Latest / Blood Trails / S2E1: Who Murdered Mike Crites?

Transcript

S2E1: Who Murdered Mike Crites? · Blood Trails

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: When a hunter living on a remote Montana homestead went missing,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: authorities believed he'd just gotten lost in the woods, but
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: when more facts emerged along with a gruesome discovery, it
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: began to look less like a missing person and more
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: like an execution. That's next on blood Trails. On an
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: overcast night in October of twenty eleven, a Montana sheriff
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: named Leo Dutton stepped in front of local media cameras
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to deliver some troubling news.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Nine one one received a phone call from Fort Service
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: law enforcement that up in this area they were doing
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: an area check and had discovered some bags alongside the
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: road and found what they thought was bones.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: The site was near a campground about fourteen miles west
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: of Helena on the east side of McDonald Pass. Bones
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: aren't necessarily unusual at a Montana campground, especially during hunting season,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: but that's not what made those four Service officers.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: Dial nine one one.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Later that evening, County corner Mikey Nelson stepped in front
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: of those same cameras and made a shocking announcement.
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: It was my observation that we had human remains here
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: because of the very unusualness of it.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I believe it to be some type of a homicide.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: He couldn't yet say whether those remains belonged to a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: man or a woman. He couldn't say how long they'd
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: been there. He couldn't even say how many people had died.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: What he could say is that whoever was inside those
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: bags had not died of natural causes. That's because they'd
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: been hacked to pieces. Arms removed at the shoulders, legs
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: at the knees, fingertips gone, What remained had been zip
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: tied together and stuffed into plastic bags. But that wasn't
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: even the worst part.
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: I'll never forget.
• 1:59
  Speaker 6: It's just the the worst thing ever that I had
• 2:02
  Speaker 6: to tell my mom, you know, when they found that
• 2:04
  Speaker 6: first set of remains, and she asked me, you know, Connie,
• 2:08
  Speaker 6: can they tell if he was shot in the head?
• 2:10
  Speaker 6: And I told her, I said, Mom, there's no head.
• 2:14
  Speaker 6: Oh my god, the look on her face. I mean
• 2:16
  Speaker 6: to hear that about your son.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Connie Crites had been looking for her brother since he
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: went missing four months earlier. The coroner couldn't confirm it
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: that night, but subsequent DNA tests revealed that those remains
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: belonged to forty eight year old John Michael crites. When
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: John Michael, who went by Mike, had disappeared from his
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: rustic cabin north of Helena, sheriff's deputies had speculated that
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: he might have left of his own volition, But even
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: in the hours and days after Mike vanished, Connie and
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: her family knew that something was terribly, horribly wrong. Finding
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Mike's remains confirmed their worst fears, but the nightmare was
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: far from over. Almost a year later, in September of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: twenty twelve, the rest of Mike's body was discovered. A
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: man traveling down the highway had let his dog out
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: of his vehicle on the west side of McDonald Pass,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: about twelve miles from the first sight.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: When the dog wouldn't come out.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Of the bushes, the man went into the undergrowth and
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: found a human head. It had been dug up and moved,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: but investigators found a hole a short distance away with
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the same kind of plastic bags and zip ties.
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: They showed his skull and.
• 3:29
  Speaker 6: His teeth had been knocked out, so it was probably
• 3:33
  Speaker 6: just one good boom my brother fell, and then two
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: shots to the back of the head.
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: Just like that.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Mike hadn't just been murdered he'd been executed. The horrific
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: nature of the crime shocked the residence of Lewis and
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Clark County, but finding justice turned out to be a
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: longer and more tangled road than anyone could have imagined.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: The problem was Mike had enemies, not just one. For years,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: he and his neighbors had been feuding over access to
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: their properties. Tempers had flared, firearms had been discharged, and
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: lawsuits created financial incentives for making some of those neighbors disappear.
• 4:16
  Speaker 7: He said a number of things, including that that uh
• 4:20
  Speaker 7: would pay, and he was right. Mike paid with his life.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I'm Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails who murdered
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Mike Kritz Part one The Hunter. To understand what happened
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to Mike, you first have to understand who he was
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and why he was willing to do whatever it took
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: to protect his way of life. Mike spent much of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: his life in Colorado, but in nineteen ninety two he
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: purchased eighty acres of wild, undeveloped land twelve miles northwest
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of Helena, Montana. It was supposed to be a hunter's paradise,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: a place to escape the stresses of modern life, live
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: off the land and enjoy everything the mountains had to offer.
• 5:10
  Speaker 6: He just fell in love with with the land, and
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: you know, the unspoiled land in Montana.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Connie didn't totally understand her brother's attraction to Montana. Colorado
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: has mountains too, after all, But Mike's decision to build
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a house without running water and live by himself wasn't
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: just about the scenery.
• 5:30
  Speaker 6: He's like, no, I want I want to own land
• 5:33
  Speaker 6: and I want to live I want to live my
• 5:35
  Speaker 6: way basically, so he just wanted to go do his
• 5:38
  Speaker 6: thing and not be bothered.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Mike liked his independence, but he was also, by all accounts,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a hunter's hunter. It's become cliche to say that the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: outdoors is a lifestyle, but for Mike, krit's living alone
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: in a cabin he built himself.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: It truly was a way of life.
• 5:55
  Speaker 8: The first time I met Mike, extremely friendly, super nice guy.
• 5:59
  Speaker 8: He was just like a man. He lived to hunt.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Shane Allen met Mike in two thousand and four through
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a mutual friend. Mike and this friend had taken a
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: trip down to Colorado and killed what Shane described as
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: a one hundred and eighty inch mule deer that peaked
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Shane's interest, to put it mildly, and he joined them
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: on one of their next hunts.
• 6:19
  Speaker 8: You know, when we met him over there, he was
• 6:21
  Speaker 8: camping on the back of this little less ten pickup.
• 6:23
  Speaker 8: He was super simple and extremely focused on what his
• 6:28
  Speaker 8: driving life was, and that was to you know, learn
• 6:30
  Speaker 8: animals and to you know, harvest big mature animals. You know,
• 6:34
  Speaker 8: he's he was talking about the biologies and you know,
• 6:37
  Speaker 8: why why deer here, and why they're you know, what
• 6:40
  Speaker 8: they're doing that time of the year, what they're browsing on.
• 6:43
  Speaker 8: Just super super detailed. I thought I knew a lot
• 6:46
  Speaker 8: about hunting and telling met Mike.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: He used that knowledge to kill a deer on this
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: trip that most hunters would consider a once in a
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: lifetime animal. According to Shane, it was business as usual
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: for Mike.
• 6:57
  Speaker 8: And you know Mike, He's like, well, I guess game plan.
• 7:01
  Speaker 8: I'm getting up at one in the morning and I'm
• 7:04
  Speaker 8: hiking to you know, this ridge where he you know,
• 7:08
  Speaker 8: he saw deer, saw some deer way way the heck off.
• 7:11
  Speaker 8: It was like six miles in and I remember that night,
• 7:14
  Speaker 8: it was after dark and we were starting to worry
• 7:16
  Speaker 8: about it. I'm like, here, about eight or nine o'clock
• 7:19
  Speaker 8: at night, Mike comes trapesing into camp with like one
• 7:22
  Speaker 8: hundred and ninety inch typical mule deer uncle's back. I'm like, gosh,
• 7:26
  Speaker 8: he knew the game better than anybody.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Connie told me her brother was extremely intelligent, and he
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: leveraged that intelligence to help him kill big mature bulls
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: and bucks. But like all serious hunters, he didn't just
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: care about animals so he could kill them.
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: He fell in love with nature. You know a lot
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: of people have this, They have a bad impression of hunters.
• 7:50
  Speaker 6: You know, Mike loved animals. He loved animals so much,
• 7:56
  Speaker 6: and he didn't like to just kill them for fun.
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: You know, he wanted his trophies and his records, but
• 8:03
  Speaker 6: he didn't like to kill just for the sake of killing,
• 8:06
  Speaker 6: because he would cry talking about animals and animals dying.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: It was clear from our conversation that Connie loved her
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: brother dearly, so you might assume that she's looking back
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: through rose colored glasses. But Shane told me exactly the
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: same thing.
• 8:22
  Speaker 8: Everything he did was for the better man of the animal. Sure,
• 8:24
  Speaker 8: he was a hunter, and he wanted to harvest big critics.
• 8:28
  Speaker 8: But you know, he would study the different grasses and
• 8:33
  Speaker 8: I actually got a book here that when he passed away,
• 8:37
  Speaker 8: I went into his house. The sister asked me to
• 8:40
  Speaker 8: go and see if there's anything that I wanted out
• 8:42
  Speaker 8: of his house, and I grabbed a couple of things
• 8:44
  Speaker 8: and one of them was this book here. It's elk
• 8:46
  Speaker 8: Ecology and Management. Oh cool, Yeah, as I went through
• 8:51
  Speaker 8: it like he had read through this, you know, five
• 8:54
  Speaker 8: hundred page book about elk ecology, and he'd found the
• 8:57
  Speaker 8: seed that he wanted to plant on his property to
• 9:00
  Speaker 8: create better habits at for animals.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Mike was clearly intelligent, articulate, and curious, and he had
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: a wide range of interests and passions, especially when he
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: was younger.
• 9:11
  Speaker 6: After high school, you know, he became my best dance buddy.
• 9:14
  Speaker 6: So this is you know, this is the early eighties
• 9:16
  Speaker 6: when you know, music was awesome. So Mike and I
• 9:20
  Speaker 6: would we go dancing all the time.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Along with muscle cars and dancing. Connie said Mike was
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: into music, roller skating, and tennis. It doesn't sound like
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: he was exactly a homecoming king in high school. But Connie,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: who's only thirteen months older than him, says he had
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: a knack for making people laugh.
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: He wasn't mean, but he just liked to have a
• 9:40
  Speaker 6: lot of fun and mess with people. And back then
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: it was all like, yeah, your mama does this, well, yeah, no,
• 9:46
  Speaker 6: your mama does that. And Mike was the king of
• 9:51
  Speaker 6: the mama jokes, just like off the cuff, just the
• 9:55
  Speaker 6: witty comebacks, just really witty, really.
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: Funny, very very popular. It's just a fun guy.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: He had various girlfriends over the years, but he wasn't
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: in a relationship at the time of his death. He
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: worked in the trades, mostly as a metalworker, but Connie
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: says he really wanted to find a career in the outdoors.
