Some Correspondence With "Misty Johnson"

Again, I beg your pardon for offering a little background information (in italics, below). Obviously, a lot has happened to me over the past 14 years since Trina Langenbrunner was murdered, and a lot of it is not directly related to my still unsuccessful attempts to get my testimony into the official record. You'd think the Sheriff's Department would have been legally OBLIGATED to take my statements and enter them into official evidence, but evidently, they do what they please, and the law is for other people ... 

I left Minnesota in December 2004, and went to look for teaching work in the Lao PDR (Laos), with relatives of refugee friends I'd met in Minnesota.
I was in Laos for a little over 7 years, and ended up spending everything I'd saved from selling the farm, plus money from my dad, besides. I ended up basically with nothing, except a much-increased knowledge of the Lao language, and 7 years of teaching experience. 
I finally couldn't get a visa to work there anymore, and had to leave my house, my motorbike, nearly all my personal possession, and my fiancee behind. (That's another story.)
Now I am in Thailand, just about a mile from where I lived in Laos. It's heart-breaking to be separated both from my kids and grandkids in the US, and from my fiancee in Laos besides.
Fortunately, the Lao and Thai languages are very similar, especially up here in the Northeast part of Thailand which actually used to be joined with Laos, so my students at the University understand Lao. I'm working full-time now, enjoy teaching nearly as much as I used to enjoy farming, and my fiancee comes over to visit whenever she can. And, I am happy that nobody in my circle has been murdered, though my life has been threatened.

While I was in Laos, I did my best to keep track of the news back in Duluth, mostly by reading the Duluth News Tribune. The Tribune used to offer a comments section where readers could comment on selected news stories. I took advantage of that from time to time to make comments on the cover-up of the evidence in the Trina Langenbrunner case. 
These comments sections were not directly on the News Tribune page, but through blogging sites, such as WordPress, Area Voices, etc. There were more than one site used over time, but I don't remember exactly the names or dates when the Tribune changed blog software.
Then one time, I believe about in 2008,  I got a "friend request" on the blog I was commenting on. The person who sent the request was a "Misty Johnson", which rather rang a bell, as "Misty Johnson" is a detective character in a mystery series. I kind of suspected "Misty" was a pseudonym for someone from the Sheriff's Department. I was happy to repeat my information to anyone, though, even "Misty".
We began a short "friendship", and "Misty" pumped me for info about what I knew about the Langenbrunner murder. 
"Misty" made derisory comments about the Sheriff's Department, especially investigator Sally Burns, and led me to believe that Sally was also posting on the same blog, under the name of "Yellow Dog", or (something similar to that). "Misty" pretended to "call Sally out", and then suddenly "Yellow Dog" didn't appear on the blog anymore -- which I guess "Misty" figured would make me feel more friendly to "her".
It was kind of funny, actually, as I'm pretty sure it was "Misty" who was the cop, and I didn't care a hill of beans about Yellow Dog being on the same blog, anyway ... but I played along. 
Also, "Misty" had mentioned that "she" was doing a blog of "her" own. I looked for that blog on the blog-site, and found it. It was very racially biased against Native Americans, and there were some crude "jokes" on it, putting down Native Americans in Duluth and in general. 
I'm sure that the blog is still archived somewhere in cyber-space, and probably even my conversation with "Misty" -- but I haven't found them, so far. I've checked WordPress and Area Voices, without success. If any readers here are more Internet savvy than I am, or know other blog software the Tribune may have been using, maybe I could still find it. I do remember my password.
Anyway, besides telling "Misty" basically everything included in the previous posts on this blog, I also sent her a copy of the following letter which I had sent to a guy named Hunter Bear. He had been on the Internet asking for any information about a murder of a young Native American male, Russell Turcotte, in North Dakota. That murder had occurred at a time and place where Tom Hinze may very well have been at the time, and the M.O. certainly was similar to the Trina Langenbrunner murder. The body was found off a gravel road, off of Highway 2, in North Dakota. The victim had been picked up and offered a ride, evidently by a "nice guy" at a gas station, then was never seen again alive.
Another thing that had struck me, was the fact that Russell Turcotte was returning from a Rainbow Gathering when he went missing, and I knew that Tom Hinze also had attended Rainbow Gatherings. (He told me that he liked to see the naked women at these gatherings.) 
I'll post that letter, which I sent to Hunter Bear in September 2003, below.

