Month: June 2012

It’s strange how theories have come to dominate to criminal justice system. We would like our detectives to be like Sherlock Holmes, who as a fictional character, would solve all crimes from his second floor window on 221B Baker Street, while smoking his huge pipe. Law And Order, the TV series not only solves the crime within 60 minutes, but even conducts the entire trial.

In real life, all over America, it is much different. Actual crimes are not easily solved unless there is a a confession or a smoking gun in the suspect’s hand. Convicting someone can become hard, so hard that the “system” has become lazy, so lazy in fact they now only have to invent a “theory” that can be sold to a jury. Often, this is not so hard to do. There are hundreds of innocent people who have been set free by the Innocence Project, who were put in prison based on theories.

Becker County convicted Kenneth Andersen based only on a theory that Ken shot his best friend in the back twice for fear Chad Swedberg would testify against him in a theft trial involving a stolen ATV. This still remains a theory as the trial and testimony never took place.  Based on the evidence the prosecution presented I have a different theory. I admit I was not there to witness what happened, so I am just as qualified as Mike Fritz or Al Zdrazil to formulate as to what may have happened. The difference is I don’t have to prove an agenda. Here are what the testimony of Leslie Fain, Ken Swedberg, Al Baker, and Thomas Covington strongly say as to what happened on April 13, 2007.

Chad Swedberg was under tremendous pressure by April 2207. His friend, Ken Andersen, was trying to borrow money to help him financially. The trial concerning the theft of the ATV was in a few days and it may be shown he was responsible instead of Ken Andersen, and there goes the main source of income to the house. Chad and Thomas Covington were on bad terms and Chad had only recently allowed him to move back in. Tommy had threatened Chad with murder before,  as he had demonstrated by shooting his cousin in their living room.

Devon Green hears a domestic 911 call. It is cancelled and there is no record because the system was down that day.  I believe that Chad and Tommy were arguing and it got out of hand. I believe Tommy shot Chad and the house tried to cover it up. This explains why Leslie Fain says it took 2 hours to call 911. They could not say the shots were heard at 9:58am and then call 911. Neighbors heard shots before 8am. Leslie calls Ken Swedberg. Al Baker shows up at the the maple stand and there is no Chad. He comes to the house at the time Ken Swedberg arrives. There is Chad. Leslie hurries Thomas Covington on the bus and they go to work carrying Chad out to the maple stand. He is dumped there in a strange position. Leslie has the foresight to even sit down and write a check to double his life insurance. She calls 911 and they begin their tale of lies.

Guess what? They got very lucky.

All of these people faked outrage and grief which was pretty easy as the shock of Tommy’s action was fresh on their minds. Chad was dead. They hoped the police would think Chad was killed by a stranger out there in the woods.  They had plenty to worry about but all that was unfounded. The police would never search the house for clues. They would let  Ken Swedberg controll the crime scene and destroy all clues. They would let him drive them around the lake “looking for clues.” They never tested anyone with a paraffin test to see if they fired a gun that day.  These people were lucky enough to have Joe and John McArthur on the case. These men hated Ken Andersen enough to plant evidence, even though the bullets wouldn’t match.

They got even luckier with an all white jury who were simply presented with an “Indian Killed A White Man” theory.  It didn’t matter that Ken Andersen had an alibi and none of them did. All that mattered was that Mike Fritz and Al Zdrazil said he did it. They taped the phone calls between Ken Andersen and his attorney, which is against the law and the constitution, in hopes Ken might say anything that could be used against him (he didn’t). They let the jury talk to the community and did not declare a mistrial. The odds of this happening should be a million to one. Still it did.

Sherlock Holmes could have figured this out easy. Why is Ken Andersen in prison?

As the investigation into the murder of Chad Swedberg only centered on Ken Andersen, they went searching him, his family’s houses and property multiple times until it became obvious they needed something, anything to arrest Ken and close this case. It became frustrating until they suddenly found a dusty rifle hidden up in the rafters of Ken’s barn. This should have been a slam dunk. Only it wasn’t. They went ahead and put him in jail, but as the forensic experts would soon learn, the rifle would shoot bullets that did not match the fragments in Chad’s body.

