Criminology - The Murder of John Mike Crites

Episode Date: October 2, 2022

John Mike Crites, or Mike as he was known by, was living in his dream location on an 80 acre property in Birdseye, Montana, just outside of Helena, Montana. But, the dream turned into a nightmare when a series of property disputes began occurring with multiple neighbors. Then, in 2011, Mike suddenly vanished with out a trace and his friends and family began searching for him. Later that year, someone found remains in two trash bags that turned out to be Mike Crites. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murder of John Mike Crites. Mike had made a number of enemies over the years during these land disputes. But, he had some people on his side as well. It seemed as though every neighbor who owned land around the area took up sides. The police looked at everyone who had run-ins with Mike, some of them armed confrontations. One man in particular stood out to them and they worked hard to put together a case against him. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last year, there were nearly 22,000 murders in the U.S. Not surprisingly, more than 200 true crime podcasts launch every year in the U.S. alone. There's no shortage of crimes and no shortage of crime podcasts to cover them. But none of those shows have the heart of our true crime podcast. Thank goodness. Well, hell, they didn't even have seatbelt laws back then. He never wore seatbelt. Yeah, it's fine.

He could not remember. exactly what happened and thought that he had blacked out. That was about it. That's all he could tell officers. He was drawing things saying the thoughts won't stop. I want to see how this plays out. It's heartbreaking. Isn't it time you made our true crime podcast, your true crime podcast?

Our true crime podcast, available on all your favorite podcasting apps. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. So everyone and welcome to episode 226 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what's going on with you? I'm battening down the hatches here in southwest Florida.

We're getting a hurricane that's going to scrape us and hopefully not hit us directly. But, you know, because of that, we had to record this earlier than we normally doing the week. So I've got to get everything ready, last second preparations. You know, I'm hoping it goes out into the golf and doesn't affect too many people, but I am worried about my fellow Florida residents here. So I hope everyone's safe. And it's one of the, you know, if there's a downside to being here in Paradise, that's one of them. That's one of them. You guys get some weather. There's no doubt about that. Yeah, it beats shoveling snow and that kind of stuff. You got to weigh them out.

Yeah, I think we've said before. right there's downsides to living places there's upsides and you know you got to balance everything out let's go ahead and give our patreon shoutouts we only actually have one because like you said we are taping very early because of the hurricane but it was regina abigail adams so we really appreciate that new support yeah thank you regina that means a lot to us and for anyone else out there that would like to support criminology you can do so by going to patreon dot com slash criminology all right buddy let's go ahead and jump right into this case. On June 29th, 2011, Elsa Kreitz received an unusual phone call. The Lewis and Clark County Sheriff's Office in Montana wanted to know if she had been in touch with

her son, 48-year-old John Mike Kreitz, in the last few days. This is how she learned that her son, who went by his middle name Mike, had not been seen or heard from for three days. His neighbor, Mark Flora reported Mike missing on Tuesday, June 28th, just two days after he had last been heard from. The call from the sheriff's office to Elsa was the beginning of a nightmare for her family. John Michael Kreitz, where Mike Izzy preferred to go by, was born in 1962 in Germany to parents Elsa and Billy Joe Crites. His family was in the Air Force and they eventually came back to the states, settling in Aurora, Colorado. While there, Mike attended Gateway High School. Growing up, Mike was very close with his older sister, Connie. They had adjoining rooms in the basement who would

spend hours talking, listening to music, and dancing. Mike loved nature in the outdoors, and he was an avid hunter and fisherman. After traveling on hunting trips to Montana, he fell in love with the state, and after working hard and saving up his money. In 1992, he bought attractive land outside of Helena, where he planned to live in what he thought would be paradise. Mike lived on an 80-acre property in Birds Eye, Montana, just outside of Helena. Mark Flora had lived in the area since 2005. Mike and Mark found themselves caught in a legal battle with other neighbors on nearby properties, but they stayed close and they looked out for each other.

