Platte is full of rumors about strange vehicles around during the wee hours of September 17, when Mid-Central Educational Cooperative business manager and GEAR UP scandal central figure Scott Westerhuis allegedly killed his family, set his house on fire, and shot himself. Angela Kennecke manages to get the first documentary evidence of one such mystery vehicle:
According to the owner of the 44 Road Stop Clark station in Platte, a surveillance video shows a white truck pulling an empty trailer past the station at 1:28 a.m. A semi and a car also pass by in the dark of that dark night. Then at 2:23 a.m., a white pickup pulling a trailer with something on it drives by in the other direction.
Kennecke claims that the truck shown at 1:28 a.m. “drives by in the direction of the Westerhuis property.” My analysis of the video and the map indicate Kennecke is wrong. The camera appears to face south from the station. The 1:28 clip thus shows the truck and empty trailer traveling east on Highway 44/West 7th Street. The 2:23 clip shows the truck and loaded trailer traveling west on Highway 44/West 7th Street.
The Westerhuis property is three miles south of Platte on 367th Avenue. To go there from the 44 Road Stop, one would go east one block, then turn south on Main Street.
The 1:28 clip does not show the white truck turning south on Main one block east of the station. The 2:23 clip does not show the white truck turning west onto 44 from Main.
To say that the truck shown in the 1:28 clip is headed “in the direction of the Westerhuis property” is as accurate as saying that it is headed in the direction of my property in Aberdeen. Each claim posits a turn that the video does not show.
Go get me the video from Casey’s one block east, at the intersection of 44 and Main, show me that truck turning south at 1:28, or just prove that Kennecke’s 1:28 clip shows the truck braking and signaling right, and we might have a story. Might.
Good forensics work. Well done.
Cory – I’m glad you pointed that out. I’m grew up in Platte and knew that was incorrect. Why would Angela do that? She was doing so well until that story.
you need to go east one block to get to road heading south, there is a four way stop, then head south, fastest route, this is logical, (defending angela)
are we thinking the 2:57 call to nicole was to find out where the girls were sleeping, assuring her he was finally home, would just crash on the couch? was he drinking, sitting in a casino at a truck stop thinking it through? check those videos between takini and platte of course? shot his boys quick, then ran to master bedroom. perhaps the shots could not be heard clearly from the mb? he built the house so there was noise privacy between bedrooms maybe? what was scott’s background experience before the ed business? silencer for a shotgun? burned up? or like any gun suicide, that was the convenient available effective “tool” laying around the house. not like newland’s nasty weapon, the claaaaaw (morgue humor), the innocuous bird gun. i grew up in a house with open built in gun cabinet w/ a dozen rifles and shotguns. everyone knew where the ammo was. i notice not too many “benda – implausible – shotgun to the stomach” yokels are prognosticating about westerhuis’ illogical choice of suicide weapon. once a suicide plan is set upon, calm overcomes chaos. armchair idiots…macabre :(
great work angela. did u ask slueth marty what he meant by the obvious legalism: “in each other’s bedrooms”?
speculating an outside murderer like denny dressed in black is silly and laughable. people in denial struggle with suicide.
Investigative reporter Angela Kennecke maybe needs to do more investigation before reporting.
thats a pretty identifiable p/u and trailer w/ side reflective tape in a small county, going back and forth at 2am. they must know who owns that truck? what was scott’s vehicle that ev/morning? those were file boxes/records on the trailer from a storage rental? where do mom and dad live?
man this chair is getting uncomfortable….
i think (defending angela) that this is priceless. who the hell was that and where were they going, back and forth and what happened to the load…an hour before a mass murder? isis? ha
cory, where does the witness of the suspicious vehicle live? was it black? maybe he painted the wht p/u black, then washed it off at an all night carwash back in platte?! reminds me of all nighters writing criminal appeals in the bowels of broadway street, in denver years ago.
does horizons ect have access to night-time sat fotos that would show locations of one or two fires near platte that night? or headlights? we have all seen sat fotos of the baaken at night, bigger light footprint than chicago!
cory, god knows u r busy. where is the jackley blowup foto of the arson in platte?
Ironically, the building directly east of the 44 Road Stop on the google maps photo is the Mid Central coop building.
Its relevant news, any pickup with a trailer that time of night, going and returning with something on it is relevant. Whether or not its tied to this or not IDK.
