1871
Andover was known as Grow Township at the time, and Ham Lake split from it in 1871.
about 0:06:21The story
Andover, Minnesota, is a suburb about half an hour outside Minneapolis, in Anoka County. Andy, ten years younger than Ed, worshipped his big brother and wrote a school essay calling him his hero.
In the late 1980s Andy started mowing lawns at eleven, and by thirteen he had fliers, business cards, grown men working for him and a dedicated phone line in his mother's basement. The brothers bought out a competitor, took a warehouse in Minneapolis, and Ed also managed their mother's and grandmother's investments.
In 2005, aged thirty-three, Andy developed thyroid problems and was diagnosed as diabetic. He took eighteen months off. In the spring of 2007 he and his girlfriend turned on a rarely used office computer and found a second set of books. Ed had been running personal expenses through the business, had a hidden checking account and had maxed out a line of credit. Ed was tipped off that Andy was asking questions, left for an appointment and never came back to the company he had worked in for twenty-five years. The family then found that he had sold his grandmother's stocks, emptied her ten thousand dollar burial fund, taken a loan on her house and drained his mother's retirement account, leaving two or three dollars. He had been day trading and was bad at it.
They gave them a binder of documents prepared with forensic accountants, and the case went to the Minnesota Financial Crimes Task Force. The US attorney's office declined.
In 2008 the family fought over his inheritance. On July 19th, 2008 Andy rammed Ed's Volkswagen Passat with a white pickup on Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis, spinning the car around while Ed's young daughter was inside. Ed began carrying a gun and moved into the house of an elderly friend, Martin Weltman.
Andy was fixated on getting the Passat back.
On October 29th, 2008 Ed left a Lifetime Fitness centre at 6.45 p.m. after a manicure, pedicure and facial. Around seven a neighbour heard yelling and a thump like a basketball hitting someone in the stomach. Ed was shot from behind with a crossbow, beaten with hammers and a baseball bat, and run over with the Passat.
Her story did not make sense, and a check found a restraining order barring her from Ed's house. Andy then flagged the deputies down, claiming a diabetic reaction.
That morning an off-duty deputy found Ed's wallet in the road and a pool of blood in the driveway, which he took for deer blood because bow season had started. Early that afternoon another deputy was sent to the house and found a critical amount of blood, a key to the front door, a pair of trousers Ed's size, part of an arrow, an arrow lodged in the house, blood smears, a bottle of bleach, a baseball bat, a crossbow, arrows, maul hammers and latex gloves, most of it spray-painted black.
He found a huge bonfire and Andy in the driveway, who said he owned the farm and was burning trash and had no permit. After midnight Wall returned with a state trooper and a deputy. The officers saw blood and bones. She said, "that's not a horse in there", and then, "that's not my brother in there." The fire was doused. Ed had weighed 180 pounds; his remains weighed 42.
At seven on October 31st Anoka County authorities arrived with a SWAT team and found Andy asleep in the farmhouse. The autopsy found a through and through arrow wound passing from Ed's back through a lung, blunt force injuries to the head and body, a fractured eye socket, a fractured upper jaw, a crushed brain stem and fractures to the ribs and pelvis consistent with being run over. The death was ruled a homicide.
The Passat was found at a church parking lot in Golden Valley, bloody inside and out, with a sledgehammer in the trunk and Ed's pistol in the back.
When the bones were reassembled there were two jawbones, two left eye sockets and three fibulas. Anthropologists confirmed at least two partial bodies in the firepit; the extra bones, a left eye orbit, a fibula and part of a lower jaw, were too small for DNA testing and were never identified.
Her mother testified that she was a healer and a compassionate person, and called her dead son a sociopath. Asked how things could get worse, she said, "why isn't my life normal?"
He lost his public defenders after the court heard he owned land near Westbrook worth $76,000 and co-owned his grandmother's Robbinsdale house, worth $187,000; the judge warned him about perjury over what he had disclosed.