Law&Crime Sidebar - Convicted Killer Escaped Courtroom Before Verdict, Got Tracked Down by FBI

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

A Minnesota drug dealer who was about to hear his guilty verdict read in court told officers he needed to use the bathroom and never came back. Michael Harlan was convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for selling fentanyl to Cole Linnell, who allegedly believed the pills to be oxy. The Law&Crime Network’s Jesse Weber sits down with former US Marshal Art Roderick to talk about Harlan’s capture in another state.SPONSOR:If you’ve used Incognito mode in Google’s Chrome internet browser, you can find out if you have a claim in only a few clicks by visiting https://www.forthepeople.com/LCGoogleHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest 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 Wondery Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Michael Harlan is 4.5. This is the FBI. We have to arrest for it. Come to the door. All right, you got to get this. A drug dealer who was about to be read his guilty verdict for killing a young man with fentanyl just walks out of the courthouse and doesn't come back.

But after almost nine months, he was finally caught. We break it all down with former U.S. Marshal Art Roderick. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Here's a story for you. A guy out in Minnesota named Michael Harlan, 29 years old, was in court back in March, and he had been facing murder and manslaughter charges in connection with the death of 29-year-old Colanel after he sold him fentanyl dressed up.

look like oxycodone. Now, a search of the young man's phone linked him to his dealer Harlan, and right before the judge was to read the verdict to this man, he walked out of the courthouse. I can't say I've seen that one before. Yeah. So Harlan was out on bail. He was supposed to appear in court to hear this verdict and then told this officer in court that he needed to use the bathroom and he took off and didn't return. By the way, he was found guilty of third-degree murder and second degree manslaughter in a bench trial. There was no jury here. But now, months after he disappeared, Harlan was finally arrested. He was apprehended by the FBI in a Detroit, Michigan apartment complex. Here's a sampling of the arrest caught in a neighbor's ring doorbell

footage. So now he's in custody. So now he's in custody. in a Detroit jail awaiting extradition back to Minnesota. A lot of different moving pieces here. Want to talk about it. Who better to bring on than former U.S. Marshal Art Roderick. Art,

good to see you. Thanks so much for coming on. I have never seen a case. I mean, we always see the trials, right, right before the verdict comes in. The defending comes in.

We're all waiting anxiously. I've never seen somebody be like, I'll be right back and never comes back. Have you ever seen anything like that? Because this guy's been on the loose for nine months. Yeah, we have come across this in the past. It's basically, it's not an escape because he was out on bond. So he was out on bond during the bench trial,

and before the verdict was officially read in court, he decided to go to the bathroom and make good as his escape. What's interesting is, I'm not even sure why he showed up at the courthouse. He could have basically jumped Bond any time prior to the court date, but he decided to go to the courthouse and then and then moved out. Maybe he had figured at that point that, hey, I'm going to be found guilty here. So I better leave now because once that guilty verdict is read, he would have been put in cuffs and detained from that point on. I have a feeling like it's like you go into the courthouse and your mood changes and you're like, uh-oh.

Or maybe it would have been wherever he was at prior to going the courthouse. He didn't have the right opportunity to leave. I don't know. I can't speculate. The idea here, though, that he is, he was fugitive for nine months and then is found in another state. What does that tell you? Well, I mean, you know, looking at his records, he does have previous addresses, quite a few in Michigan. So he's got family and associates and friends down there.

And that's exactly where I would, the first place I would have looked would have been Michigan. He does have a couple addresses in Arizona, but really the majority of where he's lived in his 29 years has been either in Michigan or in Minnesota area. Hey, everybody. This is a Morgan and Morgan legal alert. Evidence shows that Google has allegedly violated the privacy of millions of Americans via incognito mode. Your personal information and data may have been unfairly collected and then used for

profit. As America's largest injury law firm, Morgan and Morgan has recovered over $20 billion in compensation for clients, and they may be able to help you fight for justice. If you've used incognito mode in Google's Chrome Internet browser, you can find out if you have a claim in only a few clicks by visiting www.forthepeople.com slash LC-Google. It only takes a few minutes to sign up and find out if you have a claim. The fact that he was a fugitive, though, for nine months, It signals to me that he maybe had help, had the resources to travel and avoid law enforcement. What do you think was tripping them up that they couldn't find him sooner?

I think it was just a matter of the geographical location bouncing between Minnesota and Michigan really what seems to be what he was doing. And then a lot of these individuals that have extensive criminal histories, especially in drugs, that live in a lot of these neighborhoods. Sometimes it's just difficult to pin them down to one specific location because they're moving around from friend to associate family member and generally are not staying in one place any particular extended period of time. So in a lot of these types of cases, it might come down to a phone call

or just surveillance by law enforcement to figure out exactly where he's putting his head down at that particular time. You mentioned the fact that he was out on Bond. I mean, I think it's interesting because we sometimes talk about it, what the significance of it is. Here is a prime example. Do you think it was a mistake? Yeah. I mean, he had some pretty severe charges here.

And, I mean, we haven't even got into the crime itself. But evidently, he had sold some what were classified as oxycodum pills to this individual, Lennel. And when they were tested in the lab, they were found to be full of basically fentanyl. So the minute this individual, Linnell took it, you know, that was basically his death warrant at that point in time. So when they came, when law enforcement came in to do a welfare check on the victim, you know, obviously they found him deceased, but they found some of the fentanyl pills next to him along with a cell phone, his cell phone, where they were able to eventually figure out. Who sold them those pills through forensics on the cell phone? Yeah, no, the victim's cell phone here was the crucial, I think, linchpin here that basically linked him back to his dealer. It's a really, really sad case.