As for the direction its going ,its a small town, in which she is not from. I’m sure she put the impact from the convenient store owner that is the direction one would go.
The way I look at it, Kelo put themselves in a box with how they reported it. I would have left the box open, mysterious truck with trailer, in Platte, goes by convenient store, empty, returns with something on it. Locals say it was in the general direction towards Westerhuis house, but not a direct path. Anyone who knows who this truck might belong too, or the abouts of the cargo on the trailer is asked to give us a tip.
Then you are reporting something suspecious that might be tied to it, might not. The problem is now, if we find out the truck didn’t take the direct route, or the time doesn’t match up, the fact that a truck is picking up randomly large items with a trailer in the middle of the night is forgotten.
As for how it went down? Its anyones guess, I know there are nights where I could sleep through gun shots, and other days where the slightest things wake me up.
Fascinating! Now, if someone can tell me whether anyone on Mid-Central staff has a white truck and a flatbed trailer, then we’re closer to having a story.
Also the fact that Jackley knew about this video, and didn’t think its relevant is really sketchy. At the very least I’d like to know whose truck this is and why is he picking things up with a truck and trailer in the middle of the night (especially when a murder-suicide occurs that night)
Allen, sure, that makes sense. But the video shows no evidence of such a turn. To say “direction of Westerhuis property” requires an assumption beyond the evidence presented.
Joe, I have trouble even labeling the truck as “unusual traffic.” On a state highway through a small town, can’t we expect maybe one stray car an hour over night? This one’s a little different in that it’s a return trip, but even that 55-minute window between sightings means the truck could have gone anywhere in a 20-mile radius, with time to load the item or items on the trailer. That truck could have gone in any direction after leaving that brief video frame.
Someone went somewhere at 1:28 a.m. and came back at 2:23 a.m. I know, hooking up the trailer and hauling something at that hour is strange. What needed to be hauled at that hour that couldn’t wait until morning? If I were DCI, sure, if I didn’t have any other evidence about the missing safe, I’d go looking for that white truck, and maybe even the semi and the car that went by between the two passings of the white truck. Follow every lead.
But the evidence presented here, by itself, is not a story. It’s a clue that might lead us to a real story… or it’s some guy who had to get up and do something at 1 a.m.
Joe: might be, might not be—that’s why I’d hesitate to run the story. All I have is one bit of evidence with no clear connection to the big investigation.
That said, I agree that it’s odd that Jackley didn’t mention it and that DCI said it didn’t seem significant. As with the Benda case, it would seem useful to be up front about evidence to help tamp down rumors. Of course, it is possible that DCI thinks the video is significant but doesn’t want to tip off the perps… but then if we had this video available a couple weeks ago, if folks around town have been buzzing about it, how long would it take DCI to check vehicle registration for the roster of MCEC suspects they probably have pinned to their evidence board? I’d speculate that if the truck were hauling the safe, it had to be a local truck, belonging to someone who knew where Scott lived and where the safe was. Check the database for white truck and trailer licensed in Charles Mix, spot the name of a likely suspect, and send three agents over to his house to sit on him until he says what was on the trailer and where it went. That doesn’t take long.
But there I go speculating wildly. Shame on me.
Empty trailer in the middle of the night, kind of strange. Same trailer full and hour later, very suspicious. Aren’t you supposed to call these things in if you think them strange? If you see something, say something.
Maybe I watch too many TV shows, but I’d be looking and talking to any of the vehicles I saw within a few hours each way in that video. I would have ran the video and said if you are any of these people or you know of any of these individuals please contact us.
I agree on running the story, at least on how they framed it. It is a state highway, I’ve gone through Platte fairly late at night, many people have. But when you have a pickup with a trailer, empty, returning later with something on it. Its suspect, its unusual. Platte does have a few agriculture businesses and maybe someone just picked up something late. At the very least I’d be stating we’d like to talk to this individual. Who knows, maybe the guy calls in and says hey, I work nights, or I had to pick up something, its probably nothing, but its something I’d at least look into.
I’m not a fan of KELO but i was THIS close to giving them credit for staying on this story. But they’ve done what they always seem to do and that’s to devolve into speculation, hypothecation and sensationalization.
