Category: Uncategorized

First, congratulations to Missoula police for taking Todd Keith Spence into custody without killing him. Despite Spence articulating his interest in seeing bullets put inside the heads of cops during past interactions, I’m glad to see that cops weren’t so terrified of Todd Keith Spence that they felt the need to tackle him, punch him in the head, shoot him with a taser, then wrap him up to die in a field like they did to Ross Robertson.

On June 5, 2026, at approximately 1:55 a.m., a Missoula Police Department Officer was conducting an extra patrol on the north side of the California Street Foot Bridge. As the officer exited his patrol vehicle, he smelled smoke from what he believed was a campfire. The officer followed the smell and walked down to the river.

The officer observed two males, one of whom was seated by the burning embers, and the other was standing over the fire. The officer told them that it was illegal to have a fire within the Missoula city limits. The male who was standing became hostile and aggressive and began yelling at the officer. The male said something to the effect of, get that flashlight out of my face a**hole and then told him to leave him alone. The officer told the male, who was later identified as Todd Spence, that it was dark and the flashlight was necessary to see.

After explaining the function of flashlights to this violent, drug-abusing sex offender, the cop decided to use his “phone a friend” option to get another cop on-scene. Instead of showing up and immediately tackling Spence, they all just kept chatting like pals.

Spence continued to yell and flipped the officer the bird. Due to his elevated behavior, the officer radioed dispatch and requested that another officer respond to his location. Another officer then arrived on-scene and Spence continued to yell and use obscenities directed at them.

The officer gave Spence several chances to identify himself, but he refused to comply. Officers then secured Spence’s arms and placed him in handcuffs. After escorting Spence to a patrol vehicle, the officer conducted a search incident to arrest. In an inside pocket of Spence’s jacket, the officer found a white and clear soft plastic zip bag. The officer observed several syringes, a pill, a multicolored ceramic smoking pipe, and a meth pipe.

After the search was complete, an officer transported Spence to the Missoula County Detention Facility, where Spence continued to be extremely hostile and aggressive toward jail staff. Once there, the clear plastic zip bag was opened by jail staff. They told the officer that they found three methamphetamine glass pipes, a marijuana pipe, several syringes, and a gabapentin pill.

Three years ago Todd Keith Spence wanted to kill cops, but for some reason his stated desire didn’t really amount to any significant time in jail. Why the fuck not?

On May 9, 2023, a Missoula Police Department Officer responded to the area of Silver Park to assist another officer with a male suspect who had an outstanding warrant. When the officer arrived, he noticed the other officer had handcuffed the male who was later identified as 48-year-old Todd Spence.

The officer also observed a tent nearby that was occupied. While the officer attempted to make contact with the occupant of the tent, Spence became extremely agitated and began yelling at him. The officers secured Spence in the backseat of a patrol vehicle and then conversed with the occupant of the tent.

While in the patrol vehicle, Spence began kicking the cage and door and continued to escalate despite the officer’s warnings to stop. Spence continually told the officer that his arrest was unlawful and the warrant was “bulls**t,” and that his rights were being violated.

The officer explained to Spence that a judge was available to see him on his warrant and transported him to jail. According to court documents, Spence became very agitated about going to jail instead of going to see the judge and stated, “I’m going to put a bullet in your head.”

Despite LOTS of 911 calls, criminal charges, and over a dozen locations around town that have trespassed him, why is Todd Keith Spence repeatedly put back on the streets to threaten EVERYONE around him? It makes no sense.

To see the most recent breakdown of Spence’s criminal history, here’s how the latest KGVO article concludes:

Spence has two prior convictions for possession of dangerous drugs in the past two years. He was also convicted on the obstructing charges that accompanied both of the prior drug cases.

According to court documents, Spence’s substance abuse issues persist, which correspond with his continued, often aggressive, behavior that poses a risk to the community.

Spence has been permanently trespassed from over a dozen locations in Missoula, has a combined eight pending cases in Missoula Municipal and Justice courts, and, since the beginning of 2026 alone, 911 Dispatch has received at least 15 calls for service involving Spence.

