goods / clothing store with discounted prices. Byron bought a beautiful stained glass Tiffany lamp for about $100, and I purchased some mixing bowls that matched my kitchen. It was the type of store that you had to dig around to find a treasure. As we proceeded on, I took over the wheel and mentioned to Byron that I had never been to Burlington Coat Factory and had always wanted to go there. I asked him if he knew where one was located as he seemed to know the cities like the back of his hand. He said there was one right next to the Micro Store where we were headed. He wanted to pick up some printer supplies and had visited the store as it had good prices. I purchased a new coat and called it a great shopping day. We had one more stop left to Trader Joe’s in Maple Grove. Byron loves to go to Trader Joe’s for the unique foods that you can’t find in any grocery store in a small town. As we headed to the cashier, the lady behind me commented on what a gorgeous coat I was wearing. Byron made small conversation with the young cashier, who seemed interested in his work as an electrical engineer. When we left the store, I was headed for a cup of coffee for the ride home. Dilan, Byron, and I walked into Caribou, and I told them to order as it was my treat. After I came out from the restroom, Byron was having an interesting conversation with the barista, and in the process our drinks became mixed up. After figuring out who ordered what, he looked at the barista and said, “And I have to eat her cooking!” I smiled back at the barista as we left, thankful for the light conversation. Byron always seemed to be making conversations with everyone he encountered.
The next Monday, February 18, I got home from work, and Byron was not there. I was home late as I had attended our annual employee awards event. I was receiving my 15-year award certificate so wanted to attend. I knew that Byron must have gone to his house and he went alone. I was always worried when he went there alone as I knew it bothered him to be there. Maybe he needed to work on things and come to terms with what happened so he can move on to some normalcy. I finally saw him walking back to our house around 7:00. I could tell when he walked in the door that it was a hard day for him. He talked about needing to get his license plates for his car and the correct tabs got on the wrong plate. His face was all red, and it might have been from the very cold walk back to our house, but I think it was from the stress of spending a few hours in his house. He seemed irritated the whole evening and finally went to bed a couple of hours later.
The next evening, he was in a much happier mood. Other than the fact that his neighbor, Bill, had been spouting off about how his attorney and the private investigator weren’t doing their jobs, he was laughing at the jokes on the Big Bang Theory. Byron had never seen that show before. I told him once that he would remember living with us because we got him hooked on watching the Big Bang Theory. Byron didn’t have cable TV in his home because he thought it too expensive. He got irritated about the bill and had it disconnected. Upon first moving in with us, he seemed irritated with the fact that we have TVs everywhere in the house. He is very conservative and had been raised that way. He even drinks day-old coffee because he doesn’t want it to go to waste. He will eat moldy food so it doesn’t go to waste, removing the mold first. The Big Bang Theory is a show about intelligent, nerdy guys with few social graces, especially the main character, Sheldon. One night as we were watching an episode, Byron spoke out the exact words right before Sheldon delivered the same line. I looked at him and he looked at me and we both started laughing hysterically! It was the episode where Penny was down on her luck, standing at her apartment door, locked out, and carrying groceries when one of the paper bags falls apart and the groceries fall to the floor. Sheldon comes out of his apartment to a crying Penny, and she is sobbing and telling him about how everything is going wrong and that last, but not least, she just swallowed a fly. Byron said, “That’s okay, flies are all protein and good for you.” Two seconds later, Sheldon delivered the same line! It was one of his first times watching the sitcom!
At times, when I looked out our living room window and down Elm Street, I felt sad and somewhat eerie. It was a tragedy for everyone. Misguided kids lost their lives, and a neighbor and friend’s life would never be the same. This should be the prime of his life enjoying retirement, but instead he was facing murder charges. The neighbors living on Elm Street had reported that he liked to scare the neighbors with gun shots. They complained of his shooting. It was actually to keep the beavers from destroying the trees along his river property. At one point, beavers had eaten thirty-five trees that he and his dad planted, so Byron needed to thin out the beaver population on his property. He had suspected the neighbor’s daughter of coming on his property as he came home one day to find the garage had been broken into with boxes opened and glass broken all over the floor. He had purchased a collection of German beer steins, and many were missing and broken. There was a trail of clothing back to that neighbor’s property. Since our front room window faced Elm Street, Byron, now living with us, had a perfect view of the traffic going down to his property and the neighbor’s. Vehicles would stop at their house for a few minutes or so and come back out. It was so unusual and so consistent that he started filming the cars and logging dates and license numbers. My sister-in-law told me once that she and a friend were driving together and her friend said she had to make a stop at that house and it was that very neighbor living next to Byron. Her friend came out with a small brown paper bag, but my sister-in-law never questioned the contents. Byron had also heard stories while he was in the county jail awaiting a bail hearing about drug activity in the family living next door to him. Byron mentioned this to one of the deputies, and he was told that the DEA had to deal with that. It is very suspicious yet timely. Thursday seemed to be the day the supplier drops off the product in a small maroon truck, and then the parade of activity started with about twelve to fifteen cars. They would stop in for a few minutes and leave. Some of the vehicles are very predictable and scheduled. He spent several hours each day writing all the license plate numbers down and recording the type of vehicle and how long they stayed at this home. Their daughter was also a babysitter for Dilan after school when he was in kindergarten. One day my jeweled calculator was gone, too, along with some makeup. I called her mom to ask if she happened to have taken it by mistake. Her mom looked, and it was in her backpack. She said she would return it to me. Byron was told from another inmate while in the Morrison County Jail that the neighbor girl was referred to as the Pill Queen. Byron had wanted to try to capture some documentation on their unusual traffic for a long time but couldn’t get it. Living in our house had given him a golden opportunity to keep track of all the traffic going down his street. License plates were recorded along with timelines. All was turned over to the local police. Eventually, he was told that no license plates matched the known drug dealers in town, and nothing was ever heard after that. Also notable is that after Byron reported this activity, the unusual traffic ceased down Elm Street.
John came home after talking with some people downtown that a Little Falls business owner had an encounter with Nick Brady about two months before the shooting. John had run into Scott at the courthouse while attending Cody Kasper’s hearing on aiding and abetting theft at the Smith residence. Scott said that Nick Brady had driven to his house in September (2012) at fifty miles per hour demanding to see his son, who had been talking with Nick’s girlfriend at the time. Now Scott weighs 275 pounds, and Nick came to the door demanding to see him right away and stated that he “was going to kill the kid.” Scott, of course, told him to leave immediately. Nick would not leave and started calling Scott an old man and told him to get out of the way. During this time, Scott’s wife called 911. When the deputy arrived, he assumed for some reason that Scott was the one causing trouble, but when his wife explained it was Nick and company (there was another carload of kids with him in another vehicle), the sheriff’s deputy told Nick, “You are lucky to be alive. The homeowner could have shot you for coming onto his property like a maniac, and I wouldn’t have so much as issued a citation to him.”
Scott and his wife were reluctant to get involved in Byron’s trial because his wife was afraid that their son would encounter retaliation from certain friends of Nick Brady. After giving it some thought, Scott wanted to help Byron and asked for the incident report of his encounter with Nick Brady. He was told by the sheriff’s department that there was no record of this incident ever occurring. Other incidences of calls with threats to Byron by friends of Nick Brady when he was out on bail were also requested, but records were not available. The incidences occurred, and law enforcement intervened, but records of those incidences involving Nick Brady and friends
