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Season Seven: Killers Among Us: A Letter
143 Plays4 days ago
In this episode, we finish talking about a series of terrifying cases involving a community in Wisconsin.
https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1119&context=tma
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Transcript
Introduction and Series Context
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:57
Speaker
So this is the final part of the Hunters Among Us. And I split these up. ah This is telling a little bit. We're still talking a little bit about the second story.
00:01:08
Speaker
But there was a third story that I at least wanted to bring into this just because of the similarities and and sort of like where it crosses in terms of community and time. So this is the third part of Hunters Among Us.
Case Review: Wisconsin Appeals
00:01:21
Speaker
At some point, I looked at all this, and I know we started talking about like Wisconsin appeals, so I'm swinging back around to this. I know I looked at this case at one point because I clipped an old article from May of 2007 about the appeals court rejecting his appeal.
00:01:40
Speaker
Right. And I wanted to throw that in here. um yeah summary So we're at the point now. So he has been we just went over his convictions. Right. And, you know, he's he's going to be in jail for the rest of his life, essentially.
00:01:56
Speaker
Right. um So a state appeals court dismissed a challenge from a Minnesota man. That's how this kicks off from staff at NPR. A challenge from a Minnesota man sentenced to life in prison for gunning down six deer hunters in northern Wisconsin. saying his complaints were meritless.
00:02:12
Speaker
Kyes from Vaj38 argued his trial judge should have suppressed statements he made to the police on a news reporter and challenged whether the evidence supported a guilty verdict and whether the judge had properly exercised his sentencing powers.
00:02:25
Speaker
The Third District Court of Appeals ruled there were no grounds to challenge his conviction. In fact, Vaj's own attorneys told the court he had no grounds to appeal. But Kyes sent eight handwritten documents from prison taking issue with this conclusion So the appeals court still had to review the case.
00:02:40
Speaker
The court found police read his rights when he was arrested and again before questioning began. The court also found new basis to throw out the incriminating statements that Kai had made to her reporter.
00:02:54
Speaker
Police intercepted letters between the defendant and the reporter and recorded the conversations they had. The appeals court said that Kai knew his calls were being recorded and spoke to the reporter over his attorney's objections to him speaking to his reporters.
00:03:07
Speaker
As for the evidence, the appeals court said that his own testimony at trial established that he shot each of the victims and he meant to shoot all but three, asking one of the hunters, you're not dead yet?
00:03:19
Speaker
question mark A jury could conclude beyond reasonable doubt that he did. His trial judge considered the appropriate factors when sentencing. The court concluded...
Background of Fatal 2004 Shootings
00:03:30
Speaker
ah The fatal shootings had occurred during a deer hunt in November 2004 after a group of hunters in Sawyer County. I'm pretty sure this is Thanksgiving, by the way. Yeah, i I think so too. Had confronted Kai, 38, of St. Paul over trespassing in a tree stand.
00:03:46
Speaker
ah They said that Kai, among immigrants, testified during the trial. He shot the six white hunters and wounded two more in self-defense, claiming one of them fired a shot in his direction.
00:03:57
Speaker
After they shouted racial epithets and curse at him, the two survivors testified that he had begun walking from the confrontation when he turned and opened fire. So he's walking away, turns around, shoots at him.
00:04:10
Speaker
Prosecutors convinced the that Kai Vage had reacted in an angry outburst. feeling disrespected by the hunters, and tried to kill everyone so there would be no eyewitnesses.
00:04:21
Speaker
And then they close out saying he was sentenced to six consecutive life terms, plus 165 years in prison. Now, why is this all coming up, and why is this all interesting?
00:04:33
Speaker
In May of 2026, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections has to place Kai Bej in a supervised living facility.
00:04:45
Speaker
And about two weeks later, he dies on June 10th.
Speculation on Defendant's Death
00:04:52
Speaker
Wisconsin Court of Appeals that on their circuit access website, ah circuit court access website, they announced his death on June the 12th.
00:05:01
Speaker
It's so interesting to me that like he passed away that way. And I noticed that they didn't publicize how he died.
00:05:12
Speaker
But if I was reading everything correctly, he would only be 59 years old now, think. I think he's actually 57. Is He was born September and he died June twenty twenty six so fifty seven i just thought that was interesting um that so that added to the mystique of all of this I have heard at some point, i can't tell you what case it was, doesn't really matter, but an argument was made in a case, ah an appeals case, that was about ah the life expectancy.
