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Teens' day of drinking preceded murder
By MONICA LUNDQUIST Cass County Correspondent WALKER -- The assistant medical examiner testified about three footprints she found on Louis Bisson's head and a friend of the defendant's testified about his recollections, including witnessing the dying victim.
Anthony Cree testified Wednesday in Cass County District Court about his recollections the day he spent with Jesse Tapio, George Boswell and Darrell Johnson before Louis Bisson was beaten to death on a Cass Lake street on Nov. 29, 2002.
Boswell faces two counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree manslaughter. Cree has not been charged in connection with Bisson's death. He currently is serving time in the St. Cloud prison on a robbery charge.
Cree said he lied in statements he gave to investigating officers 90 minutes after seeing Bisson lying on the street near death. He said, repeatedly during questioning by Cass County Attorney Earl Maus and Boswell's defense attorney Blair Nelson, he only wanted to tell the truth now.
When Nelson asked Cree if he was afraid the night Bisson died of being blamed for Bisson's death, he said he was.
When Maus asked Cree if he was afraid of being accused of being someone who would "rat" on his friends, he said he was not, but said, "I wouldn't want any of my friends to get in trouble. I'd try to help them if I could."
Cree told the court he has known Boswell and Tapio about four years, and that he was not really a close friend of Johnson. Later in his testimony, he said he mainly associated with Boswell, because Boswell was with his closer friend Tapio.
He said the four teens had come and gone from several Cass Lake houses that day, but he could not recall how they got alcohol. He thought there were no drugs, but maybe somebody had some marijuana. He admitted he was drunk by night, but declined to say whether his friends were drunk. They had been drinking, he said.
Cree said when Johnson's mother told the boys they could not drink at her house, they decided to go about a mile away to his house in downtown Cass Lake. They saw someone in a jacket similar to another teen they might have wanted to settle a score with or talk to, he said, so the four teens set off running toward the person and yelling.
He could not recall under either prosecution or defense questioning who led the running group or what anyone yelled.
Cree said he could not keep up to the other three teens, so he lost sight of them. When he approached the block where the beating took place, he said he saw a group of people at the other end of the block, so he cut across the street and went to the alley behind the bank where he said he found Boswell and Johnson.
He said they told him Tapio had run off somewhere else.
Cree said he then circled the block and found Bisson lying on the pavement.
He said he knew the victim was still alive because every time he breathed blood spurted out of the wounds in his head. No one was around, he said.
Cree said he ran home because he was afraid he could be blamed if he reported it.
Cree told the court when he stopped on the street before going behind the bank he thought his friend, Tapio, might be the one being beaten up in the crowd he saw at the end of the block, but admitted later in questioning, "If Jesse was getting beat up, I would have helped him."
Earlier in the day, Assistant Cass County Medical Examiner Dr. Kelly Mills, who is based in St. Paul with Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office, testified about the autopsy she performed on Bisson.
Presiding Judge Dennis Murphy offered Bisson's mother and family members the opportunity to leave before graphic photographs were shown. His mother and some relatives left. One juror looked away from the screen displayed on a wall as photos became increasingly graphic.
Mills said Bisson suffered 15 blows to his head. She pointed to sites on the left and right sides and back of his head where he suffered blows, some of which caused his brain to swell underneath the wounds. Some blows broke the skin, some did not, she said.
She also pointed to points on the left side of his head, his nose and mouth, each of which she said represented a separate footprint on the victim's head.
Under questioning, she said there were so many contusions and bruises, it was difficult to say any one of them actually caused death by itself.
When the defense questioned whether bruises might have been more evident on Bisson because he was an albino, Mills said he had some skin pigmentation. She said she did not feel bruises would show any more readily than on any lighter-skinned person.
Mills also testified the only clues she had to the fact Bisson was an albino was what she was told and the fact she saw his skin appeared more like that of a 70-year-old than the 48-year-old he was. Early skin aging is typical for albino people, she said.
In the morning Wednesday, Cass Lake Police, Cass County Sheriff's Department and Leech Lake Tribal Police officers testified on the exact role each played when they answered the emergency call that night.
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