• 10:16
  Speaker 6: He really wanted to make a living, like concerning wildlife nature.
• 10:23
  Speaker 6: He wanted to write a book.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: He dabbled in the outfitting business, but it doesn't sound
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: like he had much interest taking other people to his
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: hunting spots. In the early two thousands, he also got
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: into some pretty serious trouble with Montana Fish, Wildlife and parks.
• 10:38
  Speaker 9: The sheriff had reported to us seeing the potential for
• 10:44
  Speaker 9: some baiting where there was a lot of indication that
• 10:47
  Speaker 9: maybe that there were some bait piles. It looked to
• 10:52
  Speaker 9: him like there were a lot of wildlife parts, whether
• 10:55
  Speaker 9: that was carcasses and or antlers and that kind of stuff.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: That's Randy Arn't, a former game arden with Montana FWP.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: The information from the sheriff was enough for the wardens
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to obtain a warrant and they returned to search the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: property on a day Mike wasn't there. Randy was one
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: of the wardens who took part in that search, and
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: his recollections give us a small window into Mike's life
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: on the mountain.
• 11:18
  Speaker 9: There were some salt blocks and a bunch of really
• 11:22
  Speaker 9: dug out and scraped out areas. There were deer on
• 11:25
  Speaker 9: site that didn't leave when we arrived. He was completely
• 11:28
  Speaker 9: off grid. Right in the living room was like a
• 11:31
  Speaker 9: four foot stack hall of antlers. Most of those were sheds.
• 11:36
  Speaker 9: Before we were done, we ended up coming across a
• 11:39
  Speaker 9: lot of documentation and some photos which indicated that Michael
• 11:45
  Speaker 9: did a lot of hunting. I don't believe that he
• 11:47
  Speaker 9: killed anything on site other than there was a lot
• 11:50
  Speaker 9: of skull cap deer and bone parts.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: The wardens doubted that all those sheds and mounts had
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: been harvested legally. That meant more search warrants.
• 12:00
  Speaker 6: They had him sit outside and they went and they
• 12:03
  Speaker 6: took all the meat out of his freezer.
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: They took all of his VHS.
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: Tapes, photo albums, tons of stuff, and it was insane.
• 12:14
  Speaker 6: I have never seen anything like it. And of course
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: he calls my parents and he's just sitting there and
• 12:18
  Speaker 6: he's crying. He's like, I don't know what's going on,
• 12:20
  Speaker 6: and they took his life.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: In the end, Mike was hit with fifteen wildlife related offenses,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: including illegal feeding, unlawfully taken wildlife, wanton waste of an
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: elk or deer, and unlawful possession of a game animal.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: But when the case went to trial in June of
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, only one of those charges stuck.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: For all fourteen others, either the judge dismissed them or
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the jury found him not guilty. I reached out to
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Montana FWP to obtain the case documents related to these incidents,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: but I have yet to hear back. Connie admitted she's
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: not much of a hunter. So I asked Shane Allen
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: about the one count for which Mike was found guilty.
• 13:00
  Speaker 8: They'd changed the law that year, so you had to
• 13:02
  Speaker 8: have a special permit to hunt mule deer in specific units.
• 13:07
  Speaker 8: So he had killed a mule deer any in it
• 13:09
  Speaker 8: that required a special permit, he didn't have a special permit.
• 13:12
  Speaker 8: That was what I would call honest with six.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Court records indicate that Mike paid seven hundred and fifty
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: dollars in fines and court fees for that misdemeanor, but
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: in reality, he and his family paid a far higher price.
• 13:26
  Speaker 6: My parents had to take out a second mortgage on
• 13:28
  Speaker 6: their house. They spent one hundred thousand dollars in legal fees,
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: and I strongly believe that they caused my dad's heart attack,
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: because my dad was already stressed from all this fish
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: and game stuff, but he was so stressed out about
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: you know, the money, the money, the money, and you know,
• 13:44
  Speaker 6: there's only so much he could do for Mike.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: The death of Mike's father became a wedge in Connie
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: and Mike's relationship, which had always been strong. Connie told
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: me she still loved her brother and fully expected to
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: mend their relationship. In the eight months leading up to
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: his disappearance, she'd been meaning to call him to set
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: things right.
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: But the thing about my brother.
• 14:04
  Speaker 6: You think I talk a lot, My brother was a
• 14:08
  Speaker 6: talker and I am not even kidding. The only reason
• 14:11
  Speaker 6: I didn't call him is because I was always like, Okay,
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: I need a two hour block, and it is in
• 14:17
  Speaker 6: the back of my mind for eight months. Oh man,
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: I really need to call Mike. I really need to
• 14:21
  Speaker 6: call Mike. And I never I never made the time.
• 14:26
  Speaker 6: And then you know, we get this call that he's missing,
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: and I'm like, are you kidding me? And so I
• 14:31
  Speaker 6: beat myself up about that.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: What happened is heartbreaking, but it also shines a light
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: on one of the more humorous aspects of Mike's personality.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Connie wasn't the.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Only one to mention Mike's propensity to talk. Shane also
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: described seeing Mike's caller ID and preparing himself for a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: multi hour conversation.
• 14:51
  Speaker 8: He was portrayed as this loaner. He wasn't really a loaner.
• 14:55
  Speaker 8: I mean, you get it. You become friends with him,
• 14:58
  Speaker 8: and man, you got a connection.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Mike had his share of troubles on the mountain even
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: before the real trouble began, but at his core, he
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: wanted to preserve the animals and wilderness he loved for
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: him that work started on his own property. He felt
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: a keen sense of responsibility for what happened on his
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: eighty acres, and knowing that facet of Mike's mindset is
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: critical to understanding the debacle that happened. Next Part two,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Neighborhood. Mike's property was situated near the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: top of a mountain and had previously been part of
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: a larger ranch. In the nineteen seventies, the ranch owners
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: sold their land in large chunks, which were further subdivided
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: into twenty acre parcels. Mike bought four of these parcels,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: but he wasn't the only one. Others purchased land of
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: varying acreage, and they were all supposed to access their
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: properties via an easement called turk road. An easement is
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a legal agreement that gives someone the right to act
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: says private property. Turk Road was included as an easement
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: in the deal between the original ranch owner and the subdividers.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It allowed for quote a sixty foot public easement for
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: ingress and egress to the property. Turk Road ran from
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: the bottom of the mountain all the way up to
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Mike's place, but it wound its way through several other
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: properties before getting there. There were also parcels beyond Mike's
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: place that were accessed through various two tracks, logging roads,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: and private driveways. Here's where things start to get hairy.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Easements are notoriously difficult to litigate. There are sometimes nothing
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: more than informal agreements between private landowners, and even if
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: they're written down, it's not always clear if they continue
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to apply after those original landowners sell their parcels. Combine
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: that lack of clarity with a strong desire for privacy,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and you've got yourself a potentially explosive situation.
• 16:54
  Speaker 10: The area that we're talking about is up on the
• 16:57
  Speaker 10: side of a mountain, and the people who live there
• 17:01
  Speaker 10: do so purposely. They really don't like a lot of neighbors.
• 17:05
  Speaker 10: They like their solitude, and the person that we're talking about,
• 17:09
  Speaker 10: Mike Chritz, was one of those people.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: That's Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton. He told
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: me that from around two thousand and nine to when
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Mike went missing in twenty eleven, he and his deputies
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: were called up to that area multiple times to resolve
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: conflicts over access.
• 17:25
  Speaker 10: Where this started was a dispute over access to Mike's property.
• 17:31
  Speaker 10: There was John Meehan Katie we Wetzel owning the property
• 17:37
  Speaker 10: that they claimed that no one had an easement through
• 17:40
  Speaker 10: their property. We will get called from Mike that in
• 17:44
  Speaker 10: the wintertime John would plow his road shut that he
• 17:50
  Speaker 10: couldn't get past the road. Then we would get calls
• 17:53
  Speaker 10: that they were shooting firearms at each other.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, a couple named John Meehan
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: and Katie west So moved into a property below Mike's
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: on Turk Road. They believe that, contrary to the agreement
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: that had been in place since Mike moved there in
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: the late nineties, they could block the portion of Turk
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Road that ran through their property. They dug ditches, shoveled snow,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and even stacked up haybales across the road and coated
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: them with water so they'd freeze. Mike did not take
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: kindly to this, and he and John ended up nose
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: to nose or gun to gun on multiple occasions.
• 18:29
  Speaker 11: There was a confrontation right down pretty close to Mihan's
• 18:34
  Speaker 11: property where there was an argument about access and they're
• 18:40
  Speaker 11: shouting back and forth, not.
• 18:44
  Speaker 10: For TV language. Mike claims that he goes to leave
• 18:49
  Speaker 10: and he hears a bullet whizz over his head. Here's
• 18:53
  Speaker 10: the bang, and says the only one that could have
• 18:55
  Speaker 10: done it was.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: John Sheriff Dutton says they took a report but weren't
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: able to find a bullet or shell casings to corroborate
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Mike's story. Mehan leveled the same kinds of accusations against Mike,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: but as far as I know, he never recorded one
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: of these incidents on video.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: But Mike did.
• 19:14
  Speaker 12: Tuesday, March first, and we got John Mihan apparently going
• 19:19
  Speaker 12: snowmobile crazy again. Here tracks come right down from his driveway,
• 19:28
  Speaker 12: go right up right up the road that he's continued
• 19:31
  Speaker 12: to try to pile snow in front of, and block
• 19:34
  Speaker 12: and et cetera.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: That's Mike.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: He usually used his camcorder to observe animals, but as
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the conflict with his neighbors intensified, he also used it
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: to record the goings on along Turk Road. In the video,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: which you can check out by watching the YouTube version
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: of this episode, he appears to be near John Meehan's driveway.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: He begins to walk away as he speculates that Mehn
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: had been trespassing on his property.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: Which is when a shot rings out.
• 20:05
  Speaker 12: Well, I'm hoping you guys just heard that shot. I
• 20:09
  Speaker 12: just heard a bullet fly over my head. I see
• 20:13
  Speaker 12: horses running there. So we'll see if that's enough to
• 20:23
  Speaker 12: uh make you make you law enforcement types do something.