Jerry, see something, say something? In general, if I see the scenario you describe, and I know nothing else, I don’t call the cops. If the next day or the next week I learn a safe is missing from a crime scene three miles away, then I might call. But I still hesitate to go to press with the story.
Wonder if any of the same surveillance videos were obtained from the Grocery Store/Bakery and Casey’s, which would likely have different vantage points from where they are both located on different corners of Main/Hwy 44….. you’d think so…. and it may offer more proof of the direction the white truck went after disappearing from the camera at 44 Road Stop.
I find it hard to believe none of Scott’s security cams/system or what he had is not sitting on a cloud somewhere.
I think the criticism should be directed at Marty Jackley and the DCI for apparently lacking curiosity over this vehicle. On any other night, I would agree with you, Cory, that it’s not all that suspicious. On this particular night, this back-and-forth in the wee hours is huge.
It would seem law enforcement’s obligation to track down this vehicle and find out whether it was simply running an errand in the midst of round-the-clock harvest season or whether it was tied to the Westerhuis tragedy.
That there is no answer on this front is on the DCI/AG’s doorstep, not the media’s. If law enforcement has tried and so far been unsuccessful, they should say so and not say they deem it not relevant. Holy Barney Pfife, Batman.
You can fault KELO and Angela Kennecke for bringing this to light, although I don’t understand why. She reported that the Platte community continues to have substantive questions, which is true, and cites this video as one reason why. Also true.
Do we all want to know what video from other key vantage points shows? You betcha, and I bet Kennecke is at the front of that line trying to obtain footage. And she lacks the subpoena power and other teeth that law enforcement has in its toolbox. Her advantage over them appears to be tireless pursuit of the facts. She has my gratitude for that.
The question remains why DCI et al have left this loose end whipping around in the South Dakota wind.
It could be on the cloud, or have some type of cloud backup, but if himself, his wife and his kids are all dead who is going to know the details on how to retrieve it? All security systems are different.
Again as for this video, I don’t really see it as news, I see more than the State knew about it, and brushed it aside, that is news. It could be anything, it could be nothing, but I’m sorry if I’m a local cop, sheriff or the state.
I’ll go with Whither and Joe in saying that the question of DCI’s follow-up on this issue is more significant than the editorial choice KELO-TV made to run a story on the video. But I will maintain that the description “drives by in the direction of the Westerhuis property” is incorrect.
I do have to give KELO credit for staying on this story. Meanwhile, KSFY is doing ratings pieces on sex addiction and Minnesota Vikings cheerleaders….
I’m circumspect there is no recording of the 2 phone calls/texts. We know the US collected and swept up all electronic communications for years: domestic and foreign. Some depository somewhere has the digits. Though it’s doubtful they’ll be revealed given the case’s “official determination.”
Flipper: ratings pieces? KSFY should look at my web stats for MCEC/GEAR UP reports. Off the charts. KELO is getting big ratings with GEAR UP reports.
John, I bet we could get NSA to shake loose Nicole’s last voicemail if we could show some Syrian refugees were driving that white truck.
All-night harvest—I hadn’t thought of that angle. I’ll bet all sorts of farmers may have been up late at that time.
The data is all harvested, John. It exists. Whether it is metadata or raw.
All providers at a high enough level need CALEA compliant routers.
I have no doubt any computer Scott has used would would have important history unless the same folks who cancelled the cell phone, reformatted or reset those as well.
The time frame is too tight for Scott to have cleared his digital trail at all.
Cory – All-night harvest. Yup.
And I wouldn’t assume that truck is local. If you take the real and widespread skepticism over the conclusion of a murder-suicide (missing safe notwithstanding — move along), you have to begin to think about who might be motivated enough to swoop into Platte and do the deed in the event Scott Westerhuis threatened to spill some beans. Could be Hughes, could be Minnehaha, could be just about any county.
Crap, Whither, if we’re going to go down that road, then I have to look at the direction. Truck came from the west—it’s not a Minnehaha truck. Hughes or Pennington are the likeliest origin points for parties involved in the GEAR UP scam, and in the middle of the night, they are more likely to come on I-90 and then straight down 45 from Exit 289 past Kimball. Coming from 44 would take too long… unless they went to someone’s house on the west side of town to pick up the trailer.
Dan Guericke lives in White Lake. He’d come to town on 45, not from the west on 44.