Life Expectancy in Prison Discussion
00:05:54
Speaker
And I learned from the argument that was made in a different case that Life expectancy in jail is substantially lower than it is not in jail.
00:06:06
Speaker
ah Well, I mean, I believe that. i do know of some very old convicts, but also know a lot of people who die young and young.
00:06:17
Speaker
i I always wonder how they die, though, because like sometimes I find out, and it's some kind of medical thing, where in my mind I go, well, if they were out here in the world, they probably never would have had that medical issue or would have had access to care that might have stopped it. Well, right, and there were a lot of nuances to the appeals case that I was reading, but the attorney had taken it like they were using as part of their argument. Right.
00:06:47
Speaker
And, uh, had never considered that before. Right. And it's just a statistical thing. So obviously every individual case is going to have its own, you know, ah probabilities to look at. Right. There's all kinds of reasons why people die in prison. There's all kinds of reasons why people don't die in prison. There's, you know, all kinds of reasons why people die out, not in prison, out in the world, and they don't die out in the world. you know So it's a whole thing, but I just thought that was an interesting perspective, though. And then, of course, I don't i can't remember the case, but i found it interesting. And then not too long after that, we're looking at this guy who died at 57, which I think is young.
00:07:36
Speaker
And I think he died from an illness ah because of... the way that it ended, right? oh yeah, see what you're saying. Because they move him over to to have the respite care.
00:07:49
Speaker
Right. It's probably some kind of medical illness, yeah. Right, so it probably wasn't just like a heart attack. I do not have enough information to even comment on that. I guess it could be like a heart attack or stroke and you just don't recover?
00:08:03
Speaker
Well, I guess what I mean is like, Yeah, you're right. Like a heart attack where he where he just dies, like right then. ah Because when you're when you're moved and you're in hospice or whatever, that is typically a sign. Yeah, it could have been a heart attack or stroke, but he had some sort of ailment that was prolonged, right? And maybe he had a chance to survive. Maybe it was just as good he might survive, and I've misunderstood the situation.
00:08:30
Speaker
But regardless, usually if there's sort of a downhill spiral and then you die, it's from... something, some sort of illness, right? Yeah.
Self-Defense and Stand Your Ground Laws
00:08:42
Speaker
So this, uh, this little, this case got the nickname, ah the tree stand murders, I think, or the tree stand murderer. ah Yeah. It was a tree stand murders. There's a book out there about it There are some fascinating reads about,
00:09:01
Speaker
this and kind of place in time because several people like and the student realm kind of, you know, so like more educational publications kind of took this up.
00:09:14
Speaker
But also like, I think I saw somewhere there was a monk studies journal article listed that talked about the standard ground laws where they compared Wisconsin. And this is a case that ah self-defense was argued. There's not even the slightest hint of,
00:09:31
Speaker
any sort of actual defending of oneself in this case. Right? No, we would have needed to have the, um, we really would have needed to have had, uh, well, they're outside for one thing. First gunshot needs to be real and not a figment of Kai's imagination.
00:09:52
Speaker
Correct. But well, see, and I guess we have problems with the equal force part of that, you know? Well, and he's on their property. i I'm not arguing about like where they're standing at the moment. He definitely was on their property. He gets over to the trail that leads back to the public land. What I'm saying is the racism, as awful as it is, is not enough to shoot and kill six people.
00:10:20
Speaker
Oh, no. Like, like no. yeah it it It has to be gunshots. This man, there's something seriously wrong with this man. Oh, yeah. Seriously, seriously wrong with him. And, you know, truth be told, like, he was a danger. And, you know, there could be something that prompted it that has nothing to do with him feeling slighted.
00:10:47
Speaker
from any reason, he could have been on something. He could have, I don't know, had a psychotic break. I mean, something caused this insanity to occur though.
00:10:59
Speaker
Right. Oh yeah. And he he's very unstable and it is a thousand wonders that, you know, he hadn't displayed that type of behavior previously because Well, to some degree, he had displayed some short-tempered stuff.
00:11:21
Speaker
Like, he choked one wife out for gambling. You know, it's funny that you mention that, because when I initially was looking into him, I actually thought that he had killed that wife, and I couldn't figure out why he hadn't been punished for it. And, like, if he had been punished for it, none of this would have happened. But he didn't actually kill her. It was just nearly... it was nearly choked his wife to death.