The State requested an arrest warrant in the amount of $10,000.

Spence’s latest arrest occurred across from Silver Park, where my kid had his graduation party on Sunday. When I biked around the area with my daughter that day, it was right near the location where Spence was living illegally. If anything ever happened because a piece of shit like Todd Spence continues to somehow be coddled with kid gloves by this idiotic fucking town, I know which community culprit I’ll be looking at for answers.

Since I’m good at finding little tells from those in positions of local power about how they see the system they work inside of, I already know how Matt Jennings is forming his answer about “repeat offenders” and WHY his powerful County Attorney’s office appears so helpless to stop them.

The Matt Jennings quote I’ll be using is ostensibly about DUIs, but can be applied to the general manner in which trials are conducted, which I will explain in a moment. First, this:

The nature of a trial (which I learned the hard way), especially from the vantage point of the defense team (if you have one), is to limit whatever you can from the jury and/or judge as they narrowly consider your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the specific charges. That’s the game, and Matt Jennings is using his KGVO media megaphone to say he feels like the game is skewed against his prosecution team because serial DUI offenders cannot be portrayed as serial DUI offenders.

The game outside the courtroom is called the court of public opinion, so what Matt Jennings is doing is simply following literal pages from the Kirsten Pabst playbook, a playbook I tracked down so I could have physical ownership of the pages Matt Jennings continues to operationalize:

Beyond KGVO appearances and press releases, Missoula County is fighting a serious information war behind the scenes AGAINST the media, both conventional and unconventional ones, like me, who find documents about Todd Keith Spence online in order to post and publicly call out the failing cogs in the system, like Probation and Parole.

For additional information on the anecdotal conundrum of Todd K. Spence vs. Missoula, and Kirsten Pabst’s prosecutorial enforcement of The Law, here’s some posts to click on:

“An Open Letter To Sheriff T.J. McDermott, County Attorney Kirsten Pabst, And Police Chief Jaeson White” (September 9th, 2022)

“Unpacking The September 8th Assault On Montana Transportation Staff By A Homeless Sex Offender” (September 11th, 2022)

“The Deplorable Legacy Of Missoula County Attorney, Kirsten Pabst” (October 3rd, 2022)

“Deplorable Pabst Legacy Round 2: Failing Up” (October 4th, 2022)

“On Defending Yourself In A World Where Sad Prosecutors Write Books Instead Of Keeping Their Communities Safe” (February 10th, 2023)

“AA#7-The Meth Den Clean-Up That Synchronistically Culminated With A Press Conference On Homeless Camps” (April 27th, 2023)

“Saving The Homeless Sex Offender From The Clark Fork River” (May 4th, 2023)

“Missoula County Sheriff, Jeremiah Petersen, Has Some Explaining To Do” (May 11th, 2023)

“If I Had The Resources To Do Actual, In Depth Investigations…” (July 17th, 2023)

“Did You Know Missoula Narrative Controllers Have A History Of Hating Bloggers?” (February 12th, 2025)

There you go, dear readers, ten posts over the last four years that gives you, for free, context on a criminal injustice conundrum I’ve been perplexed by since the homeless camp cleanup assaults. Maybe someday I’ll have a better explanation (besides my “Angel of Death” theory) to explain the bizarre leniency on this dangerous, drug-addicted individual.

Thanks for reading!

Hey Americans who keep voting like your votes matter, have you ever considered that perhaps YOU are the problem?

This week you’ll be hearing a lot about poor Spencer Pratt and the weird mail-in-vote surge that suddenly erased his second place finish, essentially ending his campaign against the fire-enabling insanity of liberal policies that have turned more and more of LA into an open-air homeless drug market.

Playing a rigged game, then complaining about rigged results, is getting REALLY old. Despite all that tiny hat money removing Massie, I guess it’s still shocking to some LA voters that funny AI ads and much-needed criticism of the Homeless Industrial Complex can’t beat decades of established electoral tricks.

