What started as small-town hijinks leads two teenagers to go missing on Thanksgiving. When investigators get a phone call from a man who claims he is responsible for the deaths while defending his home, they must determine truth from madness.
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00:30This particular Thanksgiving was going to be
00:34a little bit extra special
00:37because my grandchildren, Nick and Haley,
00:39were going to be there.
00:42Nick was 17, Haley was 18.
00:46They were cousins and very, very close friends.
00:51Dinner was supposed to start at about 1 o'clock.
00:55Nick and Haley weren't there yet.
00:57We waited and waited and waited.
01:00It was about 2.30 or 3 o'clock
01:02before we finally just decided to sit down
01:05and quite honestly, nobody really ate much.
01:11We were on phones texting Nick and Haley
01:14trying to find out where they were,
01:16and there was no answer, no answer, no answer.
01:19That was really frazzling everybody.
01:22There was a sense that something was not right.
01:26Never in my wildest dreams did I think
01:28what happened would have actually happened.
01:32I believe that evil took over that night.
01:38Oh, my God!
01:41Oh, my God!
01:43Oh, my God!
02:14Oh, my God!
02:39The day after Thanksgiving,
02:41November 23rd, 2012,
02:45I was off work.
02:48We were sitting downstairs,
02:50my wife Chrissy at the time
02:52and my nine-year-old daughter Haley,
02:54and we were watching a Christmas show.
02:58But I was always on call 24 hours a day,
03:02seven days a week.
03:05We don't have a huge department with a lot of people.
03:09In fact, there were only two investigators
03:11for the whole county.
03:13And the deputy told me that he received a strange call
03:17from a William Anderson
03:19saying that his neighbor Byron Smith
03:23had called the sheriff's office
03:25wanting to talk to an attorney.
03:28He said, well, Byron's been having some problems
03:31with some break-ins to his place,
03:33and I suspect he might have taken things way too far.
03:39When I heard this description,
03:42something just wasn't sitting right in my stomach.
03:51Smith lived just on the outskirts of town.
03:54It's approximately about a five-minute drive
03:57from the sheriff's office to Byron Smith's residence,
04:01and Byron's house, incidentally,
04:04is at the dead end of Elm Street.
04:08When I pulled into the driveway,
04:11what I did notice as I'm pulling up to his attached garage
04:14is that there's no vehicles parked outside.
04:17I thought that was a little odd.
04:20Like, where's his vehicle?
04:23As I'm exiting my squad car,
04:26I see an older male come out of the house
04:30with messy gray hair,
04:32wearing a blue jean jacket and jeans
04:35that appear like he slept in them,
04:38his hands raised above his head.
04:41Well, that's not a normal thing that people typically do
04:44when I respond to their house
04:46to see what kind of problems they're having.
04:49The hairs on the back of my neck were starting to stand on end.
04:52It's like, okay, now something more is possibly happening here.
04:56I asked him, are you Mr. Smith?
04:59And he said, yes, I am.
05:02Thoughts were racing through my head,
05:04trying to figure out, what do I do next?
05:07I said, I heard something happened at your house here.
05:10Is it okay if we come in and talk to you?
05:13So I would open the door, and we walked into his residence.
05:18He was very calm.
05:21I didn't notice any erratic behavior or anything from him at the time.
05:25He was just matter-of-fact that somebody broke into his house.
05:29There was a window that had been shattered,
05:33and the glass was laying on top of the glass,
05:36and he was lying on top of the glass.
05:39He was lying on top of the glass,
05:42and he was looking at me.
05:45And the glass was laying on the inside.
05:49What that indicated is that somebody had broken the window
05:53to gain entry into his house.
05:56Byron told us that the break-in happened on Thanksgiving Day.
06:01I thought that was a little odd when he told me that,
06:05because he's not reporting it now until the day after Thanksgiving.
06:10So Byron wanted to show us something in the basement.
06:14And as I'm walking down the steps,
06:18I see a rug,
06:21and I see what looks like a spot of blood.
06:25Okay, that's kind of a red flag for me.
06:28Maybe something's going on here.
