Minnesota man who killed teens in break-in charged with murder

[NIUhuskies]

wow, this sounds pretty messed up... Cant tell if his guy is nuts or if these kids were on drugs

By NBC News staff and wire services

A 64-year-old Minnesota man was charged Monday with murder for killing two teenagers who he said broke into his Little Falls home, shooting them in the head, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

AP file

Byron David Smith was arrested after he told police he shot and killed two teenagers who he said were breaking into his home on Thanksgiving Day.

"If you're trying to shoot somebody and they laugh at you, you go again," Byron David Smith of Little Falls told investigators, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.

Smith was charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Haile Kifer, 18, and her cousin, Nicholas Brady, 17, both of Little Falls. The teens were shot on Thanksgiving Day, but their deaths weren't reported until Friday.
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Brady has also used the name Schaeffel, which is his mother’s maiden name, at times for family reasons, according to the sheriff's office.

In the criminal complaint, Smith said he was in the basement of his remote home about 10 miles southwest of Little Falls when he heard a window breaking upstairs, followed by footsteps that eventually approached the basement stairwell. Fearful after several break-ins, according to the complaint, Smith said he fired when Brady came into view from the waist down.

After the teen fell down the stairs, Smith said he shot him in the face as he lay on the floor.

"I want him dead," the complaint quoted Smith telling an investigator.

Smith said he dragged Brady's body into his basement workshop, then sat back down on his chair, and after a few minutes Kifer began coming down the stairs. He said he shot her as soon as her hips appeared, and she fell down the steps.

Smith said he tried to shoot her again with his Mini 14 rifle, but that the gun jammed and Kifer laughed at him.

"Smith stated that it was not a very long laugh because she was already hurting," according to the complaint.

Smith said he then shot Kifer in the chest several times with a .22-caliber revolver, dragged her next to Brady, and with her still gasping for air, fired a shot under her chin "up into the cranium."

"Smith described it as 'a good clean finishing shot,'" according to the compliant, but also that he acknowledged he had fired "more shots than (he) needed to."

The following day he asked a neighbor to recommend a good lawyer, according to the complaint. He later asked his neighbor to call the police.

A prosecutor called Smith's reaction "appalling."

"Mr. Smith intentionally killed two teenagers in his home in a matter that goes well beyond self-defense," Morrison County Attorney Brian Middendorf said after Smith appeared at Morrison County District Court on Monday morning. Bail was set at $2 million.

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Minnesota law allows a homeowner to use deadly force on an intruder if a reasonable person would fear they're in danger of harm. Smith told investigators he was afraid the intruders might have a weapon.

Smith's actions "sound like an execution" rather than legitimate self-defense, said David Pecchia, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association. Pecchia said his statements to investigators suggest he had eliminated any threat to his safety by wounding the cousins.

Smith's brother, Bruce Smith, told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that the incident was the eighth burglary at Byron Smith's home in recent years.

The only report the Morrison County sheriff's office has for a break-in at the home was for one on Oct. 27. It shows Byron Smith reported losing cash and gold coins worth $9,200, plus two guns worth $200 each, photo equipment worth more than $3,000 and a ring worth $300.

Little Falls is about 100 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Brady's sister, Crystal Schaeffel, told the Star Tribune that Kifer had broken into her home before. Little Falls police records show Crystal Schaeffel reported a theft Aug. 28, but the department said the report was not public because that investigation was continuing and because it named juveniles.

Tessa Ruth, an aunt of Brady, attended Smith's hearing. She told the Star Tribune she wished the man had fired a warning shot or alerted the police instead of shooting the teens.

"It wasn't right for them to be there and, yes, he had a right to defend himself. But to execute them like that..."

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012...th-murder?lite

[Aries Walker]

Originally Posted by Predarat

Yes and it happens more and more every day, if they keep punishing people defending from it its going to escalate even faster then it already it.

Crime, violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and almost all other divisions of crime have actually all been steadily dropping for the last about twenty years.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Omaha

Holy shit! You nailed it!

If a person would rather use then than than, then than is not their preferred choice.

[Easy 6]

Bottom line... you have every single right to shoot a home invader full of holes.

But you cant execute them "nice and clean like" as they lay dying in front of you... when you do that you go from defender to murderer.

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by scott free

Bottom line... you have every single right to shoot a home invader full of holes.

But you cant execute them "nice and clean like" as they lay dying in front of you... when you do that you go from defender to murderer.

You're right. He should have gone straight for the head with his first shot and then he'd not have to worry about the rest.

[Anyong Bluth]

Originally Posted by lewdog

You're right. He should have gone straight for the head with his first shot and then he'd not have to worry about the rest.

Did you listen to the audio? It's disturbing. He damned himself the moment he thought recording it was a good idea.

