00:00:00 Speaker 1: Six hunters lay dead in the woods. Two others were wounded, bullet holes ripped. 00:00:05 Speaker 2: Through their bodies. 00:00:07 Speaker 1: The shooter had vanished like a shadow into the Wisconsin forest. The first and only mass murder of American hunters carried out on the first Sunday of deer season shocked and terrified the nation. What transpired in those horrific moments has never been fully explained. But what we do know about what happened and why is the stuff of nightmares. That's next on Blood Trails, brought to you by Tecova's. On the morning of November 21st, 2004, Wisconsin Conservation Warden John Hagen was on patrol in Rusk County with fellow warden Jeremy Peary. 00:01:00 Speaker 3: I had, you know, a cell phone on me, and my phone rang, and I looked down and saw it was Steve. 00:01:07 Speaker 1: Steve Craddow was John's childhood friend. Steve's family had a cabin outside the nearby town of Hayward, and Steve had invited John to visit that weekend. 00:01:15 Speaker 3: I wasn't going to answer it because Jeremy and I were on patrol, so I just ignored it and put it back in my pocket. It was like one of those ones that quits ringing and then starts ringing again. 00:01:30 Speaker 4: And I'm like, hmm, that's weird. 00:01:32 Speaker 1: John looked at Jeremy, who indicated he should answer the phone. 00:01:36 Speaker 3: It was Steve. And, you know, he sounded fairly panicky over the phone. Like, hey, we need help. Somebody's shooting. Obviously, this is kind of taking me aback. Like, I'm like, what do you mean? Like, are you being serious? And he said it again. I'm like, he slowed down. And he's like, I think there's already three people dead. 00:01:56 Speaker 4: We need help. 00:01:57 Speaker 1: Steve had been at the cabin with 14 other friends and family since Saturday, the opening day of Wisconsin's rifle deer season. Two of those friends and hunters were Alan Lasky and his 16-year-old son, Adam. Adam says they had all hunted Saturday morning and were planning a deer drive that afternoon on the 400-acre property. 00:02:15 Speaker 5: We woke up that morning and just started hearing radio calls like, hey, there's somebody trespassing in our stand and we don't know what's going on. 00:02:24 Speaker 1: The group communicated using radios, and one of the group, a 47-year-old man named Terry Willers, had called to say he'd found a stranger using one of their tree stands. This didn't sit well with Bob Craddow, who owned the property along with Terry. He drove out with his son Joey and several other hunters to confront the trespasser. 00:02:43 Speaker 5: As soon as one of my friends went out there to go talk to him, we just heard gunshots, you know, right away, like bang, bang, bang, bang. And then all of a sudden, my buddy is radioing back and saying, you know, we're. 00:02:56 Speaker 1: Adam's dad jumped on an ATV with Jessica Willers, Terry's daughter, riding behind him. They had no idea what was happening, who was shooting at whom, or what kind of chaos awaited them in those woods. 00:03:08 Speaker 6: But they went anyway. 00:03:10 Speaker 5: The last thing I got to say to my dad was, don't do anything stupid. And, you know, soon he was gone. And I think what happened in that moment was, like, I just kind of got struck with terror. And I just remember thinking and praying, like, God, if you're real, you got to help us. So my cousin and I just like hid in the cabin and we're kind of hanging out. More gunshots were being fired and you kept hearing rounds, bang, bang, bang, you know, and then we're just wondering what's going on. 00:03:38 Speaker 1: When the gunfire finally subsided, Adam and his cousin ventured out of the cabin. 00:03:43 Speaker 5: You know, my buddy comes out of the woods and he says, you know, your dad's dead. My dad's dead. They're all effing dead. He had to go back and check the pulses and like go and see what was going on. 00:03:54 Speaker 1: Adam and the others had to drive 30 minutes into town to get cell reception to call 911. 00:03:59 Speaker 5: Trying to talk to the police officer in the parking lot and explain, like, six people just died. He's like, no, no, no, you guys must be drunk. Like, you don't know what you're talking about. We're like, no, like, I know this doesn't happen, but, you know, this is the story. 00:04:13 Speaker 1: It was almost impossible to believe that a rural county of only 17,000 people had witnessed a mass murder. And not in a church or shopping center, but in the middle of the Wisconsin Northwoods. 00:04:25 Speaker 5: What I had loved became a place of real terror. And I think just in the sense of being outside and living in a small town and growing up in a place where things were safe and we didn't lock our car doors or our house. And then all of a sudden, you kind of have your trust in the world sort of broken. 00:04:47 Speaker 1: The peace of that northern Wisconsin village had been shattered. And when investigators finally began to understand the conflict that sparked the massacre, Adam, his friends, and family found no solace in that knowledge. What started as a mundane conflict over hunting rights and property boundaries had erupted almost immediately into a blaze of gunfire. They didn't know who to blame, at least not at first, but they couldn't imagine how an argument about a tree stand left six dead, two wounded, and dozens psychologically scarred for the rest of their lives. I'm Jordan Sillars, and this is Blood Trails, The Reckoning of Chai Vang. 00:05:35 Speaker 2: Part One. 00:05:37 Speaker 6: The Victims. 00:05:40 Speaker 7: I got a call from the Sheriff's Department advising me that They were looking for some assistance in the area of this. 00:05:51 Speaker 8: Incident. 00:05:52 Speaker 1: That's Mike Bartz, who was at the time working for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as a regional law enforcement supervisor. 00:06:00 Speaker 7: You know, at first it came out it was somebody was driving around on an ATV shooting hunters. That didn't sound right. And then it was reported as a hunting accident, but there were three victims and that didn't sound right to me either. And then Got some other radio traffic that was altercation that had escalated into shooting. Shortly after I got there and we got things a little bit settled down, we went down to the scene, which is about 300 yards away from the cabin. We went down there and there were five deceased victims. 00:06:39 Speaker 1: They couldn't fully process the scene with the assailants still on the loose, but they had enough information from the surviving hunters to identify them. Along a trail that ran to the southeast of the cabin, they found an ATV and a four-wheeler. Lying next to the ATV was a 28-year-old. 00:06:55 Speaker 2: Man named Mark Roit. 00:06:58 Speaker 1: Mark moved to the area with his parents in 1997. He was, according to those who knew him, the kind of person who could walk into a room and have everyone laughing within just a few minutes. He loved hunting and being outdoors, and he had just returned from a Colorado elk hunt. As investigators walked north up the ATV path, they spied another blaze orange vest lying off the trail to their right. This was 42-year-old Bob Crotto. Bob was one of the co-owners of the property, which he'd bought with earnings from his concrete company. His friends described him as someone others looked up to and a pillar of the community. He had a wife and three kids. About 200 yards to the northwest of Bob Crotto, Mike and the others found Bob's son, Joey. Joey was only 20 years old when he was killed. Like his father, he loved the outdoors, hunting, four-wheeling, and snowmobiling. South of Joey, about 150 yards, investigators discovered two more bodies, Jessica Willers and Alan Lasky. 