March 27, 2011, is the official date listed on DeVan Hawkinson’s death certificate because that was the day he was found murdered in his Eastview Mobile Home Park residence in Annandale. On the two-year anniversary of his death, last Wednesday, March 27, Hawkinson’s neighbor – 46-year-old Keith Richard Rossberg – was convicted in a Wright County court of shooting the 63-year-old Vietnam combat veteran in the back of the head six times and then starting him on fire to cover it up.
Tenth Judicial Court Judge Elizabeth Strand methodically polled each of the 12 jurors – seven men and five women – to ensure that all of them agreed with the verdicts announced in court. It was unanimous, guilty on charges of first degree murder and second degree murder with intent. As is customary, three other jurors, two men and one woman, were declared alternate jurors after closing arguments on Tuesday, March 26, and were excused from deliberations. The remaining jury of 12 deliberated for about four hours after closing arguments Tuesday evening and resumed at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday until they finalized the verdicts at 1:19 p.m.
A pre-sentence investigation is now underway and Rossberg will return to the courtroom Thursday, May 16, for sentencing and to hear victim impact statements from Hawkinson’s sister Diana Ashwill of Annandale and Ashwill’s niece Tracy Schill of Clearwater.
In Minnesota, first degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence without parole.
Week one summary
Rossberg’s trial began the week of Monday, March 18, when the prosecution team of Wright County Attorney Tom Kelly and assistant county attorney Brian Lutes questioned several expert witnesses as well as friends and neighbors of Hawkinson and Rossberg, including their mutual love interest, Diane (Skobi) Turman and her first husband, Dan Sheridan Sr., both formerly of Annandale. The case Kelly and Lutes presented to the jury centered on the idea that Hawkinson and Rossberg, who were once friends, developed an increasingly strained relationship between 2008 until Hawkinson’s death in March 2011 because of anger and jealousy stemming from their mutual love interest in Turman.
Turman and Hawkinson were good friends and she rented a room from him on Honeysuckle Lane at Eastview in 2008. That is when she met Rossberg because Hawkinson introduced them. After becoming romantically involved with Rossberg, Turman moved from Hawkinson’s to Rossberg’s home on Smith Lane, which is a street adjacent to Honeysuckle Lane. Turman eventually moved back in with Hawkinson when she grew tired of the "lifestyle" at Rossberg’s, but she maintained a romantic relationship with Rossberg. When Turman moved back in with Hawkinson the second time, their relationship became more than a friendship, which made Rossberg jealous. Kelly and Lutes portrayed all three as part of a "love triangle" that caused extreme anger and tension to build between Hawkinson and Rossberg.
The situation became further complicated when Turman’s first ex-husband, Dan Sheridan Sr., went to the mobile home park in 2010, looking to rekindle his relationship with Turman because he testified in court that he never stopped loving her, despite the more than 20 years they spent apart. Sheridan testified that he wanted to take Turman away from the party lifestyle she had developed while living at Eastview so he invited her to move with him to Clara City where he was employed full-time. They were hoping to start a new life together.
However, Sheridan asked Hawkinson if Turman would be allowed to move back in with him in Annandale if things did not work out between them because he did not want her to ever be "homeless." Sheridan also said, as a Vietnam-era veteran himself, he and Hawkinson had some things in common and they got along well. Therefore, he never had a problem with the friendship between Hawkinson and Turman. Hawkinson agreed to Sheridan’s request, saying that Turman would always be welcomed in his home. After an argument about Turman’s alcoholism and finances one night in March 2011, Turman called Hawkinson and asked to move back in with him because things were not working out with her and Sheridan in Clara City. Hawkinson, was extremely happy about the prospect of her return and told Rossberg to leave them alone when she came back. It is this event that Kelly and Lutes said triggered Rossberg’s anger and rage toward Hawkinson in the days leading up to the murder the weekend of March 25, 2011.
Turman admitted to being an alcoholic when she was questioned at the end of the first week of the trial but insisted that she was not aware of the impact that her divided affections were having on the relationship between Rossberg and Hawkinson. She downplayed the problems, saying that there were only a few arguments between them that she could recall in her presence. Turman also acknowledged that she had accessed Hawkinson’s spare key on multiple occasions while in the presence of Rossberg and few other people knew where it was kept.
Another key part of the state’s case during the first week included testimony about threatening letters found in Hawkinson’s kitchen drawer that a document examiner from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said were most likely written by Rossberg. She said there was also evidence to suggest that Rossberg authored a letter that was planted in a magazine at the Wright County Jail library sometime in the fall of 2011 while he was incarcerated there on a weapons charge. Kelly later said in his closing statements that the letter was another way that Rossberg tried to deflect attention off of himself in connection with Hawkinson’s murder a few months earlier. The note was found in December but was dated in September and it was addressed to "the courts." It was written as if it was authored by a hit-man because it made references to making money for "hits" and that he was hired to kill someone named Rossberg and someone named Hawkinson a few months earlier but that he only got Hawkinson. It further said something about wanting the courts to let Rossberg out of jail so he could finish the job and get paid.
