Sentence commuted for Nebraska cult killer: “From the depths of hell to a life of great peace.”

Later this summer Timothy Haverkamp will be a free man. He’s been out of jail for five years, but not quite free.

In 1985 freedom of any kind seemed impossible.

How could Nebraska ever release someone who participated in the barbaric torture and murder of another man on the orders of a self-proclaimed prophet of god?

Haverkamp is sworn in before Board of Pardons. (Bill Kelly)

In the Nebraska State Capitol today the shy and soft-spoken convicted murderer convinced the traditionally hardline Board of Pardons he deserved their trust. One board member said Haverkamp had emerged “from the depths of hell…to a life of great peace.”

Haverkamp spent 24 years in prison for his role in the barbaric torture and murder of James Thimm. In 1985 both men lived with Michael Ryan and his small band of religious zealots and survivalists on a farm outside of Rulo, Nebraska. 

It was, arguably, the most sensational crime in the state since the Charles Starkweather murder spree in 1959.

No reasonable person wants to read the details of what Ryan and four of his followers did to Thimm. Summaries of the crime in court documents turn the stomach and can bring on tears. Every aspect of life on the Richardson County farm, dictated by the sadistic Ryan, justified by his twisted interpretation of the Bible in general and the Book of Revelation in particular.

Thimm earned the cult leader’s scorn for questioning his beliefs. Ryan orchestrated several days of torture for the man. Four other followers, including Haverkamp, did as they were told as Thimm was skinned alive, his limbs broken, and worse.

Police raided the compound and discovered the grave of another victim of Ryan’s. Five-year-old boy Luke Stice died after Ryan hit him in the head for talking back.

Haverkamp was convicted of second-degree murder. He joined others from the cult in testifying against Ryan. At the time only Ryan’s teenaged son Dennis continued to maintain that they were doing god’s work on behalf of his father. He too has since been released from prison.

Haverkamp got out of jail five years ago. Like anyone on parole he was required to regularly report to a parole officer, submit to drug tests, and stay out of any kind of trouble. By doing everything right, he earned the right to request ending even that routine. Commuting  his sentence would reduce the life sentence handed down by the Richardson District Court to roughly the time he already served in jail. Unlike a full pardon, the state would not nullify the original conviction. He will always remain a convicted felon.

Under oath Haverkamp told the board it had been over 30 years since “the incident” and during his time on parole he’s led a “productive, law-abiding life.” He spoke for less than thirty seconds.

Esther Casmer. the chair of the state’s Parole Board was asked to review the case by the Attorney General and report back to the Board of Pardons. She and the rest of her board gave unqualified support to commuting Haverkamp’ s sentence. She said there were “no hitches” in his parole. Casmer, who has reviewed the cases of hundreds of prisoners on parole, said Haverkamp’s “exemplary” post-release record was “not the norm.”

“He hasn’t even had a parking ticket,” she marveled when we spoke after the hearing.

No one spoke in opposition to the sentence reduction.

Answering questions from the board Haverkamp spoke of the “great support” he gets from family and his church. He has a steady job, often working six days a week and volunteering when possible for Habitat for Humanity. He fishes for relaxation. His aging parents live in Kansas and he’d like to be able to visit without first getting permission from a parole officer.

Governor Heineman previously warned Haverkamp that getting a sentence reduced on a murder conviction was almost unheard of under this board. All three members tend to take a hard line on law and order issues. Yet no reservations were heard at the hearing.

“All we’re really doing here is deciding whether he has to continue checking in with his parole officer every six months for the rest of his life,” said Attorney General Bruning. “It’s an unnecessary expense to the taxpayers” since he’s been successfully rehabilitated.

Haverkamp leaves the State Capitol. (Bill Kelly)

The vote was unanimous. Timothy Haverkamp earned his freedom. He left the Nebraska State Capitol Building playing cat and mouse with newspaper and television photographers, successfully ditching the pack without making a comment.

In 2009 at his parole hearing Esther Casmer reminded everyone in the room that laws to punish criminals are written to protect the community from people “we are afraid of, not those who we are angry with.”