Dear Sir:

The enclosed relates to the murder of a young Native American lady whose body was found about 1/2 mile from Highway 2, on a little-used gravel road in Brookston, Minnesota, about 20 miles from Duluth. Her body was found tortured and stabbed, about 10 miles from the bar where she was last seen, and from where she caught a ride on her way home to Floodwood, MN, where she had 2 children. I'm sending you this information because I feel it may possibly be related to the Russell Turcotte case, which I read about on your website.

There are a few facts about Tom Hinze that are not included in the enclosed letters:

1. He attended Rainbow gatherings.

2. He has lived in Lacey, Washington. I know he was there during the winter of 2000-2001, but do not know if he has been there since.

3. He was in Alabama during the spring of 2001, and was badly burned there by an explosion at a race track where he was working. I don't know what town he was in while in Alabama.

4. I once dropped him off to hitchhike westward, at the intersection of I-29 and Highway 2 -- but that was during the summer of 2001, not 2002. All I know for sure about Tom's location during the summer of 2002 is that it was somewhere west of Minnesota, very possibly on or near Highway 2. He was in Kalispell, Montana during the early months of 2002, perhaps up to May, or so. He called me from there, but my memory is not clear as to exactly when.

5. He was in Grand Forks during the winter of 2002-2003. He called me from there and threatened me, saying, "Don't forget, I'm only 4 hours away." He showed up here in the Duluth area in May 2003, then went out to Grand Forks for a short time in late May or early June, then returned to Duluth where he was put into the NorthEast Regional Correctional Center (NERCC) for a DWI. He left Duluth heading west about a month ago, pulling a 1940 Chev on a car-dolly. I don't have a description of the vehicle which was pulling the dolly, or of the person driving it.

5. The only clues that law enforcement publicly admit to having in Tina Langenbrunner's murder are a pair of "New Balance shoes, size 11 or 12", and a "black mini-van".

I don't know if any of this information is related to the Russell Turcotte case, or not, but I thought it could possibly be, and decided to send it to you.

Please write or give me a call if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Lloyd Wagner

6168 Birch Point Road

Saginaw, Minnesota  55779

218-729-9398

Hunter Bear never answered my letter directly, but through his website suggested that anyone with information or suspicions should contact the police in North Dakota. 
I had contacted the St. Louis County Sheriff's Department repeatedly about things I had seen with my OWN eyes and even had backing for. As they had repeatedly shrugged me off and denigrated my testimony without even checking it out, what would be the use of my contacting the police in North Dakota about what truly WERE only suspicions? 
The first thing any police in North Dakota would naturally do would be to contact the St. Louis County Sheriff's Department about the Langenbrunner case, and I already knew full well where that would lead.
Anyway, "Misty" thanked me for the information, and then "she" abruptly disappeared from my cyber-life forever.

And, I guess that's the end of this post. 

Please stay tuned. 

A Little More Background Information: The Big Drug Bust that Wasn't

My last post brought things up to just before I sold my house and moved to Southeast Asia to look for work. However, after posting that, I realized that I'd forgotten a fairly major happening of "background information", and I will post that in this post.
What follows below is a part of a long email that I wrote to Ron Taggart of the Public Defender's office, in July 2013, as a partial explanation of why I think the Sheriff's Department refused to DNA-test Tom Hinze (pictured left), to do any physical checks on the Nissan car that Tom had every opportunity to "borrow" the night of the murder, to even bother to ask me the location of the trailer where Tom had burned clothing in the week of the murder, or to interrogate him on my allegations that he had threatened my life.
The "powers that be" in St. Louis County have more than once violated the law themselves in egregious ways besides the refusal to investigate evidence -- especially in a terrifying "drug bust" on my property in 1998, where they didn't even come with a warrant, but nevertheless entered my house with guns drawn ... (to be continued in the narrative below). 
There was a $100,000 reward offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer of Trina Langenbrunner. If I had received that reward for that information, I may well have used it to get a lawyer and sue the "good old boys" who'd put me out of business as a farmer, and terrified my family at gunpoint for several hours in July of 1998.
The narrative follows below, as I originally sent it to Ron Taggart on July 17, 2013 (strangely, just a few days before Joseph Couture "confessed" to the murder of Trina Langenbrunner -- with no evidence or testimony ever having been presented to a jury).