Mike called Mark early on Sunday, June 26th, and asked him to come by around. 10 a.m. because a different neighbor, one that was not very friendly, was going to come by and meet with him. And Mike wanted someone there to help keep things civil. Mark was not able to go to that meeting and he didn't hear back from Mike later that day. The next day, Mark noticed that Mike's dogs were running around and it worried him. And it immediately concerned Mark because Mike loved his dogs and took care of them like he would have taken care of children. He wouldn't just let them run around loose. As Mark went to investigate, he noticed that Mike's vehicles were still parked at the

house. He got closer to the home and found Mike's front door unlocked and standing open, and Mike wasn't inside. Mark knew that something was wrong, because if Mike had gone on any sort of long trip or gone away for a couple days, he would have asked him to take care of his dogs, like he always did whenever Mike went away. Mark also noticed that a gate on the property had been vandalized, and the lock and chain used to secure it were cut. There had been recent ongoing trouble with trespassing on the gravel road, Turk Road, which led to Mike's property in Helen. The troubles between the neighbors went back quite a long time. It mostly had to do with road access. Neighbors said that Mike would block the road and say that it was his private road. There are dozens of property

owners relied on it as they're only access to get to their property. And more for me, I'm thinking about 80 acres in Montana. I've actually been watching. this show called Mountain Men. You ever watch that? I don't. It's, it's been on. I watched it, I think, years and years ago, but I'm, I'm rewatching it on Hulu. And it's just about people who kind of live in the middle of nowhere and live off the land and something like that. But 80 acres, to me, when I watch some of these shows, I think, wow, that would be great to really have your own great big piece of land and not have somebody right next door to you. but then I also think it's kind of nice to just get in your truck and drive down to Best Buy

or drive down to McDonald's and get something to eat. So I romanticize, I think, about it when I watch the show, but then I don't know. I don't know if that would really be for me. Yeah, I think you hit the nail right in head. We're not talking about an area where you can just jump in a vehicle and drive right to the corner store. You've got to be committed to live. in an area like this and have all your supplies there. You know, I watch this show Yellowstone,

uh, which takes place in Montana out on a cattle rent, out on a ranch. And they're far away from everything. They have all supplies right there and, and these roads that they travel on for the most part, a lot of them aren't paved. I don't think we're talking about a major paved road here that seems to be the start of this dispute. It's sort of a one of those dirt roads or off the, the main road type. roads where you would get to different properties on. And according to what Mike was saying here,

this is an area that he thought was his property. Well, and I think property disputes can happen, especially, you know, when you've got that much land, you know, where I live in a neighborhood, tract homes. It's, it's pretty much spelled out. Here's your property line. Does it become a little grayer, you know, when you've got 50, 80, 150 acres. And, it's, it's pretty much spelled out. And, it's, it's And somebody thinks, you know, this area is mine. And you think, no, it's not. It's mine. So just gives a little bit of clarity on what we're talking about here.

Now, apparently, Mike didn't have a phone for a long time until he eventually got a cell phone. And this was before 2005 because later neighbor Dennis Shaw recalled Mike coming over and asking to use his telephone. Before that time, he allowed it most times. But soon, Mike started coming by later. at night and when Dennis was at work, but his wife was home alone. He told the Helena independent record. I told him if he had to call someone, he could go to town, but I didn't want him coming around anymore. It went deeper than him stopping by to use the phone. It seems that Dennis Shaw felt he had a problem with Mike due to Mike's attempts to keep access to hunting land

locked down. According to Shaw, he wanted to control the whole place. He kept every off so it was his private hunting grounds. Shaw claims that Mike would intimidate the neighbor, saying he started running everyone off, wearing camo, and carrying guns. A good friend of Mike's named Chris Forsyth told the newspaper that it wasn't about that. Chris said when you walked with him, you had to step in his footsteps. He didn't even want you to bend a blade of grass. It was about respecting nature, not driving over the land with heavy tires. He took great pride in his land and he would spent hours by himself weeding the entire 80 acres. In 2005, Mike was sued by Cheryl Morlett, who was selling two lots on Turk Road. Mike's gates blocking the road prevented access to those

lots from the road. Mike was ordered to stop interfering with access to the lots and fine $3,000. Things got worse in 2007 when Leon Ford and his wife Debbie bought property adjacent to Mike's, they planned to build a home on their property, which they would use an old, logging road to access. However, that old logging road went right through the property that Mike owned and Mike was not okay with the Ford's plan. The problems intensified in 2008 when a man named John Mehan and his wife, Katie Wessel, moved to a different property on Turk Road. Shortly after they moved in, Katie Wessel and her daughter were riding their horses and bumped into Mike, who was not expecting them to be there. When they went to move,

their horse trailer soon after this encounter. The brakes of her truck didn't work. John Meahan claims that a mechanic told them that someone had cut the brake line. And they blamed Mike. And this wasn't the only run-in between John Meahan and Mike. On August 23, 2010, Mehan and Mike had a confrontation. Mehan called the police and claimed that Mike had fired his gun towards some people that Meehan had over. There were many more phone calls to the police department after this incident.

