My Name Is Murder - Gardner, North Dakota

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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express.

Yay, choo choo.

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.

Yay, indeed.

My name is James Petrogallo.

I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wistman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another edition of Small Town Murder Express.

Wow, do we have a crazy episode for you today?

Usually, 10 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag.

We might up it to 20 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag today because this is a wild story that we're going to cram into this small space.

So it's going to be a lot of fun.

Before we get to that, though, shut up and givememurder.com.

Check it out and get all of your merchandise.

Get all of your tickets for live shows.

We have Seattle next week.

It is October the 18th, Saturday night at the Moor.

Still some tickets left for that, but not many.

They put out a low ticket alert.

So I don't know what that means.

But get your tickets for that right now.

I think that's all that's left except for the virtual live show.

Oh, that is going to be the Thursday right before Halloween.

We can't wait for that, just like a regular live show, except you don't have to leave your house.

A lot of fun, and we're gonna have costumes because it's Halloween.

We're gonna look like idiots,

the set will be decorated nice, just like a regular live show.

All the jokes and everything like that, and the pictures, and it's available for two weeks after we do it, too.

So, you can buy it then, you can buy it and watch it 20 times, you can do whatever you want with it for two weeks.

So, enjoy that and keep coming and hanging out.

That's shut up and givememurder.com.

Also, listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports.

We have a very good series on Billy Martin going on right now.

I like how Jimmy said, okay, like, you'll give it a, we may like, you've never heard of it.

Give it a laugh.

That sounds like a good show.

And Your Stupid Opinions, where we listen to people's reviews of anything and everything from around the internet and make fun of them because it's hilarious.

So listen to those.

Then get Patreon, patreon.com slash crime in sports.

Just like the name of that show you should be listening to that Jimmy's very interested in.

He's going to give it a shot.

This week I'm trying.

Finally, after we've been, we've only been doing it for 10 years, and now he's going to give it a shot.

So definitely do that and get yourself Patreon.

Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get hundreds of back episodes of bonus stuff you've never heard right away, just

to listen to and binge at once.

And then you can also get new ones every other week.

Not you can.

We'll get new ones every other week.

One Crime and Sports, one Small Town Murder.

This week, which you're going to get for Crime and Sports, we're going to talk about those old rock and jock MTV specials and just make fun of

tiny RB singers trying to play against Gary Payton.

It's just very funny.

Wild.

Yeah.

It's hilarious.

And then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about that documentary, Unknown Number, where that woman harasses her daughter horribly.

And we've had so much request, so many requests to do this, we had to do it.

She sucks.

She sucks.

In addition to that, you get all of our shows, Crime and Sports, Your Stupid Opinion, Small Town Murder, all ad-free with your Patreon subscription.

And you get a shout-out at the end of the regular show as as well.

So you can, oh, my goodness, you can't beat it.

Patreon.com slash crime in sports.

So that said, I think it's time everybody to sit back.

All right.

Let's clear the lungs here and let's all shout.

Shut up

and give me murder.

Let's do this, everybody.

Okay.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

We are heading to North Dakota this week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not many people say that because there's not many people there.

This is Gardner, North Dakota, G-A-R-D-N-E-R, Gardner, North Dakota.

It's way at the eastern edge of North Dakota, kind of southeastern, but way at the eastern edge there, butted up against Minnesota, I guess that would be.

It's about 30 minutes to Fargo, about two hours and 50 minutes to our last North Dakota episode, which was Minokan.

That was episode 543.

It's been almost 100.

It's been since like early November of last year since we did North Dakota.

And we'll tell you why in this show, too, because they only get about 10 murders per year in the whole state.

Really?

So people go, Why don't you do those states more?

Why don't you do Wyoming, North Dakota?

There's nobody there, and the people that are there aren't killing each other.

They're so far apart.

They can't shoot somebody from that distance.

It's hard.

They're living the dream.

That's why.

They're just not

no people there.

That episode was the baby-faced killer, which was a crazy one.

This is in Cass County, Area Code 701.

Population of this town, 72 at this point.

That's a small one.

That's a small one.

I think those are the permanent residents.

More people might come in the summer, swelling it to like 100.

Okay.

Like literally three, four more families show up in the summer and vacation there and really boost the population a lot.

Median household income here is right around the national average.

It's $68,750.

But the median home cost is about half the national average.

That is $187,500.

Good lord.

So not bad.

Now we'll go through the town stuff quick because there really isn't a lot to talk about with this town.

It is, it's a one, I think there's two little like blocks and that's the town.

And then there's like, you know, farmhouses and shit.

So there's not a lot going on.

It was settled in 1880.

They opened a post office in 1881.

They planned out the city in 1882, which seems backwards.

They planned out the city after it was settled and a post office happened.

It got started, and they're like, oh, we are doing this all wrong.

We should talk about this.

Yeah, no shit.

I guess the railroad came in, and then they were like, oh, we got to plan this now.

Now it's really a town.

We got a railroad and everything.

The town name of Gardner came after a man named Stephen Gardner who lived here, and he owned the land where the city is now, or the town.

Sure.

72 people.

It's a stretch to call it a city.

It's basically just a two-block farming community.

That's all it is.

It's a place where the farmers might gather in the morning to get some coffee or something.

That's all.

Now, there's no reviews of this town.

So, I did find what seems to be the only bar in town, the County Line Bar and Grill.

I found.

There's a bar called the County Line Brown.

County Line.

Yeah, well, you know, it's in the middle of nowhere.

There's never a county line that's in an occupied space.

It's always like, oh, he's headed toward the county line with a big dust cloud coming up behind him and shit.

Duke Boys.

Duke Boys are heading toward the county line.

The county line that I've been to in Arizona was way in the fucking middle of it's in the middle of nowhere.

I'm telling you, nobody puts a

county line, shouldn't go right through a major city.

It never does.

It wasn't even on the county line.

It was square in the middle of Maricopa County.

Oh, man.

So we'll just read a couple from that.

Here is five stars.

Most friendly, down-to-earth people, real people that I've met in a long time.

Honest, real people, real peoples, actually, they say, in a chill and helpful mood.

I will always swoop in when I'm in the area.

Love you all.

Thank you so much for the help with my, and then there's a truck emoji.

I guess someone helped her with her truck.

And then someone else said, quote, I hear that one star.

I hear the food is good, but wasn't able to try it.

Sat for 20 minutes and only half the table even got drink waters taken.

We left and found out the rest of the group was told a half hour later that the grill was closed and they're not getting their food.

Sorry about your order.

Yeah.

And then someone else, else won star.

The service sucked and you could not get any food.

It took forever to get anything.

I actually canceled mine after half hour.

They hadn't even started it yet and left.

Service sucked.

Service sucked.

And then somebody else just says,

rude bartender, warm beer.

Yeah, it sounds like if they don't like you, you're not getting shit.

You're not getting shit.

They'll just get anything.

They'll just ignore you, basically.

Things to do in this town.

Not a goddamn thing to do.

Nothing.

Nothing.

So I found out, like, what are the things to do?

And it is stargazing.

Fun.

There's nothing here.

So the sky is like, it's got to be awesome and beautiful, really.

You can hunt for ghost town vibes at the old post office site.

That's another thing you can do.

Ghost town vibes, not hunting ghosts.

This feels abandoned, right?

Doesn't it feel abandoned?

Cool.

I feel alone.

I feel alone.

I feel like, yeah, no one's been here in a while, right?