Finally, one other aspect of the state’s case discussed at length in the first week of testimony was the burglary Rossberg reported on March 25 – the Friday of the murder. Several officers testified that Rossberg’s behavior, the fact that nothing else was stolen besides his pistol, he had his pistol’s serial number memorized, and the minimal damage to Rossberg’s door, which had allegedly been pried open by a burglar that day, were "unusual."
Final days of the trial
On Monday, March 25, Kelly and Lutes resumed questioning of witnesses that included a ballistics expert from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and the two leading investigators of the joint task force formed after Hawkinson’s murder case – Annandale’s police chief Jeff Herr and Wright County sheriff’s deputy Mike Lindquist, who is also a member of the county’s criminal investigations division.
Erica Henderson, a ballistics examiner with the BCA, gave detailed testimony about a total of nine, spent .22 caliber shell casings that were found – six in Hawkinson’s mobile home – and three others found in Rossberg’s bedroom during a police search of his home in the days following the murder. Henderson testified that her examination determined that all nine casings shared unique, matching characteristics which suggested they were all fired from the same .22 caliber Sturm Ruger automatic clip pistol – the same type and brand of gun that Rossberg had reported stolen the Friday before Hawkinson’s body was discovered.
It was an important moment in the state’s case because it was a key piece of forensic evidence linking Rossberg’s missing 22 caliber pistol to the crime scene. Rossberg’s gun was never found, however, despite extensive ground and aerial searches of the mobile home park and surrounding wooded areas. Pawn shop records and national database searches for Rossberg’s weapon also turned up nothing.
The ‘big three’
The argument posed by Rossberg’s defense team throughout the trial was that a group of three men, who public defender Forest Larson described in his closing statement as the "big three" from St. Cloud were the more likely suspects in Hawkinson’s murder, during a burglary attempt.
In the days following Hawkinson’s death, word quickly spread in the community that he had been murdered. That’s when rumors about a burglary began circulating. As a result, several leads were reported to police that eventually took Herr and Lindquist to St. Cloud where they conducted an estimated 60 interviews stemming from reports about three burglary suspects who may have killed Hawkinson after unexpectedly finding him home during a burglary. All three men had connections to the drug world in Central Minnesota, and many of those they associated with, were known meth users. Two women who were in the Stearns County jail at the time – Cindy Lemon and Becky Kuklok – talked with police about the possible involvement of Timothy Gilles, an Annandale native, and Sean Roering and Rick Morehouse of the St. Cloud area.
Lemon told police that Roering made a comment to her after seeing a news report on TV about Hawkinson’s murder, "We were there," he reportedly told her while the news story was airing. After further investigation, police discovered that while Roering most likely made the statement to Lemon, he was referring to the day that Hawkinson’s body was discovered. He and Gilles reluctantly admitted to police that they were in the Eastview Mobile Home Park on March 29 – the same day that state patrol helicopters and investigators from the multi-agency taskforce that had formed were conducting ground and aerial searches – because they were selling drugs to a woman who lived in Eastview.
The heavy police presence made them nervous because they were uncertain about what was happening. During one interview, Gilles told police, "Do you think that if I knew about a murder and that there was all those cops around, that I would go there with a bag of dope?"
Kuklok had provided different information to police about a conversation she overheard one night at a small party where there were about seven to eight people present. Three men, including Gilles, Roering and a man named Rick Morehouse were talking about a mobile home they burglarized and burned down and that they later found out someone was inside and had died. However, that was where the similarities to Hawkinson’s death ended and no one else who attended the same gathering recalled the discussion she described.
Lindquist said investigators took it a step further, however, and also checked to see if there had been other mobile home fires in the St. Cloud area around the time the conversation took place that Kuklok allegedly heard. According to Lindquist, there was a case involving a mobile home in St. Joseph, a city near St. Cloud, that may have better fit the scenario Kuklok described to police. Coincidentally, a person died in the St. Joseph blaze.
Lindquist and Herr also determined that none of the people interviewed from the St. Cloud area knew Hawkinson had been shot six times in the back of the head because that information had not been released at the time. They all thought he died from the fire.
Despite the prosecution’s argument that the alternative suspects from St. Cloud led to "dead-ends," Larson and his partner on Rossberg’s defense team, Tom Richards, insisted that Gilles, Roering and Morehouse could have committed the murder during a burglary. They cross examined Lindquist and Herr regarding the tips that led them to St. Cloud and about the interrogation methods they used in obtaining statements from the known drug dealers and addicts. In closing arguments, Larson told the jury that the state had mostly circumstantial evidence and that the forensic evidence – the threatening letters and the bullet casings – was not strong enough to prove Rossberg’s guilt. He also argued that the timing of the prosecution’s love triangle theory did not match with the timeframe of the murder.