• 20:31
  Speaker 12: I hope you will. It's not getting any better up here.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: You can't hear the bullet whiz passed in the video,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: but the way Mike's breathing gets heavier indicates that his
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: stress levels are rising. What's more, Mike wasn't the only
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: one to accuse Mehn of this kind of behavior.
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: We were consistently confronted by this neighbor.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Gloria Flora and her husband Mark into another property in
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: this area around two thousand and four, when she left
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: her job as the supervisor of the Lewis and Clark
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: National Forest. She and Mark purchased one hundred and sixty
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: acres just north of what would become John Meehan's place.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Like Mike, they'd moved up that mountain for the wildlife,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the solitude, and the challenge of living somewhere genuinely wild.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Gloria spoke with me about how she and her husband
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: found themselves in Meehan's crosshairs, just like Mike did.
• 21:28
  Speaker 7: Uh. The first time my husband I encountered the owner,
• 21:34
  Speaker 7: he was drunk on our driveway and my husband asked
• 21:40
  Speaker 7: him what he was doing there, and he said, I'm
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: your new neighbor and I want to use this road
• 21:47
  Speaker 7: and I want to use your property for my recreation.
• 21:52
  Speaker 7: And we said, sorry, this is you know, there are
• 21:57
  Speaker 7: very strict limitations on this property because of the conservation aisement.
• 22:02
  Speaker 7: And he said a number of things, including would be sorry,
• 22:08
  Speaker 7: and he also said that would pay.
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: And he left.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: At first, Gloria says John Mihan tried to block access
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: along Turk Road using the same tactics I've already mentioned,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: but eventually he put up a gate and the alternate
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: route to the Flora's property took them an extra hour
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: along twelve miles of logging roads and two tracks. They
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: contacted a sheriff's deputy who advised them to put up
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: cameras to document any illegal activity. Those cameras ended up
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: being a critical part of this story, but we'll get
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: to that in a minute. The Floras decided to build
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: their own driveway to avoid me Hen's property entirely. But
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: instead of mollifying the man, it actually seemed to make
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: things worse.
• 22:51
  Speaker 7: Then once we were using the driveway, that's when they
• 22:54
  Speaker 7: would shoot at us. There was one time he used
• 22:58
  Speaker 7: a rifle. I was driving out of the drive my
• 23:00
  Speaker 7: new driveway, not on his property, and he shot right
• 23:04
  Speaker 7: over my car and you could just hear it go
• 23:06
  Speaker 7: right over the car.
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 23:07
  Speaker 7: The way that we had to do to use our
• 23:10
  Speaker 7: driveway was you predoualge your phone to nine to one one,
• 23:16
  Speaker 7: You had a loaded gun on your lap, and you
• 23:19
  Speaker 7: had a camera or some other video recording device every
• 23:23
  Speaker 7: time you left the property.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: This was supposed to be the Flora's dream home where
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: they'd retire to enjoy the fruits of long and successful careers.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: But they had no idea who would move in next door,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: and I can only assume neither did Mike.
• 23:41
  Speaker 7: You know, Mike was going through the same thing. So
• 23:44
  Speaker 7: I don't want to make this about us. You know,
• 23:46
  Speaker 7: we're talking about Mike, but we know that Mike was
• 23:51
  Speaker 7: not exaggerating. We know that Mike was not conflating. You
• 23:55
  Speaker 7: know some other issues or you know, past trauma or
• 23:59
  Speaker 7: whatever you want. This was very real. These were angry,
• 24:05
  Speaker 7: nasty encounters.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Shooting at someone is a serious crime, even in Montana.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Gloria says she and Mark kept the Lewis and Clark
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's office apprized of everything Mehan was doing, but
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: they were frustrated by what they saw as a lack
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: of action.
• 24:20
  Speaker 7: You know, and we were keeping the local authorities informed,
• 24:23
  Speaker 7: and the local authorities tried to make it out like, oh,
• 24:27
  Speaker 7: this is Hatfield and McCoy, you know, these are just
• 24:29
  Speaker 7: two neighbors, and it's like, dudes, this isn't Hatfield and McCoy's.
• 24:34
  Speaker 7: It's like Hatfield's period.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: I asked Sheriff dutn't about this, and he said they
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: always responded when they got a call from either party
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: up on the mountain.
• 24:43
  Speaker 10: Each would call with their own story. We would investigate
• 24:46
  Speaker 10: it multiple multiple times. Mike felt and had had tracks
• 24:53
  Speaker 10: where John had stoked him on a four wheeler, and
• 24:58
  Speaker 10: then John me and would say that Mike was stocking him,
• 25:03
  Speaker 10: and it was it was difficult for us, you know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 10: we can't take sides. We operate off of what evidence
• 25:10
  Speaker 10: is present.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Dutton pointed out that as in any jurisdiction, he
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: isn't responsible for charging someone with a crime. He can
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: arrest someone for an obvious instance of lawbreaking, but it's
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: up to the county attorney in this case, a guy
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: named Leo Gallagher, to actually prosecute. When it came to
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: access disputes, Sheriff Dutton said that Gallagher didn't want to
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: get involved.
• 25:32
  Speaker 10: When John flowed in Mike's access to his property. We
• 25:37
  Speaker 10: responded to pictures and referred that to the county attorney,
• 25:42
  Speaker 10: and then the county attorney would look at that and
• 25:44
  Speaker 10: decide not to prosecute.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Now, it's important to note that Mike wasn't totally innocent
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: when it came to neighborhood conflicts.
• 25:52
  Speaker 7: A neighbor down at the bottom of the road was
• 25:54
  Speaker 7: looking for her dog and she drove up to Mike's
• 25:57
  Speaker 7: area with her kids in the car looking for her dog.
• 26:01
  Speaker 7: She's not there to do evil. Well, Mike got rude
• 26:05
  Speaker 7: with her, got in her face, what are you doing here?
• 26:08
  Speaker 7: And you know, and he's wearing his gun and she
• 26:10
  Speaker 7: was very scared, and you know, the kids were in
• 26:12
  Speaker 7: the car, and Mike was wrong. He shouldn't have done that.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Mike agreed that he shouldn't have acted the way he did,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: and he told the Floras he drive down and apologize. Unfortunately,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Mike's peace offering was not taken in the spirit it
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: was given.
• 26:27
  Speaker 7: Her freaking husband comes out and takes a swing at Mike.
• 26:30
  Speaker 7: It's like, you jerk. You knew he was there to apologize.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: The Sheriff's office wasn't called in this situation as far
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: as I know, but the law did eventually catch up
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: to Mehan. In November of twenty ten, about seven months
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: before Mike went missing, Mike called the flooras because he'd
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: gotten stuck on the road and needed help. But when
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: they arrived, they saw Mihan pointing a gun at their friend.
• 26:54
  Speaker 7: You know, he had Mike pinned down on the road
• 26:56
  Speaker 7: because he's above him. He's in a superior position with
• 26:59
  Speaker 7: a rifle point and right it might and his wife,
• 27:03
  Speaker 7: who's pretending she's hunting, is actually gone across the draw
• 27:08
  Speaker 7: and is watching everything that's transpiring through her rifle scope.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Mihen was arrested and charged with felony assault with a
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: deadly weapon, but he struck a deal and pleaded guilty
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: to negligent endangerment, a misdemeanor. The case was dismissed by
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: a judge two years later. He ended up paying eighty
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: five dollars in court fees. Connie didn't live in Montana
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: while this was happening, but she'd hear bits and pieces
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: from her brother. I asked her, looking back, how she
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: explains the way the situation was allowed to spiral so
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: far out of control.
• 27:42
  Speaker 6: It's small, and it's the county Sheriff's department, right, and
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: the county is huge, you know, this county is huge.
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: So there was a little bit of that.
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: There was, you know, there was a little bit of
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: you know, we don't like this guy anyway, and then
• 27:56
  Speaker 6: I'll be honest, there was a little bit of, shoot,
• 28:00
  Speaker 6: this guy's a loner, nobody cares about him.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: This wasn't true.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Of course, Mike had a family who loved him dearly
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: and friends around the country who he spoke with regularly.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: One of those friends, Shane Allen, can't help but think
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: if this conflict had been handled differently, his friend would
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: still be alive.
• 28:18
  Speaker 8: It breaks my heart that he had went to authorities
• 28:21
  Speaker 8: so many times trying to resolve it and continually got
• 28:26
  Speaker 8: told we're not getting involved Unfortunately, there's no accountability there,
• 28:30
  Speaker 8: and I don't know who ultimately who should have been
• 28:33
  Speaker 8: the ones that got involved from a legal standpoint, to
• 28:37
  Speaker 8: make sure that it never got to the point that
• 28:38
  Speaker 8: somebody lost their life.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: The problem for law enforcement was that the disagreements on
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: that mountain went beyond Mike Kritz and John Miehan. Other
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: disputes had erupted over the years, some of which had
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: also escalated to include firearms. Like the Floras, these individuals
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: had purchased property they hoped would become their picture perfect
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: retirement getaway, and they weren't about to let aloner like
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Mike Crits get in their way.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: That's next after the Break Part three.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Missing Mike went missing on Sunday, June twenty sixth, twenty eleven,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: and Gloria and her husband were two of the last
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: people to speak with him before his disappearance.
• 29:27
  Speaker 7: Mike called us on a Sunday morning around nine o'clock
• 29:34
  Speaker 7: and our daughter in law and grandkids were visiting, and
• 29:40
  Speaker 7: it was the first time that they had visited since
• 29:43
  Speaker 7: before two thousand and eight because we won't let them
• 29:46
  Speaker 7: come to the property because of the danger.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Gloria was making brunch for her grandkids, But when she
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: heard her husband talking to Mike, the couple stepped into
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: another room and Mark turned on the speakerphone.