00:08:00 Speaker 2: Jessica was 27 years old. 00:08:02 Speaker 1: She worked as a nurse, she'd recently purchased a house, and planned to marry her fiancé the next year. 00:08:10 Speaker 2: We reached out to all the. 00:08:11 Speaker 1: Families of the victims in the course of reporting this episode. Most didn't respond. Others declined to talk to us. For many, this was the worst day of their lives, and reliving it, even just to share memories of their loved ones, was too difficult. But as you already heard, we were able to reach Adam Lasky, Alan's son. who told us more about his father and the others who were at the cabin. 00:08:35 Speaker 5: We pray the Our Father at Mass all the time, and I just, I can't think of, like, praying that prayer without thinking about my dad. You know, just thinking about his goodness. You know, I think I took for granted that we ate meals together, that he, you know, squeezed us at the end of the day, gave us a hug or a kiss, and said, hey, I love you, you know, have a good night. And I just thought that was normal, you. 00:08:57 Speaker 1: Know, Adam, as you can tell if you're watching the video version of this episode on YouTube, is a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. He serves several parishes in northern Wisconsin, about two hours north from where he grew up. He says the Lasky family filled their freezer every year with venison, northerns, and panfish, and Adam specifically mentioned his mother's fried venison recipe. Much of that wild game was harvested by Adam's dad, who went by Al. 00:09:24 Speaker 9: He. 00:09:25 Speaker 5: It like ordered his life around working like nine to five and then getting up at Odark 30 and getting his butt into a tree stand somewhere, you know, like bow hunting or rifle hunting. You know, ice fishing was always a part of our kind of normal schedule. 00:09:43 Speaker 1: Al managed a lumber yard. So between that and the hunting and fishing, he stayed busy. But he still made time for Adam and Adam's two older sisters. He was a central part of their lives, and it's easy to see why. 00:09:56 Speaker 5: One of the things I think that I loved about my dad is that he was kind of a gentle, big guy. He had this big, jovial smile, but he gave the best bear hugs. That's always what I like, the back-cracking sort of pick-you-up bear hug. That's what I remember about him, just being a very gentle and loving guy and, you know, like a hard going Midwesterner, you know, whenever I smell Kodiak, I just, you know, like we're winter green smell. I always think of my dad cause he always smelled like a winter green snuff, you know, like he would also be the guy who would go to mass on Sunday with all of us. And even though I think he would probably rather have been in the tree stand or doing other things, like, I think he made a point for us as kids to, you know, make faith an important part of what we were about too. 00:10:45 Speaker 1: According to Adam, a lot of the other men at the cabin fit the same mold. Mass attendance may have varied, but they were all focused on family, their community, and the outdoors. 00:10:55 Speaker 5: It was a lot of these guys who were all sort of like of a similar character to my dad. I think they were all kind of rough around the edges, blue collar men. But we're also guys who, like, if you were in a pinch, would be the guys who give you the shirt off their back to help you out and try to get you through whatever you need help with. 00:11:19 Speaker 1: Losing Mark, Bob, Joey, Jessica and Al was difficult enough. But the tragedy didn't end when the bullets stopped flying. 48-year-old Loren Hesbeck was shot in the shoulder. He survived, but his wound required surgery. 47-year-old Terry Willers was shot in the neck and temporarily paralyzed. He was transported to the hospital in critical condition, but survived and eventually recovered movement in his limbs. Denny Drew wasn't so fortunate. At 55, he was the oldest of the victims. He was shot in the abdomen and taken to the hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries the next day. His obituary says he loved the camaraderie of hunting as much as hunting itself, and looked forward to the card games that always broke out during trips to the cabin. Mike Bartz didn't know all this as he walked those 400 acres, finding and covering each body one by one. But he did know that the men and women lying in those woods deserved justice, and their killer was still out there. 00:12:20 Speaker 7: Where the scene was where the victims were, We knew we couldn't do anything. 00:12:25 Speaker 6: For them at that time. 00:12:27 Speaker 7: So then the strategy was to keep that secure, which we did, and get the other hunters out of the woods so whoever was left was hopefully going to be our guy. My greatest fear is that the guy had already slipped out somehow. 00:12:47 Speaker 1: Part 2 Chai Vang Under normal circumstances, every hunter in those woods would be a potential suspect. But in this case, Mike and the others had one crucial piece of intel. 00:13:02 Speaker 7: One of the members from the cabin had, when they confronted Vang down by the tree stand, had written the backtake number on the fender. That ATV was now back up at the cabin where I was. So we were able to copy it down there. And then we relayed that information out to boots on the ground. 00:13:22 Speaker 1: With this number, Mike and the other investigators were able to identify the trespasser as 36-year-old Chai Sua Vang, a Hmong American man who lived in Minnesota. From what Terry and Lauren said, they knew they were also looking for someone with a black or camouflage coat, a face mask, and a semi-automatic rifle. 00:13:41 Speaker 7: I got an aircraft out. We got the information out to everybody involved on the ground, who we were looking for and what had transpired. And then, um, Got some radio traffic from one of our wardens, Jeremy Peary, who was my field warden in Ladysmith. Initially, basically that he had the person in custody, who we thought was our person in custody. 00:14:05 Speaker 1: That's the same Jeremy Peary who drove to the area with Warden John Hagen. He took the lead on relaying information from the hunters coming out of the woods to the tactical units on the ground in the hopes that they might intercept Vang as he left the woods. 00:14:18 Speaker 10: So this ATV rider had encountered Mr. Vang as he was walking along a two-rut road, an. 00:14:28 Speaker 6: Old overgrown logging road. And Mr. 00:14:31 Speaker 10: Vang had told this individual that he was lost and asked him for a ride out. And I happened to encounter them as they arrived at that location. So I had my flashlight on the driver. I can see that there's a passenger there. I see the individual get off the back, and I recognize that he is wearing camouflage clothing. And the bit of intel that we had was that our suspect had camouflage clothing on. He had turned his blaze orange inside out. And so then when I trained my flashlight on him fully, I could see that he was of Asian descent, wearing camouflage clothing, matched the description of our suspect. I drew my firearm and gave him commands to put his gun down, which he did. 00:15:23 Speaker 6: I listened to all my commands. 