Yeah, this is pretty wild.

And then it says, this is amazing uh this is hilarious prairie people watching or impromptu farm chats knock on a door politely or so just go knock on someone's door who lives in the middle of nowhere they usually react right to that or spot locals at the gardener fire hall during township meetings

go spot the locals go spot them there they are everybody looking through binoculars

don't spook them

everybody quiet we're local spotting they're local spotting Oh, there they are.

Oh, I found the red-tailed local.

Look at him.

Ooh.

I found the red-mulleted local.

Look at him.

There he is.

Ooh.

I'm going to take a picture.

No, don't let him move.

Don't make me noise.

North Dakotans are famously friendly, especially.

Expect tales of epic snowstorms.

It's weirdly therapeutic.

Okay, let's sound like.

I'll tell you about that time back in.

Remember when it snowed?

I mean, up to the middle of the door.

Yeah.

Remember that?

Above the knob.

Remember when Aunt Judy had it up to her nipples?

Oh, my God.

Her nipples was hard for six, eight months, boy.

They were hard in August still.

That was crazy.

Let's talk about some murder.

What do you say here?

Okay, this is a wild, absolutely insane.

This probably could have been a regular episode if we really wanted it to be.

So it's one of those.

It's just got a lot to talk about.

Let's start in August of 2001 here.

Let's do it.

August 2001.

Now there's a new couple in town in Gardner.

And whenever there's anybody new, everybody notices because there's only 70 fucking people here.

So think about that.

Like in high school, the classrooms I was in, they were like 35 kids.

So that would be two classrooms.

So you would notice if two new kids came in.

Oh, yeah.

You know, like you notice that shit.

So two people came in.

It's a husband and wife, and they have a small child in tow, a three-year-old, four-year-old boy in tow.

Now, these people introduced themselves around town as Timothy Timothy Wicks and Diana Wicks, his wife.

Timothy and Diana.

Now Tim here is a big guy, over six feet tall, six foot two, six foot three,

350 pounds.

I mean a big, big, giant fat guy.

He's a big guy.

That's a mass of a man.

Big jolly guy here.

Now, a local bar owner, I don't know if it's the County Line Bar and Grill or not, but

probably.

Could be.

A local bar owner named Elaine, she recalled when the couple moved to town.

And quote, I'll quote Elaine here, quote, first thing she ordered is a martini and I said, couldn't do it.

I don't have vodka and ice.

I can't possibly shake some shit up and put it in a glass.

And she said that

she can't do it.

And she said, Diana, the wife who ordered this, was complaining that Gardner was like Petticoat Junction

and I can't even get a martini and I can't even get a pizza delivered to my house.

That's my rule for won't live there.

Can I get a half decent pizza delivered?

We've talked about this before privately.

It's like, if I can't get a half decent pizza delivered, it's too far in the middle of nowhere.

I don't have to be in the middle of shit, but I got to get a pizza to my house.

And you also, you have to know that you're, like, we go out of town and go to, you know, hotels and things like that.

So we'll go into places.

You know what bars to order what drinks in.

Oh, for sure.

You know, you don't order a martini

unless it's a cocktail bar or like a nice hotel bar or something.

Yeah.

You order a martini there.

And you look around and you go, oh, it's a bottle of beer.

This is what this place is.

This is a bottle of beer joint.

We were just in Madison.

I went even there.

It was a nice hotel bar.

I looked around and said, bottle of beer joint.

And I ordered a bottle of fucking beer.

That's it.

This kid does not want to make a martini.

I don't know that this kid is going to make a decent one.

No, no, exactly.

That too.

Yeah, you don't walk in and go, yeah, dirty gray goose martini, and there's like dust on the floor.

They're not doing that.

And a dirty, extra dirty...

No, not out of the dust pan.

Oh, no.

What are you doing?

He's like, we don't have made a martini before?

We don't even have olives.

We got dirt.

We got dirt.

Dirty it up for you.

Now, September of 2001, Tim Wicks applies for an accountant position at a Fargo company, which is less than a half hour away.

His Jeff, or his boss, Jeff Paradon,

his Jeff told me this.

I don't have a Jeff.

I don't have a Jeff.

I wonder where he got one of those.

His boss, Jeff Paradon, said, he talked a good line.

I even made the point.

I said, are you as good as you say you are?

And he said, no, I'm as good as I say I am.

Huh?

What?

That is the most mind-bending North Dakota.

What's going on up there?

Someone says something, you repeat it back to them, and they go,

he talked a good line.

That's talking a terrible line.

That's awful.

If someone said that in a job interview, you'd laugh and kick them out of your office.

That was the annoyance of the guys in Night at the Roxbury.

Yes, yeah.

That they would say no and then yes.

And what, what are you doing?

It's so weird, man.

So he's applying for this accountant position.

He's an accountant.

He's also, he said he's from Milwaukee and he's a drummer.

Okay.

He drums, he's a drummer and he wanted to be a drummer, but, you know, he's got to have a job.

So

here he is.

He said about, his boss said about Timothy Wicks here.

He said, I I liked him.

He's a very personable guy.

He said he was a well-qualified accountant, hired the replacement service.

So

it wasn't like he came in off the street and bullshitted him.

A service sent him and everything.

He said that

they said, well, what kind of recommendation did the placement service give him?

And the boss said they had told us that he passed all his tests with flying colors, seemed to know everything we needed him to do as far as our business was concerned.

And he also thought it was cool that he played the drums.

That is cool.

He said, so I took him out one night to a club where they had a jam night going on and Tim got up.

He could keep a beat.

Doesn't that sound awful?

That's positive.

That's worse than open mic comedy.

You can ignore a man talking.

You can ignore a man.

You cannot ignore a fucking bass drum and a snare and a fucking crash cymbal.

It's impossible to ignore that.

You're listening.

You're listening.

Yeah.

Like that time we tried to go to the restaurant and they had a bad band playing and you're like, this isn't going to be over soon?

I'll give you whatever you're paying them to make them shut the

go away.

So, over the next two months, he gets a North Dakota driver's license.

He purchases a blue farmhouse in Gardner as well here,

gets health insurance benefits and all that kind of thing.

So, you know, just ingraining, ingraining, really doing it,

ingraining themselves into the town.

Yeah.

No, that would be making them like him.

But

they're being ingrained into the town.

Yeah, they're developing this.

They're part of it.

Then in 2001, in December, there's a phone call that he gets at his home.

And during this conversation,

the phone call is from Timothy Wicks.

Yeah.

You go, well, how does he call himself?

Right.

Well, this Timothy Wicks had been a client of the Timothy Wicks that moved to Gardner where he did his taxes taxes the year before.

And he was his accountant.

So this Timothy Wicks calls and says, hey, someone is fraudulently using my credit card.

You're an accountant.

How do I deal with that?

Yeah.

Okay.

So let's talk about that Timothy Wicks.

Yeah.

That Timothy Wicks is born in 1954.

He's 5'8 ⁇ , 150 pounds.

Little guy.

Little guy.

He's a graduate of Boston's Berkeley College of Music.

He's an aspiring jazz drummer who paints houses by day.

And he's known for his perfect renditions of Fleetwood Mac covers, by the way.

Is that right?

Oh, he'll play a whole rumors album for you, just like that.

No problem.

Known for it.

Known for it.

What do you want, landslide?

No fucking problem.

And he just starts going.

Fuck yeah.

That's it.

So his friend, Tom, said he would do anything for you.

