of the investigative work
(37:43):
for the CIRIU was an Assistant Attorney General by the
name of Carmen Leone, and at the end of the
investigation they prepared a draft report that was reviewed not
only by carmeon Leone's immediate boss, Carrie Spurling, but by
her boss, the Deputy Attorney General, David Voyce. They presented
a draft as a courtesy to the BCA and to
(38:03):
the county attorney and to the sheriff guide and I said,
we're inviting you to make comments on this. And the
response was an extremely hostile one, and so they they're
contesting it, even though they don't have any inherent standing
to do that.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
I have nothing to hide. I waive attorney client privilege
because I knew the county signed an agreement to go
along with the filings, and so I've been waiting for
two and a half years for this investigation to unfold.
And then April I found out that, Hey, they found
the truth. They found everything that was going on. This
(38:43):
investigation was so thorough. They found stuff that we didn't
even find out. And yes, the county didn't like that.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
The sheriff was very hostile. He said that two courts
had already had judged this case. Of course that doesn't
mean anything, because everything that we've produced, no court judge
or jury hasn't it hurt. Any of this material and
then he said something along the lines of you have
to prove to me beyond reasonable doubt that he didn't
do this, and I don't think you're going to be
able to do that. He also said at one point,
(39:14):
you never did a reenactment of anybody going through that window,
So how do you know that somebody couldn't get through
the window. And then he also said something along the
lines of I knew Keith Musquaddies from years ago. He's
a very athletic guy. He could have gotten through the window.
The position has never been that it's physically impossible for
someone to get through the window.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Oh, it's tough.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
It's that nobody did go through the window, given the
forensic evidence at the scene. And when Carmen Leone said
something along the lines of, well there was cat blood there,
you know, I guess a cat couldn't get through it
because I've lived with cats all my life. I no
cat's going to cut itself. So Carmen said to him, well,
how do you think the cat blood got there? This
is the mentality we're dealing with. He said, I think
the misquadies went out and killed a cat and put
(39:53):
its blood on there to put us off the track.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, it sounds reasonable.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
The BCA said we're going to do our own investigation,
and they hired three outside people, was the experts. I
don't know what the terms of those agreements are, and
their motivation is undisguised that the purpose of their parallel
investigation is to find something, anything, that they can use
to discredit the CRU report, and so far their investigation,
(40:18):
when you compare it to what the CRU did, is laughable.
I mean, they interviewed George Horseman, but they didn't record it,
and they got a summary of a statement from him,
and what it was clear was that they were trying
to get him to move off of his steadfast position
that no peer, no cigarettes were missing. The store portion
of the building was untouched, and they evidently they got
(40:40):
him to look at some photographs and say, well, maybe
there were some cigaretts there that are missing, and I
guess he kind of went, well maybe, you know. Then
they did a reenactment of someone making their way through
the window. They were able to show that somebody could
physically make their way through the window, but without the
nail protruding, without the glass in it, without the munting parts.
Even then the kid was going through it caught his
(41:01):
shirt on the wooden.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Frame, which has always been the misunderstanding. The issue isn't
whether someone could get through the window, but whether they
could do it without leaving any evidence behind. Not even
a cat could do it.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Now, we labored under the impression that Jim rats the
county attorney. He's a man of his word, because we
could have been advancing our case through the court system
as opposed to going through the cru which took two years.
So he's renegged on that. He hasn't given any reason
for that other than I think he's getting pressure from
his sheriff there and maybe the BCA. So we filed
(41:37):
a seventy five page petition with the Aiken County Court.
We've asked for some discovery. I want to know what's
going on with the so called consultants from the BCA.
I want that DNA testing evidence from the BCA. There's
a wallet that we believe the assailant touched the cuttings
from the nightgown. Evidently there was some material under her fingernails,
(41:59):
we understand. And last January, when the Attorney General's Office
was investigating the case, person from the BCA contacted Carmen
Leones and said there's insufficient male DNA under her fingernails
to warrant any further testing. So I have requested those
test materials. There's evidently a quant test done. There must
(42:20):
have been enough there for them to determine that it
was male DNA, and thus far they've not been forthcoming
with providing that to us. And so the defense to
our petition, our seventy five page petition was a nine
page reply by the county attorney. It has some allegations
that are demonstrably false, and it basically relies in kind
(42:40):
of an amalgam of some technical claims. Well, this has
already been adjudged. What are we doing here? That's the
extent of what they've put in to defend against this.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
But there is a way to circumvent them.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Tim Walls has the power to take the case from
the county attorney and give it to Keith Ellison. He
will not do that without Keith Ellison and formally asking
him to do that. I think with the election pending,
there's little appetite to do that. Keith Ellison also has
to maintain working relationships with the various county attorneys and
(43:12):
taking this from the county attorney could be problematic for him.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Although I wish this was treated with the urgency it deserves.
After November twenty twenty four, either Tim Waltz or Lieutenant
Governor Peggy Flanagan, who happens to be of the White
Earth Band of Ojaboy, will be able to empower Keith
Ellison to do what is right. We have linked a
petition in the episode description to show your support, and
(43:37):
with that we go to our closing, in which I'm
going to thank our guests for joining us today and
then just sit back and lock it up as they
share their final thoughts.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
The bottom line is that Brian Pippott was not there,
He had no involvement in this case. He doesn't know
who did it, and he's been wrongfully charged and convicted,
and the authorities at this point are not treating him fairly.