06:31His walls are white,
06:34and I see what looks like a speck of blood on the wall.
06:38Now the hairs are really starting to stand up on the back of my neck.
06:42It's like, what am I going to find here?
06:50So we get to the bottom of the steps,
06:53and this chair was in an odd location.
06:56I don't know why somebody would set it up like that,
06:59but it was sitting between two bookshelves,
07:02very tall bookshelves.
07:06There were a bottle of water and some energy bars.
07:11And I also noticed that the light bulbs
07:14above the reading chair in the ceiling had been removed
07:17and were sitting in a pile.
07:20I'm like, wait, what's going on here?
07:23Why would somebody do that?
07:26Then he goes on to tell me that he's sitting in his reading chair.
07:31And he had heard somebody walking around the house outside.
07:37He heard somebody trying the doorknobs.
07:42Byron would have had ample time to make a phone call
07:45to law enforcement and report that,
07:48hey, somebody's looking to break into my house here.
07:51But he doesn't.
07:55He said, I see the footsteps coming down the stairs.
08:00And as he's coming down where I could see his hips,
08:07I fired.
08:12And I'm like, whoa, you fired.
08:15Now I'm just finding out he has a gun with him.
08:21Byron said, so I went and I sat back down in my reading chair.
08:25And he goes, as I'm sitting there,
08:28I hear somebody trying the door.
08:31And then I hear more footsteps coming down the hallway.
08:35He tells me that it felt like he was being ganged up on.
08:43Byron said that when he saw the hip area of this person,
08:48he shot again.
08:51And she, he used the word she, fell to the bottom of the stairs.
08:55And when I heard that, I'm like, oh my God, now a female party's involved?
08:59And I'm just like, whoa.
09:02I look over at the other deputy,
09:05and he's got this huge holy crap expression on his face,
09:08which I'm sure is the same expression I had on my face at the time,
09:12because I've never heard something like this before.
09:15There obviously was something going on here.
09:18And I needed to figure out what the heck it was.
09:22But at that time, I had no idea
09:25the impact this case would have on my life
09:28and that it would change our small community forever.
09:33We're dealing.
09:35We see them as vermin.
09:53I'm asking myself, did I really hear this right?
09:57Did Byron Smith just admit to me
10:00that he had basically executed two people
10:04that had broke into his house?
10:07He's very calm about the whole thing, really,
10:10but I could tell that he was not giving me the full story.
10:18So as I'm looking at this little bit of evidence,
10:21looking at this little bit of blood that I did see
10:24in the spot where he told me that he shot these two people,
10:27it was very odd to me
10:29because there should have been a lot more blood in that area.
10:33As Mr. Smith is explaining these things to me,
10:36I could see blood now on his jacket,
10:40on his pants, and then also on his shoes.
10:44And this whole time, I haven't seen any bodies yet.
10:48I said, well, can you show me where the bodies are?
10:51And he goes, follow me.
10:56There's a closed door that leads back
10:58into his office workroom area.
11:01And sure enough, I see the bodies lying next to each other.
11:09I had no idea who these victims were,
11:12but I could see multiple gunshot holes
11:15in the body of the female party.
11:18The male party was wrapped in a tarp,
11:21and all I could see was his feet and jeans that he was wearing.
11:27And I said, Mr. Smith, when did this happen?
11:30And he told me, yesterday on Thanksgiving.
11:33I said, why did you not report this incident yesterday?
11:38And Smith looks at me and he says,
11:40well, just because my day was ruined,
11:43I thought, I don't want to wreck your guys' Thanksgiving.
11:59The day was really a bust.
12:02At about 7 o'clock that evening, Thanksgiving evening,
12:06you know, the rest of the kids were calling around,
12:10calling friends, trying to find out where Nick and Haley were.
12:15On Thanksgiving 2012, I was preparing to have dinner with my family.
12:19I started to worry when I got a call from his sister
12:22wondering if I heard from Nick at all.
12:25And that's kind of where I was like,
12:27okay, there's something obviously more going on here.
12:32So it was not a good night.
12:40Little Falls is a small town.