To see how the major media outlets in LA will depict the retarded expectations of Pratt voters as being dumb and wrong, here’s the Los Angeles Times explaining to voters how their inability to track confusing media electoral updates led to the wild expectations of electoral success now crashing to the ground of supposed reality:

Since election night in California, a single theory of election fraud has taken root like no other among online conspiracy theorists, bot accounts, conservative influencers and people close to President Trump. It proved to be a simple misreading of the voting data.

Late on election night, an update of vote counts in the Los Angeles mayor’s race appeared on election results pages of various media outlets including the Los Angeles Times. It showed leading Democrats Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman receiving tens of thousands of new votes, and leading Republican former reality TV star Spencer Pratt receiving no new votes.

Some observers of the vote tally immediately took screenshots, with some shouting fraud. Others ran statistical analyses that showed it would be impossible for a candidate such as Pratt — running second in the race — to receive zero votes in such a large batch of ballots.

The problem? Just a few moments later, according to the LA Times, this happened:

In fact, the update that showed zero Pratt votes was followed one minute later by another update that showed tens of thousands of votes for Pratt, and none for Bass or Raman.

There was no batch of votes that included zero votes for any candidate, as Los Angeles County’s own data show plainly.

But the claim fit into the broader, false narrative being pushed relentlessly by Trump and other Republicans in recent days, that California Democrats were cheating.

If you’re STILL not understanding how this “misreading of data” between votes cast, and media reports reporting, fueled conspiracy theories, the LA Times has an academic expert to provide more condescending context about this “simple mix-up”:

Justin Grimmer, a political science professor at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who researches and evaluates claims of election fraud, conducted his own data analysis of the vote updates, and came to the same conclusion.

He said there was an initial update with no Pratt votes, but a second one 41 seconds later with no votes for Bass or Raman — leading him to believe the single batch of ballots was just reported in two back-to-back updates rather than one.

“Because they came so close together, it looks like it was just a sequence of updates,” he said.

Grimmer said news outlets are “thinking about speed” and the best way to get people the most accurate information as quickly as possible, but “haven’t quite adjusted to being in this world where there’s this group of people who monitor these data feeds as if they are official government reports.”

“It leads to these horrible tweets about there being evidence of fraud,” he said.

Does THAT satisfy your sense of outrage you silly Spencer Pratt voters?

While legacy media in LA does damage control over their sloppy coverage of the Los Angeles Mayoral race, local media in Missoula continue to show how very effective they are at NOT reporting on certain developments impacting Missoula’s version of the Homeless Industrial Complex, like a book author with “lived experience” coming to Missoula to offer something called a SOLUTION to the intractable problem our local leaders get paid to not fix.

Before getting to wear a cap and gown (like my oldest kid wore on Saturday), Ginny Burton was doing hard drugs and committing felonies. Then, thanks to a stint in jail, Ginny turned things around. By 2022 she was making appearances with big media figures, like Tucker Carlson.

Did ANYONE in local media cover Ginny Burton’s appearance in Missoula? Nope. Nor did any local official find the time to come and listen to what she had to say, which can be summarized by the main points of her 10-point “Gabriel Plan”:

While Ginny Burton beat a mean meth addiction and wrote a book that could be applied to systemic retardation, Missoula liberals are more prone to embrace Stephanie Land’s story, the former homeless woman who translated her poor choice of male partner into a very popular book and Netflix movie after getting “educated” in Missoula on how to participate in an astro-turfed outrage campaign against a much-needed municipal move to curb “urban camping”.

To get a sense of how eagerly Land’s story was jumped on and turned into a mass-published narrative and Netflix flick, here’s a Seattle Times article from around the same time Burton was appearing on Fox News:

Land’s story unfolds in a Pacific Northwest landscape. That homeless shelter (and subsequent transitional housing) was in Port Townsend; the tiny, mildewed studio apartment she later shared with her daughter was in Mount Vernon; the city to which she and Mia eventually moved was Missoula, Montana, where Land slowly worked her way through college in her 30s — and finally realized her longtime dream of becoming a writer. (She’ll be in Seattle on Monday, Feb. 11, for a Q&A and book signing at Elliott Bay Book Company.)