Law enforcement's so called investigation of this, I have to say,
is a discredit to law enforcement because it's not an
(44:09):
honest investigation, and by that I mean the BCA and
sheriff guide his investigation. The man should be let out.
He's innocent. Anybody who's looked at this case in any
real detail, which is my organization. The Attorney General's Office
and Mitchell Hamlin Law School Clinic studied the case and
did a pretty comprehensive job themselves. Has determined that he
(44:32):
is factually innocent, Yet he languishes in prison, has been
there for twenty five years. His relatives have died in
the meantime.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Let the man out.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
I'd like to say Jim Cousins and the Centurion Ministries
for helping when throughout pears and the fear you for
highly time, Tim and the truth. What's got made through
this twenty six years is hope that the truth will
come out. It has and as a state prosecutor, Keith
(45:04):
ellis and he knows the truth. And I can't understand
why he will not ask for this case because the
way it was explained to me is that other prosecutors
will get mad because he took the case away from
a county. Well, he's doing what's right. His job is
not about making friends keeping friends, whether people will like
(45:27):
what he does. It's his job, see, and it's something
he could do. Sixty two years old. Native Americans don't
have that long of a lifespan, and I don't want
to die in prison I have this belief that your
soul stays where you die, and I don't want my
(45:48):
still staying around prison for eternity, and I wanted to
be around family and around nature where I feel connection.
I figure I've got ten years at the most. I
want to live life lived.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
(46:31):
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate the views and opinions expressed
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
Hello everybody. Once again, miss Connor Hall, the producer for
Wrongful Conviction, filling in for Jason Vlahm. I hope you
enjoy it. On February twenty fourth, nineteen ninety eight, eighty
four year old Minnesotan Evelyn Mallin was discovered in her
ransacked bedroom, strangled and beaten to death. Her small apartment
(00:22):
was attached to her convenience store, but the store was undisturbed,
including any signs of forced entry. There was a broken
basement window, but it appeared to have been broken from
the inside out. Yet, instead of focusing on personal or
business relations with access to keys, the investigation targeted an
Indigenous man named Brian Pippott and four of his male relatives,
(00:47):
despite no evidence connecting them to the scene, credible alibis,
and an equally incredible theory of guilt. One of them
made a statement. Two more pled. One was acquitted, but
Brian wasn't so lucky. This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison,
and now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us
at eight three, three, two oh seven, four six sixty
six and tell us how these stories make you feel
and what you've done to help the cause, even if
it's something as simple as telling a friend or sharing
on social media, and you might just hear yourself in
(01:31):
a future episode call us eight three three two oh
seven four six sixty six.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we have a story
about a group of indigenous men about an hour's drive
north of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, the Malax Band of Vojaboy
to be exact, but the theory of their involvement and
the murder was so lazy and full of holes that
authorities must have known it was also full of something else.
(02:08):
And joining us to tell his story, still in Minnesota
prison is Brian Pippott. Welcome Brian, and to help tell
this story an attorney and investigator from probably the original
innocence organization in this country, Centurion Ministries. Jim Cousins. Welcome, well,
(02:29):
thank you, And before we even begin with Brian's personal history,
I'd like to recognize the history of the Malax Band
of Ojibweh as well as their relations throughout the area
whose roots are on the East coast, but as Europeans
began their continental conquest about five hundred years ago, the
Ojibwe were forced into a nomadic lifestyle. They eventually allied
(02:54):
themselves with the French in the Seven Years War, a
relationship evidenced even by the name Lacks. It's French for
a Thousand Lakes, a reference to the Great Lakes area
in which the Jojubwe eventually settled a little over two
hundred years ago, and where they were later recognized by
the US government as a sovereign nation. Spread among various reservations,
(03:14):
some of which were in Aitkin County, Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Well, Aikin County includes the town or city of Aiken itself,
and about twenty miles from there is a town called McGregor.
That's where there's a small Native American reservation called the
Sandy Lake Reservation. I understand that there's a fair degree
of tension between the white community, law enforcement authorities from
(03:39):
the Aiken County Sheriff's office, and the Native American community.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
That tension has made headlines in recent years as the
current sheriff, Daniel Gaida, it appears, has accepted financial support
from an oil conglomerate called Enbridge, and then it just
so happens that protesters were treated pretty roughly for seeking
to protect clean drinking water in the area where Brian
(04:04):
was raised.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
List McGregor, mister two of malaccs the Sandy Lake Indian Reservation.
We moved up in the late eighties to Sandy Lake
and a mother. She rented a parcel land up there
for a dollar for fifty years and had a house built.
She kept adding on to the house. She wanted a
(04:27):
place for everyone, and we all lived in alsos around
the Sandy Lake area. Had some brothers and they have
all passed, and we had some good times going swimming
in the lakes, going fishing, going hunt trapping with my
uncles in the wintertime, harvesting deer, using everything of the
(04:48):
tier and giving thanks for the deer, and offering tobacco.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Despite ugly efforts to the contrary, the Ojuboy and other
indigenous nations have been able to maintain their culture and
self governance well. Folks like Ojiboy elder Marge Anderson were
able to make strides for their nations with the US government,
like the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of nineteen eighty eight,
which brought much needed economic opportunities to their nation. In fact,
(05:16):
on February twenty third, nineteen ninety eight, Brian had accompanied
his nephew, Michael mus Squattis to an interview at one
of those casinos.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, Mike Squads my sister Anita's son. He had a
job interview that day and upon the radio for I
don't know, thirty dollars or something for some extra money
to go to a casino. I didn't drive at that
time that I had a ride with him and my
other nephew, Brandon.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
By all accounts, the trio returned to the area around
eight thirty PM, and Brian was home for the night
by ten. Then the following morning, February twenty fourth, nineteen
ninety eight, eighty four year old Evelyn Mallin's body was
to discovered in her bedroom in nearby tiny Shamrock Township.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
The building is very small and houses not only her bedroom,
but also a little convenience store that has some three
point two beer and cigarettes and other sundry items. And
piecing together some of the witness testimony, she's probably murdered
the night before, sometime between ten and ten thirty in
(06:24):
the morning, her daughter, Norma Horner went to the store
with her boyfriend Gerald Horsemen, and they knocked on the door.
