Criminology - The Gitchie Manitou Murders

Episode Date: April 17, 2022

In 1973, a group of 5 teenagers was attacked and four of them killed in Iowa in a case dubbed The Gitchie Manitou Murders. Gitchie Manitou State Preserve in Northwestern Iowa was a place where kids would go to hang out and have fun. But, in 1973, Stewart Baade, Dana Baade, Roger Essem, Michael Hadrath, and Sandra Cheskey faced three brothers who were bent on destruction. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Gitchie Manitou Murders. Brothers Allen, David, and James Freyer encountered the group on a November night. This encounter ended with the brothers shooting and killing Stewart, Dana, Roger, and Michael and abducting Sandra. Once they were captured, the brothers began pointing the finger at each other, each one trying to minimize their own involvement. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 203 of the Criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morph, man. What's going on? Not too much.

Just getting ready for CrimeCon and can't believe it's here. And I was just thinking about it before we hopped on here that I got to get bags packed and start thinking about plans. What about you? Yeah, it's kind of hard to believe, right? We're just a few weeks out from CrimeCon in Vegas. It seems like, you know, time is kind of flown by, but here we are. We're getting ready to go. Yeah, of course, we'll be on podcast row at CrimeCon.

So anyone out there that's going, you can definitely come by and say hi to us any of those three days. We thought it would be fun to have a bit of a more informal get-together with listeners of criminology and T-Cat to maybe hang out for a bit, talk, have a couple of drinks. So we did some research and we finally decided on the place close to all the crime con action to do a meetup. In fact, it's right there on the premises. It's at the Indigo Lounge at Bally's. So we'll be hanging out there on Saturday night, April 30th from 9 to 10, at least 9 to 10, you know, maybe longer or whatever. But we wanted to put at least a definite time frame on it. So be sure to come by.

say hi to Morf. I'll be there. Gibby will be there from TCAS. It should be a lot of fun. Yeah, I think it'll be a blast. And I know we've heard from a lot of people that say they're going. So we look forward to seeing all of you there. Morph, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Lynn Palmero, Daniel Curtis, Lorraine Simonis, and Rebecca Waring. So that's some great support there. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. As always, for. going out of the way and helping the show and supporting us. If you can and you're interested, please go to patreon.com slash criminology and you can help support the show.

All right. So we have all of that out of the way. Let's jump right into this week's case. It's an older case, one from 1973. And I say older. That was the year that I was born. So I don't say old. I just say older.

But this is a case that shocked and, forever changed a community in Iowa when a group of five teenagers were attacked and four of them killed in a case dubbed the Gitchie Manitou murders. Gitchie Manitou State Preserve is in Lyon County. It's in a northwestern part of Iowa. Its name means great spirit or great force of nature. In some Algonquin languages, spoken by indigenous peoples in the Great Plains area and the Great Lakes areas of both the U.S. and Canada, extending over at least 47 acres. Gitchie Manitou was a state park until it was officially classified as a preserve in 1969 to keep the area with its 1.6 billion-year-old Sue Quartzite rock

formation safe. It's a secluded and scenic area and would provide the backdrop to a terrible 1973 crime. On the night of Saturday, November 17, 1973, a group of five teenagers were enjoying the privacy and seclusion of the State Preserve, 18-year-old Stuart Beatty and 17-year-old Roger Essem were the oldest of the group, joining them were 15-year-old Michael Hadrith, 14-year-old Dana Beatty, Stewart's younger brother, and 13-year-old Sandra Chesky, the youngest of the group, as well as the only girl. She and Roger were dating. Stewart drove the group from Harrisburg, South Dakota, across the border to get you. Manitou State Preserve in his blue 1967 van.

The Preserve was a well-known hangout spot for teens in the area who wanted to drink, smoke pot, and make out with their partners without the watchful eyes of adults. The group planned to do just that. They brought one joint to smoke and a guitar to play while they relaxed. The teams were looking forward to a fun night out together under the stars. Before they picked up Sandra, the boys had gathered all their spare change, a whopping $2 between them. It was enough to buy just one joint.

