Post by Sher on Aug 5, 2005 8:46:40 GMT -5
FARGO, North Dakota -- A former Winnipeg musician who made local headlines when he was caught stealing the identity of a long-deceased five-year-old boy was charged yesterday with the grisly murder of a Wisconsin man he impersonated.
Dennis Gaede, 42, is accused of killing Timothy Wicks, 48, of Hales Corners, Wisconsin, who was last seen in December 2001.
Cass County state's attorney Birch Burthingy said the case sounds like a crime novel.
"This case has some remarkable aspects to it, ones that I haven't seen before, ones I trust we will never see again," Burthingy said yesterday, in announcing the charge against Gaede.
Wicks's decapitated body was found Jan. 2, 2002, beside a county road near the Michigan side of the Menominee River, along the Wisconsin state line. His head was found two weeks later, about 56 km away in the same river, near Niagara, Wisconsin.
The FBI said Gaede also was charged in Wisconsin with bail jumping, escape and harbouring, and forgery.
Gaede, a suspect in the slaying from Day 1, led a double life in Winnipeg. For three years, he spun an elaborate web of lies that ripped apart in 2000 after tax officials found he'd taken on the identity of a young boy who had died years earlier.
Gaede fathered a child with his Winnipeg girlfriend while passing himself off as Devon Lindbolm. The boy, now six, is autistic and has never seen his father. The family didn't learn Gaede's true identity until after he was caught filling out a tax form in the name of Luke Gagnon, another long-deceased child.
"We all knew him as Devon Lindbolm, and he always seemed to be full of tall tales. He said he was a mechanic, a paramedic, a musician. He seemed to have done everything," the uncle of Gaede's former girlfriend recently told the Winnipeg Free Press. "But he was very charming, very polite. We all feel so deceived."
Gaede was a musician, and the Winnipeg woman who had his child met him while watching his band perform in a bar in the late 1990s. The pair was making wedding plans when Gaede was arrested and his lies exposed. Back on American soil after being deported, Gaede began dating a Milwaukee woman, Diana Fruge, in early 2001 and the pair moved in together. They were married months later and moved to North Dakota, where Gaede began using Wicks's identity because there were still fraud-related arrest warrants out for him in Wisconsin.
Wicks, a longtime drummer who loved jazz music, told his friends he was leaving Wisconsin in December 2001 for a lucrative gig in Winnipeg that had been arranged by the man who had done his taxes the year before, fellow drummer Dennis Gaede. Friends began to worry weeks later when Wicks hadn't called as promised. They eventually phoned police after staff at the Winnipeg bar Wicks claimed he'd be playing at said they'd never heard of him.
Dennis Gaede, 42, is accused of killing Timothy Wicks, 48, of Hales Corners, Wisconsin, who was last seen in December 2001.
Cass County state's attorney Birch Burthingy said the case sounds like a crime novel.
"This case has some remarkable aspects to it, ones that I haven't seen before, ones I trust we will never see again," Burthingy said yesterday, in announcing the charge against Gaede.
Wicks's decapitated body was found Jan. 2, 2002, beside a county road near the Michigan side of the Menominee River, along the Wisconsin state line. His head was found two weeks later, about 56 km away in the same river, near Niagara, Wisconsin.
The FBI said Gaede also was charged in Wisconsin with bail jumping, escape and harbouring, and forgery.
Gaede, a suspect in the slaying from Day 1, led a double life in Winnipeg. For three years, he spun an elaborate web of lies that ripped apart in 2000 after tax officials found he'd taken on the identity of a young boy who had died years earlier.
Gaede fathered a child with his Winnipeg girlfriend while passing himself off as Devon Lindbolm. The boy, now six, is autistic and has never seen his father. The family didn't learn Gaede's true identity until after he was caught filling out a tax form in the name of Luke Gagnon, another long-deceased child.
"We all knew him as Devon Lindbolm, and he always seemed to be full of tall tales. He said he was a mechanic, a paramedic, a musician. He seemed to have done everything," the uncle of Gaede's former girlfriend recently told the Winnipeg Free Press. "But he was very charming, very polite. We all feel so deceived."
Gaede was a musician, and the Winnipeg woman who had his child met him while watching his band perform in a bar in the late 1990s. The pair was making wedding plans when Gaede was arrested and his lies exposed. Back on American soil after being deported, Gaede began dating a Milwaukee woman, Diana Fruge, in early 2001 and the pair moved in together. They were married months later and moved to North Dakota, where Gaede began using Wicks's identity because there were still fraud-related arrest warrants out for him in Wisconsin.
Wicks, a longtime drummer who loved jazz music, told his friends he was leaving Wisconsin in December 2001 for a lucrative gig in Winnipeg that had been arranged by the man who had done his taxes the year before, fellow drummer Dennis Gaede. Friends began to worry weeks later when Wicks hadn't called as promised. They eventually phoned police after staff at the Winnipeg bar Wicks claimed he'd be playing at said they'd never heard of him.