“Maid” was born as a college essay called “Confessions of the Housekeeper,” but quickly it grew. “I sent a pitch to (the online magazine) Vox that wasn’t really a pitch, it was more like, Dear Editor, I wrote this in college, maybe you might like it,” recalled Land, in a telephone interview this month from her Missoula home.

She sent two paragraphs from the essay, describing her experiences cleaning for an early client: the Sad House, the home of a frail widower “dying slowly in a shrine that hadn’t changed since his wife had passed away.” In “Maid,” Land writes that before the Sad House, she’d thought of cleaning as “a mindless job and something to pay my bills, but now it felt like the work had an unexpected imprint on my life, and the vulnerability I was exposed to somehow relieved me of my own.”

Vox’s response was quick: “They emailed back almost immediately, offering me $500 — a huge amount of money, the most money I thought I was ever going to make,” said Land. The resulting story was published on Vox in July 2015.

Going back to Pratt, there will now be more endless cycles of clipped social media outrage expressing dismay that he was electorally robbed, and demanding investigations, and blah blah blah…but why should anyone OUTSIDE of Los Angeles really give a shit about any of this?

Yesterday I published my first impression of the Coroner’s Inquest for Ross Robertson. Besides a Missoulian article inaccessible to the non-paying public, no other media reported on the very troubling scenario of a man in a mental health crisis getting snuffed out by local law enforcement.

It shouldn’t be the job of unpaid locals and volunteers to fill the void left by failed politicians and complicit non-profit “leaders” to address the systemic issues plaguing our community, but that’s the reality that vote-casting hopefuls are continuing to ignore because it would mean doing something more significant than filling in bubbles on a ballot every other year.

To those who aren’t waiting for election results to take action in your own community, thank you. The audiences might not be noteworthy yet to local narrative controllers, but that doesn’t mean something significant isn’t happening.

Thanks for reading!

Let’s call this a “first impression” post about the Ross Robertson episode of Montana’s routine judicial performance clearing Missoula law enforcement of killing people, known to those of us watching these performative episodes as THE CORONER’S INQUEST.

Like so many of the scripted performances that make up this genre, the result of this one was already a foregone conclusion. Why? Because “criminal means” is an impossibly high legal bar to meet, and County Attorney’s, like Matt Jennings, would essentially be ending their political/legal careers were they to ever seriously attempt to clear that legal bar against a sworn officer of the law.

Luckily, after telling the courtroom on Friday that he knows better to ask a lady cop how much she weighs, I think Missoula’s lead County Attorney, Matt Jennings, may have a shot at being a stand-up comedian were he to ever find himself in need of a career change.

How much does the FEMALE police officer, Makenzie Ranger, weigh?

That’s the question Matt Jennings didn’t ask on Friday. Instead, he turned that unasked question into a joke in order to elicit an answer to that exact same question from the MALE police officer, Joshua Mirabella, who I can say weighs 170 lbs. Here’s why the question of weight matters.

Makenzie Ranger, in sworn testimony from the stand, stated several times that she was afraid of being physically hurt by the MUCH LARGER suspect that she pursued BY HERSELF into a desolate field after responding to an unattended fire at a trailer park.

Ross Robertson, the jury was later told, weighed 275 lbs, which made him an imposing and OBESE adversary when his refusal to cooperate turned physical. Also, his heart was fat–a fact later focused on by Walter Kemp, the Medical Examiner who was brought in by Missoula County to provide his professional opinion on an autopsy that he, himself, didn’t actually perform.

Maybe (the argument goes) if Ross Robertson wasn’t a big fatty with a 520 gram heart (normal dude hearts weigh between 250-350 grams) he would have been able to survive the tackle to the ground, the punches to the head, the taser shots, the spit-hood, and the body wrap that DCI investigator, Edward Thomas “Tommy” Teniente, testified he was, previous to this Coroner’s Inquest, totally unfamiliar with.