00:11:47
Speaker
Right. Yeah. But like, I got really hung up on that because I'm like, wait, what? He didn't get punished for that. But I realized like he didn't get punished because it's more of probably in a police report somewhere than anything else. Right. No, it's, it's mentioned in passing on background. He had it in. So there were two incidents, one's in in 2003. He does not seem to have a good time around the holidays because Christmas Eve,
00:12:14
Speaker
There are police reports two years in a row related to him and his wife. And then we have a 2003 report where it's on background done for one of the interviews. Because this was like a popular story.
00:12:28
Speaker
Like the fact that this had happened was a little crazy. And people were looking at it and reporting on it and doing a lot of deep dives. I don't know how accurate the the killing the wife for gambling thing is. Or trying to kill the wife for, well, let me rephrase that. I don't know how accurate the choking the wife for gambling is, but it is in line with his other behavior. And somebody states it in a couple of different articles I've seen it mentioned. So I think it was one person from his background, like retelling the story and the press ran with it.
00:13:02
Speaker
Sure. And I feel like at the point of life that he was at, at that point in time,
00:13:12
Speaker
ah it there would have been signs.
Legal Strategies: Diminished Capacity
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, most of the time, in the list of things that could possibly happen in a situation,
00:13:32
Speaker
when you're thinking to yourself, let's go tell this person, you know, to get off our property, ah our hunting property, Like that is not one of the things on the list that you feel like could be a response, right?
00:13:53
Speaker
yeah Regardless of what you say to them. I mean, if I walked out in my front yard and I told somebody that happened to be on my front yard, you know, you've got to leave.
00:14:05
Speaker
The last thing I would expect no matter how mean or rude I was about it, would be to be shot, right? Yeah. That's crazy. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And so the fact that he, he you know, the fact that he had the audacity, I don't know that it's audacity, he had a right to a trial. However, the fact that he didn't, you know,
00:14:34
Speaker
plead do you think that his attorney didn't argue any sort of diminished capacity on purpose you can't you can't make that argument without facts to back it out so right that would require no i mean if he's if this guy's moving forward with self-defense yeah okay then we run into the problem of We have to have, and and I don't know, these are not facts, it's me speculating.
00:15:06
Speaker
Right, true. Well, I ask you to, so. you you have In order to get a diminished capacity, you have to have an expert on board. But you actually kind of have to have the defendant on board.
00:15:18
Speaker
Because it's one of those things that's like in the middle gray area. And if your defendant's like, no, I'm not crazy. There's nothing wrong with me. Those people fired a shot at me and called me a bunch of racial names, and now I want to shoot them.
00:15:30
Speaker
They deserve to die. then while you may know that like they have a diminished capacity, if the expert comes in and reviews them and they like tell the same story to the expert and expert's like, look, I get what you're saying, but like, I think that like he thinks he it was justified in doing this. And he seems to me to be pretty sound.
00:15:53
Speaker
Um, he's clearly a giant asshole, but unfortunately he is a giant asshole with all his faculties. Right, but just the fact that he felt like the shooting was justified shows he doesn't have all his fal faculties.
00:16:10
Speaker
I'm with you, but I'm just saying if the expert brings you a report back that you can't use for diminished capacity, there's nothing you can do. Right, and and but you'd be able to find... I understand a An expert could do that, but okay, so not in court, in reality, for a second. In reality, this man had a diminished capacity. We don't know, like...
00:16:35
Speaker
all the ins and outs of it, but he, he like something's off, right? That's it. He, he's not getting something. And i now I don't fault the attorney for not, um, doing it. I feel like a lot of defense attorneys do not argue, depend, diminish capacity because they don't want, um,
00:17:00
Speaker
to give their ah client any sort of advantage in the situation, which I don't know if that's right or wrong or indifferent because essentially what you mean? Don't want to give them an advantage.
00:17:13
Speaker
They don't want them to, they don't want them to have had a diminished capacity. They want them like, I feel like,
00:17:25
Speaker
And you can get some leniency with diminished capacity capacity. Why would an attorney not want that? I don't know. That's actually why I started asking this to begin with. A diminished capacity defense would have been way better in this situation than the defense that was offered.
00:17:47
Speaker
And I wondered if the defense attorney had done it on purpose because no there's there's no world where this is self-defense, like, at all. It it doesn't even begin to be self-defense, right?