12:42Two teenagers don't go missing.
12:45Little Falls is your typical slow-paced town.
12:47Population right around about 8,000.
12:50We're two hours from the Twin Cities.
12:53It's just kind of its own little corner of Minnesota.
12:58But Little Falls doesn't have a lot for the younger kids to do.
13:02What teenagers do here, get in trouble, honestly.
13:06I was actually supposed to hang out with Nick that morning
13:09but I just never heard from him.
13:11We hung out a lot, and I do mean a lot.
13:14I would call him more like a brother to me than a friend.
13:17If you're having a bad day and Nick is there,
13:19you're not going to have a bad day for long.
13:21He's going to find a way to get you to smile and cheer up,
13:23even if you don't want to.
13:25Nick was really good at changing the mood into a positive way.
13:28There's not a whole lot of people that had a bad time with him around.
13:31To be really honest, Nick lit up a room.
13:35Haley was always polite, always gracious.
13:38She just had that nice air about her.
13:41There was something with Haley that, you know,
13:45you wouldn't expect her to be rude to anybody.
13:48Just genuinely nice.
13:50It was so out of character for Nick and Haley to not respond.
13:57Just unthinkable.
14:00Where are you?
14:02Where are you?
14:10We couldn't file a missing persons claim for 24 hours,
14:14so we had to wait till the next day.
14:24The whole time I'm thinking, okay, has a crime been committed here?
14:28I knew that Mr. Smith had the legal right to defend himself.
14:32He had the legal right to use lethal force in his home.
14:36Minnesota law states that.
14:39But the problem, what I see, was these people were not armed.
14:46So I had to make the ultimate decision to place him under arrest.
14:51Mr. Smith's answer to me was, yes, I understand.
14:55I know you're just doing your job.
15:01As we're going around the outside of the house,
15:04I noticed surveillance cameras that were set up.
15:07So that was an indication to me that, hey,
15:10there's possibly some video recording of this incident that I could get.
15:17Back at the station, deputies had Byron Smith in an interview room.
15:22And so they'd be right back.
15:24So they had him in the room by himself,
15:26and they were watching him through double-sided glass.
15:29They needed to figure out if Smith was telling the whole truth,
15:33if this really was self-defense,
15:37or if this was cold-blooded murder.
15:43In the meantime, we got a call from two Minnesota State Patrol officers.
15:48They said we noticed something odd.
15:50A vehicle was parked in front of our residence here
15:53on Thanksgiving Day yesterday,
15:56and we have no idea whose vehicle it is.
15:59So they ran the license plate on the truck,
16:02and it came back to Byron Smith.
16:07Why in the heck is Smith's vehicle parked a quarter mile away
16:11in front of some State Patrol officer's house?
16:16Early on, as information was trickling out,
16:19people were for sure taking Smith's side.
16:22People feel connected to defending their property.
16:25It was, you know, kind of this rumor mill
16:27that ended up turning into pretty big news,
16:30and everyone was picking a side.
16:33It was becoming a powder keg situation.
16:38And the story was going to get pretty crazy.
16:49Byron Smith had just admitted that he had shot two people
16:52in his basement, claiming self-defense.
16:55But they're not sure if he's telling the whole truth.
17:00After I arrested Byron Smith,
17:02our sheriff's office dispatch received a phone call
17:05from the parents of two juveniles,
17:08a 17-year-old male party by the name of Nicholas Brady
17:12and his 18-year-old cousin, Haley Kiefer.
17:16It was reported that both juveniles
17:19are missing over a day now.
17:22Well, we got a description of both of them,
17:25and it seemed to add up and match pretty close
17:28to the juveniles that we had
17:31currently in the basement at Smith's house.
17:40We live out in the country,
17:43and this vehicle pulls down our long driveway.
17:49We were actually hopeful that it was Nick and Haley.
17:53My wife, Bonnie, looked out our window
17:56and saw that it was the chaplain,
17:59and she knew something was not right.
18:07The deputy and the chaplain told us
18:10that Nick and Haley had both been shot,
18:13burglarizing a house.
18:15No more details other than that.