So the Lewis and Clark County Attorney's Office sent a letter to the residence. As per the Helena Independent Record, the letter stated that neither the Sheriff's Office nor the County Attorney's Office is going to get involved in what should be civil disputes about access and easements. It went on to clarify the issue of being armed. It is not a threat under the law of this state to simply wear a sidearm and argue with someone. Apparently the letter didn't calm tensions among the neighbors because on November 27, 2010, John Mian was arrested for pointing a rifle at Mike as he went down Turk Road. So, you know, let's go back to this letter that was sent out. It's not a threat under the law of the state of Montana to wear a sidearm and argue with someone.

Okay, I get that. Now, what is against the law is to point a gun at someone. body. I'm pretty sure that's against the law everywhere you go. Yeah, I think that's the problem. When you live in the wild west area like this and you've got guns that you carry around with you as part of your everyday attire, any kind of tensions can can escalate quickly. And then you have people pointing guns to each other. It's not a good situation. Now, John Meehan's wife wasn't arrested, despite standing on the opposite end of Turk Road and pointing a rifle at Mike's back. John Meehan was charged with assault with a weapon, but pleaded no contest and convicted of negligent endangerment. He was also ordered to stay at least 1,500 feet away from Mike and Mike's friend

Mark Flora at all times. But I want to go back to what you said, Morph, you know, obviously these are people with guns. You know, they live out. I don't know if they need them for protection. There's probably a lot of wild animals, whatever it is. But at this point, these individuals have a problem with each other. And these guns are coming into play. You know, when you and your wife each have a rifle and you're pointing them at somebody, the other person's carrying a firearm, that is a very tense situation. That's not one neighbor yelling across the street and another.

This is, you know, getting into the area of the Hatfield and McCoy. Yeah, definitely you can see a situation turning volatile and someone doing one thing and someone responding and then all of a sudden you've got a nightmare on your hand. Yeah, because let's face it, neighbors get into arguments. They have beefs with each other and sometimes words are exchanged. But any time that a firearm is involved, the possibility for escalation goes up exponentially. We know that. You're mad.

You're blind. blood is boiling and you have a firearm in your hand on your hip, things can go bad very, very quickly. On March 1st, 2011, Mike called the police after another confrontation with John Meahan. This time, he claimed that Mehan had tried to shoot him, but missed. Mike had been out documenting snowmobile tracks on the property and was walking back to his truck when he heard a shot coming from the direction of Meehan's house. The following month in April, John and his wife Katie,

as well as Dennis Shaw, filed a civil lawsuit against Mike. According to the Helena Independent Record, the lawsuit alleged that Mike verbally yelled at, threatened, and accosted all the plaintiffs and many others in the Turk Road area by often driving up and down Turk Road, brandishing a weapon,

videoing or using his binoculars to look into the plaintiff's homes and other homes. Now, it's unclear if Mike was ever served in that suit before he disappeared, but we'll get to that later. In May 2011, Mike's allies in these run-ins with the neighbors, Mark Flores, and his wife, Gloria, filed a lawsuit against multiple neighbors, including John Mian and his wife. The Flores had been forced to make an alternative road to their property when John Mian block Turk Road, but the new road they used wasn't able to be used all winter. John and his wife didn't want anyone on Turk Road because their deed shows no easement.

Just two days before Mike disappeared, John and his wife filed a lawsuit requesting that Turk Road be designated officially, either public or private. They preferred it to be designated private so that people would be forced to buy easements from them to access their properties. This would, by their own words, found in court documents, more than pay for attorney fees, and pay for the horse riding arena. However, they weren't open to letting Mike buy an easement, writing an email, we will only sell to Cricht's successor. So I mentioned the Hatfields and the McCoys.

It's really getting to this level. I mean, without quite as much violence, if you've ever studied them or watched anything about them. But no doubt this is a feud between multiple neighbors. It's like neighbors versus neighbors. Eventually in May 2014, a judge granted two of the neighbors a judgment that allowed them to cross Meehan and Wessel's property via Turk Road. The final ruling stated that an express 60-foot road easement exists across the Meehan Wessel property due to the deeds within the chain of title to

the Meehan Wessel property. The express easement allows the plaintiffs, Taylor and Dickerson, use of the Turk Road to access the Taylor and Dickerson property. Nehan and Wessel seemed fine with this since the neighbors that bought these easements were not Mike Kreitz or Mark Flora. There were multiple neighbors, very aggressively involved in this whole land dispute. In 2007, Leon Ford, who owned 15 acres north of Mike's property, pointed a gun at Mike as they argued about access to Turk Road. when police were contacted, Ford admitted holding a loaded gun, but denied pointing it at Mike. Mark Flora had all this land drama on his mind when he called the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff's Office to report his friend Mike missing. As we mentioned, Mike would always call Mark to look after his dogs and property for a day or two if he went away or went hunting for a couple days.

