Witnesses remember spotting vehicles
The trial for the 2011 killing of John Michael "Mike" Crites, over possible road access disputes turned deadly, continued Wednesday in Helena with witnesses recalling vehicles in unusual places on MacDonald Pass during the summer of 2011.
Leon Ford, who bought property on Turk Road in 1993, is being charged with deliberate homicide and felony tampering with evidence. Crites moved to Turk Road and built a house in 1996. The two had run-ins and disputes over Ford using a road on Crites' property to access his property to the north. Crites would often block the road even though Ford had an easement from the courts to use it.
Dr. Katy Wessel, wife of John Mehan, testified on day 10 of the trial. Mehan was an original suspect in the Crites' case due to a long history of disputes between the two.
The defense called Bryon Baxter to the stand, who recalled seeing a woman who he believed to be Wessel in September 2011 at the two sites where Crites' remains would be discovered.
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Baxter worked as a mechanic in 2011 and owned a gold mine near Avon where he would prospect. On Sept. 18, 2011, he was coming back from winterizing his mine when he spotted a car on Lime Quarry Hills Lane outside Elliston waiting to pull onto U.S. Highway 12. Off this road is where some of Crites' remains, including his skull, would be found on Sept. 25, 2012.
Baxter recalled the beige/ gold-colored car pulling out behind him and starting to tail him. The car went to pass and that's when Baxter saw the woman's side profile; he noticed it looked like Wessel. Baxter's wife worked with Wessel, and he said he had met her multiple times.
"She passed around me, and when she did, she did it erratically," said Baxter. "We almost collided bumper to bumper, the way she cut off in front of me."
The car then proceeded to pull off at what used to be the Porcupine Campground on MacDonald Pass and parked at the gate at the end of the road. He said he saw a woman walking toward the back of the vehicle when he passed it. Some of Crites' remains would be first discovered at this site on Oct. 5, 2011.
Baxter contacted law enforcement a few years later about what he saw, but he never received a call back. In October 2021, a detective contacted Baxter and he gave a statement.
Baxter felt uneasy around Wessel for years after he first met her in late 2009. He stated she asked him if he could use his bulldozer to "bury some things" on her property, which concerned him because he knew she had disputes with her neighbors. She followed him out of the building to the parking lot after meeting him, trying to explain herself better.
"I knew that when she followed me out I felt nervous because she was trying to cover up what she had said to me," Baxter said.
Baxter had heard that Wessel carried a pistol in her purse at all times, and he was concerned because she had her purse with her during this encounter. Baxter believed Wessel started to follow him around after their meeting, saying, "I was concerned because it seemed like everywhere I went, she was there."
A while after Baxter saw who he believed was Wessel up on MacDonald Pass in September 2011, he was at Bob's Valley Market when Wessel appeared and placed her hands on the hood of his truck. She didn't speak to him, only stared in an "intimidating way," Baxter said.
Mehan and Wessel's first dispute on record with Crites was in August 2010, when Mehan called the sheriff's office to report that Crites had fired a shot in the direction of some of his visitors.
That same year on Nov. 27, Mehan was arrested and charged with assault with a weapon after he was accused of brandishing a weapon at Crites during an argument. He pled no contest in February 2011 to negligent endangerment and was ordered to remain 1,500 feet from his neighbors, Crites and Marc and Gloria Flora.
Crites called authorities on March 1, 2011, claiming that Mehan had tried to shoot him, according to police records. Authorities didn't pursue charges.
In April 2011, Mehan, Wessel and Turk Road resident Dennis Shaw filed a civil lawsuit against Crites, saying they lived in fear of him and claiming he was manipulating law enforcement with lies about his own actions. They each claimed $25,000 in the lawsuit, but a default judgment was entered against Crites in the case in November 2011.
Warrants were served at the homes of Shaw, Mehan and Wessel about a week after more of Crites' remains, such as his skull, were discovered Sept. 25, 2012, according to IR reporting. No arrests were made.
Mehan was arrested midsummer 2012 and charged with felony tampering with evidence and misdemeanor trespassing for moving game cameras prosecutors said were being used to investigate the 2011 killing of Crites. He pleaded no contest on Oct. 17, 2013, to a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge and received a six-month suspended jail sentence and a $1,000 fine.
The affidavit filed in Justice Court supporting the tampering charge points to other questions around Mehan. At a public event in Helena, he told someone, "It would be impossible for police to obtain a DNA profile from the bones located on MacDonald Pass because the police had not recovered a specific body part necessary to develop a profile."
The only information that was public at the time was that a complete skeleton hadn't been recovered, and the specific body parts found on MacDonald Pass were known only by authorities at the time, according to the affidavit.
Fast forward to August 2012, Mehan, Wessel and Shaw filed claims totaling $75,000 against Crites' estate.
Ford mentioned in an interview with authorities that while he knew the Shaws for a couple of years, he didn't meet Mehan and Wessel until June 28, 2011, at a barbecue hosted by the Shaws. Crites was last heard from on the morning of June 26, 2011, and his dismembered remains were found months afterwards.
Another witness testified to seeing vehicles parked at sites important to the Crites' investigation sometime between late June and early July in 2011. James Hyatt worked at the Montana Department of Transportation and was the primary financial officer for the maintenance division and the head contact for Homeland Security for terrorism post-9/11.
His grandson would come visit every summer for a few weeks in June and July, and the two would spend a lot of time fishing. Files from Hyatt's computer show that his grandson was visiting on June 22, 2011, through July 9, 2011.
In April 2017, Hyatt contacted the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff's Office with information he recalled from fishing trips with his grandson in the summer of 2011, going to Elliston.
He said he spotted two vehicles, a blue conversion van and a red pickup truck, parked by the area of what used to be Porcupine Campground going up MacDonald Pass.
"I thought it strange even in 2011 that there were vehicles down there and then when that information came out that there were findings at that location, that's when I called," Hyatt said. "... After working at the Department of Transportation for 30 years, it's just part of your nature to look and observe what's along the road, and that caught my eye."
Ford owned and drove a red pickup truck, but Hyatt noted there was no cover over the bed of the red truck he saw. Game camera footage from Turk Road in late June 2011 shows that Ford's red truck had a canvas covering over the bed.
Hyatt saw the blue conversion van again near MacDonald Pass a few days later parked on the side of the Austin Mullan Pass Road. He spotted what he believed to be a man walking back to the van.
"It appeared to be a similar van to the one I saw on the other side of the pass," Hyatt said.
Hyatt said he believed on the same day he saw the two vehicles at Porcupine Campground that he spotted one more odd thing — what appeared to be a rib cage in the gravel off the MacDonald Pass overlook coming down into Helena.
"Well it didn't look like wildlife, it looked more flat like a human," said Hyatt. "The other thing that struck me is that they were stripped clean of meat, just almost nothing on them."
Hyatt couldn't recall if he alerted authorities or not to spotting the bones.
The trial will resume Thursday at 9 a.m. in Lewis and Clark County First Judicial District Court Judge Mike Menahan's courtroom.
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