But the group weren't serious drug users. They just wanted to relax. Michael told his parents that he was going to sleep over at Rogers' house. Stuart and Dana's mom had bronchitis, and at the time was being treated at McKinnon Hospital. They told their older brother, Leland, that they were going to Gitchie Manitou to play guitar around a campfire. At around 9.40 p.m., Stewart parked his van, and they were, all walked southwest down a path. They'd build a campfire about 30 yards east of the Big Sioux River to sit around and sing songs.

About 20 minutes later, while Stewart played his guitar, Roger and Sandra cuddled, and Michael and Dana sat near the fire. It was exactly the type of night they were hoping for, but that's when the group began to hear strange noises in the trees. Twigs on the ground were snapping, and it seemed obvious someone was watching them. So, more if, you know, I'm looking back. at what's going on here, it seems like a really fun night that they had planned. Okay, were they going to smoke a joint? Yeah, I get it. But were they hurting anyone? No,

they were just out to have a little bit of fun, relax, sing some songs. But at the same time, what runs through my head is this is kind of a setup for like in 1980s kind of came. campy horror movie. Yeah, I remember back in the 80s when I was a teenager, we would camp out. There would be a few of us that would have our tents out there and build a little fire. And there was this cool Tarzan swing rope that went out over the creek not too far away. So we'd go out there and have a fun time like they were going to do. And when it got dark, we'd try and freak each other out and scare each other and say we heard things.

And so I can imagine that when they heard something out there. there and they all seemed to confirm there was someone out there that had to be pretty frightening for them yeah i think they were frightened i think they were nervous but they wanted to see who was out there so the teens looked around scanning the darkness and roger actually walked towards the noise and then all of a sudden shots rang out roger was hit by gunfire and he fell to the ground stewart was also shot the argus leader dot com later chronicled how Roger screamed, I've been shot. It hurts.

Before the group could even grasp what was happening, three men raced out of the tree line, carrying shotguns. According to court documents, Michael screamed out defiantly, who the hell do you think you are? In response, one of the men shot him in the arm. Michael and Sandra both fell, lying on the ground. One of the attackers yelled at them to stop playing dead and kicked their feet. One of the men who seemed to be the leader of the three yelled at the group

that they were cops, narcotics agents, and the teens were being arrested because they were smoking wheat. One of the other two men told them that Roger, who had not stood back up and was lying motionless on the ground, had only been tranquilized and that he would be fine. But the rest of them were under arrest. As the men pointed guns at the scare teens, they forced him to all walk back up the path that they had walked down from the van. Sandra helped Michael, who was injured, to walk. They didn't talk. They just followed the orders of the men, who in their young minds were police officers. One of the men tied Sandra's hands behind her back and shoved her into a pickup truck near the van, while another one of them went back for Roger, who was still lying on the ground where he had been shot.

according to the Argus leader, Sandra, assuming she was being detained and punished, said to the other three, well, I guess I'll see you in school. The newspaper went on to detail how the man untied Sandra's hands, stating she couldn't be in his words busted because she was so young, and then drove away with her in a truck.

The man called himself the boss and claimed that the other two men did whatever he told them to do. While Sandra was being driven away, at Gitchie Manitou, The other two men told Michael, Stewart, and Dana to stand in front of Stewart's van. They then shot them, killing them in cold blood. The man driving Sandra in the pickup truck took her to a convenience store in Sioux Falls. He bought them both a soda for their drive.

Sandra waited outside in the vehicle. She stayed because, as strange as it may sound, she didn't want to get into any trouble by running away from the police. He then drove to a farm near Hartford, South Dakota, about two hours from Gitchie Manitou Preserve, where the other two men were waiting for them. The man parked the truck and got out so one of the other men could get in. This man made Sandra take off her clothes, and then he sexually assaulted her before getting out of the truck. The first man got back in the truck and as heartbreakingly detailed in the Argus leader,