00:18:02
Speaker
It's not even close. A diminished capacity defense, like, and you said, well, if the client doesn't want to do that, well, yeah, if the client doesn't want to do it, it's almost like you're bolstering the diminished capacity here, right? Yeah.
00:18:17
Speaker
Like you don't even realize that has diminished. I understand what you're saying now. so it it kind of goes like this early in a criminal case. That's this serious.
00:18:30
Speaker
You get a couple of one-time events. One of the first things that happens is of those one-time events is whether or not your client has spoken with the police.
00:18:42
Speaker
Most of the times, by the time a case file hits my desk, I'm, with rare exception 48 hours have passed. So if they were going to talk to the cops, they already did it.
00:18:57
Speaker
There's nothing I can do about that. I can't take it back. The second thing is, and this can vary, but the second thing is if you're the defendant in a case that has already shown a lot of competency.
00:19:18
Speaker
No matter what happens next, your evaluations are going to be based on those early days. You were in court. You were answering coherently. You gave a statement to the police. The statement to the police made perfect sense.
00:19:35
Speaker
Well, right. but And so I'm not saying like full on like insanity, right? I'm just saying diminished capacity. Right. Right. so depending on where you are, and I don't know Wisconsin.
00:19:45
Speaker
Yeah, no, I don't really either. i just feel like that would have been a a much better idea. is Yeah, is it's really it's even hard to argue intellectual disability, which I have had.
00:20:00
Speaker
I have... People talk to me, and like I do not even understand what what they're talking
Extradition Challenges and Legal Complexities
00:20:06
Speaker
about. like I have somebody right now that's on a relatively minor charge, but they're being held with no bond because in February last year, they were in Pennsylvania in the middle of a jury trial, and they were like, you know, I don't like this.
00:20:20
Speaker
I don't like the way this is going. So the defense rested. Everybody did their closing arguments. They took a break overnight. and then And the next day they came in to do the charging conference.
00:20:33
Speaker
And this young person decided, i don't want to be a part of that anymore. So they left. Were they the defendant? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. yeah Well, yeah, that would be bad. So they were there on.
00:20:46
Speaker
So what's crazy about this is for some reason there's an extradition warrant, but it doesn't include the state that I'm in. That's dumb. did they i mean they finish Did they get all the way through the trial?
00:21:04
Speaker
They were at the charging conference. And so did they finish in Accenture? No. So they just dismissed everybody? Yeah. And this person hid out for a year and change.
00:21:17
Speaker
In a state that wasn't expected they would be in. Got picked up on a different thing that was kind of dumb. And here we are. like Fighting extradition, though? This has got to be a serious case, right?
00:21:29
Speaker
Down here? No, the case that they... Because they're... Are they picking up on a different crime here? It's like the... No, yeah, they're picked up on a different crime. It's not a serious crime. um It's like the crime they're accused of up there is like the alphabet assault type thing plus the...
00:21:50
Speaker
like, you know, assault with a deadly weapon, intent to kill inflicting seriously and serious injury, that whole thing. um Possession of a firearm by a felon and maybe a, maybe and like a de facto kidnapping where it's like move over there, but you're pointing a gun at them. So it's kidnapping.
00:22:12
Speaker
So it's just, I mean, yeah, it's serious, but the thing is like that person has diminished capacity. all the time. They look like everything's totally fine.
00:22:24
Speaker
But when you start like digging in a little bit, it's like, oh, okay, it is fine, but what about that thing you said? and you ask them about the thing they said, and you're like, oh, oh, I did not know Mr. Schizophrenia was in here. Hold on. Let's sit down and talk to him for a minute.
00:22:39
Speaker
And then they expose the full-blown thing. But you have to get two hours into a conversation to realize it. i would say that, um let's see, could somebody... Yeah, I don't know. it There's so much to that. but Yeah, but my point is, you don't always know.
00:22:58
Speaker
Well, right, but I would say, like, what I was going to say is, like, I feel like somebody who would, like, walk away at that stage of their trial, like, they're suffering from some diminished capacity, like, no matter who it is. Like, at least temporarily, they're making a really stupid decision that a A completely capacity person, no, a person that is completely capacitated would not do that because you literally get nothing out of it as far as, sure, you don't have to you don't return the next morning, but this is going to catch up with you, right?