Closing statements
In closing statements, Larson’s argument centered on the time period from 2008 to 2010 – when Turman lived with Hawkinson, then Rossberg and then with Hawkinson again before moving to Clara City with Sheridan. "What is significant here is not what has been presented but what has not been presented," Larson said. "Little evidence in this case is in dispute. It’s an unusual case – a real who-done-it, but they’ve (the state) has spent a lot of time explaining away their own evidence. It’s their evidence."
Larson continued by pointing out that there were no clothes with blood evidence found, no footprints and no weapon. Larson also suggested the actions that the state claimed Rossberg took were absurd and defied logic. "Would anybody be that stupid to report a gun stolen if he was planning to kill someone with it," Larson said. "There have been a number of simple things that have been portrayed as something they’re not. For example, it’s been portrayed as unusual that (Rossberg) had memorized the serial numbers to his guns, but I know a lot of hunters who do the same thing. My client has maintained his innocence all the way through. He was consistent."
Larson added that the state’s case was based on speculation and circumstantial evidence and he downplayed the BCA’s document examiner testimony by saying document examination "is not an exact science."
"We really don’t know who wrote the notes," Larson said. "Nobody could be so dumb as to leave notes around a crime scene and then put a note in his own garbage … There’s just no hard evidence, but there is a lot of speculation. If you add all of it, there are a lot of ‘ifs…’ something’s rotten in Denmark. It doesn’t look like ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ What’s missing is way more important than what’s been presented here. That is just the way these people lived. They would get drunk, argue and the next day, they were best friends again. There is not enough here."
Larson repeated in closing statements that while there was tension when Turman lived at Eastview, it was not a big problem after she moved to Clara City. However, Kelly countered that the tension never went away between Rossberg and Hawkinson because Rossberg continued to be jealous and angry about Turman’s ongoing communication with Hawkinson right up until the week of his death. Sheridan testified that Turman and Hawkinson spoke by phone at least two to three times per week. During those conversations, Hawkinson frequently complained to Turman about Rossberg’s continued harassment.
Lutes and Kelly reviewed their case point, by point in their closing arguments and emphasized the idea that no one else investigated in the case but Rossberg, including the "big three" from St. Cloud, had the motive, opportunity and means to carry out the murder and subsequent attempted cover-up. Kelly even went as far as to lay out his vision of what happened. He said that the evidence, witness accounts and expert testimony points to the theory that during the week of the murder, Rossberg got into a heated argument with Hawkinson about Turman on Wednesday and reached his "breaking point" when he found out Turman was moving back to Hawkinson’s. He then reported his 22 caliber Sturm Ruger pistol stolen on Friday and staged the crime by trying to make it look as if someone pried open the door to his trailer home. Kelly suggested that Rossberg went to Hawkinson sometime during the evening of March 25 or early morning hours of March 26 and shot Hawkinson in the back of the head and started him on fire to cover it up.
Kelly continued by saying Rossberg’s actions the following day indicate that he awoke on Saturday expecting to see Hawkinson’s house burned down but when it was still standing, he returned sometime that night to turn on the natural gas stove and lit a candle in the kitchen in an attempt to blow up the home. That too failed and Hawkinson’s friend came over for coffee later that Sunday, only to find evidence of a fire and called for help, foiling any further opportunities for Rossberg to destroy evidence of the crime.
Lutes reminded jurors about the reasons why the "big three" from St. Cloud did not have motive nor opportunity to commit the murder and cover-up attempts. He talked about how burglary was not a feasible motive for this group because it was well known that Hawkinson was broke by the end of the month because his disability money arrived on the first of every month. Lutes described Hawkinson as an "easy target" for burglary because he was known to pass out after heavily drinking. "They would have no reason to kill him," Lutes said, adding that there was also no evidence of anything missing from Hawkinson’s home.
Lutes also pointed out how unlikely it would have been for drug dealers from St. Cloud to buy a stolen weapon from someone who burglarized a home in Annandale in broad daylight that Friday and then go back to the same neighborhood in Annandale that same night to burglarize and kill Hawkinson.
"There was no sign of burglary, no disturbance or smoke damage in (Hawkinson’s) room. And the doors were all locked. What kind of burglar locks the door when he leaves," Lutes asked. "Do you know how improbable that would be for the St. Cloud crew? And the timing doesn’t permit selling the defendant’s gun."
Lutes also said that none of the men from St. Cloud had been seen in Eastview Mobile Home Park that weekend but Rossberg had been seen in the area several times, by many people who confirmed it with court testimony during the trial. Lutes said to the jury, "You can’t just point your finger at someone and say they did it and have that be reasonable doubt. If that was the case, the state would never be able to overcome that."
Kelly ended the state’s case by saying, "The defendant had his world crashing in on top of him. The state has proven its case. The defendant reached his breaking point, killed DeVan Hawkinson and tried not once, but twice to cover it up."
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