Are these wraps really that new to you, Tommy? Because, after a one minute search online, I found the above link about The Wrap and growing concerns about its use.

After 25 years on the market, more than 10,000 WRAPs are in use across the United States and Canada, according to the manufacturer, Safe Restraints. Institutions that use the restraint include police departments, juvenile facilities, hospitals, stadiums and parks, said Charles Hammond, the company’s president and CEO.

Safe Restraints markets the WRAP as “​​proven to save lives.” However, an investigation by Capital & Main has found that the company’s safety claims are mainly based on anecdotes and a study whose author disputes Safe Restraints’ interpretation of his work.

As the device has become more widely used, lawsuits over in-custody deaths and allegations of torture are emerging, a review of public records shows.

So, what was Ross Roberston ultimately guilty of?

Ross Robertson was guilty of not stopping when a scared lady cop of unknown weight told him to stop.

And he was guilty of being physically large, strong, and intimidating when he said “NO” several times while holding the object he died with, which was a Bible.

And he was guilty of screaming and resisting what was being done to him to “keep him safe” as he repeated phrases, like LORD HAVE MERCY, that will haunt my memory of this particular episode of Coroner’s Inquest.

And what are the cops who killed Ross, like Joshua Mirabella, guilty of?

Nothing, because they did their gosh-darned best.

Josh Mirabella did his gosh-darned best when he tried taking the “element of surprise” for a tactical tackle and “bounced off” the obese schizophrenic holding his Bible, then Lucas Big House did his gosh-darned best by joining the scrum and getting the wild beast to the ground. More cops joined in, like Mitch Lang putting his blue-gloved hands on Ross’ spit-hooded head, and when Ross Robertson went limp the FIRST TIME, the idea of using Narcan was suggested and quickly deployed, bringing Ross back momentarily before he finally died in the vacant field.

There is a sick irony entangled with the geographical terrain where this death occurred that I’ll expound on later, since I’ve long argued that Tax Increment Financing negatively impacts publicly-funded first responders, but for now I’ll just ask WHY we fund things like the Mobile Crisis Unit and STILL can’t put something better in place for a man who was getting ACTIVE mental health treatment from Winds of Change before Missoula police killed him.

It was even known, and directly communicated by Ross’ mother, Patti, ON THE DAY HE DIED via a 911 call that Ross was a diagnosed schizophrenic who had been off his medications for a month. Would that information have changed the approach law enforcement took, or was the escalation of PROTECT LADY COP already set into motion?

If you think I’m being unfair about the scenario I’m describing from seeing the available body-cam footage presented during Friday’s Coroner’s Inquest, perhaps I’ll find a way to get the footage that I saw out to the broader public so locals can see for themselves how Missoula PD can kill you for not immediately complying with their demands.

After the jury found NO CRIMINAL MEANS were used on May 29th, 2024, by local law enforcement regarding how they killed Ross Robertson in a vacant field behind the mall, shouldn’t the public get a chance to see what a well-trained police force can do to YOU or YOUR LOVED ONE if they start acting crazy with some fire and a Bible?

To officially access the information Missoula County is spending tax dollars officially withholding from out-of-state media companies, here’s a screenshot of the online process:

If CCJI is a giant dam holding back stories of Montana’s criminal injustice system from public view, then the vigorous defense coming especially from Missoula County could be evidence that too many cracks in that dam are now spider-webbing from the building pressure, and something is about to give.

THAT is the story I hope to be writing about soon, so stay tuned!

And, as always, thanks for reading.

Remember when a woman’s body was found by a family looking for a Christmas tree? Whatever happened to that death investigation?

A woman’s body was found in the Gold Creek area by people looking for a Christmas tree on Thursday evening.

Missoula County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Jeanette Smith says law enforcement responded to a report of a deceased person whose body was found in the area of Montana Highway 200 and Gold Creek.