• 29:58
  Speaker 7: And Mike said, look, Ford showed up here last night screaming,
• 30:03
  Speaker 7: beaten on my door, beaten on the walls, telling me
• 30:06
  Speaker 7: I better open the gate or or else. And he said,
• 30:10
  Speaker 7: I told him to. You know, it was dark and
• 30:13
  Speaker 7: Mike's wolf dogs were gone crazy, and so I told
• 30:17
  Speaker 7: him to come back at ten o'clock this morning. Can
• 30:20
  Speaker 7: you come up and be with me when he shows
• 30:24
  Speaker 7: up to witness what's gone on.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Mike was referring to another neighboring property owner named Leon Ford.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Ford lived in Washington State with his wife, but he'd
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: purchased two parcels higher.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: Up the mountain from Mike's place.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: The easiest way to access his property was to use
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: a road that ran through Mike's. Ford believed he had
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the legal right to use that road, but Mike disagreed,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: and the sheriff's deputies had been called to settle a dispute.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven. As with John Meehan, both
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: men claimed the other had pulled a firearm, and Mike
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: accused Ford of cutting open one of his There was
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: no love loss between Ford and Mike, but since Ford
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: only visited his property every few years, the conflict wasn't
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: as intense as with Mehan. Still, it put the Floras
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: in an awkward position. They wanted to support their friend,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: but they didn't want to be hypocrites. They couldn't back
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Mike in blocking access through his property while they were
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: engaged in a legal battle to stop John Meehan from
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: doing the same to them.
• 31:25
  Speaker 7: And we said, you know, Mike, we're in the middle
• 31:27
  Speaker 7: of this god awful lawsuit. We don't know if you're
• 31:31
  Speaker 7: in the right and we're just sitting down to Sundy
• 31:34
  Speaker 7: brunch with the kids.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: They advised Mike to record his conversation with Ford and
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: let them know how it went. Gloria said. Mike seemed
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: annoyed that they refused his request, which is why they
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: weren't concerned when they didn't hear from him the next day.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: But then something happened that sent them running up the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: road to check on their friend.
• 31:53
  Speaker 7: Our daughter in law Arrow. She started yelling in the afternoon,
• 31:56
  Speaker 7: she said, oh my god, there's wolves. There's wolves. There
• 32:00
  Speaker 7: were wolves at our driveway. Our little Yorkshire terrier went
• 32:05
  Speaker 7: out the gate. One of the wolves grabbed my terrier
• 32:09
  Speaker 7: by its head and ran.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Mark ran from his house, grabbed the nearest stick, and
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: gave chase. The wolves were running back towards Mike's place,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and thankfully they dropped the terrier after about a quarter mile.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: The small dog was unharmed, but Mark quickly realized that
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: those weren't ordinary wolves.
• 32:28
  Speaker 7: And then Mark sees the collar and then he recognizes.
• 32:31
  Speaker 7: He said, oh shit, these are Mike's dogs.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Mike owns several high content wolf dogs that he kept
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: in a fenced yard on his property. You can see
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: images of these dogs in the case file for this episode,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: and it's clear that he loved them and took care
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: of them. The reason seeing those dogs set off alarm
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: bells is that in all the years the Floras had
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: lived next to Mike, he'd never let them run free
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: on the property.
• 32:56
  Speaker 7: He said, yeah, I tried to call Mike earlier to
• 32:58
  Speaker 7: find out what happened yesterday, and there was no answer.
• 33:01
  Speaker 7: So he goes over to Mike's and the front door
• 33:05
  Speaker 7: is open and it's like there's no Mike. And Mike
• 33:10
  Speaker 7: always had his phone with him. Mike's not using the
• 33:13
  Speaker 7: phone Mark's yelling walking around, No Mike. All Mike's vehicles
• 33:19
  Speaker 7: are there, No Mike.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Gloria said that Mike fed his dogs by walking through
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the back door of his house, not by opening the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: gate to the yard. But when Mark walked behind Mike's house,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: he saw that the gate was wide open.
• 33:34
  Speaker 7: Mike doesn't do this. He would never leave without telling
• 33:39
  Speaker 7: us or making arrangements to take care of his dogs,
• 33:41
  Speaker 7: and he would never let his dogs out.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: They called Sheriff Dutton, who sent deputies up to investigate.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: He told me that initially they weren't overly concerned.
• 33:51
  Speaker 10: We began to look as we always do, and did
• 33:55
  Speaker 10: but didn't find him. But we weren't alarmed because of
• 33:59
  Speaker 10: past practice of he was probably out in the hills hunting,
• 34:03
  Speaker 10: or he was hunting sheds.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Hindsight is twenty twenty, so given what happened, it's easy
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: to criticize the sheriff for his initial assumption. Still, Gloria
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and Mark had communicated how strange it was to see
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Mike's dogs outside the fence. They also noticed that Mike's
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: car was still in his driveway, which they told Connie when.
• 34:24
  Speaker 6: She called first, I called the sheriff and he's like,
• 34:27
  Speaker 6: he just went on a walk about and you know,
• 34:30
  Speaker 6: his dogs aren't there. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute, Okay,
• 34:34
  Speaker 6: he doesn't take his dogs on the walk about when
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: his vehicles are there, you know.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: The Sheriff's office launched a search effort on June thirtieth,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: four days after anyone had heard from Mike.
• 34:45
  Speaker 10: I launched a three week extensive search using helicopters, dogs,
• 34:51
  Speaker 10: volunteers to search every piece of the property that we
• 34:55
  Speaker 10: could find. And we brought in sent dogs to look
• 34:59
  Speaker 10: for maybe a cadaver or things like.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: That, and just nothing.
• 35:04
  Speaker 10: I was one day in a helicopter, flew slow, methodical
• 35:09
  Speaker 10: grid searched over the property. Nothing just nothing turned up.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Connie had been communicating with the sheriff from Afar for
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: about a week, but she felt like he wasn't really
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: considering the possibility that something more nefarious might have happened
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: to her brother.
• 35:25
  Speaker 6: I just felt like, I don't think they're taking this seriously.
• 35:28
  Speaker 6: So we just got in the car, me and me
• 35:31
  Speaker 6: and my boyfriend and my mom. I'm just like, we're
• 35:33
  Speaker 6: driving to Montana.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Connie wasn't able to talk to anyone at the Sheriff's
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: department when they arrived, but she saw a news van
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: parked outside the office and knocked on the door.
• 35:43
  Speaker 6: So they came out and I'm like, hi, my name's
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: Connie Creatz and my brother's missing, and YadA, YadA, YadA,
• 35:48
  Speaker 6: and the reporter was like, oh my goodness. She says,
• 35:51
  Speaker 6: I was just here trying to talk to Sheriff Dutton
• 35:53
  Speaker 6: and nobody will talk to me. And I said, I'll
• 35:56
  Speaker 6: talk to you, and then boom, wow, oh now we
• 36:00
  Speaker 6: need a search party, right, you know this is you know,
• 36:03
  Speaker 6: he's been missing for almost two weeks at this point, right, The.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Sheriff had sent out search and rescue, and by July fourth,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: detectives had also interviewed John Meehan and his wife, but
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Connie still had reason to believe the office wasn't taking
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: the case as seriously as she would have hoped.
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: We go up there, we get.
• 36:23
  Speaker 6: In his card that he drives all the time, and
• 36:26
  Speaker 6: my husband reaches over, opens the glove box.
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: And there's Mike's wallet.
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: It's like, oh, yeah, okay, no, he's not on a
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: walk about.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Nothing else seemed to be a miss at Mike's place,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: and the cadaver dogs hadn't found anything on his eighty
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: acre property. They also hadn't found any sign of a
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: struggle in the yard or in the cabin, though the
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: sheriff admitted that Mike wasn't the tidiest person, so it
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: was tough to tell. As the official search came to
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: an end, Connie's feeling of dread grew.
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: For a while, I thought he was just hurt.
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: But then after a while I was like, no, something happened,
• 37:06
  Speaker 6: and it would be really hard for Mike to get
• 37:08
  Speaker 6: hurt in the wild, on his own land. I mean,
• 37:12
  Speaker 6: like really hard.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Connie told me that to her, her brother seemed invincible.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: It didn't make sense that he'd walk off and get
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: himself hurt or killed.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: So as soon as she.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Learned more about Mike's conflict with John Meehan, her mind
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: took her to some pretty dark places.
• 37:28
  Speaker 6: Honestly, we're thinking, it's John Meehan who has done something
• 37:33
  Speaker 6: to Mike. Oh, this is really gruesome, but you know,
• 37:39
  Speaker 6: Meehan did own sled dogs, and Mark and Gloria shortly
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: after Mike went missing, they had heard all kinds of
• 37:47
  Speaker 6: commotion from these sled dogs, and then a big fire
• 37:51
  Speaker 6: and everything and there was even you know, because there
• 37:53
  Speaker 6: were no remains at this point, right, there was even
• 37:55
  Speaker 6: some talk of you know, oh, they they killed Mike.
• 37:59
  Speaker 6: They cut him up, they burned them, they fed him
• 38:01
  Speaker 6: to the dogs. I mean, it was just a bunch
• 38:03
  Speaker 6: of morbid, gruesome stuff.
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: But you know that's the thing. You've you've got no remains.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: That might sound like an overreaction, even given the circumstances,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: but Connie wasn't the only one who feared the worst.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Shane Allen told me that even before he went missing,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Mike shared his sister's fear of what was coming next.
• 38:24
  Speaker 8: The last few years, the last few years of his life,
• 38:28
  Speaker 8: you know, he was he was fearful. He knew how
• 38:31
  Speaker 8: serious it was, and he knew that there was a
• 38:34
  Speaker 8: chance that they were going to try to take his life.
• 38:36
  Speaker 8: I went up to his property and actually went archery
• 38:40
  Speaker 8: el hunting with him. He was, you know, always kind
• 38:42
  Speaker 8: of looking, always watching, thinking that you know, there was
• 38:45
  Speaker 8: eyes on him, and that was it was actually really
• 38:48
  Speaker 8: sad to see. And then ultimately what happened, you know,
• 38:52
  Speaker 8: was was exactly what he thought was going to happen.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Part four the investigation. You may have noticed that in
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of the stories we cover here on Blood Trails,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the victim doesn't have any real enemies. Hunters and anglers
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: are a congenial group, and they don't tend to make
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: other people want to kill them. But as you've heard,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Mike had already been shot at on at least one occasion.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: John Meehan had expressed real animosity towards Mike. So even
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: before Mike's remains were discovered in October of twenty eleven,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: investigators went knocking on Mehan's door.
• 39:29
  Speaker 13: Mike Critz had a number of conflicts up there. There
• 39:33
  Speaker 13: were a lot of different reports about incidents. So when
• 39:37
  Speaker 13: you brought up mister Meehan, he the Sheriff's office has
• 39:40
  Speaker 13: focused a lot of time on him as a suspect
• 39:43
  Speaker 13: in this case.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: That's Shane Shaw, a veteran investigator with a Montana Division
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: of Criminal Investigation who worked the scene where Mike's remains
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: were first discovered and later worked to find Mike's killer.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: He told me that the Sheriff's office did a tremendous
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: amount of work trying to find ever that would pin
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: the crime on Mehan. They interviewed both him and his wife,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: tried to track his movements on the day of Mike's
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: disappearance and executed search warrants on his home.