1. The rifle was “discovered” under very suspicious methods. Joe McArthur would tell Sue Swedberg that Ken was a “liar, a thief, he burned stuff, and he steals ATV’s” . The court would not allow any talk of bias from the McArthurs toward Ken Andersen which was the the truth. It’s hard to believe Ken would be dumb enough to keep a murder weapon when there were plenty of lakes around.

2. Still the jury watched Zdrazil hold up a rifle and lay it on the evidence table with a tag on it. Here is the report the prosecution’s experts conducted on the rifle.

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3. These ballistic reports are pretty easy to read.  They fires bullets and examined the grooves and markings on them. There are six ways to report what the findings were: POSITIVE ID,  SOME MATCHING , SIMILAR , DIFFERENT, UNIDENTIFIABLE, NO EXAM.

4. The bullets were SIMILAR. This is like saying the suspect looks like a German, and since my looks are similar to a German then I am guilty. It doesn’t make sense does it. All of their experts got on the witness stand and said they tried hard to match them, but they don’t.

5. Still the jury sits there and looks every day at a rifle laying on the table they found in Ken’s barn. The FACT it wasn’t used to kill Chad Swedberg is somehow lost.

If you have read all the court documents on this blog, there has to be serious doubts that Ken Andersen killed Chad Swedberg. So, who did? Come back Monday and I will post the most likely theory. Remember that Mike Fritz took Ken Andersen to court on his theory, nothing more. 

The motive the prosecutors used to convict Ken Andersen was that he murdered Chad Swedberg in order to prevent him from testifying against him about a stolen ATV in Roseau County.  In the days when they put Jeff Nelson on the stand, this motive was never established. Never.

1. On page 1959-60, Nelson states he only briefly spoke to Ken Andersen. Why? He goes on to say he did not talk about the ATV. Why not?

2. He does talk to Chad Swedberg about it, but only in an effort to implicate Ken Andersen. Why?

3. The ATV was found behind Chad’s house. No one saw Ken Andersen steal the ATV or put it behind Chad’s house. There is no proof Ken Andersen stole the ATV.

4. In the “controlled call” to try and trap Ken Andersen, he does not take the bait.

5. It makes no sense that Ken would need to murder his best friend because the case against him was very weak. Why? Ken Andersen had an alibi. He was in court the day the ATV was stolen. See below:

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On August 18, 2006, Ken Andersen made his court date and was not even in Rouseau County.

6. It seems reasonable that Chad Swedberg, who was sweating bullets over severe money problems would have a bigger motive to steal something than Ken Andersen. He needed Thomas Covington to help commit the felony though.

7. On page 1986, Mr. Fritz mentions how the date Chad was killed (April 13) was only 2 days before the trial date of the ATV. Since Tommy Covington was involved in the theft, and  there was a domestic call to the Swedberg’s house the morning of the murder, is it not likely the tensions over the theft, money, and lies got boiling that morning and Chad winds up dead in his house?

Only those who choose to ignore these clues would not see the likely theory. Ken Andersen never had a reason to kill Chad.

Did Thomas Covington kill Chad Swedberg?

Jeff Nelson,  an investigator with the Roseau County Sheriff’s Office, lays his hand on the Bible and says the following things.

1. He was assigned to look into a stolen ATV case on August 18, 2006, at  a pole barn being built. He says the call came in the night before (17th) and the deputies responded to the owner’s complaint that night. The crew building the barn (Ken Andersen, Chad Swedberg, Thomas Covington) reported missing some tools along with ramps.

2. The ATV was eventually found behind Chad Sweberg’s house on November 12, 2006.

3.  Nelson tells Chad that they found the ATV behind his house.  Chad tells him that the ATV was put there by someone else and they set up a “controlled call” to implicate Ken Andersen.

4. This incident is the cornerstone of the “theory” Ken Andersen killed Chad Swedberg over the ATV being blamed on him. The definition of a theory is “a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation”. Becker County is literally experimenting with the idea that maybe Ken A. killed Chad S.  because of a stolen ATV. The judge allows this experiment to see if the jury has enough faith in the members of the court room to believe this. Why is it a theory? because they don’t have proof that is what happened. You just have to believe. The judge knows that if, and that is only if, the jury goes along with this happy horseshit, the Supreme Court will treat this theory as a fact and uphold it with no other proof.

5. Nelson says the ATV had a tribal sticker that was registered to Geraldine Bellanger, Ken’s mother. He says they found the stolen ramps on Frank Andersen’s property.