Sandra said to him, I was a virgin, you know. This seemed to surprise the man. He said, no, no, you aren't in almost more as if he was in disbelief before Sander informed him that she was just 13 years old. This definitely didn't seem like something the man had been aware of. The Argus leader article discussed how the man at that point seemed to feel guilty, saying, I'll do what I can to get you out of this. And this seems like something that would be difficult to deal with for anyone,

let alone a 13-year-old child. And it's just to hear what she went through and for her to just say that to him. And it sounds like it was a wake-up call to him. Maybe he felt some kind of guilt that he had done this to a child. It's just heartbreaking to hear how that happened to her. Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying. 13 years old, this is horrifying. But then I look at the flip side of it and think, if he did feel some type of guilt,

then that meant it was only because of her age, he would have been totally fine. Had this girl been older, so I'm not making a lot out of, you know, the guilt that he's feeling. Not to mention the fact that young people have already died. The three men talked amongst themselves outside of the truck. The guy who called himself the boss told the other two men he was going to take care of Sandra. He tried to convince Sandra to go in the farmhouse with him, but he was holding a club, and Sanders said she didn't want to go.

The man then filled the truck's gas tank using a large red gas tank located on the farm, and then he drove her back to her home in T, South Dakota. And amazingly, he simply dropped her off. But before he left, the boss told her, her that if she told anyone what had happened to her that night, that he would come back and kill her. Sandra, in shock and afraid, didn't sleep the whole night. At around 8 a.m. on November 18th, she called Rogers' house, worried about him and the rest of the group. She was told Roger hadn't gotten home yet, so Sandra and her friend hitched a ride from T to Sioux Falls, where Sandra called Roger's

house again to check on him. One of Roger's brothers answered this time, and told Sandra not to move, that something awful would happen and that he would come pick her up. That morning, a couple was test driving a car from a dealership in Sioux Falls. They drove to Gitchie Manitou Preserve, where they found the bodies of Michael, Stewart, and Dana, and then they drove off to get help. Investigators responded to the scene. They found Michael, Stewart, and Dana, but they didn't find Roger right away. They found Roger the next day, near the same.

spot of the campfire. The teams had been killed by shotgun blasts. Evidence at the scene showed that three different weapons had been used. There were spent 12, 16 and 20-gauge shotgun shells scattered around the scene. One thing that was not at the scene was Stewart's van. Stewart's van was later found in Sioux Falls, but when police looked at it, it didn't provide any useful evidence to go on. When Sandra told police about the ordeal she had been through, they didn't seem to believe

her at first. She later told the Argus leader, they weren't mean to me. They just thought that I knew the names of the people that did it, and they wanted them. When Sandra described the farm she had been taken to, the police thought she was making it up, and she urged them to drive around looking for it, but they wouldn't. But Sandra didn't deviate from her story, and despite any doubts they had, invest The investigators did drive Sandra around, Minnehaha County looking for the farm. They would take her out for several days. Finally, on November 29th, as Lyon County Sheriff Craig Vincent drove her around,

she saw the large red gas tank that one of the assailants had used that night. The property belonged to a local farmer. Incredibly, the man with a pickup truck, the one who had taken Sandra home that night, drove right by Sandra and Sheriff Vincent in the same pickup truck that he had used to transport her, from Gitchie Manitou to this farmhouse near Hartford. As Medium.com laid out, Sandra yelled out, that's him. That's the boss.

Officers quickly pulled the truck over. The driver, Alan Friar, was arrested. The farmhouse belonged to a farmer who Alan worked for. Investigators soon found their other two suspects, and Sandra identified all three of them in a lineup. It turned out that the three men were brothers. from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They were 29-year-old Alan Friar, the boss, 24-year-old David Friar, and 21-year-old James Friar,

the brother who had sexually assaulted Sandra. They began to admit to what had happened. The trio had been out trying to poach deer illegally hunting at night. After a fruitless day of pheasant hunting, they were using stolen guns to do it as well. That's when they came across the unsuspecting teenagers. During his first interrogation, Allen Friar claimed that the teens had shot at him and his brothers. He went on to change his story several times before claiming that they had been trying to detain the teens for smoking marijuana. David Friar admitted to the crimes,

but claimed that James alone had shot the teens while he was backing up the van that they were stealing from the group. The brothers detailed how they originally were only going to steal the van. That's when they heard the teens singing around the campfire, and they went and quietly watched them for a while. At first, James Friar said that he couldn't have committed the murders because he was in prison at the time. Police checked out his story and found out that James actually had been serving time in prison, but that he had been out on a work release outing on November 17th, and he didn't go back to prison his schedule. Instead, his brink. His brink, he had been out on a work. He brother David called the jail, pretending to be James's boss, and claimed that they needed James