But Mark knew in his gut this time something was wrong. Deputies came out and did check a little bit of the areas surrounding Mike's house that day, but didn't find out. anything of use to help find Mike. Since Mike lived on 80 acres of land, a full-scale search of the entire property wasn't feasible at the time. On Thursday, the day after the officer called Mike's mom, Elsa, Mike was officially listed as a missing person in Montana. A four-person search and rescue team, a helicopter, and a cadaver dog, as well as a dog trained to find living people searched for Mike. They searched his entire property in some of the nearby areas, but found no sign of them. Some of Mike's family, including his mom, Elsa and his sister Connie, headed up to Helena to help try and find him.

On July 4th, they made it to his home and started investigating. Mike's truck parked in front of his house still had the keys in the ignition. The tailgate was down and a tree in a bucket filled with dirt was resting on it. It was pretty clear that he had been interrupted while he was planting or potting a tree. There were a lot of landscape projects to be done around the home, which he built and completed himself in 1996. They found Mike's wallet in the glove box and his driver's license, credit cards, and even some cash still inside. Another indication that Mike just hadn't taken off. What was missing was Mike's cell phone and his gun.

Based on what they found when they searched Mike's home and property, police were suspicious and suspected foul play. Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton told the Missoulean, this makes us suspicious that there might be foul play involved. Everything is here except for him. Authorities learn that Mike was supposed to meet up with Leon Ford, the neighborhood pointed a gun at him in 2007, to talk about the road on the day he disappeared, June 26th. They also learned that Ford's pickup truck was spotted driving up Turk Road that morning,

and then later, leaving at a high rate of speed. Police questioned Ford who didn't deny that he was at his Turk Road property, that day, but he claimed that he was there to spray weeds and had been doing so for three days. Ford claimed that when he got to the gate at Turk Road that day to talk to Mike, the gate had already been cut open and he didn't see Mike. Ford claimed that he assumed it was Mike who had cut it open for him. He claimed that the night before, he had told Mike that he would be arriving at 10 a.m. and he expected to be able to use the road to access his property. He also claimed that he went back and forth from the property multiple times that day, but a security

camera showed just one time. There was another search for Mike done on July 6th. It was smaller this time with four people and two cadaver dogs. It was becoming increasingly clear that something really terrible had to have happened to Mike. Elsa Kreitz remembered her last conversation with her son. On the website, John Mike Kreutz.com, a site set up about the case by Mike's family, Elsa recounted Mike saying, mom, if they find me dead up here, please tell them about the crazy guy down the hill. While searchers were looking for Mike, they were also looking for his dogs who hadn't been found. They were part wolf, very special dogs. Elsa had to debate the heart wrenching decision of whether or not to let authorities euthanize them if they were caught. Because though they were

part wolf, they were used to Mike's loving care. they were running loose and they could be dangerous. Mike's family tried to lure the dogs back to their kennel so that they could try to keep them instead of putting them down, but they wouldn't come back. On October 4, 2011, remains were found spread between two trash bags near MacDonald Pass about 25 miles away from Mike's house. The U.S. Forest Service regularly finds bags of animal bones in that area, but these were human. There were zip ties in the bag, too. The remains, which had been secured together with the zip ties, showed signs of dismemberment with saw marks on the bones. Mike's family gave authorities one of Mike's baseball hats so that they could extract a sample of his DNA to be able to try and compare it to the remains found west of Helena. On January 10th, the results came back.

The remains were indeed those of Mike crates. The authorities had to break the shocking news to Mike's family that he was dead, and they turned their attention to finding out who was responsible. So you mentioned more if that, you know, bags of animal bones were found regularly in that area. I would imagine that not even just bags of bones, but just bones in general are found scattered all over, mostly animal. But there's no doubt when you find what turns out to be human bones, especially in a bag. And then you add in the details that, okay, there's zip ties. there are tool marks, saw marks on the bones. It doesn't take too long to put it together that this wasn't someone who just perished out in the woods.