They knocked on the windows, they didn't get a response.
They went around to the back door. There was a
skeleton key broken off from the inside of the back door,
so they couldn't open it, so they called nine to
one one Aiken County Sheriff's Department. Kicking the back door,
(06:47):
they find Evelyn Male and the victim in her bedroom.
That she was strangled and beaten rather savagely, and there
was fecal matter on her too. Now that may have
been that she evacuated as a result of being strangled
and beaten, but there's some other theories that who the
ever of the assailant was took some vehicle matter from
a little there's a bowl, I mean, there's no indoor
(07:09):
plumbing in the store and through that on her. I
don't know whether that's true or not. But they didn't
see her immediately because her bedroom was ransacked. Things are
thrown all over the place, and she was tossed off
her ben There was a mattress on top of her.
And then they went around throughout the building. They noted
that the front and door locks were locked. They noted
(07:30):
that a basement window was broken, and the store portion
is utterly untouched.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
The back room was ripped apart, like whoever did that
was looking for something particular.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Thereafter, they interviewed Gerald Horseman and Norma Horner. Gerald Horseman
was responsible for some of the inventory in the little store,
and he told them at the time that there was
no beer, no cigarettes missing. Subsequently, Merle Maylon, the victim's son,
came up from his home in New Mexico several days
(08:03):
after the murder. Theoretically there was some cash in a
white envelope that she used to keep that he thought
was missing.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Initially, Gerald Horseman thought so too, as well as a checkbook,
but both turned up. Yet Merle Mallin continued to allege
that other items were missing.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
There was a mention of guns missing, biers, televisions, all
kinds of stuff, and they were flying over the reservation
looking in swamps for the stuff. And then oh no,
this wasn't missing. Miss was a missing. Messing was missing.
At trial he said, oh, we found them money.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
But Merle Malan has always maintained that beer, cigarettes, and
a gun were stolen, which propped up the state's theory
a robbery turned homicide. Despite what Horsemen, who actually kept
the store's inventory, has maintained all along that the store
was undisturbed and no store items were missing. Interestingly, one
(09:01):
of the alternative suspects was Merle's son, Mark Mallan.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
The mourning of the murder, relatives actually pointed toward her grandson,
Mark Maelon and he would help her at the store too,
so he had access to the store and said that
he could be violent, particularly was on something, and that
Evelyn Malan used to give him money, and a couple
of weeks before this incident, Mark Maelan asked her for
(09:29):
four or five hundred dollars and it was one of
the first times when she had refused him money. Others
subsequently had said, we know that he's been rough with
his grandmother before, and he knows where she hides money
in the store, but law enforcement didn't really follow up
on that thread. Another alternative suspect was a man by
the name of Terry Peat. He evidently was somebody that
Evelyn Maylen was afraid of, and she expressed that fear
(09:50):
to some others that bad news is back in town.
He had been released from being incarcerated and he had
asked her to buy some pro pain on credit, and
she had refused. He subsequently perished when his trailer caught fire.
Several months later.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
But before the death of Terry Pete, as well as
the specter of missing cash and dissipated, the rumor mill
in Aiken County was quite active.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
There were rampant rumors, some of which are clearly untrue,
that the assailants cut off her finger to take her
ring off her, the assailants sexually assaulted her. I heard
it was the Miss Squades. I heard it was this person.
I heard it was that person. And so mister Bijurga
from the BCA, which is the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension
(10:36):
the equivalent of an FBI for the state, and Bruce
Beck from the Aiken County Sheriff's Office went over to
interview Michael mss squaddes, Keith MS Squades, and Brandon Miss
Squades as well. They are all the nephews of Brian Pippott.
This is within I think a week of the murder.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
And they looked at Keith and checked his body for
scrapes from March. He didn't have any, and they asked
him where he was He was at home and Mike
where he was.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Michael Musquad says what day is this now, Oh, that
was the day I had my interview down at the
Grand Casino. Brandon and my uncle Brian Piptt went with
me as well. The authorities knew this now. They later
interrogated Brandon Misquattis, who was fifteen at the time, in
a very coercive interview where they kept saying to him,
(11:25):
we know you were there. Your relatives have said you
were there. Come clean, and he said, no, I wasn't there.