to stay in work another shift in order to keep him out of jail. James tried to blame his brothers for the murder, stating that Alan had killed Roger near the campfire, and David had killed the other three teens near Stewart's van. He also claimed that Sandra was actually having a great time. He said she willingly went with them and had sex with not just him, but also David. And more, if you and I have done so many episodes, right? And a lot of times when you talk about perpetrators being caught and questioned, obviously there are a lot of things that come out in interrogations and this type of questioning. People are trying to get. And, you're trying to get out of what they've done.

I mean, that's the bottom line. And I think sometimes they are willing to say anything. They're willing to change up their story to see what might work or what might satiate

detectives. But for me, this line you know, about Sandra is just absolutely deplorable. You know, she was sexually assaulted, she was violated as a 13-year-old girl. And to have this guy say that, oh, nope, she willingly went with us and she had sex not just with me, but also with my brother

David. I mean, that just really ticks me off. Yeah, and one thing that jumped out at me was it seemed like they weren't willing to spare their brothers. They were quickly turning on each other. And weren't afraid to roll over on the other one, blaming each other. And I think we see that a lot when there's multiple people involved in a crime, you know, when the pressure's on and they, they're facing a hard time,

they start putting the finger at the other people, uh, and they, and they turn on each other. Well, when you're planning a crime and when you're carrying it out, it's one for all and all for one, right?

We're in this together. But when people get caught, then it's every man for themselves. You know, At that point, it just becomes about self-preservation. James Fryer stuck to the story about wanting to rob the teams. But according to him, the brother is one of the teens' marijuana and not their van. But he kept changing his story, essentially saying that the trio wanted to make a citizen's arrest of the teens for smoking pot.

Apparently, the reasoning for actually shooting the teams was that they thought narcotics agents were allowed to shoot criminals in the process of arresting them. The Iowa Supreme Court would later call the shoddy defense a twisted notion of a narcotic raid. It's pretty clear that these brothers were up to no good, and they had started shooting before even talking to the teenagers. Even if they really did intend to detain the group, it's clear that they still murdered these teams. Roger had already been killed, and Stuart Michael had already been shot before Allen Friar announced that the three were narcotics agents. And I think more of, you know, what's even more sad, in this story is that whether the brothers wanted to detain the teens over weed or whether they wanted to steal it, these young people died over a $2 joint. I mean, nothing's worth losing

your life over, but a $2 joint and not just one life, four lives. It's just so unbelievably tragic and petty as a motive for multiple murders. This is why some authority, even to this day. Do not believe that story. A former officer in both Minnehaha County and Brookings County, Kevin Cuncle, has put forth the theory that he shared with the Argus leader that the brothers were frustrated from an unsuccessful day of hunting, not only pheasant but deer. So instead, they decided to hunt the one thing they could find, humans. Michael's older brother, Bill Hadrath, thinks that the friar brothers saw the group of teens at night, particularly Sandra, and lost it after her. And he may be right, since she wasn't killed and was taken to a second location, and was also sexually assaulted.

Maybe Bill Hadrath and Kevin Kunkel can both be right at the same time. In an attack with three different killers, it's not surprising to think that there would be more than one motivation. It seems they decided to both hunt humans and keep the girl they were attracted to physically unharmed. If they had solely wanted to take Sandra, they could have kidnapped her in the pickup truck, and they could have even taken the van, too, so that the remaining teams would have had to hike to get help. They had Sandra in the truck being driven away before the three teams were shot near the van. They could have simply left them there. They had what they wanted.