This was a murder. This was intentional. And I think this is almost like a needle in a haystack because if in that big an area for someone to find these human bones and identify them as human and have the wherewithal to say, hey, this doesn't look like animals. bones. It's a big clue. And if they hadn't been found, this case may have gone in a totally different direction. Yeah, I often think about, you know, especially unsolved cases that have gone on for years and years and years as unsolved. Could it have been something like this, the chance find that just never occurred? And so then, you know, let's say the bag got torn open and animals scattered the bones around, okay, if they were found years later, maybe the whole

scene looks very, very different. Now, he would still be identified, but would it look as though maybe he was out in the woods, got hurt, died, got attacked by an animal, possibly. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which 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.

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch.

Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. The Fords were interviewed regarding Mike's murder in Oak Harbor, Washington. police seized on the fact that their stories varied from each others and changed so often that it was said that it was apparent to detectives that the Ford's were being untruthful. Ford changed his original weed spring story to claim that he was using a metal detector on the 26th when Mike vanished. Interestingly, from the very same article announcing that Mike's remains had been identified, his family learned that in November 2011, A default judgment had been entered against Mike because he failed to respond to a summons. According to John Mike Kreitz.com, his family had looked through thousands of pieces of paper while they were at his house and no summons was ever found. Nothing regarding any pending lawsuit was found.

Mark Flora's wife, Gloria, agrees that Mike was never served. She recalled him yelling to the process server that he was trespassing and that he never answered the door. John Meehan and his wife were clearly aware that Mike was missing since they lived in the immediate area where helicopters and cadaver dogs were searching. Not to mention, the guy they had a land dispute with was just suddenly not harassing them anymore, as they had claimed. Still, they specifically asked for the default judgment on November 17th since Mike hadn't responded in June. Mike obviously couldn't have responded to a summons due to having been murdered, so his family filed to have the judgment overturned. there was a verified lawsuit against Mike that was served, the one that was filed in April 2011. In this suit, John Meehan, his wife, and Dennis Shaw claimed that Mike was harassing them due to their property dispute.

They claimed, according to court docs, that he was on what they called a reign of terror. At the same time, Mike's allies, Mark and Gloria Flora, were suing Dennis Shaw and Linda Coombs, claiming that They blocked an easement through their land. They gave the flora's access to theirs, putting up fences, barricades. Some even made up piled up snow and dirt and no trespassing signs. They also dug a trench across the road to try to prevent access. So, I mean, again, Morif, what we're talking about here really was a volatile situation. And it was clear.

And I think to authorities that there were a number of people who could have had a motive to kill Mike Cranks. On June 27, 2012, Mike's family traveled back to Helena. During that trip, they noticed that someone had put up a sign in front of Mike's property that read Private Drive. Whoever decided there was a private drive had also decided to cut through Mike's land to put the sign up. Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton told the Missoulean, they feel it's a private road. And though the road was public, he cautioned anyone against traveling on the road.

On July 3rd, John Meehan was arrested for taking down the security cameras at Mike's neighbor's house. Because the cameras had been relevant to the investigation and investigators had been using them to monitor the area, he was charged with evidence tampering. One camera was removed and one camera was corrupted in some way. Mehan was given a $250,000 bail. As per the Missoulian Justice of the Peace, Michael Swingley, said of the bail, I feel like this is a pretty serious offense with a possible connection to the Kreitz

disappearance. The bail was eventually reduced to 50,000 and Meehan was able to post it, and he ended up pleading guilty. According to the Missoulian, a Helena citizen told investigators that over the weekend of June 29th through July 1st, John Meahan had told them that it would be impossible for police to obtain a DNA profile from the bones, located on McDonald's Pass because police had not recovered a specific body part necessary to develop a profile. But authorities hadn't announced which body parts had been found at that time. But Mehan told this witness that they had not recovered Mike's skull. And as it turned out, this was true.

They hadn't. On August 22nd, 2012, Connie Crates received a notice. Three parties, John Meehan, his wife, and Dennis Shaw had sued Mike's estate for damages in the amount of $25,000 each, $75,000 in total. This was only possible because Mike hadn't responded to the summons and the default judgment had been entered. Mike's family offered to settle at first for what they called a nominal amount, but believing that her brother hadn't been properly served, Connie, who also managed Mike's estate, refused to settle. In late August, after a week of worry, the judgment against Mike was set aside.