Well, yeah, all those angles need to be considered. I’m not familiar enough with Platte to know what’s west of that 44-Main intersection or where someone might have come from in that direction. All good questions that deserve answers.
Point being, we don’t know what we don’t know. Except of course we don’t know whether that white truck turned south on Main Street or not. Might have, might not have. Could have enormous consequences.
Somebody oughtta get to the bottom of that one. Beuhler? Jackley?
Also I do recall some press reports of some prominent folks getting some cushy, lucrative assignments related to Gear Up and MCEC living on the eastern end of the state, like Mitchell and Sioux Falls. I won’t name names. You know who you are.
if google maps is accurate, the westerhuis house was 5 minutes east then south from the east-bound unloaded trailer/ wht p/u shown on the video at 1:28 am. there is also a boat storage business with apparent unfenced access about a mile east of town on H’wy 44.
there is a west side warehouse with apparent outside, unfenced storage units 4 blocks west of the video observation an hour later, of the loaded trailer/wht p/u, a possible destination for the load. several gravel county section line roads return east or west to the murder/arson site. that there was such light traffic (only two other vehicles), and given the apparent murderer knew the local backwards and forwards, if it was him driving, this is clear evidence of planning in the hour and a half prior to the deaths, and eventual fire.
between 3 and 5 am, the deaths and then the fire occurred. if the loaded trailer was unloaded into the home, perhaps after the 5 murders, paper and file boxes would have been consumed by the fire. such a tragedy.
standing outside a 5 a.m. residential fire years ago (15 hours earlier a napping dau. turned on grampa’s heating pad a maid folded but left plugged in), it took a half hour before the raging fire inside started to smoke and burn thru to the outside. fire responders were able to knock it down. he had replacement value insurance.
obviously jackley’s investigation covered these angles. i guess he knew of the video at his presser. the store doesn’t agree w/ jackley’s conclusion which is understandable so angela was likely contacted. jackley is not my cup of tea, yet he appears to have come to reasonable lawyer-like conclusions. law enforcement may also give uncertain information in hopes that an accomplice or other perpetrator might slip up.
locale
The timeline on this is pretty fast, like a week. From the time schoop decided(not acted) to cut funding to west. death. The only one who knew from mcec that funding was going to be cut off is guericke. Is one week enough to plan this? Keep in mind there are two security systems, a camera system, computers, cellphones, house phone, safes, storages, and a deposit boxs.
A cloud based backup for computers and cell phone is likely and probably out there floating around. A video backup online would require a fiber optic internet connection, it’s fairly specialized, and I think it’s unlikely. Maybe their video and security system could email pics and small videos to a phone. That is about it though.
If it’s a safe in the back of the trailer. The problem is getting in the safe without destroying the contents of the safe. The wests had a tractor so they could have pulled it out with log chains then loaded it onto the trailer. Some safes are pretty elaborate, it’s not as easy as taking diamond saws or carbon arcs or even blowing it open. If a guy has 2 security systems and a video system he’s not gonna have a cheap safe. It’s even likely that even moving the safe would disable the lock on it.
West. up to the point he died was only accused of sloppy bookkeeping. It’s unlikely he would have ever been charged with anything. So if someone did kill him and his family I have to wonder why… only thing it could be is if MCEP was a front for something big. Like drug trafficking, weapons, child trafficking. I haven’t really seen any evidence of that. Even say West. gets an immunity deal and the Feds go RICO, it just makes people uncomfortable, it doesn’t really destroy anyone’s lives or send anyone away for a long time.
You don’t need fiber to send video, Dale. From that distance you can easily do 4 meg down and 1 up which will do just fine for compressed or a lower quality feed. The bandwidth could be much higher over copper that close in but those numbers I gave are part of an fcc mandated plan.
leslie wasn’t the trailer empty when heading East (to the W property) and empty when heading back West? People seem to be getting this confused. Truck goes out, picks something up and takes it away before the fire in order to preserve/hide it. Right?
we shouldn’t be confused, here anyway. and of course this could have just been a donut machine for a late night convenience store, or farmers.
trailer was heading east empty. destination? 5 minutes east to Boat Storage units? or 5 minutes south to Westerhuis home? either fits. something was picked up somewhere and loaded into the truck bed and/or just the trailer. between 1:28 and 2:23 a.m. less than an hour.
an hour later heading west, the camera captured a full trailer. destination 2 minutes to the west side storage??
of course going either direction and then heading south at any number of paved county roads allows one to connect back to the westerhuis home over east/west gravel section-line roads. the driver could have burned paper files out in any field he knew of. the guy knew the area like the back of his hand, i believe. I am fairly confident law enforcement would have circled the area looking for this kind of thing, especially knowing a safe was missing. law enforcement generally knows how to investigate.