• 40:10
  Speaker 10: We got a search warrant and a ground penetrating radar
• 40:14
  Speaker 10: to go up on John Meehan Kate webs of property
• 40:18
  Speaker 10: go through cement.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Mehan didn't do much to help his case. According to
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: court documents as well as the people I spoke with,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: he engaged in some pretty suspicious activity after Mike's disappearance.
• 40:29
  Speaker 7: He also got arrested for taking down our game cameras.
• 40:34
  Speaker 7: He walks up to the game camera and takes it
• 40:36
  Speaker 7: down and doesn't take the card out.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Detectives had been using these cameras to monitor the area,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: so Meehan was charged with tampering with physical evidence. In
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: July of twenty twelve, he and his wife had been
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: interviewed and their property had been searched, so he knew
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: he was under investigation. Given the timeline, it's unlikely those
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: cameras held evidence that he killed Mike, but it was
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: nonetheless eyebrow raising behavior. But what's even more suspicious is
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: what that investigation revealed about Mihn's past comments.
• 41:06
  Speaker 8: He had stated that even if they find the body,
• 41:11
  Speaker 8: they're not going to have, you know, the evidence that
• 41:14
  Speaker 8: they need to understand how Mike was killed, basically insinuating
• 41:20
  Speaker 8: that you know he was shot in the head, and
• 41:23
  Speaker 8: you know they had separated the parts and all that.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: This information was revealed in an affidavit attached to me
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Han's tampering with evidence case. I reviewed this affidavit and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Shane got the details almost right.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: Here's what it says.
• 41:38
  Speaker 8: Quote.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: During the weekend of June twenty ninth to July one,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: twenty twelve, Mihn spoke with a concerned citizen at a
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: public event in Helena. Mihn told the concerned citizen it
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: would be impossible for police to obtain a DNA profile
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: from the bones located on McDonald's pass because police had
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: not recovered a specific body part necessary to develop a profile.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Although the fact that a complete skeleton was not recovered
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: on MacDonald's pass had been made public, the specific body
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: parts that were missing from the skeleton have been known
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: only to law enforcement. The affidavit doesn't say which body
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: part Mihan is referring to, but it very well could
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: have been the head. You don't need a skull to
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: extract a DNA profile, but It's possible Mihan didn't know that.
• 42:26
  Speaker 8: If that's the.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Case, how on earth did Miehn know Mike's skull was
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: still missing. We know investigators found Mihan's statements suspicious because
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: they put it in the arrest affidavit. Unfortunately for prosecutors,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: both the camera and the statement can be explained. Given
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: how protective Mihan was of his property, it makes sense
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: that he wouldn't appreciate being surveilled by law enforcement. And
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: while certain information about Mike's remains hadn't been released by
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: the Sheriff's office, it may still have leaked out. I
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: was told by someone close to the investigation that Mehn
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: wasn't the only person who.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: Knew that detail about Mike's.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Head, and officials suspected it had been unintentionally released. What's more,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: investigators hadn't been able to find physical evidence to prop
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: up their suspicions about Mehan. Four months had passed between
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Mike's disappearance and when the first set of remains were found.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: The search and rescue operation hadn't begun in earnest until
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: days after his disappearance, and Mike's house wasn't fully processed
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: until a full week had elapsed. That was plenty of
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: time for whoever did this to hide or destroy evidence,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: and Shaw told me they couldn't make the pieces fit
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: to justify an arrest warrant for Mehan.
• 43:39
  Speaker 13: There were a lot of things that were laid out there,
• 43:42
  Speaker 13: but none of the work they did ever did anything
• 43:46
  Speaker 13: to really put him at the scene or none of
• 43:49
  Speaker 13: the evidence connected him to the actual crime.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Shaw said that Katie Wessel, Mehan's wife, was in Helena
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: the day Mike disappeared, attending her daughter's softball game. Mee
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Han's whereabouts couldn't be confirmed, but there also wasn't any
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: evidence that he'd been on Mike's property the morning Mike
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: went missing. They did find long cable ties at Mehn's house,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: but they didn't match the ones that had been used
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: to secure Mike's remains. Mike was shot with a thirty
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: eight caliber bullet, but similarly, they couldn't match the three
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: fifty seven magnum pistol found in me Hen's home to
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the bullet fragments found in Mike's skull. A lack of
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: evidence doesn't absolve someone of a crime, and other facts
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: came to light that don't look great from Mike's neighborhood rival.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: We'll get to those in due course, but I don't
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: think there's any doubt that the history of conflict on
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: that mountain made this investigation exponentially more difficult. With so
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: many allegations of bad behavior, it was tough to know
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: which threads to pull, and even though deputies pulled as
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: many as they could, none of them led to an arrest.
• 44:54
  Speaker 10: We all had theories, but these theories just didn't work.
• 44:59
  Speaker 10: We suspects, and the theories didn't fit those suspects.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: And that's how the situation remained for eight years until
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Dutton brought in a retired share from Powell County
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: named Scott Howard. Sheriff Howard passed away last year, but
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: shortly after taking the case in twenty nineteen, he asked
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Shane Shaw to help him on a pro bono basis.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Shaw had had a decade's long career as an investigator, and,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: as you already heard, was involved in processing the first
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: sight of Mike's remains.
• 45:30
  Speaker 13: We spent hundreds of hours working on this. Over the
• 45:35
  Speaker 13: next three years.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: They reviewed the massive case file, reinterviewed suspects and persons
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: of interest, and came to some different conclusions than the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: investigators who had looked so closely at Mehan. One of
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: the first things they realized is that whoever had dumped
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Mike's body had been in a serious hurry.
• 45:54
  Speaker 13: Yes, they were trying to hide the remains, but it
• 45:57
  Speaker 13: was done in haste. It was someone who panicked, who
• 46:01
  Speaker 13: was trying to get rid of these things. These the
• 46:05
  Speaker 13: pieces of Chrits's body. This was an easy off the
• 46:10
  Speaker 13: road spot. They were taking down the hill aways. There
• 46:15
  Speaker 13: was some effort to disguise them, plastic bags, that sort
• 46:19
  Speaker 13: of thing, but they didn't take the time to dig
• 46:22
  Speaker 13: a hole and bury them the main part of the body.
• 46:25
  Speaker 13: The places where the body parts were dumped our evidence
• 46:29
  Speaker 13: of someone that's unfamiliar with the area. There's a lot
• 46:32
  Speaker 13: of public ground where if they'd driven somewhere in a ravine,
• 46:37
  Speaker 13: we probably would have never found the remains. But they
• 46:40
  Speaker 13: were dumped right off Highway twelve and two spots, one
• 46:43
  Speaker 13: on each side of the pass.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Mihan had been living on that mountain for about three years.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: He was a big time hunter, so he was familiar
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: with the area. He also had ATVs and other vehicles
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: that would have allowed him to carry Mike's body into
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: the wilderness. Why Shall wondered, would he drive out to
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: a state highway and dump Mike's remains near a campsite
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: where they were far more likely to be found. The
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: other thing that jumped out to Shaw and Sheriff Howard
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: was the timing of Mike's disappearance.
• 47:13
  Speaker 13: Mike Critz disappeared on June twenty sixth of twenty eleven.
• 47:19
  Speaker 13: That's the last day his phone was used. That's the
• 47:21
  Speaker 13: last day anyone heard from him. And so I just said,
• 47:25
  Speaker 13: what is special about June twenty sixth, What happened that day?
• 47:29
  Speaker 13: Why that day? And the event that was significant was
• 47:36
  Speaker 13: Leon Ford showed up.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Remember the morning Mike went missing, he'd called the Floras
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: to ask that they attend a meeting he had planned
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: with Leon Ford. Ford was in town to spray weeds
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: on his property as part of an agreement he had
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: with Lewis and Clark County. He didn't live on that property,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: but he'd agreed to keep his weeds under control. According
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: to Mike, Ford had arrived in town the day before,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: driven up to Mike's property and knocked on his door.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: He was angry because Mike had locked a gate on
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: a road that led back to Ford's property. This was
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: the same road they'd fought about four years earlier, in
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: June of two thousand and seven. During that disagreement, Ford
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: had cut a lock on that gate and was in
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: the process of replacing it with his own when Mike
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: confronted him.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: According to a complaint Mike.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Filed with the Sheriff's office at the time of that incident,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Ford pointed a handgun at him, then Mike said. Ford
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: had shouted, you'd better run when Mike retreated. Here's Ford
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: explaining his side of that story.
• 48:33
  Speaker 14: When he stepped out, it was a hunting rifle with
• 48:39
  Speaker 14: his coupe on it, and as he started to walk
• 48:41
  Speaker 14: toward me, he cradled it across his body into his
• 48:46
  Speaker 14: right hand. Didn't point it at me, but he was
• 48:50
  Speaker 14: All he would have to do is lift it up.
• 48:52
  Speaker 14: As he got closer, and still no talking, I just
• 48:56
  Speaker 14: pulled the gun out and down the back of my blague.
• 49:01
  Speaker 8: He didn't see it.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Ford returned to the gate three days later and saw
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: that it had been welded shut. He kicked the gate
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: until the welds broke and went back up to his property.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: The next day, Mike was served an order signed by
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: a Lewis and Clark County judge ordering Mike to allow
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Ford to use that road. There is some disagreement about
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: whether the judge made the right call here, but there's
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: no question that Mike was served with the order. With
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: this history in mind, you can see why four years later,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Ford would be upset that the gate once again was closed.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: But you can also see why Mike might be nervous
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: about the meeting planned for the next morning. He was
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: already worried about the neighbors who lived on that mountain,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: and now here's another guy showing up out of the blue,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: who he says had pulled.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: A gun on him.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: He didn't know if Ford might do the same thing again.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: So I have no doubt that tensions were high as
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: the ten thirty meeting time approached.
• 49:56
  Speaker 13: When you look at that, that seems to be the
• 49:58
  Speaker 13: incident that set this off.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: The next day rolled around and phone records show that
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Mike called a friend of his and Billings after he
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: spoke to the Floras.