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah. I couldn't, with this particular case, I couldn't find anybody at first. So I reached out and started talking to the attorneys involved because he kept telling me he didn't want to go back East to deal with something. And I didn't know what it was.
00:23:49
Speaker
And then I looked at like all the paperwork and stuff, but to the jail called me and they're like, Oh, it's like really bad news. Like his mom died and like, he's got this going on and that going on. So I'm talking to the social worker about his case and he doesn't want to go back East and they don't have an extradition war and all these things are going on. And, like I go over and he tells me this i'm like incredibly heart-rendering story about the last time he saw his mother. And now that she's dead, he doesn't know what he's going to do. And he's got to leave immediately to go to her funeral.
00:24:18
Speaker
And then like when you like poke down at the story, he's explaining that she he died she died back in February of 2025. And like like he's using it as you know as part of his...
00:24:29
Speaker
reason not to go back east to this jury trial that he abandoned. Anyways, I go home later that day and I'm talking to his attorney and she's like, what's going on with him? I said, well, you know, he needs a forensic exam and then you can figure out what's happening.
00:24:41
Speaker
And she was like, but the social worker from the jail called me and his mom died. And she tells me this whole story again that like, basically I just have gone through over the last couple of days. And I sit down and I'm like, all right, let me find out what's going on.
00:24:53
Speaker
So I call up to his grandma's house and I'm like, I actually called a public defender where he was, who was defending him. And they give me like contact information. So I start calling around. I talked to different relatives and stuff and stories are interesting. So I call his grandma's house. Cause like the that's the, the matriarch in the family. And um so she answers the phone and say, Hey, this is about, and I say his name. And she's like, oh yeah, And was like,
00:25:20
Speaker
where do you fit in in all this? I just, you chit chat and see how things are going. Cause I don't actually know when, who died, when or whatever happened. I just know that like, it's a mess. And she's like, Oh, he's my son.
00:25:31
Speaker
you call my mama's house, but that's my son. And I was like, so you're not dead. So no, i was like, okay. So I have this whole conversation with her, get a bunch more information of like kind of where to do and how to help this kid.
00:25:47
Speaker
i was like, um, is there anything that you need me to pass on? And she's like, can you tell him to call me? Cause he stopped calling me like a month ago and I don't know why.
00:26:00
Speaker
was like, yeah, I'll tell to call you. um Yeah. So take him in for any, he was also like doing, him he was saying a bunch of stuff that were like, I call it sovereign citizen oriented. Like he kept asking me if I had jurisdiction over him. I'm like, sir, I work for your attorney.
00:26:17
Speaker
I do not even know what you're talking about. I don't know why i would need jurisdiction to help you, but. um Isn't that amazing? Like, that's the funniest thing to me because essentially you help defendants and they have animosity towards you.
00:26:33
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, i've we call it shaking the glass or breaking the glass. Like, people will throw things or throw their bodies at the glass between us while i'm trying to help them. I've got to go make an argument to an attorney that like and and ultimately you know a judge and a prosecutor that like this person is totally safe to be let out into society.
00:26:55
Speaker
And they're banging on the glass like they're going to break it. Doesn't that tell you like a whole lot, though, like about just kind of the base level comprehension you're dealing with if they're mad at you? And and it's for something that...
00:27:13
Speaker
Like, I guess they could be mad at you if you did something, like, that irritated them. But for the most part, you're just one of the people that they think is like, involved in the situation. And they don't even have a clue what your role is.
00:27:31
Speaker
Wouldn't you say? Yeah. I mean, I try to explain it to people, but like it's i do it very simply, very shortly. i have different ways that explain to people what I do. And you know I've done aspects of this job for over 30 years.
00:27:46
Speaker
I am doing this job now full time for people who cannot afford a meeting. Like, that's my job. I investigate police. i and And I tell them up front,
00:27:59
Speaker
um I investigate police. I investigate prosecutions, witnesses. I investigate all the aspects of the case. I'm going to review all the discovery. I'm going to you ah research case law.
00:28:13
Speaker
And I am going to tap into this pool of experts I've created over the years. um And that is also, i have, you know, a kind of a part of that is available to me as as part of my job. i'm I'm going to find somebody who can explain to me what's happening with you or some aspect of your case.
Role of Defense Investigators
00:28:33
Speaker
And the reason I talk to people about it up front is, um and it is mostly serious felonies. It's not anything. i'm i'm not usually assigned to things that are run of the mill.