He would never hurt anyone or be malicious in any way.

And his other friend said, I knew all that he ever really wanted to do in life was play music for a living.

No enemies, no conflicts, just waiting for a break here.

So obviously they're both not Timothy Wicks.

Who's lying?

Yeah, this is

that game show.

Exactly.

That one.

That one.

So this guy, the one in North Dakota, the one who called saying someone's using my card, that's Timothy Wicks.

That's the real Timothy Wicks.

The guy calling?

The guy calling.

The guy in North Dakota just stole his identity, being his accountant, knew all of his information, stole his identity, and is using it in North Dakota for his own account.

Why is he doing that?

Well, let's find out who this guy is and why he's doing it.

What the fuck?

This is Dennis James Gade, G-A-E-D-E.

He's born in 1963.

He's also a Milwaukee native, so they're both from the same area.

He's the youngest of five siblings.

Now, when he gets the phone call from Timothy, Diana, who actually is his wife,

her name is Diana Diana Frug, though, F-R-U-G-E.

She said that's when Dennis panicked when the phone call came in.

Yeah.

One of those looks where the heart sinks to the floor, just kind of pale and um um um and he started stuttering.

Didn't expect this.

Yeah, he's already caught.

Yeah,

he's got a nice criminal history too.

1987 concealing stolen property.

Um, he was tried to be an informant for the Marshfield Police Department for a while, but they got rid of him because he was was doing some shit we'll talk about.

Got arrested for bad checks in 1994, party to escape and aiding a felon in 1995.

Yeah.

Here's a quote from Dennis about his life.

Quote, ever since I was in law enforcement, it's been chaotic.

I didn't have a criminal record until I got involved with law enforcement, which isn't true, by the way.

Yeah, you got involved with them because of it.

That's what's crazy.

He worked as an like an undercover officer, basically.

We'll talk about it.

In 1987, a detective told him, because he was caught for a felony, so right away his story falls apart, meaning, you know.

It's garbage.

He said, the detective told him, here's your opportunity to turn this felony into a simple mistake, and everybody goes home happy.

Just help us out.

So he was living in Milwaukee.

He was married with two children at the time, operating his own garage, like mechanic garage.

He worked on cars and had a tow truck.

And he had a Harley also that he rode around on.

Oh, yeah.

And he would put his four-year-old daughter on the back, which is very advisable.

What the fuck, guy?

Yeah, that way, if you get hit by a car, she'll shoot into the air 30, 40 feet.

You should have

an age

in mind before you put her on the back.

You want to kill yourself.

Double digits.

Yeah, it's definitely.

For sure, does it?

It's definitely beyond six years from now.

Beyond puberty, I would say.

That's about right.

So,

yeah, he hung out at a biker bar, and basically he had a bad investment in some used tow truck parts, as it was put.

He bought some stolen shit, apparently.

Used tow truck parts.

That's what he said.

Chop shop shit.

Exactly.

No shit.

So he said that he jumped at the chance to make this felony go away.

The police wanted information on some of the patrons at the biker bar he hung out at.

Yeah.

And so he said, sure, no problem.

And he was giving any information he could.

He said he wanted to stay on the right side of the law.

So he signed up for police science classes at Waukesha Community Technical College.

Sure.

He didn't graduate, but they hired him in 1991 with the Marshfield Police Department in Wisconsin

to work undercover drug cases.

That ended terribly.

So badly, he ended up pleading no contest to two misdemeanors,

including cocaine possession and obstructing an officer.

Yeah.

That means your time

on the force didn't go well, I say.

Yeah.

You may have fucked up.

He fucked up good.

He served 90 days in jail for that.

And one of the

police chief of Marshfield said, I remember him promising a lot of things, but within a short period of time, we came to realize he was a blowhard and was not able to deliver on the promises he made.

The only conviction he got us was himself.

He made one case, and it was for him.

And he fucks up a lot, huh?

Oh, he fucks up a lot.

So then he got divorced.

He moved to Sparta, Wisconsin,

where with help from his mom, he opened Big D's restaurant.

He's Dennis, Big D.

Big D's.

Big D's restaurant housed in the American Legion Hall.

And on the side, he would collect information about bikers for the Monroe County Sheriff's Department.

Oh, my.

Doesn't seem smart.

No, that is so dangerous.

And then at one point, the police department people that he talks to asked him to hire a jail inmate on work release.

They said, we're looking for a job for this guy.

He said, sure.

So he said he was convinced looking back that it was a setup.

The police were trying to bring him down because he had evidence that a cop and a prosecutor were involved with drugs and murder.

Oh.

So this was all a big setup.

So the Monroe County District Attorney says that Dennis was the one who volunteered to give the inmate a job.

And he calls the rest of his allegations ludicrous.

He said, I certainly don't believe there was any kind of setup.

I find that fact kind of ridiculous.

Either way, the inmate takes the job and took off during his first day on the job.

Oops.

Dennis found him,

apparently, Dennis found himself at this point charged with being a party to the crimes of aiding a felon and escape.

So they're saying that he helped him get away.

And Dennis is saying this is a big setup.

And by the way, the bikers that he's been talking about found out out that he's been ratting on them also.

That's not good.

Shit.

So

he's a weird guy.

So he for two years, he lived away from the bikers, he said.

He's got away from everybody.

He said, though, then in 1995, one of the biker gangs tracked him down.

Oh, they found him.

Yeah.

There's, okay.

A rural Wisconsin biker gang.

They are so fucked up on beer and meth, they're not going to remember you next week, probably, unless you stumbled in there and was like, hey, I'm that guy.

Remember me?

Yeah, I don't think they've got many trackers in their crew.

Probably not.

Yeah, not then.

So he had to disappear, he said, and he said that he had to take another,

he had to not only leave, he needed to go by a different name and everything.

Oh, assume a new identity.

Yes, and that's not Timothy Wicks, by the way.

That's later.

This is his first.

Yeah.

He chose the identity of a Canadian boy who died at the age of seven in 1981 named Luke Gagnon

so Dennis got a birth certificate and the Canadian equivalent of a social security card in Luke's name

so he called himself Luke blended into the Winnipeg area just

acted like nothing happened he started a band called widow with a guitarist that he found when you're hiding out the best thing to do is get on a stage with lights on you lots of lights on the only person in the room be that guy that's the guy to be.

Everybody, look at this.

Nobody looks at that.

All the seats applies that way.

Yeah.

No.

So they even made a CD and everything.

Wow.

He got a job as an accountant and went back to school studying business administration.

Fell in love again, had another son.

Yep.

Planned a wedding at a park and all this type of shit, and everything was great.

But then he applied for a student loan to help pay for college tuition.

The guy in the loan office typed his name into the computer, Luke Gagnon, and told him, quote, you're dead.

I can't do this.

You are deceased.

We can't lend money to a dead child, usually.

That's not going to work.

You're dead in seven, so this isn't going to happen.

So Dennis said, you know, huh?

What are you talking about?

And he said, I can't be dead.

I'm standing here.

What are you talking about?

How could I be dead?

And this guy seemed, I said, it's probably a software glitch.

It happens, I'm sure.

You know, something somebody pressed the wrong button when they were killing somebody else off.

and it happens.

That's all.

But he got nervous, Dennis.

He was like, oh, shit, they're on to me.

And he was right, because about three days later at 7 a.m., the police kicked in his door

and they told him, we know you're Dennis Gade, and you're in deep shit.

You stole this kid's identity.