18:18My first thought was, you know,
18:21why would you break into a house?
18:24And it was just devastating,
18:27losing my grandson, losing Haley,
18:32for something that both knew better.
18:36No Thanksgiving has been the same since then.
18:40So...
18:44trying to get myself calm here.
18:51Back at the station, deputies were watching Byron Smith,
18:55trying to figure out what is going on inside his head.
18:59I looked through the two-way mirror at Smith.
19:02He's sitting there, he's getting a little restless,
19:05getting a little antsy, because now it's been a little while.
19:09So I sit down with Byron.
19:12Byron, the reason that led up to why you were placed under arrest
19:16was explained to you at the scene, is that correct?
19:19Because there were bodies, and that's a good reason.
19:22What I knew about Byron Smith
19:25is that he's a 64-year-old retired man that lived alone.
19:29Do you live at the residence with anybody, or do you live by yourself?
19:33I live by myself. My mother passed away three years ago.
19:37He told me that the house was his family home that he grew up in.
19:42He initially had been working overseas,
19:45installing surveillance cameras in embassies throughout the world.
19:49That's what he did for a living.
19:51Smith was a bit of a loner.
19:54You know, didn't have a lot of visitors come to his home.
19:57But that summer of 2012,
20:00I decided to hire someone to come take care of his lawn.
20:08Several boys were cutting his grass.
20:11Nick Brady ended up being one of those kids
20:14that came over to do lawn work for him.
20:19During that time, that's when Byron started to notice things were missing,
20:23including his POW watch and a bomber jacket.
20:26And that's when he fired him and told him never to come back to his house.
20:31But by October 2012, his house was still getting broken into.
20:35He was clearly angry.
20:37I mean, anybody would be angry if their house was broken into continually.
20:40Like, he kind of became this target.
20:43And at one point, some arrests were made.
20:46But it just, in his mind, wasn't what he imagined
20:49should happen to someone who was breaking into his home.
20:56And so he went from trying to get the law to help him
21:00to taking the law into his own hands.
21:03Like, I'm going to deal with this myself.
21:09So he had surveillance cameras all around the outside of his house.
21:16And one camera he had facing there where his property line was,
21:19you could see one of his neighbor's homes.
21:22And that happened to be the one neighbor who he was convinced
21:25was breaking into his home.
21:28During Smith's interview, he tells me that he's never gotten along
21:32with his neighbor's, the Williams, next door.
21:43And he suspected that it was the Williams' daughter
21:46that was involved in previous burglaries.
21:56Is that correct to say?
21:57Yes.
21:59Ashley Williams was seen wearing my military jacket
22:02from the Air Force to school.
22:07And so he went from being a victim to being a vigilante.
22:12Smith told me that he thought he had killed Ashley Williams,
22:16the girl that lived next door to him.
22:20I shouldn't have been involved.
22:22I shouldn't have even been brought up.
22:25I shouldn't be here right now doing this interview.
22:29Once upon a time, it was a good place to live on Elm Street.
22:34But Byron Smith is a cruel, heartless man.
22:40He had a deep hate towards me.
22:43I didn't feel safe being his neighbor.
22:46I live in fear, knowing it was supposed to be me.
22:50I felt it important to get my story out there,
22:53my truth, because I don't know what tomorrow brings.
23:03My thought on hiding my identity was because
23:07I was absolutely victimized by Byron Smith.
23:12And I would like to not be a victim
23:15or feel like a victim anymore.
23:19His claims were very absurd.
23:22100% not true.
23:26As far as my record for breaking and entering any place
23:30is null and void.
23:32I have never stole from anybody, and I would never.
23:35When I was in grade school,
23:37I went down to his house to sell him cookies for the school,
23:42and he didn't want nothing to do with it.
23:45That was the one and only time I ever been to his house.
23:49I didn't feel safe being his neighbor.
23:53Growing up, I had cats and a family dog
23:57go missing from my house.
24:00Growing up, I had cats and a family dog
24:04go missing because they went onto his property,
24:08and I think that he killed them because of that.
24:12I wish I knew why he had so much anger towards me.