00:15:27 Speaker 10: I placed him in handcuffs and then pulled the jacket down over his shoulders and I could see that his back tag number matched the back tag number that we had been given of the shooting suspect. 00:15:40 Speaker 1: Jeremy put him in handcuffs, sat him in the passenger seat of his patrol truck, and took him to the Sawyer County Jail. 00:15:47 Speaker 2: All without incident. 00:15:49 Speaker 10: Didn't say anything, didn't resist, followed all my commands. It was about a 15-minute ride back out to the roadway. During that entire drive, all he did was look forward. He didn't say anything, didn't do anything. 00:16:05 Speaker 6: Just looked forward. 00:16:09 Speaker 1: Vang's stoicism was unsettling, given the fact that he was suspected of killing multiple people. But that contrast became even stranger as investigators dug into his background. Because at first blush, he didn't seem like a killer. 00:16:23 Speaker 9: Well, I spoke with his uncle. And the family had figured that Chai was the best son of the family. And they were the ones that they were going to depend on Chai to take care of them in their old age. The grandfather felt that way. 00:16:45 Speaker 1: That's David Whitehurst, the author of a book about this incident called Tree Stand Murders. As part of research for that book, David spoke to several members of Chai's family, who opened a window into his background. David explained that Chai was a Hmong American man who traveled to Wisconsin from Minnesota with a group of friends to hunt deer. The Hmong are originally from Laos, where they lived in the mountains and built an economy around farming. 00:17:10 Speaker 2: Hunting, and fishing. 00:17:12 Speaker 1: Many fought for the United States against the communists during the Vietnam War and were granted refugee status after the Americans pulled out. They brought their love of the outdoors with them, and many partook of the hunting opportunities in the upper Midwest. 00:17:26 Speaker 10: The Hmong hunters would come in, very efficient hunters, very capable hunters. And if they had four or five carcass tags, they were looking to fill four or five carcass tags. 00:17:40 Speaker 6: They were good at it. 00:17:41 Speaker 1: Chai's father fought for the Americans, and he brought his family to the U.S. 00:17:45 Speaker 6: In 1980. 00:17:46 Speaker 1: Chai secured his American citizenship in 1991, and by 2004, he had a wife, two ex-wives, and a total of 10 children. That's a lot of mouths to feed, and Chai worked hard to support everyone. 00:18:00 Speaker 9: Chai Vang was an intensely hard worker. He was a very intense individual. He had two eight-hour jobs. He was working 16 hours a day, five days a week, and he was totally exhausted. He was way over his head financially. 00:18:23 Speaker 1: Chai served in the California Army National Guard from 1989 to 1995, where he earned a sharpshooter qualification badge and was trained as a medic. But he never saw combat and was honorably discharged. However, When investigators started looking deeper into his personal life, they found something more concerning. 00:18:42 Speaker 9: That was in a testimony of all three wives. All three said the same thing, that he had a very fast temper and he couldn't control his temper. 00:18:54 Speaker 1: David told me that on Christmas Eve 2002, Chai and his first wife got into an argument about Chai's alleged infidelity. 00:19:02 Speaker 9: And that's when Chai Bang grabbed his handgun. He loaded it, and he was going to kill his wife. And the older daughter stepped in between, and she was a teenager at this point. And she said, Daddy, don't do this. The other children ran to the telephone and called the St. Paul police. 00:19:26 Speaker 1: The police arrived before Chai pulled the trigger and charged him with attempted murder. But his wife refused to press charges. 00:19:34 Speaker 9: She knew that... Chai was the father of her children, and she refused to sign the papers, so the police released them. But she was worried. She knew he had a quick temper, and a bad temper and that maybe he didn't kill her that time, but something else would happen and he might kill her. 00:20:00 Speaker 1: We assume this is true because in the subsequent days, she took their five children and fled to a relative in Milwaukee. Meanwhile, Chai's handgun and deer rifle were confiscated, which is why in 2004, he was hunting with a cheap military surplus rifle chambered in 7.62x39, the same caliber as the AK-47. 00:20:21 Speaker 2: It's impossible not. 00:20:22 Speaker 1: To wonder how history could have been different if Chai's first wife had decided to press charges. We'll never know the answer to that question, but it was clear to investigators that Chai Vang was dealing with a host of personal, mental issues. 00:20:36 Speaker 2: And financial difficulties. 00:20:38 Speaker 7: I saw his forensic psych report after this whole thing was over, and he was a very troubled man. He was a 55-gallon drum of gasoline looking for a spark. 00:20:52 Speaker 2: That's next on Blood Trails. Part 3. 00:21:03 Speaker 4: The Spark. 00:21:05 Speaker 1: With Chai Vang in custody, investigators were free to process the crime scene. 00:21:10 Speaker 7: They did a great job of finding more evidentiary material out there at the scene. I remember one bullet that they had recovered actually had blaze orange threads still on it from the victim's clothing. 00:21:28 Speaker 1: Between that detailed investigation and the testimony of Chai Vang and the surviving victims, detectives were able to develop a timeline of events. Chai had started hunting on public land that morning, but he'd chased a doe until he no longer recognized where he was or how to get back. As he was walking, he spotted a tree stand. Chai claimed he climbed into the stand to see where he was and find his way out. But according to Ed Killeen, that stand should have tipped him off immediately that he was on private property. 00:21:59 Speaker 11: He should have known he was trespassing, at least back then especially. There's no tree stands, you know, on public property. And he could actually see the cabin, you know, from up on the tree stands. 00:22:11 Speaker 1: Ed Killeen was a longtime journalist and outdoor writer in Wisconsin, and he covered the story in detail for the Post Crescent. He told me that Chai had only been in the stand for a few minutes when he spotted someone approaching. 00:22:24 Speaker 11: Well, when Terry first confronted the guy, it was a very polite, you know, the guy says, hey, you're on private property. Vang's like, I'm sorry, I'm lost, you know. Willers pointed him the way out, you know, and Vang was leaving. You know, after he ejected, you know, told Vang to leave the property, he got on his radio and said, you know, I just ejected a tree rat. you know, from the property or something like that. 00:22:49 Speaker 1: This is obviously not a compliment, though Terry said he didn't mean it as a slur. Vang never claimed to have heard it, but he did claim at trial that Willers made a comment along the lines of, you guys shoot too many does. Vang took that as a knock on Hmong hunters, though he never mentioned this comment prior to his testimony at trial. Terry instructed Vang to walk east off the property while he followed at a distance. But instead, Vang took the larger ATV trail going south. Meanwhile, Bob Crotto had heard about the trespasser and decided to intervene. Joey Crotto rode beside his father while Loren Hesbeck and Denny Drew hopped in the back of the ATV. Mark Royt drove a four-wheeler by himself, and the crew took a trail they knew would intercept Vang. 00:23:36 Speaker 6: Nobody brings any guns with them. You know what I mean? 00:23:38 Speaker 11: It was just based on the idea that they could just go out there and just use a lot of loud voices and intimidation. 