By Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
May 24–Jamie Patton said he hoped to talk his friend Clayton Keister out of killing Peter and Patricia Niedere in October.
But prosecutors believe the 19-year-old expected to earn easy money through the shootings. They say he met with Keister the night of their botched murder attempt on the Hastings couple, eager not to be dropped from the plan.
Patton, the final defendant in the plot, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit first-degree premeditated murder. As part of the plea agreement, he will be sentenced June 2 to between 12½ and 14 years and five months in prison.
Also as part of the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop a second identical count of conspiracy. State sentencing guidelines would otherwise prescribe between 12½ and 18 years in prison.
Dressed in olive-green jail garb, Patton raised a shackled hand to be sworn in. With his mother and several members of the Niedere family in the courtroom, Patton described for prosecutors how his former classmates Keister and Matthew Niedere contacted him and urged him to join their plot.
Keister, who had known Patton since elementary school, called him two weeks before the murder and invited him to meet at a popular hangout, nicknamed “the cave,” in a Roseville park near Concordia Academy, a religious school. The two teens had been classmates there until Patton transferred to Mounds View High School in his junior year.
In their second after-school meeting at the cave, Matthew Niedere’s and Keister’s idea to kill Niedere’s parents blossomed into a concrete plan. Matthew Niedere promised Patton a hefty sum from the Niedere estate.
“At first, I believe it was somewhere in the range of $30,000,” Patton said. Later, the bounty grew. “Not a definite amount, but he did say the figure would get bigger, yes. He said he’d get it from the insurance claims.”
On Friday, Oct. 7, Patton said he met with Matthew Niedere alone at the cave. Niedere told Patton that Keister would proceed alone to kill his parents.
“I told him to have Clayton meet me at my work that night,” Patton said. “I wanted to talk him out of it.”
Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom said the truth, in fact, was just the opposite. Patton persuaded Keister to let him come along, and the two drove from Little Canada to Hastings together, readying their guns and finalizing details. Keister, who fashioned himself a future military strategist, told Patton how they would shoot through a pillow to soften the shotgun noise, or fire at close range into the couple’s chests.
The two teens never made it inside the house, abandoning their assault after tripping a motion detector in the Niederes’ back yard. The next morning, Keister called Patton and told him the plan was back on. “I said no,” Patton told the court.
The Niederes, widely respected throughout Hastings as business owners and church leaders, were shot to death in their Vermillion Street shop minutes later. Keister and Matthew Niedere, who were 17 at the time, were sentenced in March to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 30 years.
In an interview, Patton’s mother said her son deserved a lighter sentence, closer to the statutory minimum of three years in prison. “I feel like they’re being harsh, to be honest with you, because he said no,” Stanek said. “He said no several times.”
“His motive, I think, was a lot clearer than either of the other two participants,” said Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom. “This was a troubled young man, and he did it for money and money alone.”
Patton was offered a plea agreement in March and turned it down, under the mistaken impression that taking the case to a jury would work in his favor, Backstrom said. But members of the Niedere family were eager to avoid an arduous trial in which Matthew Niedere and Keister had been subpoenaed to testify, and the offer was extended again.
“We’re just glad that this is behind us,” said Kathy Kinneman, Patricia Niedere’s sister, standing with Matthew Niedere’s sister-in-law in the Hastings courthouse. “Our family’s been through enough.”
Frederick Melo can be reached at [email protected] or 651-228-2172.
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