You're also wanted in Monroe County, Wisconsin.

There's a warrant out for helping someone escape.

Probably while you're doing this.

According to the warrant,

Gade had called the jail and volunteered to give the inmate a job, as they talk about, as part of a sophisticated escape plan.

And Dennis says it was a setup, obviously.

So he says that the Canadian authorities didn't bother prosecuting him for the identity theft.

They just wanted to kick him out.

So he crossed the border out of Canada and entered the United States in Pembina, North Dakota.

And he said there was no cops waiting to arrest him.

Oh.

There was nothing.

Free and clear.

That's his version.

The CBC has a different version, the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

They said he tried to get refugee status in Canada.

This is from,

I'll read this article.

An American who assumed the identity of a dead Manitoba boy for three years wants to stay in Canada.

Dennis James Gade is claiming refugee status because he says he fears he'll be killed back home.

He worked as an undercover cop for various police forces in Wisconsin and fears people are gunning for him.

He assumed

the identity of Grant Douglas Lindblom, a Manitoba boy who died in 1963.

So he's at two different ones.

There was Luke Agnon, and then there was this one.

He used that name to get his paperwork.

He pleaded guilty to five fraud charges in Winnipeg and was sentenced to three months in jail.

Dennis left all of that out.

What a dick.

What a dick.

So he said he walked along the road till he came to a church.

Now he's just singing fucking

toms.

I'll be working on the railroad.

Or, you know,

and I began to pray.

You know, what is that?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Mamas and the Papas.

The fucking.

Oh, I don't know the song.

I'm going to miss it.

California Dreaming.

California Dreaming.

That's what he's doing.

Oh, yeah.

Walked into a church.

Yeah, he said he walked into a church, same thing, and he said, just walked up and found a church.

And he said, the minister, whose name he can't recall, obviously,

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Then the next morning, the minister gave him a buck, a bus ticket to Milwaukee and a duffel bag.

Wow.

He said he looked inside the duffel bag and there was a six pack of Budweiser and a half a bottle of Jack Daniels.

This sounds insanely made up.

This guy, nothing he says is true.

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So, he said he decided though he really liked North Dakota, even though he was going back to Milwaukee.

So, he ends up back in Milwaukee.

He got married in May 2001 to another woman.

Really?

Yeah, he turns it all over real fast.

That's impressive, yeah.

He married Diana Frug at Milwaukee County Courthouse.

Her three-year-old son, Joshua, always calls him Daddy Dennis, which just makes me think of wild and wonderful whites.

Dennis is this.

Dennis is this.

So he marries her.

Her story, she's had a run too.

One of her ex-boyfriends was an abusive ex-convict.

Another one just beat her fucking severely over the course of months.

In Milwaukee, somewhere.

Just on the road.

Yeah, who knows?

Another one beat her, even though she got several restraining orders.

He would track her down and beat her more.

So she's a single mother, has two kids, has an older daughter, a teenage daughter from two different fathers, obviously.

They met in early 2001.

She was a beautician who managed the West Alice apartment building where she lived.

Dennis was renting office space below the apartments.

That's

me.

Diana thought of him as a friendly guy who ran the accounting office, and that's it.

She didn't picture himself, you know, being with her or anything.

He was overweight, wore glasses, was bald.

Leave me alone.

Not an attractive man.

No, he's, dude, his head.

Yeah.

His head is huge.

It's this big, fat head.

And then he put glasses on it.

Oh, yeah.

He put glasses on.

He's got like stringy, balding, blonde hair.

No, he's hanging on to it.

It's bad.

Yeah, he's terrible looking.

Jesus.

She said he was sweet and enthusiastic and funny, though.

And he started dropping by her place for a beer after work and, you know, all that kind of thing.

And he asked her out, and she said, I don't know.

I can't leave my teenage daughter home alone.

So he suggested bring Rachel along with us.

That's the teenage daughter.

And the three of them had a great time at the Red Lobster.

That's just a hell of a night.

What do you want from us?

Yep.

And the three-year-old loved Daddy Dennis right away.

And

Daddy Dennis.

Within two months, he proposed.

He told her she could quit working and just stay home with the kids.

And she was like, I don't have to be a single parent.

I don't have to do all this.

This sounds great he's a charming guy she said that his looks made up uh his looks and his charm made up for his failings in the looks department

so they got married um

failings they're married less than three months when he told her that he's been charged with two felonies back in 1995 that he's still wanted for yeah it's been a while but don't worry don't worry they'll come and he's he swore he's not guilty though and he said you know i so she said oh i'm sure he'll be acquitted, you know.

So she drove.

Yeah, she went with him to the courthouse in Sparta, Wisconsin for his trial in July of 2001.

But she had to wait outside because she had the kid and they went with a three-year-old in a fucking courtroom because they're disrupting.

Yeah.

He was convicted of being a party to crimes of aiding

a felon and escape.

Even though he had jumped bail and took two separate identities and went to another country, they somehow gave him bail pending sentencing.

Real.

So he's free on $10,000 bail pending sentencing.

He told his new wife, there's no way he's going to jail.

He said, everyone's there to get me in that part of the state.

The prosecutors, the bikers, the cops, they all held grudges.

And as soon as I'm in there, they're going to kill me.

The bikers, too?

All of them.

They're still mad.

Yeah, the bikers are still mad.

So he takes off.

He's got his felonies there.

He jumps bail.

And Diana said she didn't argue because

the young boy's father was giving her a ton of grief, and she was sick of dealing with him.

She knew it would be illegal to violate their custody agreement and run away with the kid, but she told herself that the boy would be better off if she just took off with him.

She's probably right.

And she said she didn't want to leave, she didn't want to not, she didn't want to be a single parent again, she said.

Right, that's

yeah, and so she sent her teenage daughter with the kid's dad, and the three of them move out of town: Dennis, Josh, Daddy, Dennis, Joshua, and

Diana.

yeah so they go to fargo north dakota he starts using timothy wicks's identity yeah because he had prepared his taxes problem is he starts getting in trouble at his new job oh you dip shit yeah they they asked what was the first sign that something was off and one of the employees said like a twenty dollar petty cash check where did it go and where are the receipts just some real minor things but then his bosses started noticing some major things his boss here this paradon guy, said, well, I'm thinking it's awful and odd that there's a $4,000 check written to petty cash when we don't keep a petty cash account.

Ha,

that's a weird one.

He said, we found they were indeed deposited into an account belonging to Tim Wicks.

They also discovered that Wicks gave himself a Christmas bonus that he wasn't entitled to.

Well done.

I have done a hell of a job this year.

I feel like, you know, I deserve this.

I've been such a good

his boss is called the Fargo police who started investigating Tim Wicks for embezzlement.

Yeah.

So they started asking

they're asking him questions and shit like that.

And

anyway, so he at one point they tell him, I guess the police opened up the investigation and they talked to Dennis, Dennis slash Tim, and he said that I'm not doing anything.

The founders of the business, Compressed Air, they are cheating on their taxes and they're trying to put it on me.

Oh, that's what it's about.

I'm a Patsy.

Yeah, he said, I'll come to the station.

I'll show you evidence.

Uh-huh.

And so, you know, he couldn't fucking do that, obviously.

No.

But it's bought him a couple of days.

Sure.

Then the real Tim Wicks calls him and he goes, oh, fuck.

Now the walls are

closing in as they crumble.

Like this is.

Not him, too.

Yeah.

It's going to be a pile of rubble

is going to get him eventually.