Your experience, why would someone take fentanyl and dress it up to look like oxycodone? It's a money issue. You know, to me, this whole fentanyl issue, we're sort of in the beginning stages of seeing this a lot more. This is not the first charge I've seen also where an individual is charged with murder for selling fentanyl pills passed off as another type of drug. And I think we're going to be seeing this quite a bit more with individuals that will be charged with some type of murder charge, whether it's manslaughter, you know, non-premeditated. But each state has a little different version of the homicide law. And I think you're going to see this occurring quite a bit more. So, Art, let me ask you, how do you think he was just able to walk out of the courthouse?

I mean, again, it doesn't seem, you know, go to the bathroom, you just walk right out, nobody's watching you. And also, we'll take that issue, but also, how do you think law enforcement, the FBI, was ultimately able to track him down? Yeah, well, the first question about how he was able to walk out, he really, he wasn't in any type of custody at that point in time. He was on bail, so he came into the courthouse in street clothes. He wasn't in a jumpsuit.

So, you know, courthouses are very busy places, you know, especially there in Hennepin County, which services, you know, St. Paul and in Minneapolis. So he was able to just walk out as a regular citizen because he really hadn't been officially, the verdict had not officially come down in court yet. So he was able to move about until that verdict was officially read. And that's exactly what happened. By the way, and so how do you think they were able to find him? You know, you look at this individual's background.

Obviously, they had a lot of information because he had been arrested in charge and more than likely there was some type of pre-sentence report that was done that usually contains a very detailed history and criminal history of this individual. When you look at his background, you see multiple addresses in the Michigan area, and I'm sure that's what they did. They concentrated their efforts on family members and associates, which led them to the Detroit area in this particular hotel. And now after, yeah, and now the apartment complex, and now that they've been able to apprehend him, he's been charged with two additional felonies. One, being a fugitive from justice, not surprising there, but two, unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon.

What do you think about that? Yeah, that's actually a really good add-on charge because at this point, he's a convicted felon. And he does have a pretty extensive criminal history with prior convictions in there. So with the felony conviction and him in possession of a firearm, ATF generally would come in, alcohol tobacco and firearms would come in and federally charge him. And that could add an extra five years onto a sentence for that possession of the firearm. I mean, he's already, you know, hit with murder and manslaughter conviction. So, I mean, that's his biggest concern here for this.

And by the way, are you surprised? that he was convicted of those charges because, you know, when you think about these cases, is it usually the drug dealer is charged and convicted of murder and manslaughter? Yeah, it's unusual, and we haven't seen it a lot in the past, but because fentanyl is so deadly, I mean, I've done stories on fentanyl in the past with all these seizures going on down at the southern border, and it is a very deadly drug. I mean, like one of the stats I had read earlier was that two and a half pounds can kill

half a million people in this country. So the amount of fentanyl that's coming across the border, I mean, that is deadly, deadly stuff. So I think law enforcement and the prosecutors have picked up on the fact it is somebody selling fentanyl as another drug in this particular case, oxycodone, then really, I mean, it makes all the sense in the world to go ahead and put a homicide charge

on any of these types of cases. And hopefully we'll see this occur. it could be a very good deterrent, hopefully for individual drug dealers out there that are trying to sell ethanol off as another drug. By the way, you know what, didn't age? Well, I kind of went back in time to when he first left the courthouse. And his attorney at the time, Craig Cascarano, hopefully I'm not butchering his name, he said, he told local media, quote, there's not much I can say.

Obviously, he walked out of court. He told us to Inside Edition, actually. And he said, quote, I can say he will be, I can say he will be turning himself in short. I can say he will be turning himself in between now and Monday. And they asked him, how did you know that? He goes, I just know. And then they asked him, well, did you speak to him? And he says, look, I can't tell you that.

I can't tell you anything that's bound by attorney-client privilege. But he basically was confident that his client would show back up how wrong he was. We talked about now that these two charge, actually, these multiple charges have been now levied against him. He has to be extradited, though, from Michigan back to Minnesota. what does that process look like? That's a pretty cut and dry process here in the U.S. Where it gets very complicated is if he was in a foreign country

and we had to bring him back. But this is just the state extradition. So it could go down fairly, fairly quickly, and he could be back in Hennepin County very shortly. So it's just a procedural thing here in the U.S. between states. So it'll go down very quickly, and he'll be back in Hennepin County to receive the actual sentence for the original case,

and then eventually, if they're going to charge him in Michigan, which they can, then he would have to come back for those cases, especially the gun case. The escape, you know, the bond default charge can remain in Hennepin County, but then they can do some magic and also roll all this in to the sentencing. So it'll be interesting to see if they just go ahead and sentence him on all these different cases. charges. It have come up since he walked out of the court out.

And I got to ask, any chance this could happen again? I mean, or they take extra precautions now with him? You always take extra precautions. I'm sure he'll be held in solitary at this point in time and we'll have multiple deputy sheriffs on him when he goes to his sentencing. They will keep an extra eye on this particular individual from here on out. And it'll be noted in his record, even when he goes to jail in the state or county facility, it'll be noted that he's an escape risk. I think I want to end, though, with a statement from Linnell's mother, Gene Thurmer, because when this first happened, she said to local media, quote, he robbed my son of his life.

I want my day in court when I can see the man in a jumpsuit. Well, I'm very confident that she will be seeing that very soon. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking the time, sir. Thank you. All right, everybody. That is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us, as always. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.