24:22When Byron Smith's house started being broken into
24:25in October of 2012, he made her the bad guy
24:29and invented this whole plan of vengeance against this girl.
24:34But it actually made no sense.
24:37She didn't actually live there at the time.
24:40The timeline of when his jacket went missing
24:42didn't actually make sense.
24:43She would have been a baby at the time.
24:46So I would say his mental state was shaky at best.
24:52A lot of his peers talked about how
24:54he had a bit of a short temper.
24:56He was becoming a very disturbed individual,
25:00and it was becoming a powder keg situation.
25:04It was only a matter of time before he was going to explode.
25:13On Thanksgiving Day, about 12 o'clock,
25:17I was in the basement in my favorite reading chair
25:20reading a paperback,
25:21and I hear the steps come down the hallway,
25:25turn around, and come down the stairs.
25:28Then I saw his feet, and then I saw his legs,
25:31and when I saw his hips, I shot.
25:35He said he fell down the stairs
25:37and was laying wounded at the bottom of the stairs.
25:41And he's looking face up at me.
25:44Okay, then what?
25:45I shoot him in the face.
25:47I want him dead.
25:50There was a lot of blood, and I had a tarp.
25:54I pulled him on the tarp
25:55to keep so much blood from soaking into the carpet.
25:59I just wanted it out of my sight,
26:01and I dragged him around the corner into the shop.
26:04He goes, as I'm sitting there, a little while later,
26:07I hear more footsteps descending the stairs.
26:11I wasn't thinking.
26:12I was just, they're ganging up on me.
26:15So I killed her, too.
26:18He says, Ashley Williams fell to the bottom of the stairs,
26:24and she's wounded.
26:25And I walked over to finish her off.
26:28Again, he said, I just want her dead.
26:31I take my rifle.
26:33I pointed at her.
26:36It jammed.
26:37Trigger clicked, and she laughed at me.
26:41She laughed at me.
26:45I was far off in the engine.
26:51You could see almost that,
26:52when people describe him as being a bully kid,
26:54you could see that come out in that moment.
26:57You know, it's like he heard things
26:58that didn't really happen.
27:00Okay, there's another red button.
27:02If you're trying to shoot somebody
27:03and they laugh at you, you go again.
27:06So I grabbed my pistol I had at my side.
27:09I aimed at her chest,
27:11and I shot and I shot and I shot.
27:13And I shot and I shot.
27:19She was still doing some faint gasping.
27:23And as much as I hate someone,
27:24I don't believe they deserve pain.
27:27And I don't want to give Lance a hard time.
27:30So I did a good clean finishing shot.
27:36And she gave out the death twitch.
27:40First time I've ever seen it in a human.
27:42But it works the same in beaver and deer and whatever.
27:46Okay.
27:50And I'm like, wow.
27:55He said when she quit moving,
27:57I then grabbed her and laid her on the tarp next to him.
28:04And he said, I just sat with the bodies in the basement,
28:07fearful that the Williams family
28:10was going to come over with firearms to kill me.
28:28I would describe Byron Smith
28:30as kind of a Norman Bates type character,
28:33like Norman Bates from the movie Psycho.
28:36If you've ever seen the end of Psycho
28:39he's kind of just sitting in a rocking chair,
28:41just super calm, watching the fly fly around the room.
28:46But in his head, he's having a psychotic break.
28:49He's already killed people.
28:52That was kind of Byron's demeanor a lot of the time.
28:55Like just not wanting to break in front of people.
29:01But then at any moment he could snap.
29:07It was vitally important that we keep Smith in custody
29:11or there's a strong likelihood
29:13that somebody else could be shot and killed.
29:17After I finished my interviews with Byron,
29:21I drafted up 5 separate search warrants.
29:27From the search warrant at Smith's house,
29:30we found out that he had moved the rugs
29:32at the bottom of the steps
29:34where I initially was talking with Byron.
29:37What they discovered was brain matter,
29:40pools of blood, and also blood marks
29:42dragging across the carpet
29:44that led back to his office workroom.