Between 1997 and 2000, I first became aware of forced drugging being done to mental patients in the County, in many many cases, to kids. In fall 1997, I wrote a letter which was printed (after being edited) by the Duluth News Tribune, about a case I had witnessed, where a young person had been "diagnosed" and drugged against her will. Then she was committed by the St. Louis County Justice System to a Cloquet facility designed for adults. Here, besides being forcibly drugged, she also witnessed the suicide of another desperate patient, was sexually molested (while a minor) by an adult female counselor, and was being strongly "encouraged" to undergo electro-shock treatment to "erase bad memories".

With the help of friends, including myself, she managed to extricate herself (at first, temporarily, then permanently) from this county-backed system of forced drugging and mistreatment. She is now in her 30's. The last I have heard, she is employed full-time and doing fine, without being drugged.

Unfortunately, the Lake Superior Drug Task Force (which I'll refer to from now on as "the Task Force"), including members Mr. Dennin Bauers and Ms. Sally Burns, put 2 and 2 together, and came up with 7. I was/am vociferously and actively against the kind of psychological and pharmaceutical abuse I described above ... so the Task Force kind of jumped to the conclusion that I must have been growing marijuana on my farm and selling it to young people.

On Thursday morning, July 16, 1998, about 10 members of the Task Force came out to my farm on the Birch Point Road, armed with guns, but with no search warrant.

I wasn't home when the Task Force arrived, but was on the road picking up the 14-year-old son of a friend, as he was going to help me weed carrots that day.

Ms. Sally Burns was the only female member of the Task Force there that day. I drove into my yard just in time to see Ms. Burns acting as "point person" for the home entry.She was crouched down to the right of the (unlocked) front door of my house, with her gun drawn, reaching out in front of her with her other hand, knocking sharply on the door.

At the same moment, another officer stepped up to the driver's door of my truck and demanded I sign a paper he shoved at me, giving my permission for the Task Force to search my house and property for marijuana.

I asked if they had a warrant. He said they didn't need one, that I should just sign where he pointed. About that instant, I saw Ms. Sally Burns going into my house with her gun drawn. I hollered, "If you don't have a warrant, get the hell out of my house!!"

"No need to swear!" the officer told me in a warning voice, as the Task Force members were standing around my yard with guns, but no warrant -- and one of them was going with her gun drawn into my house, where my son, daughter and son-in-law were still sleeping.

I will attempt to shorten a very, very long story ... the Task Force held the 4 of us in the hot sun for about 3 hours, while a couple of them went to Duluth to get a warrant. They wouldn't allow us to go inside my own house to eat, answer the phone, use the bathroom, or even for a drink of water. 

While we sweltered in the hot sun, a couple more of the Task Force made a run to the Twig Store for cold drinks and snacks for their group, which they enjoyed in front of us. I remember Mr. Dennin Bauers especially, enjoying a cold soda in an unmarked government 8-cylinder SUV parked on my lawn. He reclined back in the seat, with his feet up on the dashboard, the air-conditioning turned on, and the motor running. 

I had agreed to pay 2 people to help me weed carrots that day, and had to send them home. One of them had taken the day off from his other job, so I had to pay him for work not done. The 14-year-old boy (who was big for his age) told me later that he was spoken to rudely and treated as a criminal or gang member, because he had no I.D. When the Task Force ascertained that he really was 14 (by calling his mother who was unavailable to come and pick him up), a uniformed Sheriff's Deputy gave him a ride home in a marked Sheriff's squad car. That Deputy was Mr. Ross Litman, by the way, before he was elected Sheriff. According to the boy's account (which I heard second-hand from his outraged mother), Mr. Litman had driven north on the Munger Shaw Road, known for curves and deer-crossings, at speeds up to 85 m.p.h.

