Questions tear at those who knew two slain Little Falls teens

Star Tribune ^ | November 26, 2012 | Joy Powell

[rabidralph]

Here's another account of the story. The guy was a security officer at the State Dept. Sounds like he would have been useful in Benghazi, after reading what he did to these would-be burglars.

[ansel12]

Sure, you are correct, but I don’t think that we need to accept the claim of a twisted murderer with 20 years in the security business, telling us that his house has been burgled 8 times in recent years, and that explains the bodies hidden in his basement as the neighborhood searched for the teens.

It sure doesn’t explain him executing them, both unarmed, and the second a female, this is one creepy dude, and there was a lot going on in that basement, and it was all being done by him.

[Popman]

——while principal Scott Doss of Pillager High School, where Brady had attended, said he had a ‘million-dollar smile-——

Well then, he is obviously innocent.... punk burglar don’t have million dollar smiles / S

[Uncle Chip]

"If you're trying to shoot somebody and they laugh at you, you go again," Smith told investigators

Wow. He wanted to teach her a lesson. But as a former government employee, he should have realized that you have to have a teaching certificate to do that.

[ansel12]

I was thinking of the pharmacist that was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life.

For the first few hours he appeared to be a citizen hero, he was in shootout in his drugstore and killed one of the two teen robbers, both of who had guns, and he described the bullets whizzing by, and how he was hit in the arm, and he showed his bandaged arm to the cops, he explained of his having commanded troops in combat, and the mass of killing that he had done with his 50cal machine gun, and so on.

The video revealed that he had executed an unconscious teen who had never been armed, after calmly going over to fetch another pistol, after chasing the other guy out of the store, the armed teen had never fired before fleeing, there was no shootout, and his Desert Storm war stories were totally made up, he wasn’t there, he seemed to have a history of living in a Rambo fantasy.

It was another case of a couple of criminal types running into a psycho killer type, who is crazy as a loon.

[rabidralph]

LOL!

[ansel12]

That basement became quite a killing place, he was murdering them, and not with clean shots.
They were unarmed, and first he would wound them below the waist, he seems very much in control of the situation, and very deliberative, I think it is OK to guess that he was talking to them while he was killing them, the execution shots were close, intimate, and in the face, as they lay on their backs, on the floor looking at him.

“”Wetzel said that while the shootings happened on Thursday, Smith waited until Friday to report the deaths, explaining that “he didn’t want to trouble us on a holiday.”

In the complaint, Smith said he was in his basement when he heard a window breaking upstairs, followed by footsteps that eventually approached the basement stairwell. 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 down on his chair. After a few minutes, Kifer began coming down the stairs and he shot her as soon as her hips appeared, he said.

After shooting her with both the Mini 14 and the .22-caliber revolver, he dragged her next to Brady. With her still gasping for air, he fired a shot under her chin “up into the cranium,” the complaint says.

“Smith described it as `a good clean finishing shot,’” according to the complaint.

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

[Uncle Chip]

He was a security officer for the State Department. Do you think that he would fearfully cower down in the basement if he heard glass breaking upstairs???

He may have caught them breaking in and then took them down into the basement, interrogated them about where his stuff was, and then executed them. I wouldn't doubt that for a moment with this guy .

And I find it hard to believe that the girl would come down into the basement after hearing the gunshots and would not have been hightailing it out of there.

[21twelve]

Or maybe the broken glass was a ruse.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the two kids left their Thanksgiving Day festivities to find a quiet place out in the woods to smoke a joint or something. Ended up on or near his property and that was enough to set the old guy off.

If it is true he has been broken into 8 times then that would be enough in some people’s enraged minds to execute even trespassers.

I imagine the forensics will get it sorted out easily enough.

[sakic]

If he did those things he forfeits any sort of benefit of the doubt. His best bet is temporary insanity in that case.

[stellaluna]

Something is wrong here. If a shoot a criminal breaking into my place that’s self defense. If I shoot him and then after realizing that he’s not dead I finish him off with a head shot that’s not self defense. And leaving two bodies stiffining in the basement for a day isn’t exactly normal. That he happened to have a tarp just lying around in the basement is interesting as well. I think he’s going to do some time in prison unless his lawyers can convince a jury that he was so freaked out that he simply lost his mind.