I wasn't there. I was at the casino. They later
acknowledged that his alibi was correct. So that's the same
alibi that Brian Pippott has. So the alibi was established
quite early on.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Nevertheless, after a year had gone by, Terry Pete had passed,
while Merle Mallin kept the specter of a robbery alive
and the rumor mill led investigators to Brian Pippott, his
nephews Raymond and Keith Musquattis, as well as his cousins
Neil King and Don Hill.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Right after an award had been offered, Don Hill started
a rumor that Brian Pippott said something along the lines of, oh,
she was already dead when I went in there. And
then eventually Don Hill starts naming a few of these
people that ultimately are selected as the assailants. And as
they started to narrow down some of these rumors, they
(12:19):
used tactics of saying to one so and so said
you were there. Now you need to help yourself by
saying you were there and admitting to things, and the
first person to the trough gets the best meal or something.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
That was the line they used, yes live threatening all
your younger kids with long term prison ten.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
And so there was a carousel of interrogations of various
people until they got somebody to say, okay, I was there,
and that was Raymond Musquaddes. He had a couple of
felonies pending, and there had been some rumors about him
being there and not being there, and he is recanted
completely and fully, genuinely, in detail and with specificity. And
(13:05):
if you look at his various statements, I actually have
a chart as to how they changed over time, you
can tell he wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Raymond first said that around seven pm they arrived at
the Dollar Lake store and Brian had kicked in the
front door. Both elements not true, so his story had
to change alongside the state's narrative until they were the same.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
The state's theory is that these five men were driving
around drunk and decided that they were going to go
to the Dollar Lake store. The store was closed with
the allegation is that Keith Musquades was able to get
through a basement window, which by the way, would have
entailed removing panes of glass with the little pieces of
wood that separate the panes, reaching in and removing two
(13:51):
wooden slats that were nailed across the window, Squeeze down
through the window, walk across a sandy basement floor, come
up through a trapdoor, which, as far as we know,
he would have no idea existed.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Everybody forgets to mention that there was a chair on
top of that trap door and it was wedged up
against the window sill. It was in the police report
that the police removed the chair from a trap door
to get down.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
To the basement, so the back door was inoperable, the
front door was dead bolted shut, and their suspects didn't
have access to keys. Yet, this basement entry theory was
still chosen despite its impossibility, and I guess since the
front door was definitely not kicked in Raymond changed his
story from Brian kicking in the front door to an
(14:41):
intoxicated Keith Musquattis wiggling through a jagged basement window. And
remember they examined him just days after the crime, and
he didn't have a scratch.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
He said that Keith Musquades cut himself going through the window,
but Keith Msquades had no cuts on him. There's no
evidence anywhere that anyone went through that window, no fabric,
no blood, no skin. There is some cat blood, so
I guess a cat couldn't get through there without cutting itself.
So he theoretically comes up opens up the trap door.
Raymond says that they all came in and out through
(15:14):
the front door, but we now know that the front
door was locked with a dead bolt, that you needed
a key to operate.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Even with the alleged gymnastics, the theory still doesn't work
without a front door key. But not according to BCA
investigator David Bjurga.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Mister Bjurga was questioned about that locked at the grand jury.
He was asked, you can't get in and out of
that door without locking the dead bold? Is that right?
He said, well, that's right, we don't believe it was locked.
Why do you think that, Well, because Raymond squads and
Don Hill said they went through the door, so it
couldn't have been locked. Well, that's completely circular logic. That's
not saying anything about the forensics or the physics of
(15:49):
the scene.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Again with the door, prosscutter on around and evaded the question, said, well,
I can't go into that because it's from the whole investigation.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
The theory on the door was that the dead bolt
lock wasn't really locked. That was just the lock on
the door handle that you could lock by pulling it shut.
There's no merit to that whatsoever. The first responders all
reported that door locked. The crime scene photograph shows that
the dead bolt door locked. I had a forensic locksmith
examined that photograph. He said, that's clearly a dead bolt
(16:24):
and it's clearly locked. And when they took photographs of
the lock when they disassembled it, they didn't show the
actual bolt portion of it because that would show you
that what you see in that photograph a dead bolt
clearly locked. There's no real getting around that. Now they've
lost the lock.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
However, Raymond was not aware of those damning specifics in
real life or in the statements he was making.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
He said that he stayed in the car but he
heard a crash. They come out with beer and cigarettes,
and Brian comes out with some kind of bag with
what they thought was a weapon in it, and the
theory is that they then went back to Raymond's father's
house and Keith Musquades and Brian Pippott confessed that they
had killed Evelyn malon Or when she came out of
(17:10):
her bedroom, but she didn't come out of her.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Bedroom, according to other interviewees. BCA investigator David Bijerga routinely
inserted this unfounded element into his questioning that the victim
had discovered the assailants in the store and so they
had to put her down, but the store was undisturbed,
no signs of a struggle, according to both police reports
and Gerald Horseman, who also maintained that no store items
(17:34):
were missing. But instead Raymond conformed his statement to include
unsubstantiated claims from Merle Mallin, the father of the only
alternative suspect, about a stolen gun, cigarettes and beer. Mallin
also testified that his mother wasn't able to lock the door,
something that it appears he forgot, he had said when
interviewed years later by a post conviction investigator, and again
(17:56):
at a two thousand and six PCR hearing when he
said that she could in fact lock the door. And
there's even more nonsense to unravel.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Ramus Squade said they went to an abandoned house that
used to be his father's on the Sandy Lake Reservation,
which was probably abandoned the last time he had been
there years ago, but has since been remodeled and had
residents in it. He said that they were all driving
a gold Toronado, but no such car existed, so almost nothing,
he said, matched with reality.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
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Speaker 4 (18:55):
That was a reference that was a year later or something,
and it was a significant time for me to remember anything.
So I told him, well, I don't know where I was.