29:48So it appeared very deliberate and intentional
29:52on Byron's part that he had taken those rugs
29:55and covered up the spot.
30:00Well, I was in the back office workroom
30:02where the bodies were,
30:04and I found a digital handheld audio recorder
30:07sitting on top of his desk back there.
30:10And we found the same exact type of recorder
30:14hidden in the bookshelf above his reading chair.
30:19I had this odd feeling in the pit of my stomach.
30:25And what we found
30:27was the holy grail piece of evidence in this case.
30:32It recorded a monologue of Byron Smith
30:35basically rehearsing what he was going to do
30:38if anybody broke into his house.
30:42I realize I don't have an appointment,
30:44but I would like to see one of the lawyers here.
30:47No rush, but, you know, as convenient for you.
30:50Over and over again, practicing saying,
30:52I think I need to speak to an attorney.
30:54No rush, but, you know, when it's convenient for you.
30:57No rush, but as soon as convenient.
31:00It's just insane.
31:01And it turns out that recorder
31:04actually recorded everything.
31:08No.
31:11No!
31:18I had five separate search warrants in hand,
31:20and I met with the county attorney at Byron Smith's house.
31:24There were some very important, key pieces of evidence
31:28that we needed to get in this case.
31:36What we found in the surveillance videos
31:38was that around 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day,
31:41Smith went outside and got into his pickup
31:44and drove the pickup away.
31:46A little while later, we saw him
31:48walking back through the woods to his house,
31:51hiding his vehicle away from the house
31:53to make it look like nobody was home.
31:55You know, we have a lot of deer hunters in Minnesota,
31:58and this is what we do.
31:59We sit in a deer stand,
32:01and we have food and water and that,
32:03so we can sit for the long haul
32:05and wait for the prey to come in.
32:06Well, that's what it seemed like Byron did.
32:12To be sitting in your basement
32:14in the middle of the day in complete darkness,
32:17waiting for someone to break into your house
32:20and to make it appear that you're not home
32:23so that they want to come in,
32:25so that you can kill them,
32:27is like another level of depravity.
32:30What we captured on that digital recorder
32:33paints the perfect picture of what I basically suspected
32:37when I placed Smith under arrest
32:40is that this was a murder and not self-defense.
32:54When Nick initially came in,
32:57you can hear the window break.
33:00You can hear the footsteps descend down the stairs.
33:05And then you hear the initial one shot.
33:11Oh!
33:13Oh!
33:14Now, he's laying there wounded.
33:17Then you hear a final shot.
33:21Where Byron shot Nick in the head.
33:25You're dead.
33:29You can hear the body dragging across the floor
33:33to his back office room.
33:36A little while later, we see Nick's cousin Haley
33:40come walking up to the house,
33:42but then that's the last thing we see of her on video.
33:46Smith said that he went and sat back down in his chair,
33:50but what he didn't tell me was
33:52he had actually reloaded his gun.
33:5511 minutes later, Haley came in the house.
33:58When she got to the top of the stairs,
34:01you could actually hear Haley whisper.
34:04Nick.
34:06She slowly started to descend the stairs
34:09looking for her cousin.
34:11That's when you hear...
34:15Oh!
34:18Now she's laying there wounded.
34:21Smith says he goes to finish her off.
34:24He aims the gun at her.
34:28That's when his rifle jammed on him.
34:32Oh, sorry about that.
34:36When Smith told me that Haley was laughing at him,
34:40that was a lie.
34:42She was pleading for her life.
34:45Oh, my God.
34:48Oh! Oh, my God!
34:51She'll die.
34:53Oh!
34:58Bitch.
35:09Bitch.
35:13He wrapped both of their bodies in tarps
35:16and just kept them there overnight.
35:18He had no regard for their remains,
35:21just totally disconnected himself from them as humans,
35:24much less kids.
35:26It'd be awful to happen to anybody,
35:28but the fact that they were children
35:30was really, really just disturbing.
35:33They weren't human.
35:36I don't see them as human.
35:39I don't believe I see them as human.
35:49So he was initially charged with two counts of second-degree murder,
35:53and then a grand jury was convened,
35:55and they agreed that he should be charged
35:58with two counts of first-degree murder.