They could have tied the boys up or wounded them at the campsite and then kidnapped Sandra. There's just a lot of other things that they could have done if taking Sandra was their only objective. So it seems to me that these men wanted to kill. Regardless of their motive, it does seem odd that they drove Sander to a farm that could ultimately be traced back to them in a pickup truck that could also point back to them. Gitchie Manitou was secluded. It would have been just as secluded a place as the farm. And James sexually assaulted Sandra in the truck anyway. It seems odd that they would risk driving her that far, so perhaps they had other plans for her.

or more as in, I think a lot of cases, you can make the argument that these guys just weren't that bright. They didn't think about things. They just acted. Yeah, it's frightening that three brothers can sort of be on the same page as, hey, do you want to do this? And sure, why not? We're out here with the guns. Just frightening that there's people out there that as a group can decide that they're going to do something like this in the heat of the moment. Well, I think it's a great point. To me, and I think to most listeners, it's frightening when you have one person who can come up with the idea that, you know, taking the life of another human being or sexually assaulting a person is the right thing for them to do.

Now we're talking about not just one person, but three individuals getting on the same page. And that is a very scary thought. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

The story these guys gave to police seemed pretty weak, pretty hard to swallow. Maybe they were just trying to get law enforcement on their side. When they thought narcotics agents could shoot people, the war on drugs was fairly new in the public eye at the time. In 1970, just three years earlier, President Richard Nixon had signed the Controlled Substances Act into law. and in June 1971 called drug use public enemy number one. The Controlled Substances Act created the five schedules or classifications of controlled substances.

While today marijuana is legal in some states, and obviously we've come a long way from the days of Reef or Madness, we're talking about 1973. Even as of 2021, marijuana was still a Schedule 1 substance. though it is not classified as a narcotic, joining weed in Schedule 1, which is supposed to be reserved for dangerous substances with no medicinal purposes and a high likelihood of addiction,

or heroin, LSD, and ecstasy. Cocaine is a Schedule 2 drug, if you're wondering about the logic or validity of the entire scale. The Drug Enforcement Administration was created in 1970, So DEA agents or narcotics officers were quite new at the time of these murders. It seems likely that the brothers may have had a misunderstanding of the new agency, new laws and the like. But it also seems just as likely with these three.

They were just trying to say anything they could to save their own skin, trying to paint the teens as drug-using degenerates out in the woods and themselves as being on the side of law enforcement, though they themselves were trying to steal the marijuana. to most likely smoke. It's probably the only story they could come up with. What other defense would there be for lining up unarmed teenagers and executing them? It's a pretty weak story in the end.

In February 1974, David Fryer pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and one manslaughter charge. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. He appealed his sentence, but in February 1975, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld his, conviction and sentence. And we said it earlier, right? The Iowa Supreme Court talked about this

narcotics agent type of defense as essentially being ludicrous. In May 1974, Alan Friar was found guilty on four counts of murder for the deaths of Michael Hadrith, Roger Essum, Ann Stewart and Dana Beatty. He received four sentences of life in prison to be served consecutively without the possibility of parole. In January 1985, he tried to appeal his sentence, but the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the conviction and life sentence in October 1985. Alan and James Friar escaped from the Lyon County Jail on June 18, 1974. They fled to Gillette, Wyoming, in a stolen car, where they were finally arrested about a week later. In December 1974, James Fryer was found guilty of three counts of murder for the deaths of Michael Hadrith,

Stuart Beatty, and Dana Beatty, and found guilty on one count of manslaughter for Roger Esham's death. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. James also appealed his sentence, but in May 1976, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld its conviction, too. In the appeal documents, it states that James had an IQ of just 85. So more if that's fairly low, we've talked about it in a number of cases, you know, just where that line is of IQ, 80, somewhere in the 80s. I've heard it being different in different cases. But I think most people would agree that 85 is, is on the low side. It might kind of give us some insight. We don't have the IQs of the other two, but it might give us some insight as to why these guys did and said what they, what they did.

that this didn't seem to me to be a group of criminal masterminds, right? Nothing that they did seem to be what you would classify as smart. And again, we don't want killers, criminals to be smart. We want them to be dumb so that they get caught and then we can talk about it. And I think even if they did have low IQs, it's very possible that they still knew right from wrong. So I think the low IQ thing is sort of a cop-out in the situation. And, you know, this isn't a situation of three teenage brothers that are 13, 14, 15, do something like this. And you can argue that, well, there are still children.