And it wasn't until I read the report and my
mother came to visit me and she said, oh, yeah,
that's that day that I had loaned a then for
(19:17):
the job interview, and then you wrote along, and I said, oh, yeah, okay,
well I would have a pond ticket for that data.
And I called my investigator and he went over there
and he's sure enough, there was that pon ticket. And
it wasn't until later on that I was getting the
discovery papers that I realized that the beats, Mike and
(19:40):
Brandon and my mother all confirmed my alibi.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, in all likelihood this was you know, somebody that
was related to her or had access to a key, right.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
Yeah. I remember sitting in the shell and reading a
discovery and I said, huh, this is an inside job.
And the police didn't pick up on that. They didn't
pick up on the doors being locked, didn't pick up
on the chair being on top of the trap door,
even the tops he had report, Well, this person had
(20:12):
a lot of anger towards her.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
But that, along with the gaping holes in Raymond's and
the state's narrative, appear to have been ignored, as Raymond
was offered five years and his other charges dropped to
become the state star witness against his four relatives.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Keith Msquades, Brian and Neil King denied having anything to
do with it and deny that to this day. They
did get a sort of confession from Don Hill, except
for it kept changing and changing and changing. He was
going to testify and he would get five years and
they would forgive some sexual assault pilonies. He never did
testify because they recognized that nothing this guy said was true,
(20:50):
even though he still got the deal, which was I
think less than five years. Same with Raymond.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Meanwhile, Brian, Neil and Keith awaited trial in jail, with
proceedings take plays between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand
and one.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Keith msquades he had a first degree sexual assault case
pending against him. They dismissed that in exchange for his
Alfred plea on the murder. I think it was manslaughter.
He had nothing to do with it. He has an
alibi as well. But he takes this plea on the
theory that you know, I might be able to survive
prison better if I'm a murderer as opposed to sexual assault.
(21:25):
So he takes an Alfred plea. But then he tries
to withdraw his plea within I think two weeks, and
that's denied, so he serves I think fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
So only Neil and Brian couldn't be coerced into a
plea deal.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Neil King has tried first, and he is acquitted by
the judge at the conclusion of the state's evidence on
two grounds. One that the only incriminating testimony against him
was Raymond Musquaddes, who was an accomplice, and in Minnesota
you need corroborating evidence in addition to accomplice evidence. And
the other thing is that Raymond squad said Neil King
(22:02):
he was drunk in the backseat of the car. So
there was no clear evidence that, even under Raymond's story,
that Neil King had gone in and participated in the
actual homicide or burglary. But in any event, he was
acquitted based on the principle that there was no corroborating evidence.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
So the state right away started interviewing all my cellmates
and trying to threaten them and getting them to say
something against.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Me, and they found jail house snitch.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
The jail house snitch is a guy by the name
of Peter Arnaldi. It's a longtime con man, fraudster. And
so Brian been told this guy knows his way around
the court system. And Brian said, I've been wrongfully charged here.
I mean, I said, what should I do, and he
showed him the criminal complaint.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I asked him to look at it and I tell
him what I'm being charged with, and then he said, well,
I'm gonna take this to the room, and I'm thinking, okay, well, no,
I'm going to need that back side grab it back.
And that's the last I'm not saying there until a
couple of years later when he was strolls into the
courtroom wearing the street clothes and I didn't know that
(23:08):
he was in federal custody for bank robbers and they
had a player's system and then work it to his advantage.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Peter Arnaldi subsequently says that Brian confessed this crime to me.
The majority of what he attests to was in the
criminal complaint which Brian had showed him, but he completely
misconstrued it. He said they stuffed Kleenex in her mouth
to stifle her screams, and he got that because the
(23:38):
criminal complaint in the autopsy said that she had soft
tissue injuries around her mouth.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Wow. But the county Attorney, Bradley Rhodes felt comfortable presenting
this vailure in reading comprehension as corroborating evidence Rhodes has
since been disbarred for unrelated reasons. In addition, Brian's original
judge had become ill, resulting in a mistrial and a
(24:04):
change of venue. Then his original attorney, Chris Davis, chose
this moment to retire.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
So they appointed me another attorney, that attorney who had
never tried a murder case. I had a new investigator.
I think that was his first case. So I had
two people that really didn't know much about how to
present a case.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Tom Murtha, he was the defense counsel in this case
where he was a year and a half out of
law school. This case was dumped on and there was
a change of venue, so it was up in International Falls,
right on the Canadian border. So he had to drive
up there in a station wagon with the files in
the back without much support.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
And I think they knew what they were doing. Minnesota's
prejudice against state of Americans, and the farther you go
up north, the more prendice there. They had me at
the tip of the state.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Here's an interesting thing too, Before where the trial started,
the judge brought the prosecutor in and Tom Earth and
Brian in and said, look, can we do a deal here.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Prosecutor said, well, we'll take life off the table and
we'll give you seventeen or eighteen years something like that.
And then the judge because, well, i'll tell you this,
I don't care what he's coffering you. I'll give you
seven years. And I already had two years in. I thought,
well three years left, and I said, well, that's an
(25:28):
excellent deal. And if I was guilty, I would take it.
But I'm not guilty, and I can't see myself admitting
to something that I didn't do.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So they moved ahead with trial in January two thousand
and one, presenting the now congealed but still erroneous narrative
through Raymond Asquattis, and to impeach him. Brian urged Tom
Murtha to ask about the condition of the house to
which they'd allegedly fled in the aftermath.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
And he described it as a hold, born out, born
down party house. The windows broke, red, shag carpeting, brown experior,
and the house was enhing like that, and it been remodeled.