00:23:47 Speaker 2: Bob was the leader of this effort. 00:23:49 Speaker 1: He was one of the owners of the property, and he allegedly made a comment about being tired of, quote, mud ducks on his property. A mud duck is a term used to describe someone from Minnesota, much like you might call someone from Wisconsin a cheesehead. It's not a racial slur, but it does suggest that Bob was already frustrated by out-of-state public land hunters wandering onto his property. The crew intercepted Vang as he made his way south. Bob, already heated, didn't mince words. Here's Vang describing their interaction at trial. 00:24:22 Speaker 12: He pointed at me and said, Who are you on my son's stand? Then I said, Yes. He said, Why the fuck are you on my son's stand? Then I said, I didn't know where you were standing. Then he said something else I don't remember. Then he said, After that, he told me, do you know you are trespassing 400 acres of. 00:24:44 Speaker 6: Land, you dang gook? 00:24:46 Speaker 12: Then I said, no, because I don't see any sign. I don't see any fangs anywhere. And he said, I don't have to put a fucking sign on your fucking chain. 00:24:58 Speaker 1: You can hear how Vang is trying to recreate Bob's tone, though it's doubtful his performance made him more believable. Those who know Bob said he could be a bit of a hothead. but no one I spoke with mentioned him being a racist. Terry Willer said he didn't hear Bob use any racially charged language in this encounter, though he also wasn't present for the entire confrontation. Lauren Hesbeck, the only other survivor, said Bob didn't use the same words Vang claimed, but he did say that Bob called Vang a, quote, Hmong asshole. Bob asked for Vang's hunting license, which he refused to hand over. Then he told Vang to get off his property and never come back. As Vang walked away, Joey flipped up Vang's back tag so they could see the number. 00:25:41 Speaker 6: Eventually, they let him go. 00:25:43 Speaker 11: But by that time, you know, they had insulted him. They flipped up his back tag to get his number. They'd written down his number. They said they were going to have him prosecuted and all that. And so he walked away and, you know, he'd had enough. 00:25:59 Speaker 1: Vang claimed that as he walked away, he glanced behind him to see Terry Willers raise his rifle to his shoulder and point it at Vang. 00:26:07 Speaker 2: Vang said he heard. 00:26:08 Speaker 1: A rifle go off and saw dust fly up from a bullet about 40 feet away from him. Terry and Lawrence say no one shot at Vang. They say that as Bob was yelling about sending Vang's back tag number to the sheriff, Vang removed the scope from his gun, dropped to one knee, unslung his rifle, and started shooting. 00:26:26 Speaker 6: Vang was a soldier. He'd been trained. The fact that he knelt down and clipped off. 00:26:32 Speaker 11: That scope, that was because in a gun battle situation, you're better off without the scope. 00:26:40 Speaker 6: He was acting like a soldier. 00:26:42 Speaker 9: And now he's facing six men, only one of whom was armed. He had a rifle with ten bullets in it. It was a very good shot. If he could disable the one man who had a rifle, then he knew If you're going to kill one, you have to kill them all because dead men don't talk. And so he knew he had to kill them all. What he didn't expect is that they would take off running. 00:27:13 Speaker 1: David told me that Vang fired first at Terry, the only one of the group with a gun. He shot once, but Terry dove to the right and was still moving. So he shot again, and this time the man lay still. 00:27:25 Speaker 2: Denny, Mark, and. 00:27:26 Speaker 1: Lauren scrambled around the ATVs, likely trying to find cover. Vang shot Denny once in the stomach. He shot Mark once in the head, killing him on the spot. He charged forward and shot Lauren through the shoulder, dropping him to the ground. Lauren was still alive, but Vang didn't know that. 00:27:43 Speaker 2: So he took off after Bob. 00:27:45 Speaker 11: The elder Croteau was running one way, and his son, Joey Croteau, was running another way. Vang went after him, chased him, and they ran in different directions entirely. You know, and he chased down the elder Krato and shot him in the back, then went up and, you know, finished him off. 00:28:01 Speaker 6: Joey Krato covered quite a distance, you know. 00:28:03 Speaker 11: By the time Bang circled around and tracked him down. By the way, they were easy to find in the woods because they're all wearing blaze orange. And I think he shot him at a distance of 65 or 70 yards, you know, Joey, you know, in the back. 00:28:17 Speaker 5: And there again, you know, he tracked him down and finished him off. 00:28:23 Speaker 1: The medical examiner later found that Joey was shot a total of five times, once in the head. Vang testified at trial that he could see the 20-year-old talking on a radio as he ran, but he shot him and he fell. Vang reloaded his rifle, continued his pursuit, and killed Joey about 200 yards from where the initial confrontation took place. By this time, the others at the cabin were making their way out to help their friends. Steve Crotto had gone into town to call John Hagen for help, and Carter Crotto, Bob's son, joined Brandon Willers in another ATV and drove down to the scene. They picked up Terry but had to leave Denny because his injury wouldn't allow him to sit upright in the vehicle. Carter and Brandon said later that they saw someone else in the woods as they were driving, but they assumed it was another member of their hunting party. They later realized it was Vang, who had been wearing a face mask and reversed his blaze orange vest. Vang also recalled seeing the boys in the ATV, but admitted that he didn't shoot them because he saw they had rifles and, quote, they weren't shooting at me. Meanwhile, back at the cabin, Jessica Willers was preparing to go help her father. 00:29:33 Speaker 9: She's an emergency room nurse in Green Bank, Wisconsin. She was in her 20s, mid-20s. And she and her father were very close. She would go deer hunting with her dad every year. And that was one way the two could spend time together. 