[Rudy tossed tigger's salad]

Originally Posted by lewdog

We had a police helicopter circling my neighborhood a few months ago. I had to leave for work but the wife was home. I got out the gun and told her if anything comes through that door, make sure you level it.

Nah, that's fine. Women, Senior citizens, and physically disabled people should be the demographic.

[ForeverChiefs58]

Jurors were quickly convinced the shootings had been planned


Byron Smith’s fate was known almost from the beginning of Tuesday’s jury deliberations.

“For the most part, we were all pretty much in agreement from the start,” juror Thomas Strandberg said. “We just wanted to make sure that we thought about all the evidence that was in front of us, and we wanted to go over everything that we had in front of us. Other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot of sticking points, so to speak.”

Juror Evelyn Mrosla agreed, saying one juror held out from agreeing to the guilty verdicts for a while, “but it just went fast, though.’’

Even the lone holdout wasn’t arguing for acquittal, but “just wanted to be sure,” said Strandberg, 32, of Swanville, Minn.

The jury deliberated only three hours before convicting Smith of two counts each of first-degree murder and second-degree murder for the shooting deaths of Haile Kifer, 18, and Nick Brady, 17. The teens were shot during a daylight burglary of Smith’s Little Falls, Minn., house on Thanksgiving Day 2012.

The two jurors, speaking just hours after their verdicts were delivered, said the picture of Smith that emerged from days of often chilling testimony was of a man who methodically planned for a violent confrontation rather than a homeowner surprised by intruders.

Several other jurors declined to comment in detail, saying only that it was a tough case to hear but not a tough one to decide.

Smith’s planning before the shootings — from moving his truck off his property to a neighbor’s home, to surveillance devices set up inside and outside of the home, to laying a tarp at the foot of his stairs — pointed toward him preparing for what happened, Strandberg said.

“It seemed like he had done many things to either lure them into the house or into the basement itself,” Strandberg said. “Moving the truck was the very first big sign that he had planned something. And then moving the bodies and having the tarp handy had a lot to do with it.”

Beyond that, Strandberg said, “it seemed like he sat there and waited for it.”

“It appeared to be that it was, for lack of a better term, his kill zone, where he wanted them to come in and enter, so he could have ample opportunity to kill them,” Strandberg added.

Some of the jurors believed that Smith waited a full day before reporting the shootings because he wanted to see whether other burglars would show up — even unscrewing bulbs from fixtures as night fell so that any new intruders wouldn’t be able to see in his basement.

“That was a major issue for us as well,” Strandberg said.

“We agreed that might have been part of a plan to see if there were more people coming, possibly, or to possibly clean something up or get rid of something,” Strandberg said.

“I definitely thought that everything he had done was precalculated,” Strandberg said.

Smith was a trained security engineer for U.S. embassies until his 2006 retirement. Fed up over a series of burglaries on his property, he had set up a surveillance system that picked up images of Kifer and Brady outside his home. Inside the house, police found hours of audiotapes on a digital recorder, with sounds of shots fired, bodies dragged on tarps and Smith taunting the dying teens.

The teens were shot repeatedly about 10 minutes apart, with Brady killed first.

Prosecutor Pete Orput portrayed a killer who sat in a reading chair with two guns nearby until the break-in, then methodically dispatched Brady and Kifer with final shots at close range.

The audio was particularly difficult for the jurors, Strandberg said.

“The whole audiotape itself was pretty hard to listen to,” he said. “It was pretty bone-chilling.”

Strandberg said jurors didn’t learn a whole lot about Smith’s background, except that he served in the military, had worked for the State Department overseas for about 20 years and was trained in surveillance.

Smith’s defense might have been more plausible, Strandberg said, if it had appeared that he had “just been doing something around the house” when people broke in and he confronted them.

Jurors also discussed why Smith hadn’t called 911 before the burglary, when he heard the sound of breaking glass and saw the shadow of someone peering in the window.

“Obviously, he might have had a little bit of fear, I mean just with the whole situation itself,’’ Strandberg said. “But as far as everything else goes, I feel that he had pretty much planned just about everything out and was ready for whatever came his way.”

Strandberg said there were a couple of nights where he lost sleep over what he heard and saw in the courtroom.

“It was a tough job, no doubt about it,” he said.

For Mrosla, a retired farmer from Bowlus, Minn., the verdict was the right one but also completed the destruction of three lives that began that Thanksgiving Day.

“It’s a terrible tragedy, because not only did the children lose their lives, but they destroyed the man, too, by coming into his house,” Mrosla said.

“Nobody won. The children lost, and now he has lost, too.”

[ForeverChiefs58]

They argued that Smith, whose home and adjoining property had earlier break-ins, had planned to take matters into his own hands.

