Law&Crime Sidebar - Beaten Mom Identified Her Alleged Killer Just Hours Before Her Death

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

A homeowner in Kellogg, Minnesota frantically called 911 earlier this month, saying a stranger with brutal injuries was in their driveway. Despite suffering from a broken jaw and missing several teeth, Melissa Hunt was able to tell police that her ex-boyfriend, Craig Hameister, had attacked her. She died just hours later at the hospital. When police located Hameister, he picked an unusual way to try to escape. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the details of this sad case with criminal defense attorney Anthony Osso.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Plaud NotePin (10% OFF with the code" PLAUD16"): https://bit.ly/3EpwFfB Plaud Amazon: https://amzn.to/4lG76aOHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A Minnesota man is behind bars after being accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend in a shockingly brutal attack. Her allegedly telling officers what happened before she died, and this all ending with a crazy chase that ended with the defendant allegedly perched in a tree for hours. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. This shocking and deeply disturbing case started to unfold on June 18th when 36-year-old Melissa Hunt, battered, barely conscious, clinging to life, pulled her car into a stranger's

driveway in rural Kellogg, Minnesota. According to a criminal complaint that was filed in Wabasha County, the homeowners immediately called 911 after finding Hunt severely injured with devastating facial trauma, including a shattered jaw missing teeth. Now remarkably, Hunt was still alive and able to speak, and she pleaded for help. Long crime, we obtained a copy of the probable cause affidavit, which includes a firsthand account of these harrowing moments when deputies arrived on scene and despite her critical condition, Hunt was able to communicate with officers. Quote, the victim was able to communicate with deputies at the scene. She communicated that Craig, this is her ex-boyfriend and the suspect in this case, hit her

with a stick. Victim attempted to say Craig's last name, Ham, but was unable to complete it. Victim then began to spell the last name. Victim was asked if she was trying to say, Hey Meister, and she nodded, yes. deputies were quickly able to identify the man that Hunt was referring to, 44-year-old Craig Haymeister, a former partner with whom she shared a child. But here's the thing. Despite drifting in and out of consciousness, Hunt continued to speak, providing crucial information that would lead law enforcement straight to her alleged attacker. She described his vehicle, this white pickup

truck with oversized tires, said he lived just outside of Chatfield, Minnesota. She also told officers, the assault took place at a new boat launch in rural Kellogg, Wabasha County, and Hunt was even able to clarify that her attacker used a stick, not a bat. But despite her bravery and her determination to help police, Melissa Hunt's injuries were too severe. She died at the hospital less than two hours later. The complaint reads that the attack was described as a brutal blunt force assault, but what unfolded next took an even darker and more bizarre turn. And I'm going to get into that in a moment. But first, I want to bring on a special guest friend of the show. Anthony Oso, criminal defense attorney, former assistant district attorney, has a specialization

in these kinds of cases. Anthony, so good to see you. Thanks so much for taking the time. You know, when I was reading about this case and we were doing the work on this case, the first thing that I think about, other than the horrifying aspect of it, is dying declaration, right? Given that the victim was able to communicate before dying, talk to us about what that means from a legal context, a hearsay context? Sure. So one of the most common known rules in trial is hearsay, right? Out of court statements can be used in court to prove certain matters.

And so an exception to that rule would be a dying declaration. And it sounds like, based on the statement of facts, Jesse, that that's exactly what we have here. She's on her deathbed and she's able to get out before she dies important things about how this death was caused. And so that's an exception of the rule and can likely come in a trial. Meaning it's more reliable. In that situation, it's more reliable. A jury can take away from that, that what she said in her final moments, it was credible, it was reliable that support. Absolutely.