My brother was living in there with his girlfriend Mary
(26:14):
Bleagan at the time, so that couldn't have been possible.
The police knew this the sheriff say this, Yet.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
This false narrative was still presented. Unfortunately, Tommrtha had not
yet uncovered all the internal inconsistencies and blatant falsehoods, including
the basement entry theory.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
The forensic technician from the BCA who testified to that
did so in an extremely superficial way. He just said
the point of entry was this window. There was no
analysis done. Two different experts have reviewed the forensics and
the physical evidence surrounding that window independently. They came to
the conclusion that the window entry was staged, that the
(26:58):
wooden slats were pried off the inside with a tool.
There's tool marks that the muntains that separate the panes
were removed and placed neatly in a spot where they
wouldn't have fallen. Two panes of glass were removed and
placed outside. The other pane was broken, but the glass
from that was actually in the window well, which means
it was broken from the inside. And then there was
(27:20):
large pieces of that pane that were placed again not
where they would have fallen, in fact where they could
not have fallen.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
So it appears that someone broke this window out from
the inside. It may have been staged or maybe had
nothing to do with this crime at all. It's unclear.
But what is clear is the implausibility of an unscathed
entrance through this basement window.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
There was a screw protruding into the area of the
window that you would have caught something on if you
had gone through there. Where the muntains were broken, there
were pointed pieces that would have caught somebody's fabric if
they had gone through there. There was no footprints or
any sign that anybody landed on the boxes below. Nothing
(28:04):
from the window well, which had leaves and pine needles
and so forth, was discovered beneath the window. There's no
set of footprints that lead from the window over to
the trap door. So there's no forensic evidence supporting the
idea that somebody went through this window other than the
window was open, and all of the forensic evidence is
(28:26):
that nobody did in fact go through the window. No
part of that case with Stan's scrutiny in any respect forensically,
physically the objective evidence.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And let's not forget the chair blocking the trap door,
or the currently misplaced dead bolt that was locked and
required a key, which would have destroyed the state's theory,
but none of it was discovered by his trial attorney
and pointed out to the jury.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
And fairness to Tom Mirtha, he had not tried to
fell any case before. I'm not even sure he tried
any cases before, but he did put on a defense.
He called Michael Musquade says to the alibi the pawnshop
operator to authenticate the pawn shop ticket.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
I had a charge accounts to get gas at the
local gas station in town. I had a bart tab.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
And then the prosecute tried to argue that he fabricated
this alibi while he was awaiting trial with his relatives. Unfortunately,
his attorney at the time didn't make the point that
they knew about this alibi back in March of nineteen
ninety eight, so he didn't fabricate it. And they said, well,
when we asked him about what he was doing that day,
he didn't come up with the alibi. And Brian's answer
(29:34):
to that is, I didn't know exactly what day this
murder occurred. I had nothing to do with it, so
I didn't necessarily put together that I was at the
casino until my nephews told me that and my mother Agnes.
Chief said, hey, wait a minute, you don't you have
a pawn receipt from that day.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
None of that came in, and they call the head
of security for Malax Casino and he says, yeah, we
don't have any record of at Aime at the casino.
And that was all just for show because they knew
that no records exist because they were changing the security
(30:09):
systems at that time. There was no evidence linking me
to any of us to the crime, no motivation at
they said, motivate didn't have a factor in Minnesota courts,
and the only thing I had was my nephew testifying
and that jail house.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
In foremant, Peter Arnaldi said that Brian felt a great
deal of remorse about what had happened, that they had
killed this lady as part of a burglary, and he
was going to try and get his relatives to conjure
an alibi for him, and that they arrived in his
mother's van and they had gone in and robbed the
(30:45):
place of beer and cigarettes and murdered Evelyn mail It.
He did have to admit that Brian had showed him
the criminal complaint and that's, of course where the soft
tissue injuries were disclosed which were not Kleenex, and.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Alas seemed like he was a professional. Even I thought, Wow,
this guy, he really sounds like what he's talking about.
If I was a jurior, I believe. I think we
impeached Arnuldy and it really didn't add to the jury.
They you, now, like Native Americans up there in northern
Minnesota was at the tip of the state. They don't
(31:20):
even like outfighters.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
I mean, did you have hope that when they came
back from you know, deliberation, that things might go your way.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
No, my attorney did, and then he said, well, what
are you going to do when you get out? I said, well,
this thing is not over it. I looked at the
jury and then read their micro expression. I'm not planning
on anything. And I believe it was three days later
that they came back to guilty verdict. And I think
(31:48):
the judge was so mad at me that I didn't
take his seven year offer that he gave me a
double maximum of two light sentences without stility of paroles.
(32:16):
I got sent to fill Water Prison and I guars
a treaty. According to here, crime and mane was a
heinous crime against an old lady, so didn't treat me
very fairly. I ended up in the hole quite a bit.