In closing arguments Tuesday morning, Orput said that Smith was setting a trap for a neighbor girl who he believed had been behind the break-ins.

The prosecutor contended Smith saw her drive on his street that morning and set the plan in motion: moving his truck to appear as if he weren’t home, activating an audio recorder in his basement, loading his guns and settling into a basement reading chair with water, snacks and a novel.

Orput said Smith had a tarp ready in his basement to wrap the body of Brady after he shot him.

“Some of you hunters will think this sounds like deer hunting,” Orput told the jury.

Later, showing a photograph of the chair where Smith sat in his basement, he called the scene Smith’s “deer stand.”

Orput questioned why Smith didn’t call police, why he didn’t shout a warning before shooting. “Is that reasonable?” he asked the jury.

Meshbesher said Smith was increasingly scared as burglaries increased at his home, then was frozen in fear once he saw shadows outside and heard someone break glass in his upstairs bedroom window the day of the shootings.

He said if Brady and Kifer hadn’t broken in, there would have been no trial.

“Homes are where we live to feel safe, and it’s our castle in this country,” Meshbesher said. Smith, he added, grew more and more afraid to live in his own home. He’d been carrying a gun around with him inside.

A case about limits

Prosecutors used Smith’s own chilling audio recordings of the shootings against him, playing them for the jury three times over the course of the trial.

In the closings, the jury again heard glass breaking, booming gunshots and the groans and screams of the two teens. They also heard Smith utter, “you’re dead” and call Kifer names.

As the recording of the shots rang out in the silent courtroom, Smith sat at the defense table with his hands in his face, trembling. A juror cried.

Orput also played excerpts from Smith’s recordings before and after the shootings when he was presumed to be talking to himself.

Before the shootings he can be heard asking to see a lawyer — what Orput called a rehearsal. After, he talked about how he did his “civic duty” and said “like I give a damn who she is.”

Smith’s friend and neighbor Bill Anderson was visibly upset after the verdict. He had testified in the trial about how fearful Smith had become after repeated break-ins and said Tuesday that Smith was the victim.

“Byron Smith is one of the nicest gentlemen you’re ever going to meet,” he said. “If one of you people would have a flat tire in front of the courthouse today … that gentleman would go buy you a new tire and send you on your way.”

[Omaha]

Well, that was easy. Why was it so hard to figure out what the right answer was here? Reading back through the discussion, it's hilarious to me how some of you guys can't find the pertinent facts and how people grab onto some irrelevant tidbit and run off on some crazy fantasy tangent. I hope this shows you guys that it will usually go better around here if you just read my posts and accept them for fact. Never doubt me again. Thank you.

[Prison Bitch]

a man who methodically planned for a violent confrontation rather than a homeowner surprised by intruders.


/end thread

[Rudy tossed tigger's salad]

Originally Posted by Omaha

Well, that was easy. Why was it so hard to figure out what the right answer was here? Reading back through the discussion, it's hilarious to me how some of you guys can't find the pertinent facts and how people grab onto some irrelevant tidbit and run off on some crazy fantasy tangent. I hope this shows you guys that it will usually go better around here if you just read my posts and accept them for fact. Never doubt me again. Thank you.

But what if Haile had been fat? Same opinion?

[Omaha]

Originally Posted by Rudy lost the toss

But what if Haile had been fat? Same opinion?

Justifiable homicide. Mercy killing. Truth, brother.

[Rudy tossed tigger's salad]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf

I don't want the guy to get off. I'm just glad there are two less scumbags in the world and hopefully one less crazy guy on the streets. Like I said earlier, win win.

Because nobody with a troubled past has ever gone on to do something meaningful.

I can't think of a worse poster.

[Predarat]

I still think most of the charges are bullshit. They are worthless home invaders who invaded his house, robbed him and terrified him repeatedly. If the cops, DAs and judicial system in general had been doing its job these thugs would have been locked up, not repeatedly invading homes. I'm not saying he should have got off scott free with nothing but the charges are way too harsh for what happened. Had he hunted them down on public property or their own property, hell yes, 2 counts of murder 1. But they broke into his home.

[Omaha]

Originally Posted by Predarat

I still think most of the charges are bullshit. They are worthless home invaders who invaded his house, robbed him and terrified him repeatedly. If the cops, DAs and judicial system in general had been doing its job these thugs would have been locked up, not repeatedly invading homes. I'm not saying he should have got off scott free with nothing but the charges are way too harsh for what happened. Had he hunted them down on public property or their own property, hell yes, 2 counts of murder 1. But they broke into his home.

None of this makes a bit of difference. None of this gives him the right to take matters into his own hands and execute them... even if he made the world a better place. It really is that simple. He can protect himself and his home, but, once he has done that, he can't take it upon himself to execute them. How is this still being argued?