Meen and his wife, according to court documents, claim that Mike was probably still alive, and his disappearance and murder were an elaborate hoax. On September 25, 2012, a human skull was found west of MacDonald Pass, near the intersection of Route 12 and Mullen Pass Road. This was only a few miles away from where Mike's partial remains had been found. A couple had stopped their car in the area in order to take their dogs out since they were traveling. And the dogs began acting strangely, leading the couple to the remains. The couple was shocked and they called 911. Police believed it was Mike's skull, but they had to wait for DNA to verify.

John Meahan knew that Mike's skull hadn't been recovered. almost three months before the skull was found, a detail that troubled investigators. On October 3rd, officers served warrants at the homes of John Mehan and his wife, Katie Wessel, as well as the home of Dennis Shaw. Police retrieves saws, bolt cutters, handgun, and hefty trash bags from the Mian Wessel residence. Police believe that these items were directly related to Mike's murder,

but officials said publicly that there were no closer to an arrest. Dennis Shaw told the Missoulean, They think I know something about it, and I don't know how to convince them. I don't know a damn thing about it. Shaw maintained his innocence, stating he was willing to take a polygraph test. He also mentioned that authorities took ropes

and coolers with them when they left his home, after about six hours of searching. Authorities in Oak Harbor, Washington, also searched the home of Leon Ford. The man Mike was supposed to meet the day he went missing. They collected three handguns as possible evidence. So I want to go back to, you know, police serving warrants, taking items, and specifically what we mentioned, saws,

bolt cutters, a handgun, and hefty trash bags. Okay, I get it. If they thought that these people were possibly involved in Mike's murder, then those items would look fairly suspicious. But more if I think you can also look at those and say, there are probably a lot of people right now who if they took an inventory of their home would have those same things and have had nothing to do with any murder whatsoever. Yeah, especially out in that area because people, we mentioned, a lot of them have guns. There's people that have saws because they cut meat to process and put in the freezer for wintertime. So all that stuff, while it looks pretty shady, it's at the same time, almost everyone in the area is probably going to have those things. Well, and I can tell you right now, my wife loads up on hefty trash bags as if they're going to stop making them.

She buys them in bulk. If someone were to raid my home, it would look like possibly I'm a Dexter. I need thousands and thousands of trash bags because I'm out doing some really, really bad things. Well, compliments to your wife because I have a lot of trash bags in my home, too. You can never have enough. No, they don't go bad, right? So if you look at it that way, but she does like to buy in bulk and we will, we will be set with hefty trash bags for a very long time. In early 2012, the skull found west of McDonald's pass was identified. It turned out to be mics. That same week, Mark and Gloria Flora asked a judge to help stop Dennis Shaw and Linda Coons from harassing them due to their use of the road, as well. as from blocking the road itself. Gloria Flora wrote in an affidavit that his behavior is becoming increasingly hostile. The Flores wanted an order granting them legal permission to use the road.

In October 2013, John Meehan pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief. He was given a six-month suspended sentence and fined $1,000. His attorney called what he did in the Missoulean simply moving two game cameras and putting them on the ground. But it was clearly part of the greater intimidation tactics happening on the road. By 2014, Mike's truck was still parked in front of his home. His camper was still in the yard, and his belongings were still inside the house. But Mark and Gloria Flora no longer lived in the home they built on their 100-acre property. As Gloria told the Missoulian, we abandoned our property. That was on the advice of law enforcement at multiple levels. The home sad abandon and Glory added, no one will live there for free because people are afraid. So I

totally get that living off the grid, living out in this beautiful, scenic area that you think is going to be paradise. But I'm sort of with glory here. If there's that much drama and that much fear and you're constantly arguing and worried, perhaps for your safety, I don't blame Gloria and her husband for leaving that area for giving up on that property that they loved. Well, if what she said is true. No one will live there for free. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know. We can't give this place away because people know what's going on and they don't want any part of it. In 2016, though no one had been charged with Mike's murder, Sheriff Dutton didn't believe that the residents along Turk Road should have any fear of meeting the same fate Mike Kreitz met. as per the Helena independent record, Sheriff Dutton stated, I believe those people are safe,

explaining that the possibility of this being a random killing is rather unlikely. In March 2017, authorities searched the property of John Mehan and his wife, Katie Wessel, again. It's not clear what they were looking for or what exactly they found. In 2018, a judge finally ruled that Mark and Gloria Flora had the right to use 60 feet of Turk Road that was on Wessel and Mien's property. The floors had been able to prove, after all, that the original sellers of the land had provided specifications for easements. According to case documents, in 1977, when Rosemary and Ray Sewell sold 980 acres, the deed included that the seller will provide a 60-foot public easement, as well as reserve and easement for public use for ingress and