00:29:51 Speaker 1: She tried to start an ATV, but she didn't know how. So Alan Lasky offered to drive. They met Carter, Brandon, and Terry on the way to the scene, who told them Denny was still injured. They continued down the path, but they never made it. We don't know exactly why Vang fired on Jessica and Alan. He claimed Alan had a rifle and was about to shoot him, but no firearm was found anywhere near the pair. What we do know is that both Terry's daughter and Adam's father were shot in the back. 00:30:22 Speaker 9: And you've got Jessica snuggled behind Alan Lansky on that ATV. The first shot hit Jessica just above her buttocks. It went through her body, didn't hit any bones. It exited her front side, her belly. And now you've got the deformed bullet. And here's Alan Lansky right in front of him. The deformed bullet hit him in the back, severed his spinal column. and came out his chest. He fell to the ground, and he was face down, paralyzed. He couldn't go anywhere. He couldn't lift a rifle or anything, even if he had a rifle. Now, she is seriously wounded through the left hip and her belly. So she starts crawling down the trail on two hands and one knee. So one knee had a mud smudge on it, She was dragging the other leg because there was no mud smudge on that knee. But she was frantically going down that trail. She crawled past Anna Lasky's body and kept going down the trail, screaming and shouting. There was a deer hunter not far away who heard the female voice screams. Well, at that point, Chi-Bang jumped up and came forward, and Alamasky was on the ground. He shot into his body, and the shell casing was on the ground right next to his body. At that point, Jessica Willards was crawling away, screaming, shouting, desperately trying to find safety. Couldn't find it. Chi-Bang walked up behind her, shot her in the back, and killed her. 00:32:18 Speaker 1: David believes Vang killed the pair because they were headed towards the scene of the first shooting, where he'd left his scope. It's possible Vang believed that if he could kill everyone who saw him and recover the scope with his fingerprints on it, he'd be able to get away without being identified. But he didn't know that Terry had already written down his back tag number. He also didn't know that Loren Hesbeck was still alive. 00:32:41 Speaker 9: Well, he got back and he was very surprised. And he said, I didn't say it this in the book, but what he said was, You fucker not dead. And raised his rifle and started shooting again. 00:32:53 Speaker 1: Loren grabbed Terry's rifle, a semi-automatic Browning, and dove behind a small rise in the dirt. He heard Vang's bullets flying over his head, but he raised Terry's rifle above the dirt and pulled the trigger. 00:33:05 Speaker 9: And nothing happened because the safety was on. He fingered around the trigger guard and he found a button. He pushed it and heard a click. So he shimmied the rifle up, pulled the trigger, and it shot once. 00:33:19 Speaker 1: It was at this moment the sound of a diesel engine echoed through the woods. Other members of the hunting party were arriving with a truck to transport Denny Drew to the hospital. Vang claimed that he still had ammunition and could have killed Lauren, but he decided to leave and later that day threw his ammo in the swamp. But most believe he just ran out of ammunition, heard the others approaching, and fled. When investigators finally put all the pieces together, something seemed to be missing. Even if Terry had fired the first shot, Vang's relentless pursuit of unarmed hunters was inexplicable. Even those hunters could barely find the words to describe their experience. 00:34:00 Speaker 11: When Brandon Willers, he rescued his father from the woods and drove him to the hospital. While they're driving to the hospital, Willers kept saying, it was stupid. 00:34:13 Speaker 6: It was stupid. You know, and To me, that kind of sums it up. 00:34:20 Speaker 1: The shooting was over in minutes. Explaining why Chai Vang had killed six people would take years. And in the woods of northern Wisconsin, a different kind of conflict was just beginning to take shape. As the families began to grieve and funerals commenced, the story of the massacre spread across Wisconsin, the nation, and the world. The general public didn't know all the details, but they did know that six hunters were dead, two were wounded, and there didn't appear to be any justification for the atrocity. Officials were concerned, first and foremost, with securing justice for the victims. 00:35:05 Speaker 2: But they were also. 00:35:06 Speaker 1: Concerned that Vang's actions might spark backlash. Here's Mike Bartz and Jeremy Peary. 00:35:13 Speaker 7: As a conservation warden, we had concerns that there might be some, who knows, some kind of violence as a result of it. 00:35:23 Speaker 10: I started working up there in 1999, and there were already prejudice against the hunting tactics of Hmong hunters. 00:35:34 Speaker 6: It had always been there. 00:35:35 Speaker 1: The first generation of Hmong hunters who immigrated from Laos didn't speak English. They had trouble navigating the complex system of hunting regulations in this country, and some flouted those laws and took as many animals as they could. American hunters didn't appreciate this, especially landowners like Bob Crotto. Mike and his colleagues worried this simmering resentment would, in light of the massacre, break out into violence. And there were actors who seemed to be stoking the flames. 00:36:05 Speaker 7: There were some really nasty things that came out from a group. right afterwards called the National Alliance, white supremacist garbage stuff, but they were putting up flyers all over the place. 00:36:16 Speaker 1: Mike sent me one of these flyers. The title urges, quote, racial unity in the wake of Vang's attack. It laments that, quote, Jews have divided America by importing nearly 100 million non-whites and says whites should all hang together or hang separately. A week after the massacre, reports started to surface of bumper stickers that said, save a hunter, shoot a mung, with mung spelled M-U-N-G. A shop owner in Wisconsin began selling them the next month, though he claimed that mung was an acronym for minuscule, unseen, naughty gnat. 00:36:52 Speaker 5: I remember those bumper stickers. 00:36:54 Speaker 13: I hate it, but I remember those bumper stickers. 00:36:56 Speaker 1: That's Yia Vang, a chef and outdoorsman in Minneapolis. Yia is not related to chai, though they share a surname. He was in college in 2004, and he remembers not just the bumper stickers, but shirts and other products as well. 00:37:10 Speaker 13: I remember even those, like, if you go out to any of, like, the hunting areas, you'll see signs out there. Like, there's literal guys who wrote down a sign to put it on their lawn. It was the very few times. 00:37:20 Speaker 14: In my life that I was really happy that my parents didn't speak or read English. I'm not going to lie. 00:37:27 Speaker 1: Everyone I spoke with was quick to point out that while resentment among non-Mung hunters was real, these examples of overt racism were few and far between and do not represent the larger Sawyer County community. The families of the victims rarely spoke to the media, but in December of 2004, Teresa Hesbeck, Lauren Hesbeck's sister, issued a statement. 00:37:49 Speaker 2: She said, quote, I would. 00:37:51 Speaker 1: Like to ask that anyone who is trying to make this a racial issue, either white or minority, would please stop this and know that is a dishonor to all of our loved ones to continue these acts of prejudice. There was no retaliation in the months leading up to the trial, or arguably even after that. Still, the Hmong community wasn't taking any chances. Yi had told me that the leaders of the 18 Hmong clans advised their people to stay away from the woods and use caution everywhere else. 00:38:21 Speaker 13: And they kind of put out this decree to all Hmong people, not just in the Midwest, but all Hmong people across the country. 