So on Christmas Eve, 2001,

the real Tim Wicks tells his brother-in-law that he's headed to Canada with Dennis Gade for a jazz drumming job.

Oh.

He's got each of them a job drumming.

Yeah.

And they can make $800 a week playing drums in a bar, which seems...

like a lot of money.

It seems like a bar drummer.

Why would you do anything else?

Yeah, just do that.

But he also says Dennis wanted it to be a big secret, so don't tell anybody.

Don't tell anybody.

Why would you can't?

Why?

December 25th, 2001, Christmas Day.

Yeah.

Tim Wicks, the real one in Milwaukee, leaves a note with his landlord, and it just says Dennis and Tim Wicks and leaves a phone number.

where he can be reached in, I guess, Fargo.

And then saying there's a band, I have a band gig in Canada.

I have to leave, blah, blah, blah.

If you need anything, this is where you can reach me.

That's where I'll be.

December 26th, people, friends, watch Tim and Dennis load drums into Tim Wicks' car outside his apartment

and they head to Gardner to get ready for the trip.

Okay.

December 29th, Dennis calls his job, which he doesn't know that they think he's embezzling yet, to borrow, to ask to borrow a company pickup to haul a U-Haul trailer.

And they said no.

Not going to allow that.

So then that evening, Tim Wicks' credit card is used to rent a backhoe in Gardner.

Oh.

December 30th, this is the Fleet Farm in Fargo.

Here's purchases with Tim Wicks' credit card.

An axe.

Yeah.

Heavy gloves, burlap sacks, and large shears.

And a backhoe.

And he's already got the backhoe, and he rents a U-Haul truck with Timothy Wicks' credit card as well.

Oh, boy.

So his friends haven't heard from him when he was supposed to call.

So they start calling the cops saying, We don't know where our friend is.

The cops say, well, he's an adult who literally moved away from here.

Yeah, he can do whatever he wants.

Maybe he's ignoring you.

Maybe he's done with you.

I'm not going to, what are we going to do here?

Who knows?

So they visited his apartment manager, and the apartment manager gave them the phone number.

Well, if you're looking for him, this is the number he left behind.

So they traced the number to Fargo, but

couldn't find him there, obviously.

So January 2nd, 2002, the Cass County Sheriff's Department performs a welfare check at Dennis's residence in Gardner, trying to find Tim.

Yeah.

Because people are looking for him.

They find his car there, but no one's home.

So they leave a note on Tim's car.

Hey, call us.

There's people looking for you.

Later that day,

on the Michigan side of the Menominee River, which is between

Menominee Menominee River between Wisconsin and Michigan there.

They find a torso.

Someone finds a torso on the riverbank.

Oh, no.

Yeah, didn't quite get into the river.

Just sitting there.

No head, no hands, torso.

Okay, so this is like, you know, the Russian guy from The Wire killed this guy or something here.

January 4th, 2002, a U-Haul is returned to the Fargo location by Dennis.

The mileage on the U-Haul is 1,786 miles.

Dang, this thing went running.

That is a lot.

January 7th, Tim Wicks, Dennis, though,

really Dennis, reports for work for the last time in Fargo.

Okay.

Okay.

The cops are still looking for Tim.

So they get in touch with the Fargo Police Department, which claims they're investigating a Tim Wicks too.

Oh, great.

That's super weird.

You know, is it the same guy?

So they were like, what?

There's two Tim Wicks and you're looking for him and we're looking for, that's weird.

So they said, well, the Tim we're after is a drummer, pretty decent drummer.

And he goes, my guy, too.

Holy shit.

We're both looking for Tim Wicks's who drum.

It's got to be the same guy.

Then

after a minute, they go back and forth here and they go, wait a second, let's get descriptions here.

The one is 5'8 ⁇ , 150 pounds.

And then they say, oh, my guy's 6'3 ⁇ , 350.

And they go, okay, not the same guy.

They couldn't be more

Physically different.

And he's balding, wears glasses.

The other guy has hair.

He's short, skinny.

None of it makes sense.

So they said they saw pictures then of both men, and they went, yeah, these are not.

That's Dennis Gabe, and this is Tim Wicks.

Like, these are different.

So they were like, where is the real Timothy Wicks?

So

this detective, please stand up.

This detective in Milwaukee had a bad feeling about Tim Wicks here.

Some guy using his identity.

Way to have a hunch.

Then one of the cops says, hey, we got a bulletin a few days ago from the Michigan State Police.

You know, a lot of notices you get from neighboring states and they just kind of go up on the board for a minute and then they're gone.

It's been filed away in a binder.

So this guy dug it out and it's saying that we found a headless, handless male body aged 40 to 50

on a riverbank.

No tattoos or scars, no other distinguishing characteristics.

So this guy said, let me call Michigan.

This is the Milwaukee investigator.

And then he's told about that January 16th, 2002, about 35 miles upriver from where they found the torso, a surveyor was rowing looking for precious metals there.

Yeah.

And the temperature was below zero that day.

The water was close to a dam, so the constant flow kept it from freezing.

So it was a place you could look.

He saw something on the river bottom, didn't know what it was, poked it with an oar, oar, and it's a human head.

It's a head.

It's just a head.

God.

God damn it.

So this is about, I think it's about 12 miles from the torso.

Okay.

In the head, a bullet wound is found.

All right.

And they said both parts happen to be,

everything ended up at the Milwaukee morgue for some reason.

They've been sent there because murder cases,

I guess they have a better forensic pathologist than the middle of nowhere.

All right, sure.

Yeah, that was in Niagara, Wisconsin.

They were able to use dental records and DNA to identify the remains as Tim Wicks.

Of course.

So we found Tim.

An autopsy.

A Tim Wicks.

We have one of those.

An autopsy determined that he was shot and suffocated to death.

Ooh.

So who could have done this?

Well,

one guy is openly using his identity.

That might be

a person to talk to.

So then on January 23rd, Dennis calls his old boss, Jeff Paradine.

Yeah.

And he said that basically they're looking for him for embezzling $9,000 from them.

Over nine grand?

He's running?

He's running.

So he calls his old boss and says, if there's anything

that the guy could get out of the house that he has that would make up for what he's taken, you can take.

You're welcome to it, basically.

Go to my house, look around.

If you can piece together nine grand worth of shit, you're welcome to it.

Take what you want, get out, and we'll call it even.

So he calls the cops instead, this guy.

He's like i'm calling the cops the detective tells him don't go near there and he says let me tell you something the real tim wicks is dead keep that under your hat but oh we know it this is bigger to know we know it this is bigger than your nine grand basically so then they search the the dennis's home the blue farmhouse and gardener uh no one's there they knew that so they look all around the driveway's empty there's mail piling up they said the um

they're looking around they said the whole kitchen floor is just luminous.

I've never seen anything like this one.

The entire kitchen floor was cleaned with straight bleach.

There's no blood.

It's just bleach.

Bleach.

Whole floor bleached.

All bleach.

Yep.

They say nothing found in the house.

No blood evidence.

They do found a mop with reddish-brown fluid that tested negative for blood.

Oh.

They found marks in frozen ground near the house from a backhoe, and they found women's shoes that they're going to keep for footprint comparisons.

Then they realize that multiple bank withdrawals from Tim Wicks' account is a total.

He's stolen a total of $17,000 from Tim Wicks,

where he purchased a 1989 Travel Master RV

as well.

So February 15th, 2002, Dennis is wanted by the FBI now.

Yeah.