The woman is believed to be in her late 30s to early 40s with a news release noting that the body — which could not be identified — was taken to the Missoula Medical Examiner’s Office.

An investigation into the body’s discovery is continuing.

Well, there was no evidence, we were told, of “foul play”, so case closed. Unfortunately not everyone believes local law enforcemen.

This dead woman was finally identified as Tyler Christine-Rosetta Arnold and I guess we’re expected to believe she died in the middle of the woods from natural causes.

Right?

The dead body found by hikers on the Kim Williams trail last November has NEVER been publicly identified by officials, but that didn’t stop commenters on Facebook. After 8 months of NOTHING from official sources, today I’m reporting the likelihood the dead man was Mike Condo, from Butte.

Back in April a media company sued Missoula County to get what they needed for their death stories. You see, True Crime is a popular and lucrative content market, which makes a mentally ill Native woman who killed her own children GREAT content for a media company like EWU Media LLC to exploit.

So, why is Missoula County being so stingy with their valuable death content? Does it really make sense to use “Confidential Criminal Justice Information” to hide behind?

A national media company known for producing true crime videos sued Missoula County for details on two graphic cases involving children, which the county has refused to share, citing privacy concerns.

EWU Media LLC, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, is seeking body camera footage and testimony related to a case of double homicide of children in 2021 and an infant who was left partially buried near Lolo Hot Springs in 2018.

While both cases have been closed, and therefore public under Montana law, Missoula County contends it must notify the families involved and have a judge release the data before sharing the graphic footage with the company.

“We believe we are subject to the fact that (the records) are confidential criminal justice files and we need that court order in order to release them,” Brian West, chief civil deputy county attorney, said in court.

Well, Mr. Brian West, you already have the Bureau of Land Management using details of this story to make their agency look good, and you also have this article from Oxygen True Crime. Considering how much of this story has already been publicly told, I find it very odd that Missoula County is fighting to keep additional details hidden from the public.

Why?

For the legal argument being made to publicly disclose what Missoula County has been sitting on, here’s civil attorney, Mike Meloy’s, take:

Montana first amendment attorney Mike Meloy is representing the group in the case. He told Larson that under the Montana Constitution’s right to know clause, all the records of the case should be released.

“Our position is that all of these records in the closed cases we requested are presumptively open,” Meloy said in court.

West said since the cases involve children, Missoula County argues there is a heightened level of privacy and seeks the family’s acknowledgement before releasing the files.

This morning, after TWO YEARS of zero information about Ross Robertson’s “police custody” death, details of his death will finally be examined by a Missoula County prosecutor in a purely performative (in my opinion) legal process known as the Coroner’s Inquest.

Last November I was interviewed by a Boston tv news station about dead people, specifically the ones murdered by Kevin Lino. This morning, when I went looking for that news segment, I found a New York Post article with my name in it instead. Interesting.

“It is a serial murder, but it’s not the kind of predatory killer that we generally think of when we talk about serial murder,” Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox told Boston 25.

Nevertheless, experts think the man whose face is covered in terrifying tattoos exhibits that “dark triad” of personality types — psychopathy, narcissism and manipulative Machiavellianism — often found in serial killers.

“I believe he is a very dangerous, dangerous individual. So, I think he is a serial killer for sure,” said Montana journalist Travis Mateer, who spent time with Lino as a homeless counselor in Missoula.

Mateer believes Lino is even responsible for the vanishing of another homeless man, Monte Swanson, who knew Lino in Missoula.

And prosecutors are also open to the idea that Lino might have more deaths on his hands.

“We continue to investigate that,” said Ryan. “We never give up on those cases. We don’t forget about them, and we stay open to other information.”

If local investigators in Missoula share this sentiment, I’ve compiled a list of my top ten suspicious deaths over the past 4 years. Here it is:

To wrap this post up, I’d like to highlight a new media effort that has popped up to tell death stories in Missoula, spearheaded by Jule Banville.