Nebraska is still very much afraid of Michael Ryan. The man who convinced Haverkamp and the other others to savage another human being in the name of god remains on death row. The Nebraska Supreme Court recently rejected his latest effort to stop his execution. There is no word about when, or if, Nebraska will be able to carry out its first execution by lethal injection.

Facing Execution, Nikko Jenkins Continues His Bizarre Legal Journey

Nikko Jenkins told everyone he understood.

He understood he was giving up his right to a trial.He understood he was admitting to the murder of four people.He understood what happened in court could land him on death row.

Just when everyone thought, "okay, this should wrap things up," Jenkins started back-tracking, bobbing, weaving, and (I say this without fear of libeling or slandering the man) talking crazy. 

By the end of this day in court Nikko Jenkins talked his way into, at the very least, a lifetime in prison without parole and the prospect of being executed by the State of Nebraska.

He entered the court room of Judge Peter Bataillon demanding to enter a guilty plea to four counts of murder, being in possession guns and using them to commit the crime. Two hours later, stretching the patience of judge and prosecutor, Jenkins changed his mind again, pleading no contest to every count. It gave the judge the authority to pronounce him guilty on all counts.

Nikko Jenkins (Douglas Co Corrections)

Jenkins did it his way. The people who could have helped, the defense attorney "advisors" from the public defenders office, stayed close but stayed silent. The confessed killer wanted to serve as his own attorney. He wanted to explain the murders.

And what an explanation.  

The judge asked him if he killed his first two victims. "My physical person may have been there but I was not in that spiritual moment."  Jenkins claims he was moved to kill when he "heard the voice of the underworld god. That's who assassinated these individuals." It all has something to do with the "War of Revelations."

Growing more agitated as he spoke of each of the murders, Jenkins told the court he recalls seeing the victims before they were murdered but doesn't remember firing the shots or seeing their bodies. At times during his explanation he slipped into speaking in tongues or some sort of unidentifiable language. (Todd Cooper of the World-Herald earlier wrote it was the language of Jenkins personal "serpent god" Opophis. I have no reason to doubt that.)

The confession Jenkins gave to police after his arrest did not place as much of the blame on Lucifer and Opophis, according to Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine.

If there is any temptation to smirk at the absurd and surreal courtroom antics, its necessary to remind oneself why Jenkins was here. Jenkins killed four people within ten days.

The first two execution-style murders made the news barely two weeks after the Nebraska Department of Corrections released Jenkins from prison. Juan Uribe-Pena and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz were shot in the head while sitting in a pick-up truck in South Omaha. A week later a man who became friends with Jenkins in jail, 22-year old Curtis Bradford, was found outside a garage in a residential neighborhood on the north side. Two days later on the city’s west side Andrea Kruger, a waitress heading home after her shift, was shot to death and her SUV stolen. It took a few days for Omaha police to make sense out of three seemingly unrelated homicides and pull together the evidence tying them all back to the recent parolee, Nikko Jenkins.

Always methodical prosecutor Kleine laid out the details of each murder in court today. It was a 30-minute summary of what would have been presented over two or three weeks had the case gone to trial. The autopsies. The ballistics tests. The witnesses. The confessions. (Jenkins apparently killed Ms. Kruger to steal her SUV because he wanted a nice car to drive to an upcoming Lil' Wayne concert.)

Jenkins interrupted Kleine a couple of times to have him repeat descriptions of the victim’s wounds. That was too much for the family of Curtis Bradford, who fled the courtroom in tears. 

To accept Jenkins guilty plea Judge Bataillon needed the accused to say he accepted as fact statements made by the county attorney.  Jenkins wouldn't do it.  "Everything he said is completely false," said the man who started the day telling the court he was guilty. 

Clearly frustrated, the Judge changed course and asked Jenkins if he would be willing to submit a no-contest plea instead of admitting his guilt. Yes he would, but....

Jenkins launched into a rehash of claims about being treated unfairly, violations of his constitutional rights, and accusations against police involved in the murder investigation. As he spoke the five sheriff deputies providing security moved in closer to the fidgety defendant. 