Now, can they move forward with the case purely based on these statements? I mean, at the very least probable cause for an arrest in subsequent charges? I think that they could. But I don't think that that's what they're going to do. And I don't think that would be the best idea. there's a lot of things that they can do from in their investigation based on what she said, right? And so it sounds like that's what they did. But I don't think they would try the case on that kind of statement alone. By the way, a little sidebar here. Have you ever left a meeting

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into this clean, digestible summary. There's no more messy notes or lost ideas. It's not just a recorder, by the way, it actually acts like a hands-free assistant, pulling insights, organizing information, letting you stay fully in the moment. So if you want to make the most of your time, it's time to try the applaud no-pin. Right now, you can get 10% off. Just click the link below or scan the QR code on screen. Hope you can check it out. Generally speaking, if you're looking at something like this, what would classify a case as first-degree murder as opposed to, let's say, second-degree murder? Well, Jesse, when you look at Minnesota law, it really comes down to the circumstances of the murder and whether there was premeditation involved. And so first degree murder

requires premeditation with intent to kill, meaning that there was a plan taken out in order to affect someone's death. Second degree murder doesn't require premeditation. So there just has to be an intent to affect a certain person's death or there has to be the commission. Someone has to, you have to cause someone's death during the commission of another felony. And that's how they filed these cases in this case. Generally speaking, again, if the victim is a ex-girlfriend, ex-partner, mother of a child, right, mother of his child, is that an aggravating factor? I think it's aggravating from a punishment aspect, but I think that oftentimes it opens up the door for the defense to argue sudden passion. And I think that's what probably the prosecution is contemplating and not

filing first-degree murder charges in this case. By the way, from a defense perspective, we talk about how that statement can come in or the statements can come in. But if you don't have the witness to cross-examine, how do you challenge it as a defense attorney? You'd argue confrontation clause violation. So under the Sixth Amendment, any defendant in a criminal case has the right to confront their accusers. And if the witness isn't present in trial, then the defendant is private that constitutional right. There are, again, there are exceptions to that rule. That's probably something that the defense is going to raise during if this case goes to trial and that the prosecution would really have to work hard to work around. Could you also question the officer or officers? Hey, is this exactly what you heard? Where were you when you heard this? How do you know for sure she was saying this? Is that something you could do too?

Absolutely. You would want to look at the summary of their statements. And in this day and age, it's very likely that any officer that took a statement from her had a body warrant camera on. So it would be interesting to find out whether that was important. interview or whether that was recorded on body worn camera. So the defense might not have the ability to raise questions like that if it's on video. But if not, that's certainly something the defense should attack on cross-examination. It's a really good point, a really good point about the body war camera. So look, after Hunt apparently tells police that this attack allegedly occurred at a boat launch. Police rushed there, right? When they arrived, there was no weapon. There was no blood. There was no clear sign of a crime. Why? That scene had been wiped clean. But you know what it was from? I say wiped clean. You already might be making a conclusion. Not exactly. There was a

torrential downpour that had rolled through during the search. According to responding officers, heavy rain had likely washed away any remaining evidence. But the thing about that is the trail wasn't called for long. Why? Law enforcement, they quickly issued an alert to locate Haymeister's vehicle, this white 2017 Chevrolet Silverado pickup. That truck was soon found outside of a home in Chatfield, which is nearly 40 miles from the crime scene,

but the house didn't belong to the defendant. When officers arrived and questioned the person living there, they uncovered shilling new details. According to the criminal complaint, quote, the truck had its door open and law enforcement observed a live 9mm millimeter round on the floor. The truck

doors were shut and the property's residents were interviewed. Law enforcement was told that the defendant had recently showed up at the property. The defendant appeared very frantic, and the defendant stated, something bad happened. The resident was also told that the cops would be coming. Now, the house where Haymeister's truck was found was in his own, though the criminal complaint doesn't specify exactly whose home it was.