They didn't fully understand what they were doing. These men were in their 20s when they happened. They were adults. So I think they definitely should have known right from wrong and knew what they were doing and the repercussions of it. No, I agree with you. Where I do think the IQ thing comes in a lot of times is when, you know, prosecutors are weighing the death sentence or a jury is kind of deciding life versus death. I think a very low IQ can often result in life over death. But I'm with you.

I mean, 85. And again, we don't know what the other two IQ. cues were. I think these guys knew what they were doing and I think they knew it was wrong. I just don't think maybe that they were that intelligent and that's why they did some of the things that they did. And it's why they thought maybe some of their stories would work when, you know, most people would hear that and think, well, that just doesn't make any sense. Okay. Number one, none of you were narcotic agents. And, Number two, you thought that you could do what, some type of civil arrest and that you would have the authority that, you know, somebody else would have that you could just shoot people on site, even though the real authorities don't have that type of power.

Yeah, it either seems that they were out of touch with reality and living in some fantasy world that they saw things on TV and thought they would act them out or, you know, maybe they'd truly. believe that, but either way, it just seems like a really weird cover story for explaining away what they did. Yeah, to me, it's just people being desperate and trying to come up with anything they can to get out of this horrible thing that they've done. And they're willing to try and say anything and everything in the hopes, however far-fetched they are that they can talk their way out of things. But I think, you know, one thing we can't forget here is Sandra's courage.

It was the details. She provided that led to the capture of these brothers. She believed the friars when they claimed that they were cops. She also believed that Roger had been shot with a tranquilizer dart. This is why she didn't panic when they were walking to the van and why she simply told the group that she would later see them at school. She had really thought they were busted in trouble for smoking marijuana. Perhaps, you know, it was just because she was a young teenager, maybe she was a bit naive. She later told the Argus leader, I was young. I watched Wild Kingdom

on TV where they shot animals with tranquilizer guns. When one of the brothers claimed they were using tranquilizer darts, that made sense to Sandra, based on her limited experience with the world. Sandra's called Michael, Dana, and Stewart, heroes for their calmness in those moments, which she believed saved her life. They didn't talk, yell, or run on their way to the van, even though Michael had been shot and he was injured. This allowed the friar brothers to keep up their ruse for Sandra, directly leading to her not trying to run. She reflected to the Argus leader that if she had known the men weren't real officers, when Alan had stopped at the gas station for soda, she certainly would have tried to run. Sandra said of her friends, I think they were trying to protect me by staying calm and not scaring me.

That's what makes them such heroes to me. No, I think one of the big questions that remains in this case is why did Alan Frye let Sandra live and walk away, even? even going so far as to drive her home. I mean, this directly led to the downfall of these three men. Sandra talked to Alan Friar throughout their two-hour journey. And it might have been this talk that saved her life. One retired Iowa Bureau of Criminal Investigation Agent Terry Johnson told the Argus leader, Alan wasn't the brightest ball when it was just Sandra and Allen in his truck. on the way to Hartford, Johnson says, I think he became aware of her as a person rather than just somebody standing out in the woods. She remained calm and they talked and he couldn't

bring himself to kill her. He also seemed surprised when Sandra revealed she had never had sex. Perhaps at that moment, he realized she was still a child. The aftermath of the murders and the attack on her wasn't easy for. Sandra. Just months after the murders and her assault, Sandra dropped out of her school. She couldn't take the social isolation or ridicule that accompanied being called the Gitchie Girl. According to the Huffington Post, kids would say, that's her, that Gitchie Girl who was with the boys who were murdered. Other kids would whisper as they passed her in the halls. She wasn't offered therapy through victim's services like she would probably be offered today. She was left to deal with the ordeal on her own.

Her mother did try to comfort her, often climbing into her bed after a nightmare, even years after the attack. But she was also working two jobs at the time, and couldn't always be there for Sandra. And a mother's hug, although comforting, isn't the same as trauma therapy, no matter how much they love you. Sandra had only lived near T South Dakota for about a year before the murders, and before that she had been in foster care and also mission school. her stepfather had convinced her mother to basically get rid of her and her brothers. Being the new kid at school is always difficult. But now she wasn't just new. She was known as the Gitchie Girl.