6. It was decided to charge Ken Andersen, and him only with the theft of the ATV.

7. Nelson states the Kenworthy’s were upset and angry over the theft of their ATV. He goes on to say that the Kenworthys, even though they were mad at Chad as well, were never investigated to see if they might have been involved with his murder.  He also says that Ken Andersen did not know that Chad would be testifying at his trial over the theft of the ATV.

Here is what we learn from Jeff Nelson: No one actually knows who stole the ATV. He ignores the obvious crime Chad committed by having the ATV on his property and the implications that come from that. He “thinks” Ken Andersen stole the ATV. There is no proof. Since this is the only motive the prosecution has dreamed up, I will show proof that Ken Andersen did not steal the ATV on Monday. Nelson has already said that Ken would not have known that Chad was going to testify against him unless he told him. The Kenworthy’s were never even looked at as possible suspects. Why?

When the Becker County Attorney, Mike Fritz, decided to prosecute Ken Andersen for the murder of Chad Swedberg, he had one great big problem: MOTIVE. What would cause a jury to believe that murdering your friend would solve something so big, murder was the only recourse? As they poured over the two friends’ history, they found NOTHING that would be so serious as to commit such a horrendous act. Remember that not only are Ken and Chad life long friends, they are sometimes business partners. They help each other out.  Fritz finally settles on a long shot:  A STOLEN ATV.

Here is the testimony of Jeff Nelson, an investigator with the Roseau County Sheriff’s Office. I will comment on Friday.

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Devon Green is a licensed EMT and at the time she testified at Ken Andersen’s trial, she was the manager of the White Earth ambulance service. Below  is the story she told about the true events of April 13, 2007. As we continue to put the pieces together of what happened, her story is a very big part of understanding what really happened.

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Now for a minute let’s believe that Devon is a professional person, who works in a job where the facts and details matter in  life and death situations. What I mean is she must be just a credible as Leslie Fain, Al Baker, or Ken Swedberg. Devon had been an EMT for 15 years and should be an excellent witness.

Devon Green says there were TWO 911 calls from the Chad Swedberg house the morning of April 13, 2007.

The first call was a DOMESTIC CALL. According to the national 911 datat base, this is short hand for domestic VIOLENCE. 

She says the call was cancelled and we have no more details thanks to the court shutting down this information.

Devon was first on the crime scene and tells us something else very important. Chad was dead, but laying in an odd position with one leg twisted, kind of like someone dumped him there in haste. The other odd thing was there was no sign of what killed him. There was no blood spatter, no gun smoke smell, no shells, no nothing. Only after cutting off several layers of clothes did Devon see the wounds.

Ken Swedberg told her he thought Chad had O-Ded on drugs. I find that kind of odd.

Mr. Zdrazil now goes to great lengths to now prove Devon Green is lying for some reason. He says there is now no record of that first 911 call. The prosecution does admit that the MCArthurs who are so vehemently testifying against Ken Andersen have access to the 911 computer system and the passwords to change the data. Why go try so hard to keep yet another testimony out of the trial?

Because if she is telling the truth, then Chad could have been killed by someone in his house and dumped at the maple stand. Is she telling the truth? I say she is. 

At this point Rory Durkin quits. The defense rests. He is beaten by the very system that is supposed to stand for justice and truth. This system of a judge, investigators, and police men know that Ken Andersen did not kill Chad Swedberg.

P.S.  Here’s a thought: The same jury that convicted Ken Andersen would have convicted Leslie Fain, Thomas Covington, Al Baker, or Ken Swedberg, if they have charged any of them with Chad’s murder. There is that 2+ hour they are unaccounted for around the murder scene and the suspicious things they did. There may not be proof, but if investigators would have got up in court and said “I think they did it”, one of them would be in Rush City, not Ken Andersen.

This is a new blog advocating that Ken Andersen should not be in a Minnesota prison for a crime he did not commit. Thanks to you devoted readers, in less than a month, in only 12 posts so far, we have attracted over 1,000 readers. This is unprecedented! Thank all of you for sharing and lets keep sharing and try to get the word out as much as possible. Lets have 2,000 as soon as possible. I will continue to post news on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Will you help share this?

As we continue to try and understand what really happened the morning of April 13, 2007, Chad’s brother Ken, takes the stand. Here is what he says happened.  His testimony is long so I will comment on Friday.

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