What is clear, however, is that the woman living there told investigators that her 9mm handgun had gone missing and that the defendant had fled her property on a motorcycle. And that revelation triggered a full-scale manhunt. And by the way, just wait until we get into how the suspect attempted to evade police. Now, before we get there, okay, and we'll get into it. Anthony, the loss of physical evidence at this alleged crime scene due to a storm, not even, you know, human intervention. How does that affect the strength of the weakness of a prosecution's case? Well, under most circumstances, it wouldn't be good.

but it sounds like the defendant didn't do him so many favors based on the statements that he made to these people at this residence. So there's a lot of other things that the prosecution had hang their hat on, but certainly without that kind of evidence, you'd want to look at DNA to prevent the defense from raising an identity defense, and that could be very problematic in a case. And the discovery of the live 9mm round in the suspect's abandoned truck, you know how is that handled in terms of chain of custody evidentiary value especially by the way if no firearm had yet been recovered

yeah it's it's i mean i think the existence of it especially when coupled with the dying declaration of miss hunt in this case is important but again chain of custody is always important and without a gun there's no way to really compare whether that casing was fired from a specific weapon that was taken from the residence. And the resident reports that the defendant appeared frantic, admitted that something bad had happened. How strong of a statement is that in court? How would a defense attorney work to minimize it, suppress it in some way? I think the ability to suppress it would have to do with relevance in that they don't know. They didn't know what was going on at the scene with Ms. Hunt. But I don't think that that objection is probably going to work.

If you look at the timeline of events, it's so close in proximity to when the police met Ms. Hunt and she was so badly beaten that I, that most judges I would anticipate would let that kind of statement in. And any statement of a defendant can be used against a defendant in a trial. So I anticipate that that evidence would come into play. It would be difficult for the defense to overcome that hurdle. And the suspect allegedly leaving, right, the flight, leaving the vehicle, leaving his vehicle, leaving on a motorcycle. You can interpret that, reportedly evading law enforcement. I imagine the prosecution should say that's consciousness of guilt right there. How would the defense try to frame it differently?

You know, without all the circumstances, it's hard to say which direction they want to go. And if we haven't seen all the physical evidence yet, I know that there was rain, and I know that there's probably an issue of finding the firearm. But they might not go the identity route. they might go and they might use it to sort of, I wouldn't say insanity defense, but use it to really lean into the fact that he was having issues at the time, that he, I would lean into the franticness of his behavior to say that he was having sort of an episode and try and mitigate the punishment that way. I think it's a hard hurdle to overcome when there's a dying

declaration, a statement against, you know, that's really not in his best interest to another witness and then evading from law enforcement, which the jury can use his consciousness of guilt, it's really kind of stacks up against a defendant in this case. So what happens? Well, authorities, they track the suspect to Chester, Minnesota, which is about a 20-minute drive from Chatfield. And when officers closed in, that is when the situation quickly escalated. The complaint describes just this chaotic scene. Quote, he was pursued by law enforcement and climbed a tree to evade arrest. He was ultimately apprehended after an hours-long standoff. A 9-millimeter handgun was found at the base of the tree that the defendant

sheltered in. Now, in a scene that felt ripped from the pages of a crime thriller, the 44-year-old suspect was finally cornered deep in Chester Woods where he had somehow climbed this tree, remained hidden for hours. You have this tent standoff. He was taken to custody, booked into the county jail and now he faces a slate of serious charges second degree murder with intent but without premeditation second degree murder without intent while committing a felony and the next day the autopsy was performed and that too brought this unexpected and chilling twist and we're going to get into that as well but first anthony back to you you know this is quite a way to avoid arrest climbing a tree It is. I think, again, to my earlier point, I would probably, I imagine the defense is probably going to lean into the franticness of the defense baker.

Another route that they could go is that he wasn't aware of any injuries to miss hunt at the time and wasn't a part of that and was in making an identity case. But that's where the part of the statement of the residence where the defendant says something bad has happened would really go against him. I imagine that once that handguns recovered, they will do testing on the casing that was recovered in his vehicle to try and create a chain, again, like you said earlier, a chain of custody, and establish that a shot was fired. Why two different murder charges, right? So you have one with intent but without premeditation, the other without intent while committing a felony.

You talked about it before. I just want to button it up. Why two different ones? Is it, hey, we believe that his alleged conduct matches this? or is it, if there's a weakness in one murder charge, we can get him on another one? It's the latter, Jesse. This is CYA, and you see it oftentimes. There is no requirement that the prosecution pick one theory of murder.