The judge had enough. He cut Jenkins off in mid-sentence telling him if he had complaints he wanted to share with the world to contact the media and "do it on your own time."

A few minutes later, Jenkins was found guilty of four counts of murder.

Jenkins had one more choice to make. Should a judge or a jury decide if he deserved to be executed?  The U.S. Supreme Court says anyone facing a death sentence gets a hearing to weigh factors favoring the death penalty (like the cruelty of the crime) against factors favoring mercy (like not having a prior criminal record). Jenkins chose to leave it up to the judges. 

County Attorney Kleine leaves court (Photo: Kelly)

Judge Bataillon all but begged Jenkins to turn over his case to the public defenders office for this stage of the proceedings and stop trying to represent himself in court. It was clear throughout the day Jenkins had no grasp of the most basic legal procedures. 

Jenkins continues to insist he can go it alone. At a hearing in March Judge Bataillon warned him it’s a job that “would be very difficult for any lawyer.” Jenkins didn’t flinch. “I understand all those risks.” While mental heath experts had serious doubts about the man’s grasp on reality, Jenkins insisted he was “intellectually able” to represent himself. Back in court a couple weeks later the scope of his intellectual abilities was on full display as he swore at the judge, mocked the prosecutors, laughed manically when asked if he was competent, and howled at the bank of cameras in the hallway when being lead back to jail.  

It's likely that Jenkins' mental health will come up for discussion again. He stated repeatedly in court that he's schizophrenic and two doctors came to the same conclusion. Three other psychiatrists doubt that diagnosis and indicated he's a man capable of playing deranged to work the system.

Leaving the courtroom, in the few seconds Nikko Jenkins appeared before the wall of waiting TV cameras, he shouted out something or other in the language of his serpent god, disappearing behind a door on his way back to jail.

Did Former CSI Kofoed Plant Evidence a Second Time? While Under Oath,No One Asked.

What did not get asked in court was as important as any of the questions David Kofoed did answer.  

No one asked him under oath if he, rather than the killer, was responsible for the presence of the murder victim's blood in the trunk of Chris Edward's car.  

That will have to wait for a new trial.  If there is a new trial.  That will be the decision of District Court Judge Russell Derr.  

David Kofoed

Kofoed, once the leader of the Douglas County CSI unit, returned to the witness stand for the first time since appearing before a Federal grand jury investigating allegations he planted evidence implicating two innocent men in a double homicide case.  A District Court judge in Cass County found Kofoed guilty.  Evidence indicated Kofoed was the only logical source of a blood smear found on the underside of the dash of a car alleged to have played a part in the murder. Two teenagers who had never been in the car were later identified as the real killers.  They are now in prison.  Kofoed also ended up in jail for a time.

The grand jury testimony six years ago was secret. His appearance this week at the Douglas County courthouse was public. He did not testify at his own trial but continues to deny the old and the new allegations when interviewed.

Returning from South Carolina where he now lives, Kofoed volunteered to testify at a hearing to determine if Edwards deserves a new trial. In 2007 Edwards was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Jessica O'Grady, a one-time girlfriend. Her body was never found but the shocking amount of her blood found at the crime scene left little doubt something violent occurred.

Edwards' attorneys, Jerry Soucie and Brad Munnelly, called witnesses and submitted hundreds of pages of documents in an attempt to convince the judge that Kofoed, with unrestricted access to the collected evidence, at some point added smears of O'Grady's blood to the trunk of the car, a pair of hedge clippers, and a shovel.  

If true, the deception would be strikingly similar to manner in which Kofoed tampered with evidence in the Murdock case.  The special prosecutor who put Kofoed in jail theorized at the time the high-profile CSI director was driven to generate accolades and publicity for himself.

Soucie spent much of the court's time reviewing records and depositions of other law enforcement officials, building a foundation for Kofoed's role in the investigation while demonstrating the one-time investigator had access to blood samples taken from the scene and ample opportunity to tamper with evidence.