egress to the property on the existing roads. In the 1990s, when Dennis Shaw and and Kuntz moved in. Their deeds included mention of a 60-foot public road easement on the existing road. The floors bought their property in 2000. In 2003, Shaw actually rerouted a portion of Turk Road so that it was no longer on his property. It was on his neighbors. In 2005, the floors built their home and they moved on to their property. In 2008, when Meahan and Wessel bought their property, the deeds included that their property line was subject to the existing 60-feet right-of-way easement of record. In 2009, the Flores actually purchased their own easement off of Turk Road from their neighbor, Stefan Reziel, and they built a driveway parallel to Meehan and Wessel's

property line. In November 2010, Meehan and Shaw put wet hay bales across the floor's driveway, creating a wall of ice that could not be plowed for over a week. Further blocking the driveway, Meehan created a fence of snow so that it would fall into the new driveway. In 2019, Connie Kreutz took legal action to try and have Lewis and Clark County turn over their files on the investigation to Mike's estate so that they could effectively defend against the lawsuit that was still pending and helped build a wrongful death case.

But Lewis and Clark County referred to. citing concerns over how it would impact the integrity of the ongoing investigation into Mike's murder. In 2020, 66-year-old Leon Michael Ford, the man that Mike was supposed to meet with the day he disappeared, was arrested. Where he lived in Oak Harbor, Washington, he was charged with premeditated homicide and evidence tampering. In the case of Mike Kreitz, it was revealed that Mike had been shot multiple times in the head and then dismembered and placed into bags. Because Mike had been scheduled to see Ford, it was most likely that he was the one who shot him. Investigators were able to recover a bullet from Mike's skull to analyze four forensic

matches. Records also showed that Ford and his wife, Debbie, drove from Washington to Montana and back with a rented RV in the summer of 2011. When they arrived on June 25th, They got into a confrontation with Mike due to the gate on his property that blocked access to the Ford's property from Turk Road. It was also revealed that on the 26th, the last day Mike was ever heard from, he was on his cell phone with a friend, explaining the land dispute with the neighbors and his fear for his life when someone knocked at his door, and he hung up the call. The floor's game camera caught Ford's red Chevy going up Turk Road toward Mike's house just before someone knocked on his door. there was no weed sprayer attached to the truck, and Ford had claimed that he was spraying weeds. In reality, he was confronting Mike Crites. Police verified that Ford didn't bring a weed sprayer to the property until the following afternoon,

staying for just 30 minutes, and he didn't use much liquid from the sprayer, as seen on the floor as game cameras. The zip ties that had been found in the bags with Mike's remains were apparently pretty unique and could be traced back to Chugatch Industries. in Oak Harbor, Washington, where both of the Ford's worked at the time of Mike's murder. They were not made after September 2011. And it had to be specifically ordered from certain distributors, certainly not something that just anyone would have access to, and too much of a coincidence to shrug off in a murder investigation. Looking into this connection, investigators found that Ford had taken the ties from a warehouse at the Naval Airways.

station in Whidbey Island with no assigned project that would have given him a reason to need them. Ford was arraigned and extradited back to Montana. His trial was originally set for February 22nd, 2021. But there has been no movement on the case, likely still due to COVID. In July 2021, Connie Kreitz filed a wrongful death suit against Leon Ford for the murder of her brother Mike. It's interesting and worth pointing out that Leon Ford was the only person charged with murdering Mike. His wife had previously helped threaten Mike by pointing a rifle at his back. She was with Leon when they traveled from Washington to Montana and back, and their other neighbor, John Meen, knew information that only law enforcement

and someone who had been involved in his murder would know. Police searches must have come up with something significant, perhaps ballistics, as well as the unique ties used in the murder disposal that tied to Leon Forer. Ford specifically. But just because charges have only been filed against Leon Ford and Mike's murder so far, that doesn't mean other charges against other people in the future aren't a possibility. As we mentioned, Ford's trial has been affected by COVID. His trial was postponed until August 23rd, 2021. And then again to January 24th, 2022. Finally, the trial was scheduled for August 22. So there have been a lot of delays. And we don't exactly know if anything happened last month. There's really been no updates that

we could find. It's up to the jury to decide whether Leon Ford murdered Mike. There is certainly evidence that there was a lot of animosity between certain people on that mountain. But only one of them ended up dismembered in trash bags. And that was Mike Christ. Mike's sister, Connie's attorney, Colleen Dowdall told the Missoulian he was a victim in an earlier charge against John Meehan and he is arguably the ultimate victim in the neighborhood dispute. Mike Kreitz remains are cremated. Perhaps his family chose to scatter them along Mike's property that he loved so much. We reached out to them via their website to help fill in some blanks. But as of the time of this recording, we didn't hear back from them.