I felt tough, kind of targeted. You passed the time
by working, doing anything you can, staying as busy as
(32:40):
you can't. I do that right now. I developed a routine,
a routine that I fall every day and really go
off course. I just stayed as busy as I can
and it helps pass the time.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Of course, part of that time was passed by appealing
his conviction, which was upheld, but his sentence was ruled
to be improper and he was resenced to one life
term with parole eligibility. Meanwhile, he filed for post conviction
relief and was granted a hearing in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
The evidence that was presented there was they said there
was a false evidence about the door lock, that Merle
Malin testified that she wasn't able to lock the door
at the trial, but then he admitted that she could
lock the door, so that was one element. They had
an ineffective assistance of council claim. They had an outdated
from Keith Musquade saying that he wasn't there and that
(33:33):
he knew that Brian came back from the casino that
night at ten something. Then there was a victim's advocate
who had talked to Ray on the phone at some
time after the trial, and Ray had said, I just
told him what they wanted to hear to get out
of this, but they couldn't find him testify. A guy
by the name of Craig Lacari was housed with Brian
(33:54):
Pippott and Peter Arnaldi, and he said that Arnaldi had
told him that Brian's that he was innocent, that he
had never said anything about Brian confessing.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
We pointed out the flaws and our nullity's testimony, saying
that there was toilet paper steps in her mouth and
I complained for soft tissue injuries and somehow he converted
that into tissue paper being put in her mouth, and
they ignored it.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
That was an affidavid from Lacari. The judge wouldn't rid
him out. They didn't have Peter Arnaldi testify, They didn't
have all the forensic experts that we've assembled testified. They
didn't have Neil King testify. So it was really a
pretty tepid presentation, and it was denied and appealed and denied.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
At which point Brian began looking for meaningful pro bono help.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Brian Pippott had written to Centurion, so I went out
with two other members and we interviewed him, and everything
he told me turned out to be true. It took
me quite a long time to find Ramus Squades, but
when I found him, he was forthcoming about his having
not told the truth. I also found Peter Arnaldi initially said, well,
you know they raped her, and I said, Peter, I
(35:08):
have the autopsy report. Whoever did this didn't raper? He said,
oh my god, I always thought that you know these
you know, he wasn't charitable about what he called them,
went in and raped this old lady. He said, I
think I have it all wrong.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Perhaps this was just how Arnaldi internally justified his false
testimony for personal gain. Either way, Jim continued his investigation,
moving on to Neil King.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Neil King, he said the basis of his defense was
that he was drunk in the backseat of the car,
and that wasn't even really the truth. He wasn't even
there at all, But he didn't want that disrupted. He
felt that Brian Pipptt had implicated him, so he didn't
want to help him, even though that wasn't the truth.
But he gave us a declaration saying he wasn't there
at all. Keith Musquades gave us a declaration saying he
wasn't there at all. And then I have this forensic evidence,
(35:53):
lock Smith, the two different crime scene specialists, and so
I put together an application to the CRU in January
of two thousand twenty two. It was about seventy five
pages long, doing an analysis of the different stories that
Raymond told, showing photographs of the lock and the store
supported that with an eight hundred page appendix. So the
CRU took the application, they started their own investigation. There's
(36:16):
a couple of aspects of that I think we're worth
mentioning too, and that is Jim Rats, the County Attorney
at the onset of the CRI investigation, signed a memorandum
of understanding with the Attorney General's Office and CRU, and
from what I understand, he asked for a phrase in
that memorandum of understanding that said, I'm paraphrasing him in
(36:37):
the event that I don't want to support the recommendation
of the CRU, as the county attorney, if I don't
want to execute that recommendation. Then in that event, I
agree that I will surrender jurisdiction to the Attorney General's Office.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
So it's fair to assume that the county attorney waived
jurisdiction and that the Attorney General's Office Conviction Review Unit
has the final say.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
And I have to say that their investigation is astonishing
and how thorough it is. They were able to get
in to interview Don Hill in the psychiatric facility, something
I was not able to do. They reviewed literally thousands
of documents. They interviewed either twenty five or twenty six witnesses,
recorded interviews. There was no leading questions. They discovered an
(37:21):
alibi witness for Keith Musquades, who I was unable to find.
They interviewed the forensic specialists, they retained an expert of
their own with respect to the false confession, and ultimately
they issued a report that was one hundred and eighty
pages long with nine hundred footnotes to source materials. And
the guy who did the majority of the investigative work
(37:43):
for the CIRIU was an Assistant Attorney General by the
name of Carmen Leone, and at the end of the
investigation they prepared a draft report that was reviewed not
only by carmeon Leone's immediate boss, Carrie Spurling, but by
her boss, the Deputy Attorney General, David Voyce. They presented
a draft as a courtesy to the BCA and to
(38:03):
the county attorney and to the sheriff guide and I said,
we're inviting you to make comments on this. And the
response was an extremely hostile one, and so they they're
contesting it, even though they don't have any inherent standing
to do that.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
I have nothing to hide. I waive attorney client privilege
because I knew the county signed an agreement to go
along with the filings, and so I've been waiting for
two and a half years for this investigation to unfold.
And then April I found out that, Hey, they found
the truth. They found everything that was going on. This
(38:43):
investigation was so thorough. They found stuff that we didn't
even find out. And yes, the county didn't like that.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
The sheriff was very hostile. He said that two courts
had already had judged this case. Of course that doesn't
mean anything, because everything that we've produced, no court judge
or jury hasn't it hurt. Any of this material and
then he said something along the lines of you have
to prove to me beyond reasonable doubt that he didn't
do this, and I don't think you're going to be
able to do that. He also said at one point,
(39:14):
you never did a reenactment of anybody going through that window,
So how do you know that somebody couldn't get through
the window. And then he also said something along the
lines of I knew Keith Musquaddies from years ago. He's
a very athletic guy. He could have gotten through the window.