• 50:09
  Speaker 13: And he tells him someone's here, and he hangs up
• 50:13
  Speaker 13: the phone, and that's about ten thirty. So you have
• 50:16
  Speaker 13: a conversion of events, which it's kind of unique that
• 50:21
  Speaker 13: somebody's on the phone when someone shows up at his
• 50:24
  Speaker 13: house and the only vehicle that went up the road
• 50:27
  Speaker 13: is leon Ford's.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: We know this is true thanks to those trail cameras
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: the Floras had set up during their conflicts with Mihan.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: Detectives pulled the SD cards and at ten thirty seven
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: am on June twenty sixth, leon Ford's read nineteen eighty
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: six Chevy pickup can be seen in a video driving
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: up Turk Road towards his and Mike's properties. This is
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: the same time Mike hung up the phone on his
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: friend and told him that someone had arrived.
• 50:54
  Speaker 13: So just the fact that no other vehicles were on
• 50:57
  Speaker 13: the game camera didn't mean nobody else was up there.
• 51:01
  Speaker 13: But we could say that leon Ford was up there.
• 51:05
  Speaker 13: That was the start of this that we looked at.
• 51:08
  Speaker 13: He was there, he had motive. Christ's disappears when he
• 51:12
  Speaker 13: shows up. That's where we focused our attention.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: That's next after the break Part five, Lies and cable Ties.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: The timing of the meeting between Mike, Chrit and Leon
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Ford strongly suggested Ford's involvement, but it wasn't the only
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: piece of evidence investigators found or didn't find. Remember how
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Mark Flora had advised Mike to record his conversation with Ford.
• 51:50
  Speaker 10: Mike had a propensity to record every conversation that he had.
• 51:54
  Speaker 10: There was a recorder in the back of his vehicle,
• 51:57
  Speaker 10: an old time cassette recorder opened with the cassette tape gone.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: It's not just that they didn't find the tape. It
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: looked as if someone had removed the tape from the recorder.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Even more suggestive was what Ford claimed to be doing
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: on Sunday.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: June twenty sixth.
• 52:14
  Speaker 13: You have someone with motive. He's there, he has a meeting.
• 52:19
  Speaker 13: We have evidence to put him there. He never denied
• 52:22
  Speaker 13: he was there. His story change the twenty eighth. The
• 52:26
  Speaker 13: Sheriff's office interviewed him, and that's a recorded interview. And
• 52:30
  Speaker 13: in that interview he used the word Sunday, which I
• 52:34
  Speaker 13: felt was interesting that on Sunday he was up there
• 52:37
  Speaker 13: spraying weeds and when he got up there, the gate
• 52:39
  Speaker 13: was open, when in fact, he never checked out the
• 52:43
  Speaker 13: spray or till Monday because he rented it from the county.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: The sprayer tank he'd rented from the county was installed
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: on a trailer, but he wasn't towing a trailer. In
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: the trail cam footage from that day, it shows his
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: truck driving up around ten thirty am and then driving
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: back down again around three to thirty, and neither of
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: the videos depicts any kind of trailer. He changed his
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: story later to say that he had actually spent those
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: five hours using a metal detector to look for nails
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: on his property. It's, of course not unusual to misremember dates,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: but only two days had passed between Ford's initial interview
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: with detectives and the day in question. The idea that
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Ford could mix up what he did on Sunday and
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Monday when he was asked by law enforcement on Tuesday
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: was a tough pill to swallow.
• 53:29
  Speaker 13: The other thing was is the Sheriff's office had taken
• 53:33
  Speaker 13: photographs of tire prints in the mud behind Kritz's house,
• 53:37
  Speaker 13: but he explained that he went back there to spray
• 53:40
  Speaker 13: weeds because Mike had asked him to.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: This is what he claimed to be doing the next day,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: on Monday, June twenty seventh. According to him, his first
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: meeting with Mike on Saturday had been cordial, and Mike
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: had actually asked him to spray the weeds on his property.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: Here's Connie.
• 53:57
  Speaker 6: You know, I caught Ford lying to me because I
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: was trying to pay place Nancy Drew in the very
• 54:01
  Speaker 6: early stages, and so I had gotten a Ford's number
• 54:04
  Speaker 6: and I called him. We were on the phone for
• 54:08
  Speaker 6: forty five minutes. He puts it on a speaker, puts
• 54:10
  Speaker 6: his wife on there, and he's like, oh, yeah, me
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: and Mike blah blah. Yeah, we were you know, I
• 54:15
  Speaker 6: was talking him up. You know, I pulled up a
• 54:18
  Speaker 6: bucket and we're talking, and you know, I told him
• 54:21
  Speaker 6: that I was going to be spraying weeds and that
• 54:23
  Speaker 6: i'd be happy to spray his weeds, and he said, oh, yeah,
• 54:27
  Speaker 6: that'd be really great and blah blah, you know, and
• 54:29
  Speaker 6: I'm just like, m m mm hmmm.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: This might not sound like a big deal, but if
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: you know someone who's passionate about native grasses and non
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: toxic solutions for weeds, I think you can see where
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Connie is coming from. And she wasn't the only one
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: to mention this to me.
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: And we had a serious issue with weeds, and Mike
• 54:48
  Speaker 7: was really good on non toxic blends for suppressing weeds.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Ford also claimed that he had made multiple trips with
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: the weed spray on June twenty seventh, but the trail
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: came footage only showed him driving up at two point
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: fifty pm and then returning about an hour and a
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: half later. The tank is translucent, so investigators could see
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: it was only half full when Ford went up, and
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: the level hadn't decreased significantly when he went back down.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: What's more, the county weed inspector, a guy named Mike Bacon,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: told investigators that he didn't think Ford had sprayed at all.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: When he checked the tank on June twenty eighth. He
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: said he didn't smell any weed killer and the gas
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: tank on the pump was still full. You might also
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: be wondering how Ford drove his truck and weed spray
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: up to his and Mike's properties if that gate Mike
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: had installed was still closed. Here's how Ford explained that one.
• 55:44
  Speaker 13: On the twenty sixth. He said he never saw Mike.
• 55:48
  Speaker 13: He got up there, the gate was opened. This story
• 55:50
  Speaker 13: of the gate's opened, well, he must have listened to me.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: The problem is the gate hadn't just been opened. It
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: had been cut down and the cross arm had been
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: thrown down the hill. Ford said he thought Mike had
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: done that, which didn't make much sense to Gloria.
• 56:07
  Speaker 7: A person who doesn't have a lot of money and
• 56:10
  Speaker 7: who does a lot of metalwork and stuff is not
• 56:13
  Speaker 7: going to take a perfectly good length of pipe and
• 56:15
  Speaker 7: throw it down the hill, and Mike is not going
• 56:19
  Speaker 7: to cut his own gait. So it was clear to
• 56:24
  Speaker 7: us that there.
• 56:25
  Speaker 10: Was foul play.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Ford denied destroying the gate, but Shaw says he did
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: initially admit to cutting the center post that was still
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: sticking up out of the ground.
• 56:35
  Speaker 13: So what you're going to postulate here is that somebody
• 56:39
  Speaker 13: went up there and tore the gate down before Ford
• 56:44
  Speaker 13: got there, but left the steel post in the middle
• 56:46
  Speaker 13: of the road that Ford then had to cut. Because
• 56:51
  Speaker 13: Ford said he cut that post down, and then later
• 56:55
  Speaker 13: he kind of changed that story, but that was what
• 56:57
  Speaker 13: he said.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Initially Ford's story, it seemed just a little too far fetched,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: and even in those early weeks and months after Mike disappeared,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark County detectives took a hard look at
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the man from Washington State. They even traveled out to
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: his home to interview him. On January ninth, twenty twelve.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: That interview lasted three hours, and investigators said Ford and
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: his wife changed their story twice by the end of it.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: Investigators noted quote it was apparent to detectives that the
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Fordes were being untruthful in their statements to law enforcement.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Dutton told me that interview with Ford and his
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: wife was the closest they came to solving the case
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: in those first few years.
• 57:41
  Speaker 10: I felt his wife almost confessed to it. She was ture,
• 57:44
  Speaker 10: just close, but the detective didn't feel like going further,
• 57:50
  Speaker 10: so a camp faultim I wasn't there, But that's why
• 57:53
  Speaker 10: I say that King closed.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: They weren't able to secure a confession in that interview,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: but Sheriff Dutton didn't give up. He brought in several
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: retired investigators over the years, and as you already heard,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Jackson and Shane Shaw were the final two. When
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: they agreed to take the case, they knew they needed
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: to find hard physical evidence connecting Ford to Mike's murder.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: That started with going back to the closest thing they
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: had to a crime scene with the.
• 58:20
  Speaker 13: Body were zip ties. And these are huge. They're like
• 58:24
  Speaker 13: one hundred and seventy five pound tensil strength zip ties.
• 58:29
  Speaker 13: At the time, you couldn't buy those at least I
• 58:32
  Speaker 13: had never seen any that big at Home Depot or
• 58:34
  Speaker 13: Low's or the local hardware stores. That's what I told
• 58:38
  Speaker 13: the Sheriff's office when we were doing the initial work
• 58:41
  Speaker 13: on that. As I said, these zip ties are worth
• 58:44
  Speaker 13: following up on.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: And follow up they did.
• 58:48
  Speaker 13: Plaid Electric was the company that could order those in.
• 58:53
  Speaker 13: They didn't have them on the shelf, and they didn't
• 58:55
  Speaker 13: either out in Washington. They were a shelf item at
• 58:59
  Speaker 13: the naval base out there. In fact, Leon Ford had
• 59:04
  Speaker 13: checked some of those out.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Ford had served as a master chief in the Navy,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: and though he wasn't a seal himself, he had reportedly
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: gone on missions with the Special Forces as a demolitions expert.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: He had retired by twenty eleven and was working as
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: a safety officer for Chugach Industries at Whidby Island Air
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Force Base in Oak Harbor, Washington. Chugach Industries had a
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: warehouse where authorized personnel could check out gear and equipment.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Among the shelf items at this facility were the distinctive
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: zip ties found on Mike's remains.