The speculation surrounding this truck is baffling to me and confirms that people will latch onto any small detail just to promote their conspiracy theories. This is exactly why investigators don’t provide lists of every piece of evidence they examined, because if they did we would have Google-educated investigators inventing new theories to turn everything into the proverbial smoking gun.
Apparently people now think someone had to plan ahead and pull a trailer out knowing they would be loading an object large enough that it wouldn’t easily fit into the bed of a full size pickup. This very large and heavy object would need to be removed from a home and put on a trailer in less than 45 minutes or so and presumably it would need to be loaded by one person by himself – because if Westerhuis was invovled it would have made a lot more sense to provide the contents of the safe to another party rather than the safe itself.
Meanwhile earlier reports mention the “safe” resided in the bottom of a file cabinet. I wouldn’t think you’d need a truck and trailer to make off with it… but that’s just me.
I pity anyone who lives in the area who happens to own a white pickup however… I imagine people will be looking at them out of the corners of their eyes all because of some silly KELO report. Might want to ask them if they have GPS in those white pickups though because clearly at the rate of speed they were moving they must have missed the turn to or from the subject property twice.
I’d probably also question how people involved in some massive criminal conspiracy which some are still trying to suggest involve the murder of an entire family somehow think it would make sense to drive their ‘getaway’ vehicle directly through town where every ATM or convenience store could pick it up on video along with eyewitnesses who happen to be awake in the middle of the night. One might think with this level of planning these criminal masterminds would have taken a rural escape route as to avoid as many electronic eyes as possible rather than driving directly through town using the busiest road possible, but here I go trying to use logic and common sense to explain things.
laughable. you could have used “laughable” as our rear leader would agree with you. jackley invited the public to speculate on the safe to help him out. KELO’s report is excellent.
tryin to find MCEC records. tryin to find EB5 records.
Craig —
You say, “Apparently people now think someone had to plan ahead and pull a trailer out knowing they would be loading an object large enough that it wouldn’t easily fit into the bed of a full size pickup. This very large and heavy object would need to be removed from a home and put on a trailer in less than 45 minutes …”
Well, isn’t that what happened? Someone pulled a trailer so they could load a large object, and that object was loaded in less than 45 minutes. Isn’t that what this video shows?
The question that needs to be answered is, where did that truck go to get its load? I’m not ready to accept that investigators can’t find that out. The next question that needs to be answered is, why didn’t they put this puzzle together to get a complete picture?
KELO was well within bounds to report that the video, along with other details, leaves the Platte community at large unsettled despite Jackley’s conclusions. Cory is right to point out that we don’t know whether that truck made a key turn.
You are right to point out the rate of speed could be an important factor, in the event there is no other video evidence to show the truck’s route.
I’m hoping for answers.
Remind me if I’m going to pull off a heist not to drive through the center of town or past any gas stations or ATMs.
impulsive as suicide often is, i am guessing (no, rashly speculating in my armchair) westerhuis was feeling more and more trapped, becoming pathological, and in that last day of driving, came up with an awful plan than would cover-up the shame his children would be exposed to. who knows where his wife was on the family business model. execution of the plan was certainly amateurish but devastating and horrible beyond understanding. yet a suicidal plan quells the deep emotional disturbance and somehow the action is executed. especially if there is a freely available gun.
i hope my posts have not been hurtful to the residents of platte.
craig, as larry would say, apparent from your post, “you are in way over your head lil’ dude.”
my gut usually tells me what the answers but so far this whole platte dealio remains a mystery to my bowels.
Westerhuis was clearly in over his head. My guess? Bankers and collusion look like pretty good motives.