This isn't a Milwaukee cops.

There's warrants in North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Diana has an outstanding warrant in Wisconsin for taking her kid, too.

Her husband called called him.

Diana.

So

now they put out a big APB for him.

They're saying he's Dennis Gade or Tim Wicks or Grant Lindbaum or Grant Garow

or

who knows this time.

You know what I mean?

Could be Luke Gagnon.

It could be anybody.

White male, 38, between 325 and 375 pounds.

Possibly a mustache.

Yeah.

He's an RV.

He has a skull with a music note tattoo on his upper left arm.

Even a shitty tattoo.

The FBI said he might be traveling with his wife, Diana, and her five-year-old son in a 1989 Chevrolet Travel Master motorhome with Wisconsin Plates A3951.

Watch out for a man with a full shitter.

Watch out.

Oh, you know, it's gone.

Full shitter and a lit cigar.

Watch out.

Now, they're on the run.

They were going to Canada at first.

Yeah.

Now, Now, what he did, they got to Canada, though, and he told Diana, you and the kid drive the RV across.

I'll get out and sneak through the woods across the border since I'm banned from the country, since I got deported.

We'll meet up elsewhere.

You just pick me up on the other side.

And she said, We can't do that.

That's crazy.

So she said, I took Joshua from her father.

I have warrants too.

If I try to take the kid across, they're going to look into that, and I'm going to get busted.

So he said, okay, we're going to Mexico instead.

They were like at the Canadian border.

We're going to you turn it.

Turned it around.

Their plan to live on the beach and sell fruit from the back of a truck.

God damn it.

Imagine what the fuck is that?

That's your getaway?

That's your dismount from nine grand?

Well, nine grand and all sorts of other charges.

Yeah.

But

that's crazy.

He knows he's in more trouble than that.

Yeah.

He does not want to go to jail.

So March 4th, 2002, this is at the Camp Away, Camp Away

Campground with dashes in there in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Dennis, the whole clan here, they drive into the campground about 8 p.m.

on a Sunday.

Diana paid the $19.93 registration fee with cash.

The owner said he didn't notice anything strange about either of them.

He only saw them briefly.

They bought a soda from the vending machine.

And he said, we see 10,000 RVs a year, so there's nothing to make us suspect.

It was just a normal registration.

So it's a private campground and it was a real nice one, clean showers, laundry room.

And Diana begged Dennis to stay for one more day so she could wash Joshua's sheets and blankets because he'd been wetting the bed lately.

His mother thought maybe from nerves.

So they stay an extra day.

Now, a Minnesota couple who'd camp next to them in Tennessee recognizes them from the news and tips off authorities.

Then there's somebody who ends up back in North Dakota after seeing them at the campsite and seeing their pictures on the news as wanted.

So they call the cops too.

So everyone's called the cops on them now.

So they swarmed.

They clearly stand out.

Absolutely.

They swarm the place and they arrest them.

They said, Diana said Joshua was screaming at the top of his lungs and he said, Mom, were you bad?

Because it's like, there's like 30 cop cars and the FBI, a little bit.

So Dennis, now he is a flight risk.

Yeah.

He's not charged with murder at this point, just the embezzlement and everything like that.

Yeah, they don't know anything.

Yeah, I mean, they know, but.

They don't have a case yet.

But his bail is set for $3 million because he's such a bad flight risk.

So both of them refused to waive extradition from Nebraska.

So they had to get a governor's warrant and do all this bullshit.

It was a real big pain in the ass, but they ended up getting him back to North Dakota.

He's also wanted in Wisconsin, like we said.

Now, about murder charges, they said there's no additional charges against against Dennis are pending, not yet.

They said we have an active investigation going.

When that's concluded, everyone that has an interest in this matter will decide.

Diana faces a felony warrant from Milwaukee for interfering with parental custody of her young son.

The child was with them.

He was then returned to his father in Wisconsin.

Now, in jail.

In Nebraska, Diane has a big fucking mouth.

Really?

She starts telling the inmates that she's in there because she killed a guy.

I killed him because he raped me.

That's what he says.

She says, Tim Wicks raped me and I killed him.

Not a lot of shut up in this girl, huh?

No, not at all.

They also, there's Diana writes to Dennis, and he writes back love letters from jail as well.

Oh, that's nice.

They discuss the fake rape statement, too.

Well, you should say this.

Yeah.

Good.

Dennis's letter

basically, Dennis said, all these guys that committed grisly crimes and made money on books and stuff.

And he said he could write a book and make some money and be one of those guys, he told Diana as well.

Sure, what the hell?

Hey, everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you about a new series on Prime Video coming out right now on October 22nd.

Oh, it's Harlan Coben's Lazarus.

Absolutely best-selling mystery writer Harlan Coban returns to television with a twisted tale of lies, murder, and long buried family secrets.

Harlan Coban's written 37 novels, and they're all this, you know, when you get to the last page, it happens type of thing.

And it's really cool.

He's a great author, and you really want to see this.

Harlan Coban's Lazarus stars Sam Claflin and Bill Nye.

He's the older actor.

You've seen him in a ton of stuff.

He's a really great actor.

Premieres October 22nd only on Prime Video.

It looks like a real tons of death and killings and mayhem and all sorts of stuff going on.

You want some blood?

This is the place to get it.

Harlan Coben's

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You should definitely check this out.

It looks really cool.

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And it looks like something that you're going to have to watch till the end.

Can't wait.

Don't miss Harlan Coben's Lazarus streaming October 22nd only on Prime Video.

Now back to the show.

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Then he does some jailhouse interviews, because that's going to be smart.

And he said this to the forum newspaper.

When people walk into the jail, almost everyone knows who I am.

They base popularity on your criminal act.

And he said about the FBI, I had them at the edge of their seats.

I bet very shortly they're going to announce that they were pointing the finger at the wrong person.

And then they asked him about Tim Wicks' death, and he said, I'm not worried about it at all.

I'm not the one who killed him.

Okay.

February 2004.

Here we go.

Now Diana does six months for her parental custody thing.

He's still in jail, but only for the embezzlement and the thing he was wanted for in Wisconsin, too.

That's what he's in jail for.

So their cops want to talk to Diana because they really want, it's been over two years.

They want to charge something.

So they said, okay, let's talk to her.

Once she's released, the cop, he had, the detective had like visited her like twice a week trying to get her to talk to jail.

Once she's released, he still keeps going.

Two years pass, and they interviewed her in February 2004.

They said it was difficult because there's law enforcement agencies from three states.

There's tons of evidence and all this shit.

They said because we have multiple agencies

involved, it's taken some time to put together all the interviews we needed and all the information we thought was appropriate.

Now, her initial statement is, I killed Tim.

Okay.

Because he raped me.

Right.

Yes.

I'm a victim, so now he is too.

The police say, we don't believe you.

No.

We don't believe that you killed him, and we don't believe he raped you either.

Same Z's.

Yeah.

Both of these are no good.

And then finally, she cracks after a while.

Yeah.

She said, because they're also probably saying, you know, you're going to be involved in this too.

You should probably tell us what happened.

Oh, yeah.

She said, quote, Dennis had told me that with his felonies in Wisconsin, that if he was convicted of murder, he'd never see daylight again.

So we concocted a plan.

He told me if I could convince a jury it was self-defense, I'd be free in eight or nine years and we could be together again.

Oh, great.

Wow.

So they said, why did she take so long?

