Star Tribune
Woman accused of stealing and selling $40K in outdoor gear, guns from northern Minn. outfitter
WALKER, Minn. — A former employee of a family-owned outfitter is accused of using dormant and unused gift cards in a $40,000 scheme of fraudulently purchasing outdoor gear and 18 guns, then reselling some of the merchandise customized through her laser engraving business.
Kelsey Marie Rutland, 38, worked at Reeds Family Outdoor Outfitters in Walker where the thefts began in September 2021 and continued through November 2023 for a total of 40 fraudulent transactions. She’s accused of stealing coolers, grills, Livescopes, chairs, tables, ammunition and Garmin GPS navigation systems, according to 26 felony charges of theft and racketeering. Rutland, of Lake George, Minn., appeared in a virtual court hearing Monday when her new attorney requested a continuance given the nature of the charges filed in Cass County District Court this spring.
Anthony Bussa, partner at CJB Law, declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday. He said he was just retained by Rutland on Monday and is still learning about the case.
“We’re going to let it play out in court,” Bussa told the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Rutland said in a message that she was advised to not comment.
She owns and operates JB Designs, a laser engraving business, out of her home 25 miles west of Walker. She’s accused of selling customized stolen Yeti mugs, an engraved Remington shotgun and other items online and at markets. Products swindled from Reeds and the money paid to Rutland in exchange for the stolen goods is an estimated $40,700.
Rutland’s family and friends “were unwittingly duped” and “led to believe they were getting an employee family discount,” Cass County Attorney Ben Lindstrom said in an email to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
“Some firearms were recovered. Others were not,” Lindstrom said. “The thefts were accomplished through the normal store protocol which would require transfer to another Federal Firearms Dealer who would do the federally required background check. Thus, any initial transfers would have been to eligible persons.”
Star Tribune
Harris campaigns with Liz Cheney at the GOP’s birthplace while Trump rallies in Michigan
”He praised the rioters. He did not condemn them. That’s who Donald Trump is,” Liz Cheney said, while urging the crowd to “meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth. To reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.”
In an interview Thursday night with Fox News Channel, Trump said of Harris and Cheney: ”I think they hurt each other. I think they’re so bad, both of them.”
Cheney lost her Wyoming seat to a Trump-endorsed candidate two years ago and endorsed Harris, the Democratic nominee, last month. The two women appeared together in Ripon, home to a white schoolhouse where a series of meetings held in 1854 to oppose slavery’s expansion led to the start of the Republican Party.
”I know that she loves our country, and I know she will be a president for all Americans,” Cheney said of Harris. Noting that she herself remains conservative, Cheney said she was ”honored to join her in this urgent cause.”
Harris is on a two-day Wisconsin and Michigan swing, while Trump was in Michigan on Thursday as both candidates grapple for wins in the ”blue wall” battleground states, which also include Pennsylvania.
While Cheney and Harris spoke, the former president took his social media site to say Democrats and prosecutors have lied about the “huge crowd of Patriots gathered in Washington, D.C. on January 6th.”
Star Tribune
Robert West helped with the dismemberment of Ricky Balsimo Jr., then dropped pieces of his body in Lake Superior
SUPERIOR, WIS. – Robert Thomas West, 44, was sentenced Thursday to more than seven years in a Wisconsin prison, plus four years of extended supervision, for his role in dismembering Ricky Balsimo Jr. and the lengths he went in covering up the murder of his longtime St. Paul friend.
West, of South Range, Wis., didn’t operate the power tools used to destroy Balsimo’s body, but he revived a longtime idea he had about what to do if he happened on a situation like this one: dispose of the body in weighted containers in the depths of Lake Superior.
West took the killer — his friend Jacob Colt Johnson — to a recreational vehicle in rural Wisconsin, gathered the tools, and manned a fire outside while Johnson cut the body to pieces. Then West burned the bloodied clothing and bleached the RV, drove weighted buckets up the North Shore to Grand Portage, and dropped them off the side of a commercial fishing boat into the lake. He dismantled the gun and tossed it in Middle Lake.
Johnson was sentenced last month to 40 years in Cook County District Court for Balsimo’s murder, and West was sentenced in August to 15 years in prison in Minnesota for his role in Balsimo’s death.
West was arrested after the murder on drug charges and offered law enforcement officials information about Balsimo, whose family had been looking for him in Duluth and Superior for about a month.
In outlining West’s role, Douglas County Judge George Glonek described the scene as “heinous” during the sentencing, the result of a plea agreement in which West didn’t stand trial in Wisconsin and testified against Johnson.
West participated in Thursday’s sentencing via phone from the state correctional facility in Faribault, after a miscommunication with staff that made Zoom impossible.
Balsimo’s parents Kim and Rick, and sister Raquel Turner, all dressed in shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with Ricky’s face, made the trip to Superior from St. Paul to offer victim impact statements — which they have done again and again as three defendants in the case have been sentenced, two in both Minnesota and Wisconsin courts.
Lloyd is the father of two of the children who live somewhere else, and they were visiting him. His two children and five others with them, ranging from ages 10 to 13, arrived about 8:20 p.m. Lloyd left for the store with a friend about 8:50 p.m. and came back minutes after the shooting.
While Lloyd was gone, his son and his niece went into Lloyd’s bedroom. They each retrieved a handgun and started waving it around. The two told police they have played with the guns “a dozen times” in the past year when Lloyd is not around, and “the firearms are generally unloaded.”
The niece said she last played with one of the guns the previous weekend, and she assumed the guns were unloaded as usual. As she was waving and playing with the gun, a shot was fired that hit Damarjae.
After his arrest, Lloyd said he keeps the guns high up in a cabinet and usually stored them unloaded. He acknowledged that his children and his niece have seen him handle the guns previously.
There was no gun safe or “other form of locked cabinet” in the cabinet for storing firearms.
