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| Thomas J. Hinze |
I haven't written anything new in this blog for well over a year, as there haven't been any new developments worth writing about. I have continued to try to publicize the information as much as possible by posting links here and there to some of the posts.
The post that has received the most views by far has been "Attempts to Correspond with Steven Hagenah, Pt 2", as this post shows most clearly the absolute and inexplicable REFUSAL of the police investigators to seriously investigate or even DNA-test Tom Hinze, the son of a former (Red Lake County) Sheriff, who met every single "clue" in the murder case that the investigators said they were looking for.
And the post also shows the attitude of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in the case. None of them cared about sworn testimony or forensic data being presented to a jury in a trial, or that the defendant Joseph Couture had been kept ignorant of my testimony of ANOTHER person meeting the "clues" the investigators claimed they were looking for, or that that other person had never been DNA-tested, despite my repeated pointing out that he met all those clues -- the police and prosecutors had obtained their "confession", and that was enough to convict the defendant, and "solve the case".
By the way, as I am writing this, I have been doing some searching around the Internet. I have just become aware that Steven Hagenah has passed away, on May 9, 2016. Here is a link to an obituary in which his skill at "pulling confessions" is praised. Well, I suppose that's a useful skill, especially if there's no matching DNA data available in the case. May he rest in peace.
But anyway, but to bring this matter more up to date, back in October 2016, I read the following in the Duluth News Tribune. I'll post a quote to the most pertinent part of the article, here:
A judge has thrown out a cold case murder charge against an Iron Range man, ruling that his confession to the 1987 slaying of an elderly Virginia woman was the result of a “highly coercive” interrogation by police.Well, to put it mildly, I was amazed, and nearly overcome with the warm, hopeful feeling that yes, there can indeed be justice, in St. Louis County, Minnesota, after all. I mentioned the case in messages to a couple of my Facebook correspondents, with the comment that Mr. Daniel Lew, the Chief Public Defender mentioned, is a Public Defender who actually does his job!
Bruce Wayne Cameron, 45, is set to be released from the St. Louis County Jail more than 16 months after authorities charged him with intentional second-degree murder in the death of 83-year-old Leona Mary Maslowski.
Sixth Judicial District Judge David Ackerson ruled on Friday that Cameron’s June 2015 statement to investigators — in which he confessed to assaulting Maslowski inside her Virginia apartment — was given involuntarily and in violation of his 14th Amendment right to due process.
“The detectives essentially told the Defendant what they wanted him to say and then led him into saying it,” Ackerson wrote in a 32-page order.
Defense attorneys had argued that the statement was coerced through leading questions and false promises by the investigators.
"We are happy for Mr. Cameron and his family,” Chief Public Defender Dan Lew told the News Tribune. “He's sat in jail for almost a year and a half waiting for this day.”
...............................................
Cameron, who was 16 at the time, had been at a party in the duplex above Maslowski’s apartment the night of her death and had been interviewed by law enforcement multiple times.
The investigation turned to him last spring when he was identified as a possible suspect based on a palm print and fingerprints discovered on a kitchen door in Maslowski’s apartment.
Police said he denied involvement in an April 2015 interview, but offered the confession on June 2, 2015, when confronted with the forensic evidence.
According to court documents, he told investigators that he had entered Maslowski’s apartment, "most likely drunk" and in search of alcohol. He said he was confronted by Maslowski and punched her when he thought she was moving toward the phone. He also said he used an object to hit her in the head and possibly choked her, according to the criminal complaint.
Defense attorneys moved to suppress the statement, arguing that Cameron was led to believe that the forensic technology was enough to implicate him in Maslowski's murder and that confessing was the only way to keep his case in juvenile court — where he would face lighter sanctions — and out of prison.
Despite his age at the time of the incident, the juvenile court lost jurisdiction over Cameron when he turned 21, requiring the matter to be handled in standard court.
Ackerson noted that the BCA agents did “well over 90 percent of the talking” in the interview and that Cameron’s answers were mostly limited to one word or one phrase, citing examples of the agents repeatedly asking Cameron if he had struck Maslowski with various blunt objects.
The judge said Cameron’s version of the events simply did not fit the established facts of Maslowski’s death and criticized the agents for attempting to “lead and steer” him into confessing.
“The only reasonable inference from the extreme leading of the Defendant by the detectives is that the Defendant’s will at that point was entirely overcome, and he was merely trying to say whatever they wanted him to that would get him the benefit of juvenile court treatment and the promise of not going to prison,” Ackerson wrote.
The judge also wrote that a mental health assessment concluded that Cameron suffers from a “mild cognitive impairment” and that he appeared to be “thoroughly intimidated and frightened by the coercive nature of the interrogation.”