00:28:46
Speaker
um They usually have a question and they're usually a serious felony where someone is facing a tremendous amount of jail time, 10 years or more. in a lot of instances, it's 25 years of life So I sit down and I tell them, it is best if you answer the questions that ask you truthfully because we have this bucket of resources.
00:29:06
Speaker
And that bucket of resources never gets refilled. It's time and it's money. And it might just look like a water bucket sitting in front of you. But like if you send me down the wrong path trying to like get me to do things that like are fantastical, that water drains out of that bucket and we never get to refill it.
00:29:27
Speaker
yeah We run out of time at some point. You're on trial. We haven't found the thing that you sent me chasing. So it is better if you're up front with me. And you're typically the only shot they have.
00:29:38
Speaker
Right. And like, that's one of the, the, the area that I live in, we kind of, we joke about this. um I'm responsible for like a big judicial district. That's got a lot of cases is me. And one other person takes the other half of it in the smaller part of the district.
00:29:55
Speaker
And we probably have between us 30 agencies that we deal with in terms of the other side. And none of them have less than three or four, detectives like I don't think any of them have that few so i am your one resource and all of that and people will people will still lie to me all the time they lie to me so I mean they don't they're embarrassed they don't want me to know something so like it takes months to like work on a major felony or somebody's in custody for something that maybe they didn't didn't do or maybe there's some reason that they should not be in custody It takes months to find it. And it's so weird to me that that happens.
00:30:37
Speaker
But i think there's a an aspect to this that people miss out on. And that is if you're here in jail, charged with a crime and caught and you talk to the cops and you're being held without bail, like I think a large percentage of the population of people who end up in that position potentially have something seriously wrong.
00:31:05
Speaker
Diminished capacity, intellectual disability, not all of them, but a lot of them. Right, and diminished capacity, ah at least from my perspective, it it doesn't excuse a crime, right?
00:31:20
Speaker
It just really helps me understand stupid behavior sometimes. Yeah. I guess would be a way to put it because sometimes people do things that just don't make any gosh darn sense.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah. And I, I have a hard time. This is one of those cases. I had a hard time. i' had never heard of it ah before. do you have anything else on this case? No, I
Case Clarification: Name Mix-Up
00:31:49
Speaker
don't.
00:31:49
Speaker
So there's this other case and I got him a little confused. So the guy we were just talking about is C-H-A-I-V-A-N-G. That's his name, Kai Vaj.
00:32:02
Speaker
There's another case from January 2007. Did you see this one when I sent it over? i did. It's one letter different. So this guy is Kavaj, C-H-A-V-A-N-G. And I know I'm saying some of these wrong, but i amm and I'm trying to present it the way I've been told to pronounce it and it's kind of an odd thing in how I talk, I think, that makes it sound weird.
00:32:28
Speaker
This is a case, it's the opposite. So this kid was born in Laos as well, spends most of his life in a refugee camp, comes over, mid 2004, he ends up being in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
00:32:44
Speaker
He's working at a factory, he has a bunch of kids. I think I saw he had five kids. And he goes out with squirrel hunters in Green Bay on January 5th, 2007. So this is just a couple of years after the story we were just telling.
00:33:00
Speaker
They're out in different parts of the forest and they spot this guy and he's in the woods hunting squirrels as well. And according to the autopsy, Kaivong gets shot from about 50 feet away with a shotgun.
00:33:21
Speaker
And then he's stabbed six times in his face and neck. And his body is like shoved under a log.
00:33:32
Speaker
And I was like, what in the world happened here? But sort of this is all January 5th, 2007.
James Allen Nichols Case Details
00:33:42
Speaker
January 6th, 2007, a guy shows up in a hospital with a gunshot going to his hand.
00:33:50
Speaker
His name is James Allen Nichols. And from what I can tell, he's born and raised Wisconsin. um He had a record ah for, it looked like burglary and like obtaining property.
00:34:04
Speaker
he and also told his boss in October, 2006, that he hated Hmong immigrants. So at one point in time, he said that, uh,
00:34:18
Speaker
a Hmong hunter had stolen a tree stand from him. And he tells multiple people he would have killed that hunter if he would have had a rifle that day instead of a bow. Because he's not supposed to have a gun because he's a convicted felon.
00:34:33
Speaker
So he shows up in the hospital. He says a stranger shot him with a.22 caliber gun. But he doesn't. He's asked why the police ah why the police haven't been called. He like changes up his story. Because you know if you go in with a gunshot wound, they have to report it.