The position has never been that it's physically impossible for
someone to get through the window.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Oh, it's tough.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
It's that nobody did go through the window, given the
forensic evidence at the scene. And when Carmen Leone said
something along the lines of, well there was cat blood there,
you know, I guess a cat couldn't get through it
because I've lived with cats all my life. I no
cat's going to cut itself. So Carmen said to him, well,
how do you think the cat blood got there? This
is the mentality we're dealing with. He said, I think
the misquadies went out and killed a cat and put
(39:53):
its blood on there to put us off the track.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, it sounds reasonable.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
The BCA said we're going to do our own investigation,
and they hired three outside people, was the experts. I
don't know what the terms of those agreements are, and
their motivation is undisguised that the purpose of their parallel
investigation is to find something, anything, that they can use
to discredit the CRU report, and so far their investigation,
(40:18):
when you compare it to what the CRU did, is laughable.
I mean, they interviewed George Horseman, but they didn't record it,
and they got a summary of a statement from him,
and what it was clear was that they were trying
to get him to move off of his steadfast position
that no peer, no cigarettes were missing. The store portion
of the building was untouched, and they evidently they got
(40:40):
him to look at some photographs and say, well, maybe
there were some cigaretts there that are missing, and I
guess he kind of went, well maybe, you know. Then
they did a reenactment of someone making their way through
the window. They were able to show that somebody could
physically make their way through the window, but without the
nail protruding, without the glass in it, without the munting parts.
Even then the kid was going through it caught his
(41:01):
shirt on the wooden.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Frame, which has always been the misunderstanding. The issue isn't
whether someone could get through the window, but whether they
could do it without leaving any evidence behind. Not even
a cat could do it.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Now, we labored under the impression that Jim rats the
county attorney. He's a man of his word, because we
could have been advancing our case through the court system
as opposed to going through the cru which took two years.
So he's renegged on that. He hasn't given any reason
for that other than I think he's getting pressure from
his sheriff there and maybe the BCA. So we filed
(41:37):
a seventy five page petition with the Aiken County Court.
We've asked for some discovery. I want to know what's
going on with the so called consultants from the BCA.
I want that DNA testing evidence from the BCA. There's
a wallet that we believe the assailant touched the cuttings
from the nightgown. Evidently there was some material under her fingernails,
(41:59):
we understand. And last January, when the Attorney General's Office
was investigating the case, person from the BCA contacted Carmen
Leones and said there's insufficient male DNA under her fingernails
to warrant any further testing. So I have requested those
test materials. There's evidently a quant test done. There must
(42:20):
have been enough there for them to determine that it
was male DNA, and thus far they've not been forthcoming
with providing that to us. And so the defense to
our petition, our seventy five page petition was a nine
page reply by the county attorney. It has some allegations
that are demonstrably false, and it basically relies in kind
(42:40):
of an amalgam of some technical claims. Well, this has
already been adjudged. What are we doing here? That's the
extent of what they've put in to defend against this.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
But there is a way to circumvent them.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Tim Walls has the power to take the case from
the county attorney and give it to Keith Ellison. He
will not do that without Keith Ellison and formally asking
him to do that. I think with the election pending,
there's little appetite to do that. Keith Ellison also has
to maintain working relationships with the various county attorneys and
(43:12):
taking this from the county attorney could be problematic for him.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Although I wish this was treated with the urgency it deserves.
After November twenty twenty four, either Tim Waltz or Lieutenant
Governor Peggy Flanagan, who happens to be of the White
Earth Band of Ojaboy, will be able to empower Keith
Ellison to do what is right. We have linked a
petition in the episode description to show your support, and
(43:37):
with that we go to our closing, in which I'm
going to thank our guests for joining us today and
then just sit back and lock it up as they
share their final thoughts.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
The bottom line is that Brian Pippott was not there,
He had no involvement in this case. He doesn't know
who did it, and he's been wrongfully charged and convicted,
and the authorities at this point are not treating him fairly.
Law enforcement's so called investigation of this, I have to say,
is a discredit to law enforcement because it's not an
(44:09):
honest investigation, and by that I mean the BCA and
sheriff guide his investigation. The man should be let out.
He's innocent. Anybody who's looked at this case in any
real detail, which is my organization. The Attorney General's Office
and Mitchell Hamlin Law School Clinic studied the case and
did a pretty comprehensive job themselves. Has determined that he
(44:32):
is factually innocent, Yet he languishes in prison, has been
there for twenty five years. His relatives have died in
the meantime.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Let the man out.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
I'd like to say Jim Cousins and the Centurion Ministries
for helping when throughout pears and the fear you for
highly time, Tim and the truth. What's got made through
this twenty six years is hope that the truth will
come out. It has and as a state prosecutor, Keith
(45:04):
ellis and he knows the truth. And I can't understand
why he will not ask for this case because the
way it was explained to me is that other prosecutors
will get mad because he took the case away from
a county. Well, he's doing what's right. His job is
not about making friends keeping friends, whether people will like
(45:27):
what he does. It's his job, see, and it's something
he could do. Sixty two years old. Native Americans don't
have that long of a lifespan, and I don't want
to die in prison I have this belief that your
soul stays where you die, and I don't want my
(45:48):
still staying around prison for eternity, and I wanted to
be around family and around nature where I feel connection.
I figure I've got ten years at the most. I
want to live life lived.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
(46:31):
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate the views and opinions expressed
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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