00:38:28 Speaker 5: Like, hey, like, let's just hope off on hunting outdoors this year. 00:38:34 Speaker 13: I think for the Hmong kids in college, we just kept our heads down. And I remember my mom said something to me like, just say you don't know him. Just say that. 00:38:44 Speaker 4: You don't know him. 00:38:45 Speaker 14: And I think that there were a lot of wandering people going, hey, dude, like, you're. 00:38:49 Speaker 13: The only one guy I know, and your last name is Vang. 00:38:52 Speaker 4: Do you know him? And I'm like, no, I don't. 00:38:56 Speaker 1: You can imagine the fear of Yia and his family as they worried that the actions of one man would be attributed to their entire community. That was clearly happening in some circles, but there were also people who tried to defend Vang's actions. 00:39:10 Speaker 5: I'm proud of him for who he is. 00:39:12 Speaker 12: You know, I'm not ashamed of him. I'm not ashamed to tell, let people know that he's my brother because. 00:39:23 Speaker 9: He did what he had to do. 00:39:25 Speaker 1: That's La Vang, Chai's sister, speaking in a documentary titled Open Season. And she wasn't the only one who felt this way, according to Wah Meng Wah, editor of Hmong Today. Here he is speaking to Court TV in 2005. 00:39:39 Speaker 12: People do feel like Vang is the martyr who stood up for the Hmong people, and. 00:39:49 Speaker 6: He's actually being praised. 00:39:51 Speaker 1: When David Whitehurst put his book on consignment at a Hmong bookstore in St. Paul, he ran into the same sentiment. 00:39:58 Speaker 9: The man who ran the bookstore said, nobody's going to buy these. And he said, the Hmong people feel that they shot at him first and he returned fire. His story to the Hmong people was that they shot at me and I was just defending myself, defending my race. And they all say, He's a hero. He's a good guy. 00:40:24 Speaker 2: Of course, not all Hmong feel this way, then or now. Here's Ye. 00:40:28 Speaker 13: I don't believe what Chai did was right. I am 100% against that. I am 100%. It was a tragedy. Awful, awful, awful. I don't want a but behind it. There's no buts. It's just boom, period. We're done with that statement. 00:40:47 Speaker 1: There is no doubt that some tried to use this tragedy to advance their own agenda, regardless of the facts. But based on my conversations with those who were there at the time, most people were willing to wait for those facts to come to light. They wanted to know what sparked the conflict and how the shooting began. But most of all, they wanted to hear how Chai Vang would explain himself when he testified in his own defense 10 months later. 00:41:13 Speaker 2: All this and more is next. 00:41:15 Speaker 7: Don't go anywhere. 00:41:22 Speaker 2: Part 5. 00:41:24 Speaker 4: The Trial. 00:41:26 Speaker 1: Judge Norman Yackel opened proceedings in the state of Wisconsin v. Chai Sua Vang on September 10, 2005. The trial took place in the Sawyer County Courthouse, but the jury was from Madison, about 280 miles south. Vang was represented by two experienced defense attorneys from Milwaukee, Stephen Cohn and Jonathan Smith. Smith told me they considered entering an insanity plea, but Vang passed all the mental competency evaluations. So they took their client at his word and argued that Vang acted in self-defense. 00:42:00 Speaker 4: He has been shot at by people that he was walking away from not wanting to have a confrontation with. 00:42:08 Speaker 1: Smith pointed out that the group of men had yelled at Vang, intimidated him, and were following closely behind as he tried to walk away. As soon as the shot rang out from Terry's rifle, Vang was justified in firing back. 00:42:21 Speaker 4: He's under attack. So having been shot at, he's going to defend himself and he's going to return fire, which in fact he did. 00:42:31 Speaker 1: The problem for Vang and his attorneys was that Terry Willers denied this allegation and Loren Hesbeck backed him up. 00:42:39 Speaker 8: Listen, was Vang nervous and afraid? I'm sure he was. Okay, he's alone. 00:42:45 Speaker 15: There's, you know, six guys out there. A couple of them are getting in his face, yelling at him. But nobody touched him. Nobody threatened him. I mean, those are just the facts. 00:42:55 Speaker 1: That's Roy Cordy, one of the prosecutors on this case. The prosecution was led by Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lottenschlager, and Roy assisted her along with Donald Lataraca. Roy explained that Terry's gun had a capacity of five rounds, and it was recovered with four. One had been fired, but as you heard earlier, Lorne claimed to have fired one shot in his brief gun battle with Vang. Now, the casing from that shot was never recovered, so neither the prosecution nor the defense was able to mount a case based on that physical evidence. But there are other reasons to doubt that Terry pulled the trigger. 00:43:31 Speaker 15: Terry always struck me as a very Level-headed, calm, reasonable person. 00:43:37 Speaker 6: I never saw him angry. 00:43:40 Speaker 15: Even when the guy's sitting there testifying about killing his daughter. Terry had already encountered the guy and was polite. Vang never claimed that Terry, you know, called him names, threatened him, pointed his gun at him or anything. So why all of a sudden would it become a totally different Terry Willers? 00:44:01 Speaker 2: It is still possible Terry fired first. 00:44:04 Speaker 1: Several people I spoke with wondered if Terry's gun might have gone off accidentally. But even if that happened, Vang had an even bigger problem. 00:44:12 Speaker 15: He'd be justified in shooting back at the person who shot at him. None of the other people had weapons. He was not in any immediate danger of death or great bodily injury from the other people who were there. One guy pulled a gun, I get to kill all his friends. 00:44:30 Speaker 8: No, it doesn't work that way. 00:44:33 Speaker 1: Bob and Joey were running away, and Vang shot them in the back. Jessica and Alan likely never even saw their attacker as he lay prone in the forest. Vang claimed Alan had a rifle, but none was found. Justifying these killings seemed impossible, but Vang's attorneys had a response. 00:44:51 Speaker 4: So when you have people coming in from different localities, having been summoned in by the people that you believe shot at you, that... threat continues until the siege is over. And I think it's very much a military sort of mentality. You know, if you were the only person in a foxhole and the enemy kept coming, you're going to keep shooting them, right? The confusion of the scene of the woods, the trees, the shadows, the noise coming in and out, the radio traffic, you know, there's a lot of commotion. And to his mindset, he acted in self-defense through the end of it. that interaction. 00:45:33 Speaker 1: Unfortunately for Vang, he didn't consistently act like most people would in a self-defense scenario. The threat from Terry's rifle was gone after Vang's first barrage. He could have run away after shooting Lauren or after shooting Joey. Instead, he stayed in the area and reloaded his rifle. 00:45:51 Speaker 15: When Brandon Willers and Carter Crotto come back on the ATV when they hear the calls for help, what does Vang say? 00:45:58 Speaker 8: I didn't shoot him. because they had a gun, right? I mean, that's telling in and of itself. 00:46:06 Speaker 1: Vang was inconsistent in his actions, but as the jury heard during the week-long trial, he was also inconsistent in his statements. 