00:34:52
Speaker
Right. And it's immediately going to link you to whoever got shot. Right. So he ends up talking to the first responders that come to talk to him, the cops and somebody else come. And like he takes them to where he had put this guy under the law.
00:35:10
Speaker
Because of his own statements, he's already put himself in a position where like he's been quoted on the record saying that Hmong people are bad, they kill everything, they go for anything that moves in the woods, they're mean people. He said all of these like terrible things.
00:35:27
Speaker
So there's not going to be much of a trial. He led authorities to this body of this young man, Kavaj. And March 19, 2007, two months later, he pleads not guilty.
00:35:39
Speaker
They've charged him with first-degree intentional homicide, felony possession of a weapon. i think it's felon in possession of a firearm and hiding a corpse.
00:35:52
Speaker
So on October 6, 2007, jury finds this guy, James Allen Nichols, guilty of second-degree intentional homicide. They give him 69 years in prison.
00:36:04
Speaker
Now, the community over in St. Paul, so this happens Wisconsin, but like Wisconsin and Minnesota are like tied together in a lot of ways community-wise.
Hmong Community Statistics
00:36:20
Speaker
The spokesperson for the Coalition for Community Relations in St. Paul, Minnesota comes out and says, the message that has been sent to the Hmong community is that someone can shoot Hmong hunter and not get the maximum sentence.
00:36:35
Speaker
I start going further down this path of like how many things have happened in the woods between like white hunters and and Hmong people. There are a lot of incidents.
00:36:48
Speaker
it is the It's like something you never think you read about. It makes no sense to me. do Do you know if Wisconsin and ah Minnesota have if Wisconsin and Minnesota have a high number of among either immigrants or i guess a larger community or do you know yeah I mean they okay so they have a higher number of immigrants period that would not be where I would want to go it's cold up there right
00:37:27
Speaker
i Yeah. So here's what I pulled in terms of the population. There's an estimated half a million folks who share traits with Hmong.
00:37:40
Speaker
Specifically, identifying as Hmong, are believed to be 350,000 375,000 the United this population has more than doubled since two thousand okay okay And by the way, it's doubled because of birth rates, not further immigration.
00:38:02
Speaker
Right. Yeah. No, I got that. Here's the breakdown of like that population. 120,000 them live in California. of them live in Minnesota. in North Carolina.
00:38:16
Speaker
sixty five thousand live in wisconsin i just under thirteen thousand live in north carolina Around 8,000 live in Oklahoma and 7,500 live in Michigan.
00:38:33
Speaker
That's almost the entire population. not there's there's ah There is an unknown number in Alaska.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah. I just thought that was interesting. that that's so That's more than 80% of the entire u s Hmong population. And three of them, like three states, ah is California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
00:38:58
Speaker
That's where you have like the most problems is in Minnesota, Wisconsin. Right. And so I've never lived in ah Minnesota or Wisconsin. And ah it makes sense to me. It makes a little more sense now because ah I was very surprised when I saw this case because it literally took something from the other case that I thought was ridiculous and actually made it true.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah. So it was it's interesting, right? ah i don't completely understand what, let's see, the quote was that ah Nichols had was quoted on the record saying, Hmong people are bad, mean, end quote, kill everything, and that they go for anything that moves, end quote.
00:39:52
Speaker
And so is that... You're talking about hunting. Well, I was going to say, is that having to do with like ah the competitive nature of hunting? Is that what he's talking about there?
00:40:04
Speaker
um Partially. I think he's also talking about them not following the rules of hunting is what he's implying. Like shooting a turkey during...
00:40:15
Speaker
deer season or shooting a doe when you're not supposed to shoot a doe or shooting a bird when it's squirrel season, that kind of thing. And so I, I imagine, uh, he found that irritating, I guess.
00:40:30
Speaker
Well, it it's always weird to me when a convicted felon with a gun wants to tell other people what to do in terms of following your rules. But my my guess is like, he just had bad experiences with other hunters that,
00:40:46
Speaker
didn't look like him and he developed a disdain for them over the years. Okay. Well, that makes sense, I guess, but there's a, I imagine there's a process you can go through to like legitimately go to wildlife and game and be like, yeah, you could go to DNR and make a complaint and hopefully get their license revoked, which means if they hunt illegally, they would be,
00:41:11
Speaker
um Sighted potentially charged depending on where they're at and what they're doing. There. Yeah. There's always a process and people get, people want shortcuts, man.