Jule Banville has spent more than a decade asking her journalism students at the University of Montana to do something a lot of reporters stopped doing years ago: pick up the phone and report an obituary. Not the kind families write themselves — which often consist of the bare-bones lists of survivors and accomplishments — but deeply reported features in the tradition of Jim Sheeler, the late Rocky Mountain News writer whose short profiles cut straight to what made a person human.

That classroom assignment has now grown into something much bigger. The Obit Project is a 12-episode podcast that tells stories about the lives of real Montanans after they die. It’s co-hosted by Banville with Jad Abumrad, who founded the pioneering public radio podcast Radiolab. I love Abumrad (he created one of my favorite podcast portraits, Dolly Parton’s America), but I’m saving my breathlessness for Banville here, because the Obit Project idea comes from her long-running feature writing course at UM’s journalism school and her own expert background in audio storytelling.

Great idea, Jule Banville! And I’m sure you’ll get nothing but cooperation from our local authorities in telling these important death stories. I’m glad someone can make money and further their journalistic career telling these kind of narratives.

Thanks for reading!

After three years of dealing with Ryan Funke as Sheriff, Mineral County said NO THANK YOU and fired him on Tuesday from his Sheriff job. Since Ryan Funke and his opponent, Ben Banks, both identify as Republicans, the primary WAS the election and this was the result:

The article continues by describing how quickly Funke went litigious after taking over for Sheriff, Mike Toth. We will soon see this isn’t the first time Ryan Funke has used a lawsuit to get what he wants from a local government entity.

Before I get to the knife-wielding man with the literal street name “Demon”, let’s review how Ryan Funke sued the city of Polson after a deck at the Diamond Horseshoe Bar and Grill that he was partying on collapsed.

Plaintiff Ryan Funke, one of the 80 people injured, contended the city shared negligence because it was responsible for approving the deck’s construction and subsequent inspections.

Lawyers for the city argued it bore no responsibility for the collapse.

The city acknowledged that an anonymous caller telephoned the city’s building department about 14 hours before the collapse occurred, warning that the deck was not safe.

The caller gave no details, and the city said that without specific information, officials could not act on the anonymous tip, even if they would have had time to do so.

A jury awarded Funke nearly $684,000 in damages, apportioning 95 percent of the negligence to building owner Bert Shultz and 5 percent to the city.

This nice little payout for Funke must have given him a taste for aggressive litigation because, once elected to replace Mike Toth, Funke got to business going to legal war against the Mineral County Attorney’s Office on numerous fronts, starting with the Writ of Mandumus saga, and continuing with litigation aimed at stopping “Brady” disclosures.

Back in January, when Judge Vannatta ended the Mandamus charade, hearings continued to determine how much the lawyers would get paid. Lance Jasper, from the influential Jasper family in Mineral County, essentially bitched and moaned in his best legalese about what he was owed until someone started cutting him checks:

Vanetta ordered that Jasper be paid $62,215.36 beyond the $113,740 he received under the settlement terms. The judge said the fees were appropriate for Jasper’s continued monitoring and enforcement of the settlement terms. The fees included $5,000 for Jasper hiring an attorney to represent him when he was deposed by the county attorney in the case regarding whether the county attorney was required to turn over information regarding past allegations against Funke and Deputy Micah Allard. Vanetta had earlier decided that allegations against Allard regarding employment disputes with the former sheriff, which led to his firing, did not have to be disclosed to defendants.

Ongoing is the suit by Allard against the county commissioners, Attorney’s Office, and County Attorney Deb Jackson and her Deputy Wally Congdon, alleging the county’s refusal to rehire him as a deputy under Funke and for defaming him. Jackson and Congdon are sued individually, attempting to make them personally liable. The county disqualified Vanetta from the case, and it was assigned to Judge John Larson. Allard has moved to disqualify Larson.

This excerpt is confusing to me, and not just because the Mineral Independent author, Bruce Moats, can’t spell Vannatta’s name correctly. What’s confusing me is the report that Vannatta was “disqualified” from the subsequent Micah Allard case. Interesting.