The most damning moment, according to Soucie, in Kofoed's reply to his very last question. He was asked if, at the time he was CSI director, one of his employees was the target of an investigation into mishandling evidence whether that investigator would be allowed to process evidence in other cases.  Kofoed said he would not allow it.  That is the point Soucie hoped to drive home to the judge. With hindsight, the evidence in the Edwards case should not be trusted, he argues, because the man put in jail for evidence tampering should not be trusted today when he claims the evidence was handled properly in 2006.

The office of the Douglas County Attorney argues it is not necessary to revisit the case because the most damning evidence has not, and cannot be, disputed.  Edwards bedroom, from a red-stained mattress to droplets covering the ceiling, was awash in the blood of Jessica O'Grady.  

In one short burst of questions to Kofoed,  deputy county attorney Katie Benson listed the inventory of items collected and tested for DNA matching the victim.  

"Did you plant blood on the mattress?"

"No," replied Kofoed.

"The headboard?"

"No."

"The night stand?"

"No'"

"The clock radio?"

"No."

"The laundry basket?"

"No'"

"The ceiling?"

"No."

She did not ask Kofoed if he planted blood in the trunk of the car.  Neither did Edwards' attorney.  Even if everyone suspected they knew what he would say, no one wanted any surprises at this stage.

More documents will be presented to Judge Derr. There may be more witnesses called by the county attorney's office.  It will likely be weeks before the judge makes the call on whether there is enough substance to give Christopher Edwards another day in court.

(The attorney who made the controversial choice of representing both Edwards and later Kofoed in their criminal cases appeared to answer questions at the hearing yesterday.  Read about his testimony here.)

Wed Lock: Two Nebraska Prison Inmates Sue for the Right to Marry

Love finds a way, even in jail. 

However two inmates in Nebraska prisons 50 miles apart can’t get married. Both are convicted murderers. The Department of Correctional Services declined to bring them together for a ceremony.  The determined couple is taking it to court.

In their complaint filed this morning in Lancaster County District Court, Paul Gillpatrick and Niccole Wetherell claim “the right to marry is a fundamental right protected by the United States Constitution that cannot be denied because the partners to the marriage are incarcerated.”  They request the judge find Corrections violated the constitution and require a wedding be accommodated.

The case boils down to who gets the bride to the church.   

The lawsuit claims the couple filled out the necessary paperwork, a “Marriage Intention Form,” but the request and an appeal through the prison grievance procedure were denied.  Wardens at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln and the Correctional Center for Women in York refused “to make arrangements to transport” Gillpatrick or Wetherell to the other prison for a ceremony and “refused to make alternative arrangements” which would permit a wedding to take place.  An alternative would include exchanging vows by video hook-up.

There is a policy for prison weddings in Nebraska.  It does not specifically block matrimony between prisoners.   

Paul Gillpatrick (DCS)

Weddings are allowed “unless  the Warden finds that the marriage presents a threat to security or  order of the institution or to public safety.”  DCS regulations  state corrections employees “will not transport inmates from one institution to another for the marriage ceremony.”  There lies the problem for the engaged couple.

Gillpatrick, 42, and Wetherell, 33, met through a mutual friend in 1998, before they both ended up in jail.  In a statement released by their attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, Gillpatrick is quoted saying “she makes me laugh, she brings smiles to my face every day and I want to marry her.”

In 2009 Gillpatrick, murdered Robby Robinson in Omaha.  It was a messy case involving meth.  He’d killed the man at the request of his sister, Jennifer Gillpatrick.  Both family members were guilty of second-degree murder.

 

Niccole Wetherell (DCS)

Wetherell went to prison ten years earlier.  In 1999 she and two other teenagers were convicted of participating in the murder of Scott Catenacci in Sarpy County.  Presiding Judge Ronald Reagan said the killing had no motive other than being “the result of idle minds with little or no moral or ethical guidance.”

She's got a life sentence.  He's in for 90 years.