00:46:14 Speaker 15: The first interview, and it was this bizarre, implausible, ridiculous story of, yeah, I was out hunting, this guy came up to me, pulled a gun on me, disarmed me, and then started shooting everybody else. 00:46:30 Speaker 1: Vang abandoned that story pretty quickly, and his subsequent accounts were more plausible. 00:46:35 Speaker 2: But the details kept changing. 00:46:37 Speaker 15: Sometimes it was all of them threatened me and called me names. Other times it was no, just Bob and Joey threatening him or calling him names. It goes from, I saw them with guns to only Terry Willers had a gun. I saw guns on the ATVs, and then I didn't see any guns on the ATVs. 00:46:57 Speaker 1: Vang's contradictory statements hurt his credibility on the stand. but it also stood in stark contrast to the cold, blunt way he described shooting and killing six people. 00:47:08 Speaker 12: And then I saw Mark Wright scramble around the back. I shot him one more time. Then I shot him one time. I looked to the west of the ATV and Dennis Drew, Mr. Dennis Drew, started scrambling around of the ATV. I shot him one more time. 00:47:25 Speaker 6: I turned around. 00:47:26 Speaker 4: Mr. 00:47:26 Speaker 12: Lorne Hatchback, he started getting up and running northeast to the wood. So he tripped something. He fell down. So he's about like here, about 10, 15 feet away. So I shot him one more time. 00:47:40 Speaker 1: For those who aren't watching this episode on YouTube, Vang actually stands up in the witness box as he acts out shooting Mark, Denny, and Lauren. Jonathan Smith told me he prepared Vang for testifying in his own defense, but he never expected Vang to do what he did. 00:47:56 Speaker 4: Now you have the actor who's almost literally acting it out on the stand, I think that that was really unanticipated. I know, I guess I tried not to show it as I was working them through that. I wouldn't normally suggest to a client that they use the person's first names when referring to people that they had shot and killed. So I don't think it went as smoothly as it could have. 00:48:27 Speaker 1: Smith believes Vang did feel remorse, but his stoic demeanor didn't do him any favors. That blunt, logical attitude was on full display throughout his testimony, but no more so than at the end. 00:48:40 Speaker 6: Can you tell me. 00:48:40 Speaker 4: If on that day, Mr. 00:48:43 Speaker 12: Crotto deserved to die? 00:48:48 Speaker 7: Robert Crotto? 00:48:49 Speaker 9: No. 00:48:51 Speaker 14: And can you tell me on that day if. 00:48:54 Speaker 15: Mr. Reut deserved to die? 00:48:57 Speaker 8: No. 00:48:58 Speaker 4: Can you tell me if on that day Mr. 00:49:00 Speaker 6: Drew deserved to die? 00:49:01 Speaker 9: No. 00:49:03 Speaker 12: Can you tell me if on that day. 00:49:05 Speaker 6: Joseph Prado deserved to die? 00:49:13 Speaker 9: Yes. 00:49:14 Speaker 12: Can you tell me if on that day Mr. Lasky deserved to die? 00:49:18 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:49:18 Speaker 6: Okay. 00:49:20 Speaker 4: Can you tell me if on that day Ms. Willers deserved to die? 00:49:27 Speaker 7: No. 00:49:28 Speaker 4: Mr. 00:49:28 Speaker 12: Robert and those three, the one that I pretty much feel think that they deserve. 00:49:34 Speaker 6: And Mr. Crotto, why did he deserve to die? 00:49:38 Speaker 12: Because he's the one that come in, confront me the first time and yell at me, call my name. And that's who he is. 00:49:48 Speaker 1: It's hard to understand if Vang believed he acted in self-defense why he would admit that some of his victims did not deserve to die. Smith thinks his client was hampered by a language barrier and misunderstood the question. Vang may not have been speculating on whether he was justified under the law, just how he felt about each victim. 00:50:07 Speaker 4: I think it's suggestive that he was telling the truth. Or at least as he Believed it, right? It's a pretty decent distinction to say, yeah, well, these two or three absolutely deserved it. Saw the one, I feel bad about that one because they didn't technically do anything to me. 00:50:27 Speaker 1: But there's almost no doubt that to the jury, it came across as unbelievably calloused. 00:50:33 Speaker 8: Yeah, that didn't help. 00:50:33 Speaker 15: People weren't looking to hear that. They want to hear, okay, okay, you said that Willer shot you or shot at you and missed and you shot back. 00:50:43 Speaker 5: Okay. 00:50:43 Speaker 8: Okay. but I assume it had a big impact. It had certainly a substantial impact. 00:50:48 Speaker 1: We don't know exactly what the jury thought of all of Vang's testimony, but we do know they only deliberated for three hours before reaching a guilty verdict. In a subsequent hearing, Vang was sentenced to six consecutive life terms in prison. Ed Killeen was there throughout the trial, and in an article for the Post-Crescent, he described how the families of the victims reacted. 00:51:11 Speaker 11: As the jury passed his verdict, their grips became visibly tighter. Yackel had warned against any outburst, and there was none. No sound escaped the lips of anyone in the courtroom. As Yackel read the verdict, some family members cried quietly, others leaned into each other's for support on both sides. Once the jury was excused and Bang had been taken from the courtroom, many of them hugged each other. 00:51:38 Speaker 1: I asked Adam how he felt knowing his father's killer was going to prison. And his response mirrored the somber reaction of his family and friends. 00:51:46 Speaker 5: What I don't think we're seeing in our justice system is actual justice, because it's not like this makes it go away or somehow takes the teeth away from the trauma of a sudden loss of somebody that you love. And at the end of the day, I just wasn't super satisfied with seeing Chai Vang go to prison, unfortunately. 00:52:05 Speaker 9: I don't know. 00:52:06 Speaker 5: I just felt like it didn't do it for me, ultimately. There was a deeper fix that needed to happen, and that wasn't making it. 00:52:13 Speaker 1: Adam isn't saying he disagreed with the verdict, and he acknowledges that it was cathartic for his community. He's also not saying he wanted Vang to be executed. But he was looking for the kind of closure a courtroom can't offer. And as he explained in our interview, he believes he found it. Part 6 This case is difficult for many reasons, but one of the most troubling is that we still don't know why Vang did what he did. I asked everyone this question, and many echoed Roy's assessment. 00:52:50 Speaker 8: I think he just lost it. He just was angry. 00:52:53 Speaker 15: He had other encounters in the past with hunters, which didn't go well. 00:53:00 Speaker 8: A lot of yelling and name-calling. 00:53:03 Speaker 15: He had temper. He had a history of it. So I don't know if he just, you know, just got angry because it was deliberate. 00:53:13 Speaker 1: However you explain them, Vang's actions have echoed through the decades. His wives and children lost a father, husband, and primary provider. After the trial concluded, David Whitehurst witnessed an interaction between Vang and his family that spoke to that loss. 00:53:28 Speaker 9: How he dropped onto his knees and put his forearms on the floor and put his head on the floor, crying heavily, you know, shoulders bouncing, back bouncing. As he was crying and dropped down, a total of three times he'd stand up and drop down, stand up and drop down. Each time calling to his family and begging for forgiveness. 