What I did next then, naturally, was to immediately write to Mr. Lew regarding the "confessions" in the Langenbrunner case. I'll just post the email itself ... actually, this is the second email I sent on November 20, as it includes the full text of the first email I sent October 25, which I never got an answer to:
Dear Mr. Lew,And here is the screenshot of the list of all the posts in this blog, that I also sent to Mr. Lew:
I sent you this nearly a month ago, and haven't heard anything from you, so I am sending it again.
I am assuming that perhaps the first email was overlooked, or that maybe you needed time to research and consider.
I'll wait for a few more days, then decide how I will proceed.
Thank you,
Lloyd Wagner
--- On Tue, 10/25/16, Lloyd Wagner <lewagner2002@yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Lloyd Wagner <lewagner2002@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Coerced confession in another St. Louis County murder case
> To: dan.lew@pubdef.state.mn.us
> Date: Tuesday, October 25, 2016, 5:44 PM
> Dear Mr. Lew:
> I just read of your success in getting the coerced
> confession of Mr. Cameron suppressed by Judge Ackerson. My
> congratulations.
>
> I am a witness in the Trina Langenbrunner murder case
> (September 2000), and I have maintained for many years that
> my testimony regarding Thomas J. Hinze has been deliberately
> ignored and covered up by investigators from the Sheriff’s
> Department, and by the MBCA.
>
> Mr. Hinze met every clue the investigators said they were
> looking for, yet the Sheriff’s office absolutely refused
> to take my testimony seriously, or to DNA-test Mr. Hinze.
> The fact that Mr. Hinze was never DNA-tested was confirmed
> to me in 2013 in an email by former investigator for the
> Public Defender’s Office, Mr. Ron Taggart.
>
> In 2012, Mr. Joseph Couture was arrested, and in 2013 he
> also confessed to a murder I say he could not have done. He
> was convicted solely on the basis of his confession. No
> sworn testimony or forensic evidence was ever presented to a
> jury.
>
> Not only was Mr. Couture framed and induced to confess to
> the murder, both he and Sandra Couture were also induced to
> confess to a “Cloquet arson fire” of July 6, 2012.
>
> I have checked media reports and also have checked with the
> Cloquet District Fire Chief, and with the Incident
> Investigator and Inspector from the Minnesota Department of
> Public Safety for the Cloquet area (both in St. Louis and
> Carlton Counties).
>
> There is no record in any media of that fire the morning
> after it supposedly occurred, but only reports of it AFTER
> it was supposedly “solved”. None of the gentlemen in
> either the Fire District or the DPS have any record of such
> a fire even having occurred. The claimed grand-daughter of
> the "fire-victim" could not give me an address of the house
> that was supposedly burned, even after several weeks of
> correspondence. (I believe my correspondent was someone else
> posing as the "fire-victim's" grand-daughter, because as I
> say, there are no records of any such fire.) However, both
> Joseph and Sandra are serving 7 years each for this “arson
> fire” they confessed to.
>
> As I could not get my testimony into a courtroom no matter
> how hard I tried, I instead wrote a blog reproducing my
> correspondence with many various people (letters in the
> past, and emails more recently) concerned with this case.
> These are the original text files of beginning in 2003,
> which I have never deleted, and I also have never deleted
> any of the emails.
>
> I will give you a link to the first post in the blog, and
> ask you to please consider looking at it. I will also attach
> a screenshot of a list of all the posts, so you can get a
> quick overview of the number and variety of people I have
> contacted regarding this case. http://formerlyfarmerly.blogspot.com/2014/09/introduction.html
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> Best Regards,
> Lloyd Wagner
Dear Mr. Lew,Well, I said above that I wouldn't bother Mr. Lew again, but then I reconsidered. The reason I reconsidered is because after I had written the above email, I watched the entire Netflix series of "Making a Murderer".
I've decided I'm going to resume posting on my blog regarding the Trina Langenbrunner murder cover-up and framing, plus the related matter of the concocted-out-of-thin-air "arson fire" of July 6, 2012.
What I plan to do within the next few days, is to post a completely new blog post, which will consist mainly of the email that I wrote and sent twice to you. I also plan to add comments to that, to compare the Cameron induced confession (as reported in the Duluth News Tribune) with the Couture framing, and to point out how the two cases are different.
The behavior of the police, prosecutors, and Public Defender's Office in the Couture case was much MORE egregious than in the Cameron case, and it is glaringly obvious, and yet I can't even get a comment from you.
Anyway, I will not bother you again, but I just thought I would let you know what I am going to do, in case you do want to make a comment before I post that.
Sincerely,
Lloyd Wagner
Something that caught my attention in that very interesting 10-part (so far) series about that Manitowoc County, Wisconsin murder case, was someone's pointing out that challenging an obviously coerced confession in some murder cases is tantamount to accusing the police and prosecutors of deliberate misconduct. (!)
This is especially true in a case like the Trina Langenbrunner murder, where repeated witness testimony was ignored for years, the life of the witness (myself) was threatened, and a DNA test of the person who I repeatedly said met all the investigators' "clues" was never taken.