The spokesperson with the Department of Correctional Services, as is standard procedure when lawsuits are filed, declined comment.  (Read the DCS marriage policy here)

Last year DCS also turned down the request of a transgender inmate, Gracy Sedlak, to marry a former prisoner.  A federal court judge rejected the lawsuit that also challenged the state’s ban on same sex marriages.

The Death of Amanda Baker and the Risky Business of Jail Guards.

The murder of a jail guard in Nebraska is rare. It’s been difficult to track down how many corrections officers and guards have been killed while on duty. We do know one more was added to the list last Friday.

Amanda Baker

For Scottsbluff, Neb., the murder of Amanda Beth Baker hit just as hard as the death of any law enforcement officer killed on the job. (There had not been an officer murdered in Scotts Bluff County since 1923.) The fact that Baker was only 24 and the inmate accused of killing her is only 15 might make it even more poignant and unnerving.

Funeral services for Baker will be held Saturday.  She was a single mother of a 6-year-old son who had returned to school hoping to stay in corrections, but as a nurse.   A statement issued by her family through the sheriff's department said: "Amanda Baker was a light in our world that was blown out much too early. With a great sense of humor and a smile that took over her whole face, any room would brighten when she entered."

Dylan Cardeilhac was in court today answering a charge of first-degree murder. He had already been busted on armed robbery. That’s where the details of the attack were made public, in paperwork filed in County Court. 

Here’s how Kevin Mooney of KNEB radio summarized the police report:

The arrest affidavit filed in Scotts Bluff County Court by sheriff's investigator Matt Holcomb says video from a camera in the cell shows Cardeilhac had talked Baker into coming into the cell to look at something on the floor. The documents say the video shows (that) as Baker's back was turned to Cardeilhac, he jumped on her back and wrapped both arms around her back and neck, the attack lasting just over two and a half minutes. 

The documents say after the attack Cardeilhac got the facility keys off Baker's belt, left the room, and opened and entered a number of cells that housed other juvenile offenders in the facility. A short time after the attack he was located in another cell and relocated to a secure cell by corrections officer Mark Botzki, who noticed a number of open doors and saw things were not as usual.

Dylan Cardeilhac is lead into court (Courtesy KOTA)

The attack only lasted a couple of minutes. About 12 hours later doctors declared Baker dead.

It was the middle of the night when Baker was called over by Cardeilhac to his cell. Throughout the state there are jail guards and sheriff deputies who work that shift every night. It takes an event like this reminds everyone it is an incredibly boring job that can become, in seconds, horribly risky.

Last fall, after two Douglas County corrections officers were injured on the job within days of each other, more rigid safety procedures were put in place. Douglas County Corrections Director Mark Foxall told the Omaha World-Herald at the time that a felony assault “on a guard typically occurs once or twice a month, a number that rises with the inmate population.”

It’s been 50 years since a guard has been killed at the Nebraska State Penitentiary. That was correctional officer John Claussen, stabbed to death in the prison’s print shop. Claussen was 70 years old. The inmate convicted of killing him died in prison in 2002, but not before he’d murdered another inmate.

Norfolk News-Journal, March 15, 1912

The penitentiary marked its deadliest day on March 14, 1912, when the warden, a deputy warden and a guard were gunned down during a dramatic prison escape in the midst of a blizzard. Three inmates escaped and later killed a farmer near Gretna. Eventually two were killed by police and the third returned to prison.

Only two months later Deputy Warden Robert Taylor was stabbed to death by convict James B. King following a church service. King was the last man in Nebraska to die by hanging.

In all, six employees of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services have died while on duty.

Meanwhile, Scottsbluff grieves Amanda Baker. The tributes from other corrections officers and those in law enforcement have filled a tribute page set up online. 

Typical was a note from a writer identified as working for corrections in Saunders County, Neb.

Know that the thoughts and prayers of all CO's here in the great state of Nebraska are with your son, your family and co-workers. Your time on this earth was short, but you served our citizens and your son well. Protecting them from the worst of the worst. Lay your shield at the doors of heaven and know we have your watch. Thank you for your service and ultimate sacrifice!