Later, the team which had gone to Duluth returned with their belated search warrant. Some of the Task Force went into my house (and left quite a mess), while others went out into the garden and woods. A couple of them stayed to guard the 4 of us. 

About that time, Tom Hinze (on his way home to his parents' place farther down the Birch Point Road where he lived in a camping trailer at the time) drove into my yard, right into the middle of everything. I tried to wave him off, as I knew he had no driver's license, and suspected (rightly) that he was stinking drunk. Dennin Bauers asked his name. "My name's Tom," he answered loudly. Dennin Bauers asked his last name. Tom replied with a grin, "That's none of your damned business!"

Ms. Sally Burns then answered, "We've got ways to find out your last name, Tom," and she crouched down in front of the car with her notepad out and started to write down the license number. 

Tom grinned again, "That ain't gonna help you none. The car's not in my name! My dad taught me never to put a car into my own name." Then he told them that his dad had been a cop, the former Sheriff of Red Lake County. 

The Task Force agreed with Tom that his dad had given him sensible advice, but then Dennin Bauers told him that he should leave, now. They allowed him to leave in his car, though he was obviously in no condition to be driving.

Not long after that, the Task Force members came in from the woods, and said they hadn't found any marijuana. Then they left, with no apologies. I distinctly remember Sally Burns tell me that they had seen some pictures upstairs upstairs in my house that looked like people smoking marijuana. "You have to be careful, Lloyd," she warned me.

Later, Tom Hinze and I talked about this. I marveled that the Task Force had let him go, as drunk as he was, without calling a uniformed deputy to arrest him for DWI. 

"They like me," Tom said, with his characteristic quick laugh.

I vociferously, loudly, and publicly related and protested the illegal and terrifying actions of the Task Force that day, and I wrote letters about it, as well. My biggest fear at the time was that they could so easily frame me -- I owned 40 acres, and there was no possible way I could patrol 40 acres every night. They may have liked Tom Hinze, but I knew that they didn't like me. (*Please ask Sheriff Litman to confirm*.)

Narrative: A Meeting that Went Nowhere, December 2004

Tom Hinze, formerly of Birch Point Road in Twig, who I saw wearing size 11-12 New Balance shoes just before the Trina Langenbrunner murder in late August 2000.

Please bear with me as I give a few paragraphs of background information (in italics, below) before getting back to a direct discussion of the Trina Langenbrunner murder ...

As mentioned in previous posts and in my profile, I lived and farmed in Twig, Minnesota until the first week of December 2004, when I sold my farm and moved to the Lao PDR (Laos) . I went there to look for English-teaching work with relatives of refugee friends, who I'd helped sponsor and get started in the US, after the Vietnam War. I knew a lot of the Lao refugees as they were relatives and/or neighbors of my ex-wife, who I'd married while serving with the USAF Security Service in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. My ex-wife was from Thakhek, Laos, just across the Mekong River from Nakhon Phanom, Thailand.

I was forced to sell my farm for financial reasons -- I couldn't possibly compete with the vegetable-growing operation that was going on at the Northeast Region Corrections Center (NERCC) during the 1990s. They were located out in Twig also, and were paying their captive labor force a couple of dollars per day, while I had to pay at least the legal minimum wage. They were selling their vegetables directly to the public at rock bottom prices, just a short distance from my farm. They were also selling to their own employees and to others to resell in Duluth.
One of their employees also had (still has, in fact) his own vegetable farm, and profited through "at-cost" goods and services he received at NERCC that other farmers had to pay full retail prices for.

I made some loud complaints about this corruption both to the County and to the State of Minnesota, and howled fairly loudly about having been put out of business and into poverty.

I made myself unpopular with the powers-that-be on that issue, and I also made myself unpopular on the issue of forced psychiatric drugging which was and is going on in most of America, including in Duluth. I've personally seen people hauled in by Sheriffs' deputies for "non compliance" with their forced drug regimen, and I've also personally seen people held down and forcibly injected with heavy-duty drugs, such as Haldol -- against their will and despite their loud pleadings. A person doesn't have to do much research on the Internet to find that these psychiatric drugs are likely to cause more problems than they cure -- including such permanent conditions such as tardive dyskinesia, and even death.  The mother of a friend of mine did die, in fact, from a diabetes reaction to Zyprexa.