Another interesting fact that might have relevance to the legal situation I’m in is the fact Judge Vannatta was, himself, running for reelection this cycle in the “non-partisan” judicial election in which he had no opponent.

When I wrote this post criticizing the signature-gathering effort to “keep the courts non-partisan” in Montana it’s because a covertly partisan judge, like Shane Vannatta, is a VERY DANGEROUS thing to behold.

Here’s a reminder of what Judge Vannatta was forced to do last fall in order to maintain the illusion of judicial integrity:

Missoula County District Court Judge Shane Vannatta recused himself from hearing a lawsuit over a bill that says there are only two sexes, but he noted the “facts” in a move to disqualify him are “exceedingly thin.”

In a Sept. 25 court filing, Vannatta said he would withdraw from jurisdiction of the case “in the interest of preserving the public’s confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary.”

The case from which he withdrew is Perkins vs. State of Montana, over House Bill 121.

HB 121 restricts access to public restrooms and other facilities based on an individual’s sex assigned at birth.

The plaintiffs, including transgender and intersex Montanans, argue the restrictions violate their rights to equal protection, privacy and ability to pursue life’s basic necessities.

Supporters argue the bill adds protection and safety for women.

After years of watching a highly political judge referee a legal charade, only to weigh in RIGHT AS THE ELECTION WAS HEATING UP, Mineral County voters stepped up and did what Shane Vannatta REFUSED TO DO–they took action by casting votes to protect women, men AND children from the dangerous and well-documented incompetence of Ryan Funke and his predecessor, Mike Toth, when it comes to running investigations into deaths and alleged crimes, which is also known as DOING THE FUCKING JOB.

If you’d like to review the evidence I’m using to make my non-legal case that voters did what Vannatta refused to do, exhibit A is a 14 minute video featuring Heather Boyes addressing Mineral County Commissioners:

And exhibit B is part of a comment, post-election, from the mother of Rebekah Barsotti, who is mentioned in the video clip above:

While the day might feel new in Mineral County, the problem of drugs and violence are certainly not, so I’d like to conclude today’s post with a little story about a guy named “Demon” who led local police on a “knife chase” from a casino near the homeless shelter a few days ago.

On May 29, 2026, at approximately 10:12 a.m., a Missoula Police Department officer was dispatched to the Magic Diamond Casino on W. Broadway Street for a report of an assault with a weapon. The reporting party, John Doe, told dispatch that a male he knew as Demon tried to stab him with a knife in the parking lot of the casino. Demon was later identified as 41-year-old Terrence Keplin.

The officer arrived on the scene and made contact with Doe, who reported that he had been traveling on foot when he noticed Keplin walking north on Burton Street. Keplin approached Doe and stated that Doe’s sister owed him money. Keplin then took a knife out of his waistband, started waving it at Doe, and demanded that Doe give him all of his stuff, or he was going to kill him. Doe described the knife as being a button-release switchblade with a black handle and a blade approximately six inches long.

When he saw Keplin had a knife, Doe started “booking it” towards the casino. Keplin started following Doe down the sidewalk and then into the casino. Once inside the casino, Keplin continued to follow Doe until an employee intervened by physically stepping in between them. Keplin then left the casino.

Since mugshots are no longer publicly shared by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, I decided to see if Demon has a Facebook page. Here’s what I found:

While some might find Terrence Keplin’s mean-looking mug on FB to be cause for concern, more concerning to me is the fact that I recognized someone on his “friends” page (a woman) who used to work at the Poverello Center. This is the side of drug culture our Homeless Industrial Complex doesn’t want you to see, but it’s the world judges and Sheriffs are DEEPLY enmeshed in.

I hope the Funke clique (some might say gang) gives the new Sheriff in town a chance to acclimate to the possibility that the main job at hand will now get the focus it deserves, because that’s clearly what the voters want.

Thanks for reading!