Well,

she said that she hoped DNA or some other physical evidence would tie Dennis to the murder so he could be charged without her, basically.

She didn't want to be involved.

But she said, now that time passed, it's pretty clear that's not going to happen.

And they're telling me that they need me.

So

here it is.

This is what happened.

December 28th, 2011.

This is at their residence in Gardner, North Dakota, between 11 p.m.

and midnight.

She said about eight, nine o'clock, I gave Joshi a bath and took him upstairs.

Dennis and Tim were like drinking and partying and stuff downstairs, drinking and smoking pot.

So she brought her three-year-old upstairs and she didn't smoke weed and she didn't want Josh in the room while they were smoking weed, obviously.

Yeah.

So she says, I went to bed and she said, Dennis waking me up in a panic and he's like, come downstairs.

And we went downstairs and Tim's laying on the kitchen floor.

I said, what did you do?

Party him out?

I don't think I've ever heard that.

I've never heard that expression before.

What a weird party him out.

I drank him under the table.

So he's actually under the table.

He's there he is.

See him?

It's literal when they say that.

I did it.

He said, because I thought he passed out.

And he said, no, I shot him.

So she said she was confused because he was still breathing and she didn't see any blood.

So how could he be shot?

She said, well, he's still alive.

That is when Dennis got a plastic bag

and put it over his head until he stopped breathing.

Oh, Jesus.

So Diana said she went into the bathroom and threw up.

Yeah, because she just told him to do that, basically.

Yeah, she's like, he's still breathing.

And he's like, thank you.

I'll deal with it.

I'll fix it.

Don't worry.

Got it.

She said her first instinct was to call the police, but how could she explain that she was married to one Tim Wicks, but there's another Tim Wicks dead on the kitchen floor?

What a conundrum.

What if they thought that she had been involved?

What would happen to her son?

What if this guy also, what if Dennis doesn't want to leave witnesses and decides to kill her?

Great.

So she said,

I'll go along with it.

So she said, when she left the bathroom, Dennis was wrapping the body in a tarp.

She says she helped him drag it out to the barn, which had been converted into a three-car garage.

Joshua was sleeping the whole time.

From that point on, she said she stayed drunk on beer, bourbon, whiskey, whatever she could get her hands on.

She suggested that she call, or Dennis suggested you call the police and tell them that Tim tried to rape you, so you shot him.

And she said, I'm not doing that.

I don't have the wherewithal to put that performance on.

It's a problem.

So December 29th, the cover-up has to begin.

In the morning, that's when the body is dragged to the barn.

That afternoon is when he calls his employer asking to borrow a pickup to haul a U-Haul.

That evening, he rents a backhoe.

He tried to dig a grave beside the house, but the ground is frozen fucking solid because it's late December in North Dakota.

So Diana said he planned to take him to his cottage in Michigan, and he said there was some kind of cement sewer type thing he could drop him into and nobody would ever find him.

Holy

shit.

So then December 30th is when he buys the axe, the gloves, the burlap sacks, and the shears.

And everybody around there says, what do you need shears for in the middle of winter?

There's no

foliage.

There's nothing grain to cut.

Not trimming your rose bushes back.

Rents the U-Haul truck, loads the body into wardrobe box, into a wardrobe box.

Yeah.

December 31st, New Year's Eve, they leave Fargo with the body in the U-Haul.

Diana and Josh still in there too.

New Year's Day, near Powers, Michigan,

they drove, and Diana said they were going to the upper peninsula where he had a cabin.

Diana said that's when he decided to dismember him, take his head in his hands so that dental records or fingerprints wouldn't identify the torso.

He just got wild now.

Wow.

This is from I'm going to steal this guy's identity.

Yeah.

Diana said that she and Joshua sat in the front seat of the U-Haul with the radio blasting as Dennis dismembered the body in the back of the U-Haul.

Ooh, wee.

You see weird stains in the back of a U-Haul, assume it's a dismembered body.

Probably was.

She tried to say, she said, she tried to forget the sounds of the banging and hacking.

She said you could just hear bang, bang, bang, and it seemed like it was never going to stop.

When they reached the Menominee River, Dennis told Josh to wait in the car while they stepped out.

They threw the river, threw it over the bridge at the Menominee River.

She said she helped him heave the body over the guardrail, but it landed on the riverbank and didn't go into the water.

Dang it.

She said Dennis is just too lazy to go down and push it in, so that's why they left it there.

It's right there.

You said because of that.

He drove a thousand miles, but was like, I don't want to walk all the way down there and push it.

Wow.

Holy fuck.

They stopped at a gas station to wash up.

She said she stood in front of the mirror and saw she had blood all over her clothes and all this.

And she said, what the fuck am I going to do with myself?

She said she couldn't leave.

She had no money, no car.

She had a three-year-old.

What are you going to do?

So then they drove all the way back to Gardner after dumping the torso.

He returns the U-Haul.

She also said about the murder weapon on the trip to Milwaukee, Dennis disassembled the handgun used to kill Wicks and had her throw it into Lake Michigan.

They never find that.

That's gone.

So they go back to Gardner.

She and Josh go in the house while Dennis takes Tim's car with the head and hands and drives off.

When he gets back, he told them that he drove to the UP border and thrown Wicks' head in the river and his hands in the woods somewhere.

Then they take off again, driving Wix's beloved Z24 black cavalier that he has.

Oh, loves it.

Remember when that was

Cavalier.

Yikes.

Oof.

So

they stopped at the dealership where Tim had bought it, and Diana says,

I'm Tim's wife, and we can't afford the payments anymore.

I'm leaving the car.

And before they could get a manager or anything, she was already gone.

Just saying, there's the car.

There's the car sitting there.

They went to a hotel on 27th Street when the Hales Corners Police, where Tim had lived, called Dennis's cell phone number looking for Tim.

Yeah.

Dennis said, I'm Dennis Johnson from Bismarck.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't know Dennis Gade, and I don't know Tim Wicks.

I don't know anything.

So that's her story.

Wow.

It's quite the tale.

Now, she hasn't gotten immunity or anything else from the authorities, they said at this point.

She said, quote, I wanted to make sure that Dennis stayed behind bars so that my children are safe and that one day my children can say their mom did the right thing.

It took a while.

So Dennis is in prison, sentenced to four years in prison for embezzlement at this point.

Yeah, he has no idea what's what.

Nope.

He's serving a term for theft and fraud.

He's set to be released August 1st, 2005.

Right.

And he's saying Diane lied about him to get on the authorities' good side to win back custody of her son.

He said, I did not do this thing.

Something happened, and I'm not sure what, but I had nothing to do with it.

And the truth will come out.

The only reason I'm not charged with this is because I didn't do it.

That's it.

So they have a time crunch because if they're going to charge him, they want to charge him before they release him from jail because he could disappear

and be gone.

He could be selling fruit from a truck in Mexico tomorrow.

That's his goal.

It's his dream.

So in this time, by the way, he and Diana had got divorced, but the fact that they were married poses a big problem because she's willing to testify against him, but North Dakota law limits how much she's allowed to say.

She can't testify about things he told her only to

what she saw because it's privileged at that point,

marriage, whatever.

So they said there's limited prosecutorial experience in North Dakota, murder trials as well, because they only have about 10 murders a year.

There's no practice.

And he said, most of them are dunkers.

Most of them are domestics where the guys in the front lawn with a bloody knife in one hand, a beer and the other going, I killed the bitch.

Like, that's not a big murder trial.

It's complicated.

Yeah.