But woe be onto anyone who doesn't bow down and worship the Doctor, even if the Doctor is some damned fool who doesn't know that just because a black person from Mississippi uses language differently than a white Duluthian, that fact SHOULD have absolutely nothing to do with a mental illness diagnosis. The same "Doctor" didn't even seem to know the side effects of the drug he was forcing my friend to take: she had a scabby rash all over her neck, and the "Doctor" said the meds couldn't possibly do that to her skin ... though the published side-effects of the meds included "possible epidermal reactions".

Anyway, as I mentioned in previous posts, my life had been threatened by Tom Hinze, and the Sheriff's Department refused to do anything about it. Also, the Sheriff himself had had remarks published about people who "perhaps were mentally ill", and "had yet to be diagnosed" (or words to that effect). Knowing the power of this psychiatric crowd, and their complete lack of culpability for any of their actions, plus the fact that I couldn't possibly make a living on my farm anymore, I sold my farm as of the first week of December, bought an airplane ticket, and began packing up.

Just a couple of weeks before I was to leave, I got a call from a guy who said he was a "friend of Trina Langenbrunner's". He said he'd heard from a friend of mine that I had some information about the case. I told him that yes, I did have some information. He asked if he could come over and talk to me. I told him I'd be happy to talk with him, but that he'd have to come quickly, as I was in the process of leaving the area.

He came with another man one afternoon the week before I left. They both told me that they were "friends of Trina Langenbrunner", and that they felt that the Sheriff's Department investigators were not doing a thorough investigation of the case and seemed to be dragging their feet. 

I took what they said at face value. I told them everything mentioned in the first 4 posts of this blog, and also printed out the three letters and gave them copies. I also talked about the tire from the Nissan, and gave that to them, feeling that no one else wanted to take care of it, and I certainly couldn't take it with me. 

Then one of Trina Langenbrunner's "friends" mentioned that there was yet another clue besides the size 11-12 New Balance shoe tracks (that matched the size 11-12 New Balance shoes I'd seen on Tom Hinze a few days before the murder), and the mismatched tires from the Nissan that Sheriff Litman asked so many questions about (though he then in almost the same breath said he wasn't interested in) ... This "friend" of Trina's told me that there was a "Camel jacket" that had been found at the scene of the murder.

I asked about the jacket, and he told me it was a red and tan advertising jacket for Camel cigarettes.

[Notice: I apologize that the information given about the jacket in this post is in error. Actually, these guys did not tell me the color of the jacket at the murder scene. It was black, not red and tan -- and it had evidently already been identified, back in October of 2000. They did not tell me that, either. Please see Post 16 of this blog, for more details and explanation of how this error occurred.]

That struck a bell with me, because a kid who used to live with us had such a jacket several years before, and I remembered seeing it around the farm. I even vaguely remembered a picture of someone in that jacket, but as I told the "friends", all my pictures were packed, and I'd have a heck of a time finding that one. But, I promised that if I found the picture, I would get in contact with them through the friend of mine who Trina's "friend" had mentioned the first time he called me.

I remember thinking to myself that if the Sheriff's Department had used their heads, they would have published ALL the clues in the newspapers right away, so witnesses who'd seen anything would know what the the police were looking for. But, instead they released clues one at a time, and in private, and then when I said I'd seen something, they changed their stories of what they were looking for and refused to check into what I had seen.

Later, I did find that picture of the red and tan Camel jacket, and I sent it by mail from Laos to my friend ... but I never did hear if he had turned it over to Trina's "friends". Nor did I hear anything at all, in fact, for a few years.

Thanks for reading, and please stay tuned ..... I'm trying to paste a picture of that jacket right side up, but am not having any luck right now. Here it is, sideways. Maybe I'll fix it later.
Again, I apologize. Please disregard any info on that jacket. What a headache it's been for me, too!