There is a lot of talk about a small safe that would fit inside a small filing cabinet. I would think that a person like Scott Westerhuis would have fireproof filing cabinets considering all the important documents that he had. A fireproof file cabinet looks like a regular file cabinet and offers about the same protection as a small fireproof safe. A two drawer cabinet weighs close to 300 pounds, a four drawer will weigh close to 600 pounds. Not an easy task to load up and haul off. Many people might notice a safe in the house but might overlook file cabinets. How many file cabinets were found in the ruins? Would these file cabinets been enough to hold all the records of such a large operation?
Any civic minded person in the area with a pickup of that description would have already contacted the investigators and gotten cleared of any wrong doing.
@ Whither: “Well, isn’t that what happened? Someone pulled a trailer so they could load a large object, and that object was loaded in less than 45 minutes. Isn’t that what this video shows? ”
It is one thing to load a heavy object with the assistance of others and/or equipment as would be the case if a farmer was loading a parts, equipment, or chemicals needed during harvest. It is quite another to attempt to be stealthy under the cover of darkness to commit crimes and being able to ‘sneak away’ with a large safe which (as some portend) was either mean to destroy evidence or stolen so it could later be broken into.
@ Cory: “Remind me if I’m going to pull off a heist not to drive through the center of town or past any gas stations or ATMs.”
Based upon some of the comments who continue to believe this is some massive conspriracy drive by criminal masterminds it would seem only logical that if they had the capacity to make off with massive safes, murder entire families, delete cell phone messages, stage crime scenes, burn away any trace evidence, disable security systems, and manipulate the location of bodies, it would seem feasible that they would avoid as many potential witnesses as possible.
Then again Al Capone ended up serving time not for his many criminal enterprises… but for tax evasion. (sarcasm intended)
MFI: “Any civic minded person in the area with a pickup of that description would have already contacted the investigators and gotten cleared of any wrong doing.”
I don’t expect everyone who owns a white pickup to call up the Sherriff to provide an alibi for their whereabouts the evening of the events nor do I believe that is logical.. Most people just want to mind their own business, but even if someone was “civic minded” that still wouldn’t prevent small town rumors from floating around. We can thank KELO for reporting on nonsense without bothering to check Google maps to see if it made sense – but hey… ratings.
Craig, My contention all along has simply been that law enforcement ought to at least know where that truck & trailer went and, ideally, who was hauling what with it.
It would be just as important to rule it out of the Westerhuis tragedy as to rule it in. At present, we don’t know what business was occupying that truck in the wee hours of an historic night, and law enforcement asserts they don’t know either. (That makes for an incomplete investigation and, btw, qualifies as news.)
It’s possible that truck was hauling the missing safe, but I agree with you — that is unlikely. Not impossible though, especially if there were 2 or 3 burly dudes in that truck (and depending on the nature and situation of the safe).
Even more unlikely is that the truck was transporting someone home after a long night at a local watering hole or from some other away-from-home outing. That truck was carrying out an errand. Given the date and time of that errand, I can’t for the life of me wrap my head around an investigator pushing that aside as not relevant.
Who was in the truck; what did they haul; where did they go? Without answers to those questions, speculation, skepticism and suspicion are unavoidable.
You can blame the hoi polloi for that. I blame the cops.
Any civic minded person would have contacted authorities and nipped rumors in the bud. Fixed it for tou,Craig.
Nonsense Mike. Absolute nonsense. The ACLU would be the first to tell you that you don’t approach law enforcement to clear yourself until you have been asked to do so. It also would do little to stop small town gossip.
the entire town of platte knows now who owns that particular newish p/u&trailer if a local owned it. it must not have been relevant as jackley discarded it. but if he didnt consider it people of platte should be very concerned. perhaps the murders occurred before the videos. perhaps the records were assembled afterwards and he fetched the trailer to hide them. perhaps the records were in storage then put in the trailer to be burned back at the house. perhaps he dropped the full trailer load somewhere then switched to his own vehicle and returned to start the fire after 3 am. cops likely know what car he drove and that may have excluded the p/u.
Oh if murders occurred before videos cops would find blood ect in his vehicle(s). All these angles were likely considered as inconsistent w report jackley gave. Again i am no jackley supporter.
Speculation, speculation.
But Jackley’s dismissal of the evidence doesn’t tell us anything. Remember, these are the same investigators who didn’t learn about the safety deposit box until eight weeks after the murders. Team Jackley may have thoroughly analyzed the video long before we started playing armchair CSI here, or they may not have looked at it until Kennecke did. We just don’t know.