The parents of some of her classmates even told her kids not to talk to her. People had their own questions and judgments of Sandra, too. Wondering why at just 13 years old, she was even out late at night with so many boys that were older than her. Or they were even thinking that she may have played a role in the murders because she somehow survived. You know, and this is terrible more if when you see it in these types of cases, you have a victim who goes through a terrifying, horrible ordeal. And then it's as though they continue to be victimized by others around them. You know, kids are cruel. We know that.

But calling her the gitchy girl. Okay. That's brutal. But then you have adults who. are telling their kids not to talk to this girl, adults who are whispering that, you know, she may have had some type of hand in the murders, questioning why this girl would be out so late with boys who were older than her. I understand that part, but that's today what we would call victim blaming, right? You know, as youngsters, we don't always make the best decisions.

was it a great decision for her to be out with these people? It may not have been the best decision, but did it mean that she was complicit or that she deserved what happened to her? Obviously not. But I think there were, you know, people back then that thought that way. And that's just really sad. Yeah, I feel really bad for what she went through. It's almost as if she was victimized a second time,

I'm obviously not being abducted and assaulted the way she was, but just the ridicule and that constant bullying or whatever you want to use for it. It just seems like something that would just be traumatic for her just on top of what she had already gone through. And we do see that this still happens today with survivors of terrible crimes. A huge example that comes to mind is the kidnapping of 13-year-old Jamie Clause in the. late 2018. At 1253 a.m., 21-year-old Jake Patterson kicked in the door of the Klaus home in Barron, Wisconsin, and killed both of her parents with a shotgun before abducting Jamie. She was held captive at Patterson's home, 70 miles away from her home for 88 days. She escaped on January 10, 2019, running through the snow in leggings, a shirt, and Patterson's

shoes. They were very big on her and in her haste. She even put them on the wrong feet. Enough people had speculated about Jamie's involvement in the murder of her parents during the time that she was missing that when she was found, Nancy Grace used some of her airtime to scold those people who believed that Jamie had been involved. Just like in Sandra's case, Jamie's abductor drove by her and the police not long after her escape and was quickly apprehended without incident. Sandra told kiloland.com in 2018, just before the 45th anniversary of the murders, I walked with my head down for 40 years and I blocked everything out. Sandra realized that she wanted her grandchildren to have an accurate record of what happened,

enlisting Phil and Sandy Hammond to write a book and tell her story. She realized that people finding out about her story was inevitable. Sandra told the Rapid City Journal, My grandchildren are going to Google Gitchie Manitou, and they're going to see my name and read horrific stuff that they don't know about. At the time of that interview, she had nieces that were 12, almost her age when she was attacked that night in 1973. She didn't want them to find her story and be shocked and upset.

She wanted to be able to frame it in a way that she was sure they would know that it was a huge tragedy, and that grandma wasn't doing anything bad. More if it's sad and painful to hear Sandra so focused on defending her actions on that night, as if anything she was doing in the woods with her friends, would have justified this attack by the friar brothers. Gitchie Girl co-author Sandy Hammond explained to kiloland.com that while she knew about the murders, it was more of a lot of legends surrounding it, a lot of mystery. No one really knew what had happened.

There were a lot of rumors. Phil Hammond had been a close friend of the four murdered teenagers. While even Sandra says you can't ever heal completely from something like that, you can't be the you that you were before something like that happens to you. She says, you have to talk about it. Don't hold it in. Even all these years later, Sandra remembers her boyfriend, Roger Essem, and wonders what their relationship might have become if he wasn't murdered. They met in the summer of 1973 when Sandra was walking

from the drive-in concession stand to her car, and they were walking in opposite directions. Sandra told the Rapid City Journal that she remembered seeing the most handsome man she had ever seen in her life, and instead of walking past her, he stopped and they talked. He got her phone number, and they started seeing each other. They went on three or four dates, usually with Stewart driving them all around before that fateful night at Kitchie Manitou that took him from Sandra.