They can go on both counts in one trial. And so the way that they see it is that if, for whatever reason, a jury doesn't find or the defense sort of gets a theory out that there was no intent to affect death, then they can fall back on the idea that, well, he at least. least intended to cause their serious bodily injury, which is a felony in the state of Minnesota. And as a result of that, or during the commission of that offense, her death occurred. And that raises it to felony murder. By the way, I have to ask, it's a weird thing for him to allegedly do. I mean, running away, I have to ask if there's a mental health evaluation that would become an important part of this case. I don't imagine we're talking insanity if that's even available, because if you're running away from law enforcement, allegedly running away from

law enforcement, you know what you did as a crime. You have a consciousness of that being a legal action. But I do wonder if a mental health evaluation would become a part of this case in some way. Absolutely, Jesse. I think the defense would be remiss in their responsibility to the client if they didn't have them evaluated. You know, I think it would be, and we don't have all of the facts yet, and it might be. Sure, sure. Whokey for them to argue that he was running away because he thought they were, didn't know they were in law enforcement or he thought that they were trying to attack him or for whatever other reason aside of a consciousness of guilt but i think the defense has to have him evaluated

based on the circumstances in this case and if it's not a defense to guilt innocence it's certainly something they could use for mitigation and punishment nope that's a good point um now i got to go to this autopsy result okay this is really interesting so according to the complaint quote the facial wound of the victim has gunshot residue embedded in the wound meaning was hunt actually shot in the face that's the part that seems a little strange there anthony because she said she was beaten unless she was beaten with a i mean she said it was with a stick but did the stick have gunshot residue on it that's the part i don't understand well and that was my confusion too is i i don't understand if there was a bullet wound in her jaw at any point typically when you're looking at

that autopsies and you're with gunshots, anytime there's gunshot residue inside a wound, that's a good indicator that it was a shot that was fired really close to the person shot. And so that led me to think that there might have been a gunshot involved. However, just because there's, you know, even if a gunshot is fired near a person, there's a possibility that that could end up, or gunshot residue could end up on the wound, that you see that all the time. Even if someone's not shot, they still have gunshot, as it do. They were around a gun being fired.

Just a weird detail about this. Now here's another interesting bit of background information here, and it has to do with an ongoing custody dispute. So months before Melissa Hunt was brutally killed, court records show she was locked in this bitter custody and child support battle with the defendant, the same man now accused of her murder. And newly obtained documents reveal that Mr. Heymeister was ordered to pay $660 per month in child support. for their three-year-old daughter. And after a court hearing where Heymeister didn't show up, by the way, Hunt was granted full custody while he received zero parenting time.

According to the March 2023 Olmsted County order, Haymeister, a tree trimmer earning $25.34 per hour was slapped with $2,961 in back payments for late support. The court stated ability to pay is based on the respondent's parental income. Liability is limited to the two years immediately preceding the action. Hunt, a caregiver, making $15 an hour, relied on $110 per month in housing and while raising the child solo. And the order threatened Haymeister with felony charges for withholding the child support, wage garnishment, even license suspension if he failed to pay, and the filing exposes the raw tensions. Hunt had 100% custody. Heymeister wasn't granted a single overnight visit. A stark warning in the order read denial of

of parenting time is not an excuse for non-payment. Now, Haymeister's family told media outlet KTC that the couple had this unstable relationship and that while Haymeister didn't have any history of domestic violence that they knew of, he did have past issues with drugs. Anthony, how often do we see disputes like this factor into cases involving alleged domestic violence or, you know, even homicide. My gosh, if you talk about a potential motive for prosecutors, I think they have it. The large percentage of them, Jesse. I think it's a custody dispute can kind of be a textbook entryway or introduction into turmoil between any relationship. And you do see that oftentimes result in violence down the road, not necessarily to the extent the Ms. Hunt and dirt in this case,

but it's oftentimes a segue into violence. So his bail was set at $2 million, scheduled to make his first court appearance on July 3rd. If he's convicted of second-degree murder, he could spend up to 30 years in prison. This is a horrific case with horrific consequences, and we will see which way it goes. Anthony Oso, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having, Jesse. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar.

Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.