00:41:25
Speaker
And so he just went away, right? That was it Yeah. Yeah. He's, I'm, we're he's not going to get out again. Right. And it seemed like there was some backlash that I didn't completely understand because
Sentencing Implications Discussion
00:41:40
Speaker
they're mad. Cause he only got 69 years. He didn't get life without parole. Right.
00:41:43
Speaker
I see. But sometimes it's actually better for it to be a numbered sentence. Yeah. Yeah. i mean, sometimes life is not what you think it is. Oh, 100% agree with that. I mean, look, it's not going to be great when you're
00:42:09
Speaker
when you're looking at a situation like this where people have died, regardless, either one of these situations, they're terrible. um You honestly should probably take the win.
00:42:23
Speaker
and And I say that because it sounds c terrible to the Hmong people, but like there's so many ways that like having that type of racism go on can result in somebody walking.
00:42:38
Speaker
So 69 years should be considered to win. i was going to say, regardless of race or any other thing, if your loved one ah was taken ah violently from you in a homicidal ah situation, yeah if they're per if the perpetrator who did it gets 69 years, like I think that's justice.
00:43:01
Speaker
Yeah, it is. I mean, it's unlikely that most people getting 69 years are ever going to get out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think I wouldn't look badly upon that just because I think that um wasn't was it second degree?
00:43:17
Speaker
um it was second degree. and entitl convictions Yeah, um he gets second degree intentional. i pulled him up. Hold on. I've kept it somewhere here.
00:43:30
Speaker
He's listed as a American Indian, not white, by the way. Oh, that's interesting, I guess. But again, I feel like that is, that's just not a way that I've ever seen.
00:43:43
Speaker
he he doesn't have a parole eligibility date either, by the way. It says his discharge date, which I guess he wants to have done something else, will be 2111.
00:43:55
Speaker
than 69 years. twenty one eleven well that's more than sixty nine years Yeah, he has that conviction. he has a previous conviction out of Marinette, the same county.
00:44:09
Speaker
I'll see what that is. I think it was, i think the other case was some kind of burglary. But he was out on parole for a long time. So, yeah, here we go. He's got burglary of a dwelling, criminal damage to property, burglary of a building or dwelling with a bunch of, light like, if you look at it, like there's a bunch of counts.
00:44:29
Speaker
They're all class C and D felonies, um theft of movable property. He got a really long sentence on that. He got out on parole. He committed this murder while he was on parole.
00:44:41
Speaker
He's not like he's not ever getting out. They just didn't want to go through the trouble of a trial and take a risk with him. There's probably two different communities that are mad about this with him being listed in here.
00:44:55
Speaker
as American Indian. That's his, like, classification here on his Fender detail. Mm-hmm. That's James Allen Nichols. Oh, that's interesting. I wonder if he really is. i don't... not my job to question that.
00:45:12
Speaker
No, I got you. No, I just didn't know, like... A lot of people think that they're American Indian. They're not. But, I mean, I'm not saying that's the case here. I'm just curious.
00:45:24
Speaker
ah Did you ever know why he was shot?
00:45:31
Speaker
no i wonder i think it was over a squirrel. Well, I know, but, like, I wonder if his victim shot him.
00:45:44
Speaker
I think it's... I think the idea was... i think he shot himself by accident in the hand while shooting the victim.
00:45:55
Speaker
Okay, well... But it could be... i could definitely be convinced that his victim got a shot off at him. Yeah, well, that's what I was curious to know. And see, in that case, i it would be more... That might actually be self-defense. Exactly. That's what I was thinking. And, like it just It seems like a weird situation because of how it ultimately plays out. And you know regardless of and hiding the body like that and like some of the other things he did, it actually seems like it might have been something like that. Of course, I don't know that the shot initially would have been on purpose either, Right.
00:46:37
Speaker
Because I think he was squirrel hunting, so Like things happen out in the woods, right? They do. I mean, i don't hunt. i have a lot of family that hunts, but I don't hunt because it it just doesn't appeal to me. Yeah, I don't hunt either. And it seems like like it's not a great idea in Wisconsin to go hunting.
00:47:02
Speaker
No, no, I don't think it is.
00:47:11
Speaker
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