They said, we have a good circumstantial case, but attorneys like hard evidence, and we're not there yet.

They said,

you know, we don't know what to do.

So they said, we can't specifically say who would be charged or with what.

We don't have any murders that go unprosecuted, or we don't want to have murders that go unprosecuted, but we only get one bite at the prosecutorial apple, so to speak, so we want it to be a good bite.

Now, they're also worried about Dennis in court.

They said he's very articulate and very smooth.

In his delivery of what he's telling you, he's so rehearsed.

He's been through it hundreds of times in his head, and to him, that's how it is.

He's a con man.

So

they're concerned he could win.

They're concerned he could go up there and tell a compelling story.

So Diana pleads guilty, like I said, to the interfering with child custody, But she, and by this point, she is

seeing him for three hours of supervised visits, like every other weekend, because of all this.

They're looking for evidence, physical evidence.

They go to the house a hundred times.

They go over it with a fine-tooth comb.

They find nothing.

Really?

Nothing.

They even went up to the...

to the or they went to the cistern even and had a detective with a rope around his waist.

They lowered him down all the way into the ground.

Cistern, yeah.

Couldn't find shit.

They were looking for the murder weapon or something.

August 2005, finally murder charges.

Really?

Yeah, the DA says this case has some remarkable aspects to it, ones that I haven't seen before, ones I trust I will never see again.

It's like a true crime novel.

Probably, yeah.

Yeah, it's a true crime book, all right?

So they said in a lot of cases, you just take baby steps until you get to the final end, and that's what we're doing now.

They said, at heart, I'm kind of a competitor.

We always try to go from the

We always try to go from the beginning to always get your man or woman, whatever it may be.

Now, trial.

It's a two-week trial and

40 witnesses.

A lot of people.

The prosecution says that Dennis wanted to eliminate Wicks before his identity theft was exposed.

Right.

The defense says, no, no, no.

Dennis is innocent of murder.

Diana is the one who killed

Tim Wicks and Dennis.

She is a rapist.

Well, yeah, they don't even say that.

They say that she's just a psychopath and that Dennis only assisted afterward due to, quote, love and fear.

Terrified of her

in Vegas or something.

Yeah.

So they don't have a lot of direct, they have no forensic evidence, basically.

That's it.

That's basically all it is.

Now, they have Diana's eyewitness testimony, credit card usage trail, bank with withdrawal records, identity documents in Wix's name, dismemberment tool purchases.

That'll help a little bit.

Sure.

But Diana's testimony is limited to lying multiple times about who killed Wix.

They get to ask her about that.

She also confessed falsely to the murder.

They're going to grill her for that.

She did help dispose of the body and didn't call 911.

That's a problem.

Yeah.

She detailed everything we told you about before.

In cross-examination, they highlighted her initial confession, saying you're an unreliable liar motivated by a plea deal that you got for your other shit.

By the way, they never charged Diana with anything here.

Really?

Not even after the fact, nothing.

She just shot free, got away with everything.

Yeah, she said the thing in court is, how would I explain that I was married to Tim Wicks and there's another Tim Wicks on the floor and a car in the driveway, my husband's supposed to be him.

She's got a point.

It's tough.

So in closing, I mean, once he's in jail, she probably should have told on him earlier than two years, but still.

The attorney, this is the defense attorney, said Diana killed Wicks.

Dennis only helped with the disposal.

Then he says this, which will come up later.

I talked to you about the fact that this case was about betrayal.

We talked a little bit about Judas and the 30 pieces of silver.

They don't like it.

Appeals courts don't like it when lawyers make biblical references because it

couldn't have anything less to do with the law, you know what I mean, on earth here than that.

So they don't like it because it takes the jurors into another place that's not

a courtroom.

Also,

if you're not biblical, you might not understand what the fuck they're talking about.

That's true, too.

The prosecutor said the real betrayer was that man right there.

He betrayed his friendship with Timothy Wicks.

His were the greater sins.

He was the one who committed the murder.

The jury deliberates for less than four hours before convicting Dennis, finding him guilty of intentional murder.

Now, during sentencing, the prosecutor said that, quote, I think Dennis is a liar, and he's shown that time and time again.

He's made a life out of living a lie and spinning that lie to everyone around him.

They say that his statement,

you know, telling, blaming it on his ex-wife, was pathetic.

He even,

wow,

they're just called him pathetic, basically.

So then Dennis gets to speak as well.

And Dennis

blamed it on Diana, called her a demon.

Oh.

A demon and said, quote, she may be sending me to prison today, but my

conscience is clear that I am not a murderer.

Really?

Yeah.

So the judge

here after that,

the judge said that his history of lying, quote, borders on the pathological.

Sure.

Not only that, he said this was a case of premeditated murder as cold and calculated as one will find.

He said that his history of lies and conduct through this case show that he would definitely commit more crimes if ever released from prison.

You, sir, may fuck off life without parole.

Wow.

For fat boy there.

Now, Diane, not charged with everything, with anything, like we said.

He appeals for a bunch of bullshit, ineffective assistance of counsel, saying there's insufficient evidence and they didn't go after Diana hard enough.

And

they said the combined and cumulative weight of evidence connects you to the crime.

Fuck off.

He also appeals failing for with the biblical references and all of that, saying ineffective assistance.

North Dakota Supreme Court affirmed it there, saying that biblical references are permissible literary illusions.

They weren't putting him in a Bible story.

They were just, you know, whatever.

He also claimed in 2018, he says that he has just been diagnosed with PTSD, and that proves he's innocent.

PTSD of what?

Doesn't matter.

Proved he's innocent.

Okay.

His argument is he could not have rationally or coherently committed a homicide during a panic attack.

A panic attack.

The court found that PTSD had no bearing on his crimes in relation to his competency.

They back all that up.

He goes all the way.

He's still appealing in 2024, a federal appeal of a U.S.

Supreme Court petition here.

He wants out.

He wants the fuck out.

Everything denied, denied, denied, denied, denied.

I heard at one point, too, Diana had gotten remarried, and I heard, I saw it, I don't know if this is true, but she was working at McDonald's or something.

So

things didn't go well for her either.

Now, I don't know if that's true or not.

Now, final thoughts here.

A friend of Tim's said that was his life.

He lived to play, and Dennis took that away from him.

Right.

Drummond.

His friend Jim said, we rehashed this whole case from beginning to end.

It's terrible.

It's a travesty.

Such a great person to have their life ended like this.

Right.

And that is Gardner, North Dakota.

Wow.

He just over nine grand.

Stole an identity and then decided, I got to kill him.

Well, yeah, he's going to expose my whole shit and I'm going to go back to jail.

So I'll just murder this guy.

And he really said, I'll call Wisconsin and I'll fucking tell him there's a gig.

I mean, it was a plot.

He wasn't just sitting around with him and going, oh, that's a good idea.

And then he stabbed him in the neck.

This is like a huge, premeditated, horrifying plot.

Over nine grand and the ability to not face up to it.

He had like a 10-hour drive to change his mind and everything.

Like, it's wild.

He probably could have pled that nine grand.

Jesus.

Something.

So there you go.

That's Gardner, North Dakota.

Definitely get on whatever app you're listening on and give us five stars.

It helps a lot.

That story was worth it.

Come on, man.

That's like the quintessential.

Don't do that.

No reason to do it.

No, just a complete asshole.

Just

trying to keep his plate spinning.

No dismount.

Again,

our old favorite there.

Do that.

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