Imprisoned by Fear. Kathy Lange
everyone safe—the decent, law-abiding homeowner minding his own business and then those addicted and committing crimes? In this case, why was Statute 609.065 completely ignored by the jury?
This story is a personal look at the real Byron Smith, a man without so much as a parking ticket, who stands convicted of murder. This is the other side of the story that the media never wrote or spoke about. It is a story of consequential fear. The fear that led Byron Smith to feel unsafe in his own home for months as he was terrorized by misguided teenage thieves. He had spent great time, energy, and expense on dead bolts and replacing previously damaged locks and security cameras. On Thanksgiving Day, he had locked all windows and doors to deter entry. If he had wanted them to enter, as was the prosecutor’s trap theory, it doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t have left the doors unlocked to make sure they came in. This is also about community fear. The community’s fear of exposing drug traffic in nice, quiet neighborhoods with little resources or lack of leadership to stop it. It is all these fears—the school, the judge, the sheriff, the community, but most of all, the misunderstood, underexposed fear of Byron Smith. Was Byron Smith’s fear less significant than all the others’ fear? His was a fear that none of us could ever imagine being subject to. How many of us have come into our home finding every drawer and room ransacked, cherished items gone, wondering if and when the invaders will return? They have also stolen your guns. How many of us have felt that we may be killed by our own stolen gun? That fear would be incomprehensible for any of us and certainly not the average juror. Byron’s fear was dismissed, discarded. The deepest fear none of us should ever experience.
Chapter 1
The Neighborhood
It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2012, and my fifteen-year-old son, Dilan, was already asking about putting up the Christmas tree. At his age, I was a little surprised at how excited he was for the Christmas season as it seemed a tradition that only little ones got really excited about. It was eight thirty in the morning as I started the decorating process. We had enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with my two older children, Laura and Greg, and my mother-in-law, Colleen. Laura and Greg both live only thirty minutes away but have weekend jobs that keep us from seeing one another as often as we like. I had taken my thirty-minute walk that day as soon as I had the turkey in the oven as the temperature outside was going to take a dramatic drop later in the afternoon. On the way back from my walk around noon, I had noticed an older little red sports car and had wondered who was visiting today. As it was parked on the avenue, not in front of anyone’s home, I wondered which neighbor the car belonged due to its odd parking spot. This car would come to change the lives of myself, my family, and our neighbor forever.
One person in particular was missing for our Thanksgiving celebration. My husband, John, had invited our neighbor, Byron Smith, for the last few years. He had retired from his national security position with the State Department when he moved back to his family home to take care of his elderly mother. I first met Byron in 2009, after his mother passed, when he and my husband visited about restoring a classic car. He seemed quiet, somewhat reserved, but a very interesting conversationalist as he had lived all over the world. His job with the State Department had afforded him opportunities to live in Beijing, Cairo, Moscow, Tokyo, cities in Germany, West Africa, and many more. Each job assignment lasted three years, and then he would move on to the next embassy to install a new security system. This was not a career conducive to having a wife and children and might be part of the reason he never married. Byron was not a tall or muscular man, but spoke gently and owned a thick head of hair for a sixty-four-year-old man. I admired his intelligence, but aside from being gifted intellectually, his gentleness spoke through his wanting to care for his mother, who had passed away a few months after his retirement. He came from a family of four children. Byron was the second son. His two younger sisters were not close to him or their parents in their adult life, although one lived only thirty miles from the family home, which was now his with the passing of both parents. Byron inherited the home, and he and his older brother split the family assets. Their father had purchased stock from working at Minnesota Power, and that stock had doubled in the 1980s. Both parents lived very frugal lives, I was told, as I had never met them. When we moved to the Riverwood neighborhood in 1997, I knew of an elderly woman down the street but never had the opportunity to meet her. Their home was somewhat secluded from the rest in the neighborhood. You could see the detached garage, which Byron used as a shop to work on small projects. His father, Ted, short for Edwin, was a maintenance supervisor for the local electrical plant, a caring father, and husband to his wife, Ida. The children grew up in the fifties and sixties, going on family vacations and spending quality time together. Ted was a teacher to his children, and they did what was expected of them and were taught good behavior. Byron talked very lovingly about his mother. He once told me that his mother had called the mother of a girl he wanted to date so she could get to know the family first, as mothers would do sometimes, and he didn’t much care for that. I said that I had to side with his mom, because I would do the same thing. All the family photos showed them as a very close and active family. The only bad thing I had ever heard him say about his mom was that she was too lenient with the youngest daughter. She always made excuses for her tardiness or lack of ambition. Ida was also in the armed forces, along with Ted, so military life was embedded within the family. After Ida died and Byron was no longer a caregiver, he and my husband began to talk back and forth in the neighborhood and build a friendship. That Thanksgiving Day in 2012, Byron had declined our invitation and stated that he had not been feeling well. We later learned how very true that was. John had said that he had been acting differently for the past several weeks as several offers to go to bologna days, where one ate all the bologna your stomach could hold on a given weekday, were refused. Byron would regularly stop over to chat, but it had been at least ten days since he had walked over. Soon we would learn why.
As I started decorating the Christmas tree, I was surprised to see several police cars headed down Elm Street toward Byron’s home. His home is at the dead-end of Elm Street with a straight view from our living room window. After several cars, came several more, and soon it was a frenzy of law enforcement vehicles in the neighborhood heading down Elm Street. Then it came, a large van with the lettering BCSU—Bemidji Crime Scene Unit. As my thoughts collected in a panic, I went to find John and told him that he needed to call Byron right away. Something terrible had happened to him. John tried his home phone. There was no answer. He called his cell number. No answer. It was a stream of law enforcement vehicles headed down Elm Street. As we watched for several hours as more came and some left, a large white suburban drove into our driveway, and two police officials knocked on our door asking questions about what we had seen in the neighborhood on Thanksgiving. I told them right away that we were friends of Byron and I did not have a bad word to say about him. By this time, through social media, we had learned that two teens were shot in a basement as they broke into someone’s home. The deputy and investigator flashed their badges, then sat down, turned on a recorder, and informed me that they wanted to record my statement. I had seen the strange red car parked on the avenue around noon on Thanksgiving and just explained that it was parked in an odd spot. These officials seemed interested in what time I noticed that car parked and when I had first seen it. They recorded my answers and went out to talk with John, who was with some of the other neighbors gathered outside. They talked with John for several minutes, asked questions, and then left. They gave no further indication of what actually had happened at Byron’s home. As we wondered about our friend, Facebook was a source of information about the two teenagers that had been shot and killed burglarizing a home on Thanksgiving. My heart sank as I discovered that the red car was the car of the teens and our friend was now in jail for shooting them as they broke into his home.
Nick Brady and Haile Kifer were teens unknown to me even though I had a son who went to Little Falls High School and knew who they were. Their Facebook pages appeared to show that they were very troubled teens, obviously as they were breaking into someone’s home on a holiday. Rumors from schoolmates spread that Haile had recently been in rehab for chemical dependency. Another rumor insisted that she had moved away from her parents and had been living with a boyfriend right after she turned eighteen. Nick had the reputation of being a bully. He had been attending school in Pillager, a town thirty miles from Little Falls, and had been living with his grandparents. His Facebook page showed him holding a gun, and it wasn’t a hunting picture.