And besides that, an "arson fire" was concocted completely out of thin air -- as described briefly in the first email above, and written about in more detail HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE -- and two people, Joseph and Sandra Couture, were also induced to "confess" to that fire that never even happened. The two were sentenced to 7 years in prison each for that, as well, and ordered to pay restitution, besides, of nearly $35,000 each ... well, in such an egregious matter, it's understandable that even a Chief Public Defender might be hesitant to buck the obviously stinking (not to say criminal) corruption in the County.
So, upon reflection of the above, I wrote one more email to Mr. Lew, on December 16, 2016, as follows:
Dear Mr. Lew,Well, to make a long story a little shorter, I got no response from Mr. Lew.
I have been reflecting further on that Cameron case, and Mr. Cameron's induced confession being thrown out by the Judge. That's something I have never heard of happening before, at least in St. Louis County.
I look at it in two ways. In one way, it gives the public the heart-warming impression that justice eventually does prevail, in St. Louis County cases. In another way, it almost seems as though they arrested him, knowing ahead of time that his induced "confession" would be thrown out -- to give the public the heart-warming impression that justice eventually does prevail, in St. Louis County cases.
That case shows only minor malfeasance on the part of the investigators and interrogators. They were just a little over-zealous, I suppose. The case is still open.
But in the Couture case, the malfeasance was much worse. Actual crimes were committed by certain people in law enforcement, in covering up testimony and evidence, in manufacturing new "evidence", and even in concocting a new crime for a framing. I won't go through it again, as I have already explained it to you in brief, and offered my blog with all of its documentation.
As you were not in your present position at the time all of that malfeasance was occurring, it is probably not fair to drag you into it, or to diss you in my blog, as though you were a part of it. Getting an over-zealously obtained confession thrown out by a Judge is entirely of a different order than pointing out actual conspiracies and crimes committed by people in high positions of law enforcement ... not even to mention the obviously coerced false confessions.
However, please reflect on the fact that the Coutures have effectively had NO defense, except from myself. I am just a witness who happened to see something, and who refuses to accept the Sheriff's telling me that I did not see what I saw. So, I just keep on telling people what I saw, and I keep on digging into why the Sheriff was so determined NOT to DNA-test the man who I said (and the Sheriff also damned-well knew) met every clue the investigators said they were looking for.
I am a former bankrupted vegetable farmer who had dirt under my fingernails and grease on my jeans, and who is now an English professor at a University, living in a rented apartment in Thailand. I certainly cannot afford to hire a lawyer.
So, I have written to you, the Chief Public Defender, in St. Louis County. It seems to me that you are at least in as good a position as I am, to speak out about this case of injustice.
I also realize that if you do speak out, they will do their very best to discredit and destroy you, as they have done to me. However, I am not destroyed, and my conscience is clean in the matter. I've done the best I could.
I am not sure whether or not I will continue adding to the blog, or exactly what I will do. I will continue to speak out about it, as widely as I can. You do what you feel you have to do. I would appreciate your help, or even your advice.
Sincerely,
Lloyd Wagner
Probably completely unrelated to my emails to Mr. Lew, I did notice in Blogger Statistics within the past couple of weeks that there were 5 views of THIS POST, all in one day. That's over 1/5 of the total number of views that post has received over the past 2 years since I published it. That post is the record of my correspondence regarding one important facet of the case with retired jailer, Duane Johnson, who suddenly died, at about the age of 60, in 2014.
If that has anything to do with anything, only God knows, and I can only speculate. I asked a couple of mutual friends who knew Duane much better than I did, if Duane had ever mentioned anything about our correspondence to them. I got absolutely no reply. So I don't know. It did interest me that there were 5 views of that one post, in one day.
On my testimony, however, and on my research, and on my correspondence on this case, I provide ample links and documentation to back it up. I have it all backed up by screenshots, as well, and not only on my own computer.
All the Sheriff's Department and MBCA would have had to do to prove me a liar, would have been to DNA-test Mr. Hinze and prove him innocent (if they actually thought he was) -- but they refused to do that. Instead they released Mr. Hinze without ever DNA-ing him, and years later came up with a "confession" from Mr. Couture to "solve" the case. Mr. Couture confessed to the same things I had repeatedly described about Mr. Hinze's actions the week of the murder, wore the same size 11 or 12 New Balance shoes (though no one will tell me what size feet he has) -- and the van he supposedly owned even ended up to be the same exact color as the car I described: charcoal gray. What a bunch of incredible coincidences, eh??
And then suddenly, an oh-so-easy overturning of a coerced confession by a St. Louis County judge, something I've never EVER heard of before -- and during the same time-frame of the world-wide exposure of the very similar coerced confession in the "Making a Murderer" case, on Netflix.
Hence, this blog post.
Thanks for reading, and please share.
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