Update: Murder suspect agrees to second assessment

Oct. 01--LE CENTER -- It was the first time Special Agent Micheal Anderson had used his cellphone as a video recorder, so he was a little confused and not sure how to get started.

Anderson, an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, was investigating the Jan. 6 death of 47-year-old Richard Nelson in his rural Montgomery home. He wanted more details for what, by then, was a suspected homicide.

Jonas Nelson, 18, was there and happy to help out. Nelson, the prime suspect in his father's death, showed Anderson what to do with the device before getting to the business at hand.

"Jonas demonstrated how he fired the two shots in the situation we were investigating," Anderson said during a hearing Tuesday for Nelson's first-degree murder case in Le Sueur County District Court. "He actually offered to go back to the scene to demonstrate. I didn't think that was a good idea."

That was the fourth and last series of interviews Nelson's attorney, Richard Lea, doesn't want a jury to hear. The hearing was in response to a motion Lea filed saying Nelson, based on an assessment from a forensic psychologist, wasn't fit to waive his right to remain silent and have an attorney present during those interviews.

The interviews took place during the early morning hours of Jan. 7 and the afternoon of Jan. 8. Nelson is facing first-degree murder charges.

Portions of the interviews highlighted by Lea during the hearing suggest Nelson was too cooperative with police because of his father's strict rules and his inability to resist the persuasion of authority figures. A motion filed by Lea also said Nelson is suffering from post traumatic stress and was not able to form the intent required for first-degree murder.

While questioning witnesses, Lea pointed out that Nelson was home schooled and didn't pass the test showing he'd fulfilled the state requirements for a high school education. He also highlighted comments Nelson made to the investigators about his troubled relationship with his father.

Lea declined to comment after the hearing.

Gruesome scene

The first law enforcement officer to record a conversation with Nelson was Le Sueur County sheriff's deputy Todd Lau. He had been dispatched to Richard and Jonas Nelson's house southeast of Montgomery near the county line at about 11:10 p.m.

While testifying Tuesday, Lau said he initially thought he was responding to a suicide because the situation had been reported to him as a "D.O.A" or dead on arrival. That changed after he spoke briefly with Jonas Nelson, who was sitting outside the house in a pickup truck, and Lau went into the house to survey the scene.

Richard Nelson was lying dead on the living room floor, where he had been sleeping next to a wood stove during one of the coldest nights of the year. There were blood, skull fragments and brain matter around the victim's head. There wasn't a gun in the room.

"It was obvious Richard was deceased, so I called and told them to cancel the ambulance," Lau said. "Obviously he was shot from behind and not the front."

A bullet hole also was found in the lower corner of a patio door.

After the house was searched to make sure no one was inside, Lau walked out to the pickup to start the first series of recorded conversations with Nelson. Lau asked what had happened and Nelson told him he had been watching movies in his upstairs bedroom when he heard a "pop" sound. Nelson said he called 911 after he found his father had been shot.

The second deputy to arrive, Scott O'Brien, recorded the next series of conversations with Nelson. They took place both in O'Brien's squad car and the Nelson pickup. They were talking in the front seats of the car when Nelson brought up the problems with his father. Nelson did not know he was being recorded, O'Brien said.

Nelson talked about how his father had been acting weird and holding grudges against people, O'Brien said. He also talked about about how judgmental his father was and a conversation he had that night with a former girlfriend he had met at a camp in northern Minnesota.

Assistant Attorney General William Klumpp, the lead prosecutor in the case, asked O'Brien about a will Nelson had found on his father's computer. The will left the proceeds of an $850,000 insurance policy to Jonah Nelson and his younger brother, Kabe.

"He just brought it up out of the blue and said he found his father's will," O'Brien said.

Rights read

Nelson wasn't formally interviewed and read his Miranda rights until he agreed to talk to Anderson and sheriff's Det. Bruce Collins in Collins' squad car at the scene. It was about 2:40 a.m., more than three hours after Lau had arrived at the Nelsons' house.

Both detectives said Nelson seemed calm and collected as they encouraged him to tell the truth about what happened. That's when Nelson allegedly told them he walked down stairs, placed a glass in the kitchen, grabbed a gun and ammunition from the gun cabinet and shot his sleeping father in the head.

Nelson told the detectives he fired a second shot through the patio door to make it look like the shot had been fired from outside, Anderson and Collins said. Two spent casings were found where Nelson allegedly said he'd placed them after the shooting.

Klumpp told District Court Judge Terrance Conkel that he also wants to have Nelson interviewed by a forensic psychologist before a ruling is made. Prior to having the officers testify, the two attorneys and Conkel made sure Nelson understood he didn't have to agree to the second interview.

Nelson agreed to the interview, saying he understood it could both help and hurt his situation depending on the outcome of the second doctor's findings. That portion of the hearing will take place at a later date, after the second interview is completed.

Conkel's decision on whether the law enforcement interviews are admissible will be made after the doctors are questioned in court and the attorneys have made their arguments.

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