36:00When this broke, there was only a couple of reporters covering it.
36:03It was me and Morrison County Record.
36:06I mean, I'd say hi to him in the morning.
36:09Byron Smith comes across as a really kind person.
36:12He's very quiet and has a very soft demeanor,
36:15but then when he feels cornered or he feels humiliated,
36:19something happens.
36:21There is another person that just comes out,
36:24and he just...
36:26It's scary.
36:29During the trial, I listened to the recordings.
36:33They still haunt me.
36:35I learned that he was targeting me,
36:39which to me was a blind side,
36:42and to this day it affects me.
36:46Sitting in the courtroom, listening to that...
36:50I've been angry.
36:52I've never experienced rage in my life.
36:56Listening to him talk about my grandson and Haley that way...
37:03I literally could have gotten up
37:05and attacked him right in the courtroom.
37:13He's a monster.
37:15No regular human being could go to that extent.
37:20I don't know any way to put it besides a monster.
37:26He just wanted to be judge, jury and executioner.
37:31Haley was looking for Nick. She was not a perpetrator.
37:34I don't believe that she was doing anything
37:36other than searching for her cousin.
37:39And she certainly bore the...
37:44bore the brunt of Smith's rage.
37:49In the Little Falls trial of Byron Smith,
37:51the man charged with killing two people in his own home,
37:54two very different pictures are painted
37:56by the prosecutor and defense.
37:58Our attorneys are trying to see if self-defense holds up.
38:01And jurors in a Byron Smith case will now consider four counts,
38:04two of which are first-degree murder.
38:09Smith was tried and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder
38:13and sentenced to prison for the rest of his life.
38:18I would say it set a precedent for Minnesota case law here
38:22in just how self-defense works.
38:26The news media really hyped this case up
38:28about the castle doctor law.
38:30And it became national news.
38:33You're in your home. You're broken into.
38:35You can shoot the intruder to protect yourself.
38:38This is called the castle law in Minnesota.
38:43It was very divided.
38:46We would get a parade of cars past our house,
38:48people harassing us.
38:50Well, that was very hard on my family.
38:54My wife finally had enough and wanted a divorce,
38:57and I ended up getting divorced.
39:01I remember going into town,
39:03and a couple of people made some hurtful comments
39:06that, you know, this was my fault or this was my family's fault.
39:11There's times when I actually have a bulletproof vest that I wear.
39:16I had people stalking me, so...
39:20I would read online the people that sided with Byron
39:24and their opinions about Nick and Haley.
39:28I just wished at the time that I could tell my story.
39:33He is a cruel, heartless man.
39:39I think we paint this picture that this town is divided.
39:43I just think that this town is sad.
39:45For people who pay attention to the news,
39:48there's always two sides to the story.
39:51Be open-minded enough to get both sides.
39:55Mr. Smith wanted revenge,
39:58and he didn't care how he got it.
40:01I've had properties broken into before,
40:04and you feel violated, but it's stuff.
40:08You know, stuff can be replaced.
40:11Taking a human life is way, way different than that.
40:17If I could talk to Nick or Haley, I'd probably tell them both
40:20that I miss them, and everybody down here misses them,
40:23and it's just, it ain't the same.
40:25My hope for Nick would have been
40:28that he had consequences for his actions,
40:31that he learned from them, and that he moved on.
40:35Haley would have found true happiness
40:39if she was such a nice young lady that, you know,
40:42if she would have chosen to get married,
40:45that there'd be a hundred guys out there
40:48that would be dying to marry her.
40:50Nick's personality would have gotten him
40:53certainly high places.
40:55Do I miss them? Every day.
40:58If there isn't a day goes by that I don't think about them,
41:03with a smile on their face.
41:10I was screaming, my dad's dead, someone's killed him.
41:14You have a murder on Halloween, on Elm Street.
41:18It's your connection to Halloween.
41:20It's the violence that really, really hurts.
41:23He's gonna get rid of loose ends.
41:25We wanted to find these people
41:27before somebody else was going to get killed.