he was a friend of ours and we were running errands for him. I thanked him for giving him privacy and confidentiality as I was afraid his number might be given out if someone overheard us. I know the T-Mobile guy was in utter shock that he had helped activate Byron Smith’s phone. Dilan looked at me in disbelief that we couldn’t get by with getting a new number for him without someone recognizing his name. As we drove home, Dilan and I decided that we would not tell Byron about the T-Mobile experience. It might worry him for nothing, so we kept it to ourselves. Similar things happened when I stopped at the local coffee shop. His face was plastered on the front page of all the newspapers—the St. Cloud Times, the Brainerd Dispatch, and the Minneapolis Tribune. People were talking about it as I stood in line to get coffee. I heard varied opinions about why he did it and a few opinions that the kids deserved it too. I was standing there silently listening to all the words and thinking if they only knew the whole story. If they only knew he was my neighbor, a person just minding his own business, and that he was living right in my home now. It was all so surreal.
A few days later Byron’s attorney assigned an investigator to his case. Ross drove a black Cadillac and wore bold gold jewelry and black leather cowboy boots. He reminded me of those TV investigators, all calm and cool, dressing really slick. He had interviewed John and I, along with Dilan, and now wanted to concentrate on the burglars. We actually had one of their classmates living in our home for several weeks by the name of Colt. Colt had also helped Byron do some yard work one day last summer. He was a teen with a strained relationship with his single mom. He and Dilan had been friends a couple of years ago but had drifted in different directions. At the beginning of October, a city policeman called me to ask permission to have Colt stay in our home for the night. Colt had an altercation with his mother, and rather than fill out foster home papers, the officer told me that Colt had named our home as a place he wanted to stay. Instead of one night, he ended up staying in our home for six weeks. I had called the officer twice during this time. My phone calls went unreturned. After several weeks, I finally went to his mother and said that she needed to work on a good relationship with her son. The tensions were growing between my son and Colt. He had overstayed his welcome with Dilan. Otherwise, I think he would have lived with us forever. Since Colt was living with us during the October robbery at Byron’s home, and because of his connections to some of the teens involved in the robberies, Byron thought that maybe he could be the one watching his home while he was living at our home. But I would have known if he would have had money or any kind of take from a robbery of that magnitude. The day Byron’s home was burglarized, Colt had been working away from our house with my husband, so he would have had no opportunity to be watching. While Colt was living with us, we went shopping for new clothes, and as Colt was with, I bought both Dilan and Colt new clothes for school. Colt stated that he had never experienced that before. It felt good to do something for someone who appreciated being treated kindly. After Colt had moved back in with his mother, he caught me in the local Walgreens shortly after the shootings and was troubled about the fact these classmates were dead. He had asked me if Byron really killed those kids and what I knew about it. Colt mentioned a couple of other teens that were involved, so Ross, the investigator, was contacted. Ross needed to talk to Colt to find out more information. He asked if I would help. I knew Colt would freeze up and not talk if an investigator was asking about them, so I agreed to call Colt to see if he would come over and hopefully, Colt would tell Ross all that he knew. I texted Colt that Friday night and asked for his help loading music into my computer. He agreed right away and stated that he wanted to pay me back in some way for the clothes I had bought for him. Three hours later, he texted saying that if my wanting him to come over had anything to do with Byron, he was not coming. I wasn’t sure how to handle that, so I waited until the next morning and told him that it didn’t. I felt bad lying to him, but we had to find out the truth. I knew he was protective of his classmates, but the truth needed to be brought forward. So when I picked him up at his home, I explained that I had seen the investigator’s car in the neighborhood and that this investigator had accused Dilan’s band of robbing Byron, which, of course, was not true. Colt agreed that in no way did that happen. We briefly talked about how well he knew the two teens, and then Ross appeared shortly, and after some conversation, he began to tell Ross everything he knew. Colt had seen Cody Kasper and Nick Brady at the mall with a fistful of cash. They were buying new clothes, snowboards, and snowboarding outer wear. He stated that they had a lot of money in their possession and that he had seen it. Ross continued to question him for another half hour. Ross gave a thumbs-up when he left as he had good information to help Byron’s case.
On Christmas Eve, our tradition was to head to Crosby to John’s mom’s home. We celebrate with her and the rest of the Lange family. Bruce was still in town, so he and Byron would spend Christmas Eve together at our home. Before we headed to Crosby, I had some gifts I had bought for both Byron and Bruce. I had bought Byron a new gray-and-white flannel shirt and also found a book he wanted to read called The Purpose Driven Life. He said one of the inmates in the county jail had a copy and he started to read but never finished. I had found it in a second-hand shop for two dollars. Since Byron was such a frugal person anyway, he would appreciate that fact. I gave each of them their Christmas gifts, and we left for Crosby.
The next morning, we started out early to celebrate with my side of the family in South Dakota. It was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive, but the time there was always full of love, laughter, and noise. There were about forty of us when we all got together. We had a nice dinner, played a dice game to exchange gifts, and then headed for home about five o’clock. My family had asked about the shootings, of course. It had been in their local paper too. John had told them the whole story so far—what we knew anyway. He did not tell anyone that he was living with us. My brother, Dan, seemed the most concerned for our safety, but he, like many others, had only heard what the news media reported. John and I had agreed that we would not tell anyone that he was living with us. When we got back home, Byron and Bruce had spent Christmas afternoon together and were in the middle of cooking a dinner for all of us. Byron had watched the parade of cars that were still going down Elm Street. He was amazed that twenty-seven cars spent the Christmas holiday observing a crime scene. We all had a glass of wine and toasted Christmas as best we could.
Bruce left several days later. He wanted to get back to celebrate Christmas at his daughter’s home, where he had to abruptly leave over Thanksgiving when Byron summoned him to Little Falls. On February 5, 2013, Cody Kasper appeared in court charged with two counts aiding and abetting burglary. Byron received the letter last week, and his attorney said he would appear on his behalf. Cody Kasper’s guilty plea was entered on April 26, 2013. He confessed to being the lookout on three different occasions. During the summer of 2012, he and Nick Brady went to Byron’s and stole cash and a Nikon camera. He told the court that Nick went in and he hid in the pine trees so he could see if anyone was approaching the home. They again went to the Smith residence between the eleventh and seventeenth of October. He again acted as a lookout, and Nick entered the garage to steal a chainsaw, copper wire, and a gas siphoning kit. He also stated that they left some things in the trees because they couldn’t carry everything, but they would come back at a later date to pick up. When asked if he assisted in carrying items to the car, he said, “No.” They each had cell phones with the lines of communication open in case anyone approached the residence. He was sentenced to ninety days of electronic home monitoring and probation. If he committed any further crimes before he was age twenty-five, his juvenile criminal record would remain with him forever.
That day while in my office, a writer, Terry Lehrke, from the Morrison County Record asked if I could let her know when things were happening with Byron’s case. Her husband had met Byron a few months back in his work at the Minnesota DNR. Terry had been very supportive of Byron and had also agreed not to print our names if we told her any information. She was very respectful of the fact that this was a stressful time, and she commented that “I have to live in this town too,” so writing carefully was important to her. I had not even thought of alerting her to this new event. Of course, the fact that these teens had been burglarizing Byron for many months should give the public more understanding of his reaction. I tried to convince Byron that he needed to submit a nice picture of himself for this article. This was his chance for the public to see him as a good guy instead of through an awful mug shot. Byron kept refusing,