Sandra eventually moved on with her life, as best as someone can after something horrific like this. She married when she was 26 years old. In 2013, Sandra Chesky reunited with the former sheriff from Lyon County, Craig Vinson, who had driven her to search for the farmhouse,

house. By this point, he was 94 years old. As reported by the Argus leader, Craig Vinson told Sandra, I never thought you were a bad girl. And I checked on you through the years to make sure you were doing all right. Sandra looked back in an interview with the Argus leader saying, nobody deserved what happened. We were just going out for a night and it was so wrong. Sandra remembers the four teens fondly as good people, they were just kids with their entire lives in front of them who happened to cross pass with three monstrous brothers. In 2016, the book called Gitchie Girl was released. Authors Phil and Sandy Hammond released a companion or sequel to the novel called Gitchie Girl Uncovered in 2019. Now a grandmother, Sandra can't listen to music like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath anymore because it makes her think back to that time in the early 70s and think of her friends.

It's still too painful. Following the Gitchie Manitou murders, local teens didn't go there as frequently. There are rumors that Gitchie Manitou State Preserve is haunted. The lore of the case has frightened many people for years, and the case was also the inspiration for the Sioux Falls massacre in the second season of the FX series Fargo. Sandra told kiloblan.com that she hopes that visitors to

Gitchy Manitoo will just say a prayer for the boys and remember them as the great people they were rather than spray painting the rocks and trees or just thinking that it's so haunted. The preserve itself is a beautiful place. It's just the Friar brothers who were ugly. And morph as we wrap up this case, you know, it is an interesting one. You know, it's not a case where, you know, we had a lot about the trial and a lot of of, you know, information came out there, you know, this is a case about, you know, teenagers, doing what teenagers do and did back in the 70s. The one thing that I always go back to is that,

you know, in some of these stories, victims are doing something, maybe illegal, you know, in this case, smoking pot, but they're not hurting anyone. They obviously, obviously did not deserve anything that happened to them at the hands of the friar brothers. But that doesn't stop people. As we mentioned from, you know, kind of laying blame on the victims. And I hate that. I really hate it.

We got to stop doing that. The blame has to be solely placed on, you know, in this case, these three brothers who somehow all came to the same conclusion that it was a good idea to murder four people to sexually assault a 13 year old girl, I'm putting it all on them and no one else. Yeah, I think it's hard to blame anyone but those three. And it's what's frightening is it just, it brings home for me of just how this sort of can happen to anyone. I think a lot of us can put ourselves in the shoes, sort of remember when we were out with friends, maybe we went camping and, you know, came home, thought nothing of it, had fun. And these were just kids doing the same

thing many of us have done, except they crossed paths with these three dangerous brothers. And, you know, that unfortunate crossing a path led to them being killed and just leading to a tragedy for this entire community. And that's the one thing that is, kind of a central theme to many true crime cases, right? A lot of times victims are just out doing what they would normally do. They're shopping. They're driving. They're working in a convenience store. But the one thing that so many of them have in common is that they encounter a monster or monsters in this situation, but people who are intent on destruction, destroying, lives, whether that's through committing murder or through committing sexual assault.

I go back to Sandra. You know, what happened to her was obviously horrible. It changed her life forever. I mean, every day for the rest of her life was changed. There's just no way around it, knowing that four of her friends were murdered. She was sexually assaulted. We didn't even talk about survivors' guilt. which you know had to have been there.

Most people report that as something that they go through. Why did I live while my friends died? You know, you just feel so bad for her. I'm glad that she was able to go on with her life and get married and have kids and grandchildren, but it had to have been a struggle. One question I come away with at the end of all this is,

what might these brothers have gone on to do? had they gotten away with this crime. It seems like they may have been emboldened or felt, hey, we did this. What else can we do? And who knows what horrible things they might have done after that? Yeah, I think about that a lot in cases where you don't know maybe what they had done before. And let's just assume these were the first murders that they committed. What would have happened if they had gotten away with it?

Like you said, would they have become? emboldened, would they have gotten a taste for it, for murder, for the lack of a better term? I think it's a question you have to ask in many of these cases. And that goes back to the courage of Sandra, right? To be able to lead police to these individuals, you could make the case that she saved lives. Thanks to Sunny Landon for help with research and writing in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a rating. Keep telling your friends, that word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with a handle at Criminology Pod.

You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by searching for our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So more, if that is it for our episode on, the gitchy manitoo murders. But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.