• 59:36
  Speaker 13: The number on It was traced to a batch that
• 59:39
  Speaker 13: included once sold to Plat Electric, and in that time
• 59:44
  Speaker 13: frame that Leon Ford checked some out.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Records at the facility indicated that on February sixteenth, twenty eleven,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Ford had checked out twenty four of these cable ties,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: but it was unclear why Ford's work as a safety
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: officer did not require the use of such heavy duty ties,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: and records did not specify the project for which Ford
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: withdrew them. This was one of the most critical pieces
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: of physical evidence connecting Ford to Mike's murder, but it
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: wasn't the only one. Cat hair was found inside one
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: of the plastic bags that held Mike's remains, and the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Fords had taken a cat with them on their trip
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: to Helena. Shaw told me they weren't able to do
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: a DNA test to confirm it was the same cat,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: but that was nonetheless suspicious. Mike had also been shot
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: with a thirty eight caliber handgun, and investigators retrieved a
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Ruger three fifty seven magnum, a Cult three eighty semi auto,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: and a Smith and Wesson nine millimeter from Ford's residents.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 13: I've worked on a lot of death investigations and I
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 13: don't recall ever seeing a case where someone was shot
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 13: in the head twice. And my own opinion is is
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 13: that someone one who's very experienced with a gun and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 13: has a little more warrior mentality. I think it more
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 13: likely fit with a man who'd gone on missions with
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 13: the Navy Seals than a guy who was a ski
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 13: instructor that happened to live down the hill.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: In addition, they looked closely at Ford's cell phone data
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: to try to track his activity.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: On the day Mike disappeared. Ford had made.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Calls after he drove up to Mike's place. The cell
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: tower his phone used was consistent with him being in
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: that location, and Ford himself had admitted to driving up
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: to his property on that day. But Ford had also
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: called his wife twice after he drove back down the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: mountain around three point thirty that afternoon.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 13: His call pinged off the cell tower that we hit
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 13: when we made a call from Highway twelve and a
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 13: road that would go by the Fort Harrison. It also
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 13: went up to Birdseye where the property was.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: Birdseye and Fort Harrison are both along the quickest route
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: between Ford's property and Highway twelve, which leads to McDonald
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Pass and the locations where Mike's remains were buried. Ford
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: and his wife also connected for another call, this time
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: around five pm along a road west of Helena.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 13: Scott Howard actually drove it, put a timer on, and
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 13: drove the truck his pickup from the game camera up
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 13: McDonald Pass and over the top to the second dump
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 13: site and back to the first one and back to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 13: Williams Street Bridge and allowing for fifteen or twenty minutes
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 13: at each site. That he found that that timeframe fit that.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Even the route the Fords took on their return trip
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: to Washington was strange. McDonald Pass is along a major
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: state highway and a much easier route if you're pulling
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: an RV, but the Fords avoided it.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 13: When Fords left, they didn't go back over McDonald Pass,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 13: even though they had a motor home. They went over
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 13: flesh Or Pass to Lincoln, and I'm sure they provided
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 13: an explanation for that, but it seemed like they avoided
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 13: those dump sites.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: After seeing all this evidence, Lewis and Clark County Attorney
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Leo Gallagh made a decision on September eleventh, twenty twenty.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Over nine years after Mike was brutally killed, an affidavit
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: was filed accusing Leon Ford of deliberate homicide and tampering
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: with physical evidence. He was arrested about a month later.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 13: Ultimately, you have a whole set of circumstantial pieces of
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 13: evidence that it's unlikely that anyone else would.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: Have fit all of those.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 13: When you take one piece of evidence, it doesn't prove much.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 13: But when you take multiple pieces of evidence and you
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 13: add motive opportunity, all of a sudden, you can start
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 13: to rule out almost anyone else.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Investigators believe that Ford had driven up to Mike's property,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: noticed that the gate was still shut, and picked a
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: fight with the Turk Road resident. At some point, whether
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: on Mike's property or somewhere else on the mountain, Ford
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: had punched Mike in the face and shot him twice
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: in the head. Then, using what the medical examiner said
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: appeared to be some kind of saw, he cut Mike
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: into pieces and stuffed him in bags. He led out
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Mike's wolfdogs to clean up the mess from that gruesome task,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: and driven up to McDonald Pass, where he disposed of
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: what was left of Mike Critz. It was a compelling
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: theory and all that evidence, the lies, zip ties, trailcam footage, guns,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: cat hair, and history of conflict with Mike pointed in
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: Ford's direction, but it hadn't been tested in a court
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: of law. And as I've been told time and again
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: by investigators, it's not what you.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: Know, it's what you can prove.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Convincing a jury of twelve that they'd arrested the right
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: man was the prosecution's next task, and it turned out
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: to be a taller one than you might expect. Part six,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: The Defense of Leon Ford. Leon Ford maintained his innocence,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: and he hired two attorneys to build his case, Palmer
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Hoovestahl from Helena and Julie Pierre from Billings. I reached
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: out to both hou Vestal and Pierce to get a
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: better sense of their defense and to ask if Leon
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: himself would be willing to speak with me, but neither responded. Fortunately,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: I was able to obtain portions of the transcripts from
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Leon Ford's trial. Between those documents and the people I
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: interviewed who attended the proceedings, we have a clear understanding
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of the arguments they mounted in defense of their client.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 10: This is Cole's number ADC twenty twenty four to ninety
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 10: three the State of Montana versus leon Michael Ford.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Leon Ford's trial for murder began with opening statements on
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: June first, twenty twenty three, and ran through closing arguments
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: on June twentieth. The prosecution laid out all the evidence
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: we've covered so far, while the defense tried to cast
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: doubt on each piece. They didn't have to prove that
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: leon Ford was innocent or that someone else did it.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: They just had to sew uncertainty in the minds of
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: the jurors to convince them that reasonable doubt existed about
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: Ford's guilt. Shane Shaw knew this case better than anyone else,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: and he worried there was room for those seeds of
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: doubt to grow.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 13: When you look at all the evidence, Each piece individually
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 13: is not enough to find anyone guilty, and it's the
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 13: reason the jury had trouble with parts of this because
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 13: the defense is able to explain away, or offer an
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 13: alternative theory or whatever.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: They started by pointing out that investigators were never able
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: to find a murder weapon. They had never found where
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: Mike was murdered, or even where his body was dismembered.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: These are some of the basic building blocks of a prosecution,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: but they were noticeably absent. When Leon Ford took the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: stand in his own defense, he flatly denied having anything
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: to do with Mike's death.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 14: Just afore you killed Mike Christ, Absolutely not, Jada, just
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 14: never Mike Christ's body.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 8: Absolutely not.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: Then they went after the zip ties. Those ties were
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: unusual and they were on the shelf at the Air Force.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 13: But as Shaw admitted, there's no way to say that
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 13: the zip ties that were on Michael Kritz's remains were
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 13: the ones that Leon Ford had. You cannot do that, man,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 13: The defense was sure to point that out.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Ford said he didn't remember checking out any cable ties.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: To bolster this claim, the defense called a man who
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: also worked on the base named Leon Iron Moccasin. Maccison
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: told the jury he used those cable ties all the time.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Ford's defense suggested that the person who entered the request
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: into the computer started typing Leon, the computer auto filled
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: leon Ford, and he mistakenly hit enter.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: They also pointed.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Out that the numbers on the request form were used
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: to designate both Hellerman Titan ties and three M ties,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: so there's no way to know whether Ford checked out
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the three m product or the ones found on Mike's body. Finally,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: they noted that while those ties can't be purchased at
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: big box hardware stores, they can be ordered on line.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: They also poked holes in that trailcam footage of Ford
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: driving up and down Turk Road. The camera didn't pick
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: up anyone else driving up to Mike's on the day
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: he went missing, but the defense noted that something did
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: trigger the camera at twelve one am on June twenty seventh.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: The camera took a video, but failed to capture anything
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: moving up or down the road. The defense contended that
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: this was actually Mike's murderer driving up to kill Mike
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. The prosecution's theory that
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Ford disposed of Mike around five in the afternoon explained
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: the apparent haste with which the holes were dug. But
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: it definitely would have been a risky move, so it
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: made just as much sense that the killer had struck
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: under the cover of darkness. Hunters have more experience with
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: trailcams than virtually anyone else, so I think it's worth
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: weighing in here. The defense makes a big deal about
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: how there wasn't any wind to trigger the camera, so
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: it must have been a vehicle. Any hunter can tell
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: you that these cameras can go off for all kinds
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: of reasons, birds, squirrels, or even just apparently nothing at all.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: They're finicky devices, and that was especially true in twenty eleven.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately for the county attorney, the defense could point to
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: at least one example of someone driving past that camera
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: without their car appearing on video. After Ford's first meeting
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: with Mike on June twenty fifth, he'd triggered the camera
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: around eleven PM, but his truck didn't appear on the
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: corresponding video. That offered a strong piece of evidence that
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: those trail cameras could be faulty, which casts doubt on
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: the assertion that Ford was the only one near Mike's
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: place on the day he went missing. The jury also
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: heard from another neighbor we haven't met yet, a guy
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: named Dennis Shaw. Dennis isn't related to Shane Shaw, the
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: detective you've heard throughout this episode. He lived farther down
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: the mountain from John Mihan and the Floras, and he
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: was deposed by Leo Gallagher and one of Ford's attorneys.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: We obtained a recording of that deposition which was played
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: during the trial.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 15: Good morning, mister Shaw, thank you for being here.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Dennis said he and Ford were friends, and he described
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Ford as a quote neat person.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 14: I think you testify or you told law enforcement detective
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 14: Nyland that you thought he was honorable?
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 8: Remember that?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: Yep?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 16: And why is that? If he said something, that's what
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 16: it was. He had never heard seen him or heard
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 16: of him or anything, lying to me or anybody else.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 16: So to me, that me need honorable until somebody proves
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 16: indifferent to me. Okay, and there'd be a lot of proof,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 16: not more zipize shit.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Dennis interacted with Ford in the days after Mike went missing,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: and Ford's attorney asked him whether the Navy man was
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: acting strangely.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 8: You know, would he acting like a guy who just
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 8: killed somebody?
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 5: Oh?
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 16: Yeah, right, No, I mean, how can you say shit
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 16: like that? I mean, how can they dream that stuff up?
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 16: I mean, he doesn't have horns on his head?
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 15: Was he acting like exact like realities?