00:53:57 Speaker 6: And they were crying. 00:53:58 Speaker 9: Most of those among people were crying. 00:54:01 Speaker 1: The families of Vang's victims no doubt wondered why that contrition was never directed at them. But it's clear that Vang's family suffered tremendously, even though they didn't pull the trigger. Ye also told me that for many years, Hmong hunters and anglers stayed away from the woods. 00:54:18 Speaker 14: Even till today, the echo of what happened 20-some years ago still affects to today where now we're just starting to see young Hmong men and women that are starting to enjoy the outdoors again or feeling like it's okay. 00:54:36 Speaker 1: This might seem like an odd reaction in light of the fact that the victims in this case were white, not Hmong. But Ye and others had reason to worry about backlash. In 2007, a 30-year-old Hmong hunter named Cha Vang was shot and stabbed to death by 28-year-old James Nichols near Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Nichols had made anti-Mung statements in the past, and he even claimed to have known one of Chai Vang's victims, Denny Drew. Roy Cordy prosecuted that case as well, and he told me it was most likely the result of a conflict over public hunting land, not a targeted attack on a specific Mung person. Nichols also lied about knowing Denny Drew. Still, it was exactly the kind of thing the Mung community was afraid would happen, and it kept many out of the woods for years. Here's game warden Jeremy Peary. 00:55:26 Speaker 10: But the year after, in 2005, the gun deer season, I did not encounter another Hmong hunter in Russ County in those areas where I would typically encounter Hmong hunters. 00:55:37 Speaker 1: Of course, the greatest impact was felt by Vang's victims. The Crottos lost a father and husband, a brother and son. Terry Willers watched his daughter drive away towards danger and never saw her alive again. Adam Lasky told me he spent a long time hating the man who'd stolen his father. 00:55:56 Speaker 5: At the time, you know, I just loathed this guy. I couldn't touch him with a 10-foot pole. I couldn't even think about him without just, like, you know, foaming. And I think it just took me so long just to, like, even be able to say Chai Vang's name, you know, or, like, even be able to talk about my dad in my house with my family, you know. It took us the years to get to a place, I think, where, you know, we felt like there was some sort of normalcy coming back. 00:56:27 Speaker 1: Part of that road to normalcy, Adam says, lay in letting go of his hate. It took him many years, but he realized that if his father's death was eclipsed by his hatred of Chai Vang, his father's life might be as well. 00:56:40 Speaker 5: Because it provides an opportunity to kind of not let his life be defined by his traumatic death or not let my experience of him be locked in only to this experience of trauma and death. Because I think that's what is really painful is like when you can't think about this person lovingly or, you know, outside of that context, it's like you kind of get stuck interpreting reality in this, this bitter loop of, you know, like everyone's out to get me. 00:57:09 Speaker 6: And that's not true. 00:57:11 Speaker 1: After Adam became a priest, he decided he wanted to hold a mass service at the cabin. He prayed for his father, but he also prayed for Chai. 00:57:20 Speaker 5: Celebrating mass out there was like this weightiness of death and the weightiness of like, in the mystery of Jesus, like how does this death and this experience of trauma and like all of the sin in the world, and particularly like this sin that affected my family, like, you know, crashing into the middle of like the death and the resurrection, the dying and the rising of Jesus Christ. And so like, so to me, I was like weeping and bawling as I was picking up the hosts and the wine, you know, at the altar. And it was this interesting experience of like feeling a lot of the weight of the whole thing and like the loss, not just for me and my family, but for like Chai Vang and all of his family. And I just, remember thinking and praying like for them very specifically. And like, they lost a father too, when this happened, you know, like they, they were wounded and broken and were experiencing hurt because of all of this as well. 00:58:19 Speaker 1: Adam says working through the process of forgiving Chai has given him a freedom that a life of resentment never could. 00:58:25 Speaker 5: This sense of like a journey of, of healing and finding just like the freedom, um, It's not to reduce this person to an object, you know, not to reduce this person to somebody who deserves my punishment. But ultimately, like, I don't think it cheapens my love for my dad. If anything, it deepens it. 00:58:51 Speaker 1: Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Department of Justice announced that Chai Vang had passed away in prison. They didn't list a cause of death, and so far, they haven't responded to our request for that information. We'll never know exactly why Vang killed six hunters that cold November day, but wherever he is, Adam hopes he finds peace. 00:59:10 Speaker 5: When I heard just a couple of months ago that Chai Vang had died, I think one of my responses was like, you know, God have mercy on his soul. And I meant that. Like, I want God to have mercy on his soul. I want that he meets the mercy of the Lord and that he would be able to be reconciled repentant for whatever sins or offenses he had and that he would be able to, you know, to be contrite in that. Like, I think that's the best thing that I can pray for somebody like that. 00:59:39 Speaker 1: When I asked Adam whether he still gets into a tree stand, I was happy to hear that he does every year with the Browning Abel 280 he got from his dad. 00:59:49 Speaker 5: I still love hunting. That's part of the beauty too, is like getting on the bike, you know, you almost have to just get back out there every year and say, I'm going to go sit in the tree stand because I'm Like, I just need to do this, you know, I'm going to get out there. The first year, my cousin and I just decided, like, we're going to go. And, you know, he got a big buck. And then the next year we went out, like, I got this big buck. And it was just sort of fun to, like, get back into hunting. And I still love it. I still think it's a great rite of passage. I still think it's a great thing for families. And it's a culture. 01:00:21 Speaker 7: That I like. 01:00:29 Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. If you'd like to see. 01:00:32 Speaker 1: Images of Chai Vang, his victims and their families, and maps of the area, head over to TheMeatEater.com slash Blood Trails. You can also check out the video version of this episode on YouTube. Huge thanks to everyone who spoke to me for this episode. Adam Lasky, Roy Cordy, Jonathan Smith, Jeremy Peary, Mike Bartz, John Hagen, Ea Vang, Ed Collain, and David Whitehurst. There's a ton more detail in David's book, Tree Stand Murders, so you. 01:01:02 Speaker 2: Should check that out. 01:01:03 Speaker 1: If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, or you know about another you think we should cover, send me an email at bloodtrailsatthemeateater.com. 01:01:14 Speaker 6: See you next time. 01:01:16 Speaker 2: Stay safe out there.

Shop Now

Shop Now

Save this episode