And as we wrap up this case, Morve, I did find it. to be extremely fascinating. You have all of these different individuals with plots of land out in, you know, what you would call rural Montana. And obviously there were disputes between a number of these people. And you had some people siding with each other and then kind of ganging up on the other side, people siding up on the other side, there really was kind of a Hatfield McCoy thing to it for me, even though that was one family against another, this is multiple families against multiple families. But the fact that it all kind of centered around, you know, road access. And maybe I'm making that to be trivial. And to them it wasn't because that was how they,

accessed their property, their home. And so it was most likely a very big deal. And what I think is ironic here is I imagine a lot of these people probably aren't the type of people that want to have neighbors piled up close together where you look out both sides of your house and there's houses six feet away. These people probably say, okay, if I have people that close, I'm going to get into arguments. I'm going to be at each other's throat with the neighbors. Here they move out to this area where they all have big chunks of land and they're still at each other's throat. So I really found that ironic with this case. Yeah, I can understand where you're coming from. I would think the type of person that wants 80 acres is that type of person. They don't want to live driveway to driveway.

They don't want to be able to almost reach out and touch, you know, the home next to them. They want a little space. They want a little privacy. They want to be left alone, maybe in some cases. And it's like, okay, that's not what happened here. Not only were they not left alone, they were at odds with their neighbors. So we don't have the finality in the case of Leon Ford. What will ultimately happen? Will a jury decide that yes, he murdered Mike Kreitz? We're going to have to wait and see on that part. But I also want to talk. about, you know, whether or not it will come out that anybody else was involved. Because, you know, we did kind of talk about it. As we went through this episode,

people aligned with each other, right? It was neighbor aligning with neighbor versus these other neighbors. So Leon Ford was aligned with certain people. Is it going to come out that he acted alone? Will some other people ultimately be. found to have been involved in this thing as well? I don't know. Yeah, it definitely seems like some people had some knowledge here and some inside information that only the police or the killer would know. So whether they're connected or whether they're accessories after the fact, you know, we'll have to wait and see. But as I mentioned earlier, just because one person so far has been charged with this doesn't mean there won't be more arrest in the future if other

people are found to be connected. Yeah. And I, I don't want to point the finger at anybody because, you know, we don't have the evidence to back it up. The one thing I do want to talk about is if it is true, this statement about John Mehan saying, well, they won't be able to get a full DNA profile because they're not going to find his skull. That really continues to jump out at me because obviously, they did find his skull and it wasn't with the other remains. And at the time that it's purported that he made this statement, the police hadn't released that information. Doesn't make him look good.

That's for sure. I think this is a real tragic case. This is a, you know, Mike went to this place to enjoy his life in an area that he loved. And it wound up sort of being a living health room in many respects. And he ultimately paid with his life for, that torment that he went through.

And there's been a lot of accusations on both sides, right? We don't know if Mike was completely innocent in all of this infighting that was going on. But even if he wasn't, it still doesn't mean that he should have been shot in the head, dismembered, and his remains put in a plastic bag. I get it. You might have bad neighbor. and a lot of people listening probably do. That's something that we all have to deal with from time to time.

Sometimes those people move away. Sometimes a person makes a decision to move away from that person just because they don't want to deal with it. What I don't believe goes through most people's minds is, you know what would settle this whole thing is if I shot this person in the back of the head, cut their body up, put it in a trash bag and put it out in the woods. I don't think that's where most people's minds go to, but obviously someone's did. And that's the whole, you know, thing about this case. Who was it? Was it Leon Ford? And if so, was it him alone? Those are really kind of the questions that I have

surrounding the murder of Mike Kreitz. But again, we will have to wait and see as, you know, some of the final details emerge. But that's it for our episode on John, Mike Kreitz. If you love the show and you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review as well if you want to. Keep telling your friends. That word of mouth about the criminology podcast really helps.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Pod. or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So, Morp, that's it for another episode of Criminology, but we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all-new episode. So for Mike and Morph.

We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.