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 16: Meeting people and they were everybody was getting along and
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 16: smiling and joking and talking shit.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: Here Dennis is describing a cookout he hosted on Tuesday,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: June twenty eighth. He had invited Ford and his wife,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: along with John Mihan and Katie Wessel, and the three
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: couples eight together to welcome the Fords to the neighborhood.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: It was the kind of party you'd expect in June
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: and Montana, but given what had just happened to Mike
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: and his history with some of those couples, it was
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: easy to see something far more nefarious.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 13: The other thing was is there was a belief that
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 13: there was a conspiracy of people that agreed to take
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 13: out mister Kritz.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: News of this cookout fueled this conspiracy, but it wasn't
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: the only reason Mike's friends were suspicious.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 13: Well, there were people saying that mehnn had bragged about
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 13: a military man that was going to come up here
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 13: and fix this situation.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: You can hear that Shaw is skeptical, but I heard
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: this same rumor about John meehan from pretty much everyone
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: I spoke with.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 7: He had gone to two neighbors that we personally know
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 7: and said, in two weeks, a military guy's coming back
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 7: up here and he's going to take care of Mike
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 7: once and for all. That was exactly two weeks before
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 7: Mike was murdered.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Dutton admitted that fifteen years makes these kinds of
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: rumors hard to verify, but he acknowledged that they were
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: floating around that mountain.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 10: There were some neighbors who wouldn't come testify that said
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 10: that Uh Meehan had said he was bringing in somebody
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 10: who is really good at getting rid of people.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: One of those neighbors was apparently Dennis Shaw, and the
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: jury heard him say as much at trial, though he
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: wasn't as clear as prosecutors likely hoped.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 15: Did me Hann ever tell you that he expected Ford
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 15: to come out or anybody a military man? I find
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 15: all the year saying, well, Didnehann before Ford showed up
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 15: that Monday? Did me Hann ever tell you that he
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 15: thought that Ford was coming out?
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 8: Or did Wessel? I'm pretty sure.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: The idea that Meehan and Ford were in cahoots was
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: an obvious assumption. Ford denied it, and if John Meehan
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: and Katie Wessel had agreed to talk to me I
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: assumed they would too. But it remains one of the
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: most frustrating, most ambiguous parts of this case today because
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: if me Hann really did say that, if he told
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: his neighbors two weeks before Mike disappeared that a military
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: man was coming to handle the situation. Then this wasn't
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: just a neighborhood dispute that got out of hand. This
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: would have been like some kind of contract. But Dennis
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: Shaw's on the record statement wasn't. And without phone records,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: without a paper trail, without Mihan willing to admit it himself,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: investigators didn't have the evidence to prove the two men
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: had ever spoken before that cookout on June twenty eighth.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: The possibility of a conspiracy is a theory that Connie
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: and her family wondered about almost immediately.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 6: From the very beginning, we thought that it was Meehan
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 6: who was the main guy, but that Ford either did
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 6: the deed or helped get rid of the body.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: Of course, Ford's defense was more than happy to talk
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: about John Meehan. They emphasized Mihan's ongoing dispute with Mike,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: the violent encounters and threats. They even theorized that Mike
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: had been cut up not to hide his identity, but
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: to fit in a freezer. During one of the searches
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: of Meehan's home, investigators had found a dead dog stuffed
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: in one of his freezers. The dog had been put
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: in a clear plastic bag, which had then been stuffed
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: in a black plastic bag. Mike's remains, the defense noted,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: had been found in exactly the same manner. What's more,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: in the months prior to Mike's disappearance, Meehan, Wessel and
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: Dennis Shaw had sued Mike for interfering with the enjoyment
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: of their land. They then requested a default judgment. After
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Mike's death, the jurors heard Dennis explain this in his
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: videotape deposition, which no doubt fanned the flames of suspicion
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: against John Meehan. This could have been a risky maneuver
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: for the defense. Pointing the finger at Meehan wouldn't do
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: them much good if the prosecution could prove he was
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: working with Ford, But as the defense very well knew,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: there was no evidence to suggest that the two men
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: had ever met prior to that cookout. Two days after
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: Mike's disappearance.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 13: Mehan testified in a deposition that he never met Ford
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 13: until after Chrit's disappeared. In fact, he met him at
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 13: that picnic they had up there, which was like on
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 13: the twenty eighth I looked at all the phone raps.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 13: There were no phone calls between Ford and me Han
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 13: or me Han's wife.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: The final move for the defense was to call John
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: Meehan and Katie Wessel to the stand, but instead of
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: outlining their alibis or making excuses for their actions, they
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: did something no one saw coming.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 7: And then the defense put them on as witnesses for
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 7: the defense, and then they both pled the fifth.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: Imagine for a second how this looked from the jury's perspective.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: They'd been hearing about Mehn's conflict with Mike, They knew
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: about his arrests for brandishing his rifle and tampering with evidence,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: and now here he was pleading the fifth and refusing
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: to testify for fear of incriminating himself.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 7: And so the jury they were hung because like, we're
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 7: not sure who killed.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: The trial of Leon Ford concluded Wednesday with the jury
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: unable to reach a verdict. The official word from the
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: jury Wednesday was that they were deadlocked, meaning that the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: jury in good consciousness, were unable to reach her verdicts,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: which resulted in a mistrial.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: We don't know exactly how the voting broke down. I've
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: heard rumors about some of the jurors, and if you
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: served on that jury, I'd love to talk with you.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: But I don't believe it was eleven to one in
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: either direction.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this is just hearsay.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 6: I didn't talk to these people, but you know, allegedly
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 6: the jurors were like, yeah, we thought he was guilty,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 6: but we didn't think it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: Still, hope remained that the man she believed killed her
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: brother would be brought to justice. Leo Gallagher had come
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: out of retirement to prosecute leon Ford. Connie thought Gallagher
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: didn't do a great job, but she believed his replacement
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: could be more successful.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 6: The new county attorney, I just loved her. She just
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 6: she was like, we're going to redo this. We're going
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 6: to redo this. And then I heard like six weeks
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: later or something like that. You know, we just really
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 6: feel like without new evidence, we're going to have the
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 6: same outcome.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 17: Almost a year after his trial for deliberate homicide ended
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 17: with a deadlocked jury, Lewis and Clark County prosecutors have
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 17: filed emotion saying they'll no longer pursue charges. Against Leon
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 17: Ford for the twenty eleven killing of John Mike Chritz.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: Ford was a freeman.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: His charges were dropped, and since that announcement in twenty
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: twenty four, there hasn't been any official movement in this case.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 10: The county are turning now is reluctant to try mister
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 10: Ford again without some substive new evidence. Maybe the answer
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 10: is right in front of us. I don't know, but
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 10: that's where we're at.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 8: What's the case?
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: Part seven?
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: Hope it will be fifteen years this June's anyone heard
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: or saw Mike Kritz alive. It took over a decade
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: for a suspect to be arrested for his murder, and
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: then another two for the trial to start. For the
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: result of all that waiting to be neither an acquittal
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: nor a conviction was for everyone involved incredibly frustrating. But
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they're without hope. Shaw is no longer
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: on the case. He said that solving Mike's murder will
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: require someone to step in and own it, much like
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: he and Sheriff Jackson did in twenty nineteen.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 13: And one of my requests of the Sheriff's office was
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 13: that we go through every piece of evidence again and
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 13: submit things for more DNA work. Somebody also has to
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 13: come up with the money, and it's thousands and thousands
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 13: of dollars to do that. I'm not sure where that goes.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 13: I had a conversation with the sheriff at the end
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 13: of July about this, and at that point he was
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 13: interested in doing that, but he had to get some
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 13: budget things squared away, so you know, I don't know
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 13: what's going to happen.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: When I asked Sheriff Dutton about this, he said he's
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: hopeful that new advancements in DNA analysis will provide the
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: results they're looking for. As we saw in the Danny
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: Houchen's case we covered last season, these technologies can be
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: powerful tools in solving cold cases.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 10: What didn't exist then was touch DNA, and whoever did
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 10: this was very, very careful not to leave any DNA,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 10: but there's probably some we've just missed. Touch DNA had
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 10: not been developed yet.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: Touch DNA is a forensic technology that allows investigators to
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: extract DNA profiles from nothing more than a few skin
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: cells left on an object. There are still boxes and
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: boxes of evidence in Mike's case, and we know for
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: a fact that DNA has been found on some of
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: those objects.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 13: DNA was found that don't match any of the people
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 13: that are currently connected with the case or the law
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 13: enforcement offs. You know, if it's not in the code
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 13: of system and it's not people connected, you know, it's
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 13: very expensive to do some kind of genealogical work on it.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 8: There may be.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 13: More items that additional DNA might be extracted.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 10: If we find new evidence that indicates that he's the person,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 10: then we'll try it again, or if we find other
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 10: evidence that someone else will go after them. So it's
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 10: it just taken some time, and I feel bad for Connie,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 10: I really do, but we've got to be successful in
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 10: our next attempt.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: Connie expressed some skepticism that her brother's case will ever
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: be solved. After so many years advocating for justice and
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: fighting against a system that will never care. As much
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: as she does, it's tough to blame her. She didn't
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: talk to me because she hopes the publicity from this
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: podcast will bring Mike's killer to justice. Instead, she wants
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: the world to remember Mike not as the grouchy mountain
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: man who chased people off his property, but as the
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: little brother who made her laugh took her dancing and
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: was always happy to talk for as long as she
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: wanted to stay on the phone. But after Mike died,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: Connie and her family held a memorial. They all wrote
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: notes to Mike, attached them to balloons, and released them,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: hoping that Mike would somehow see them.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 18: Hey, little bro, miss you and can't believe you were gone.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 18: I will always remember the long night's chatting dancing. You
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 18: were the best dancer. Your humor, your wit and intelligence
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 18: will never be gone because I have so many memories.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 5: I love you.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 18: Say hi to Dad. You're bakesis Connie?
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 5: Okay? Should we let him all go?
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 8: I Mike?
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. To
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: see images from this case, including photos of Mike, his property,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: his wolf dogs, and a map of the area, head
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: on over to the meeteater dot com slash blood Trails
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: and click on the case file for this episode.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: Thanks to everyone who agreed to be interviewed.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: Connie Krits, Gloria Flora, Shane Allen, Sheriff Dutton, Shane Shaw,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: Randy Arnold, and Joe Gill, the listener who first told
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: me about Mike's case. If you know about a case,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: you think we should cover or have a tip about
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: this one, send me an email at blood Trails at
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: the meeteater dot com.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 3: See you next time, and stay safe out there.