Jury to Hear How
O'Kasicks Met Death

The rapidly moving first-degree murder trial, of James O'Kasick entered its "Anoka phase" today. County attorney George M. Scott called witnesses to depict for a jury the end of the month-long blood and death trail f the O'Kasick brothers at the Carlos Avery game farm.
James Sampson, Anoka deputy sheriff, still wearing a cast over a bullet wound in his right ankle, testified that he was shot by Roger O'Kasick after, the three brothers had been halted on Crooked lake road.
He testified that Ronald O'Kasick had been picked up a short distance down the road when he was carrying a gasoline can.
Sampson and his partner Vernon Gottwald, suspicious of the man (later identified as Ronald) because he acted nervous.
Upon reaching the O'Kasick's car, he testified, the two deputies ordered the man in the front seat, the only one they could see in the car, to come out with his hands up.
The occupant rolled out of the front side firing his gun. Sampson testified. The officer said he was struck in the ankle and his partner ran for help when they ran out of ammunition.
During this time, Sampson testified, Roger O'Kasick opened the door of the squad car and helped Ronald who car and helped Ronald, who was wearing handcuffs, out of the back seat. He said he saw three men running across the field after this.
Gottwald, in his testimony, asserted that he had fired at a third man in the back seat of the O'Kasick car.
Under cross-examination, both witnesses said that the man that later was identified as James O'Kasick was not the bandit who had fired at them.
The two deputies were followed to the stand by Detective Inspector Charles Wetherille, Minneapolis, who recounted the police investigation, which followed the shooting of Patrolman Robert Fossum and his partner, Ward Canfield.
Ten witnesses, including Anoka deputy sheriffs and Minnesota highway patrolmen, were on hand to testify as, the third day of the trial opened before Judge Rolf Fosseen.
James O'Kasick, 20, was captured in the game farm. He shot himself in the chest following the shooting of his brothers Roger and Ronald who had killed Eugene Lindgren, Anoka resident they had taken as hostage.
First positive identification of James O'Kasick linking him to the Aug. 17 slaying of Fossum and the wounding of Canfield was made in a court Wednesday.
It came from eyewitnesses to the gun battle between the O'Kasicks and the two police officers at Thirty-ninth streets between Blaisdell and Nicollet avenues.
In addition, a Bloomington housewife described a "35 minute eternity" while she was held captive by the three brothers as they fled from the scene.
Mrs. Velma Anderson, 9448 Clinton Avenue, said she and her husband were forced to the curb as they were driving on First Avenue S. shortly after the gun battle.
One of the men (identified later as Roger) said to My husband, 'Get the hell out of here and get out fast,"' Mrs. Anderson said.
Then he said, �You�re going along, sister,' and he grabbed my arm and pushed me back into the car."
She testified that James O'Kasick was the driver of the car and that she had to tell him where the starter on their 1950 Buick was located.
The man she identified as Roger-"the blond one"-sat beside her in the front seat and held a pistol at her temple.
He was very nervous and kept hitting me on the head with it," she said.
During their drive she was told to shut her eyes. On one occasion, one of the men tried to blindfold her, but could not tie it tight enough so that it would stay on. She offered to cover her own eyes with her hands.
Although the man in the back seat held his hands over her ears, Mrs. Anderson said, she could still hear part of the men's conversation.
Once, Roger said, "Think, think, think," to his brothers as they were driving.
"The blond one then yelled, 'Jim, our car on Forty-second,"' Mrs. Anderson said, recounting that after this outburst Roger pushed her head down under the dash.
"We seemed to stop on an incline and sat there," she continued. "It seemed like an eternity. Then we drove on and stopped in an alley. We got out. I thought they were trying to do away with me.
They changed cars, Mrs. Anderson said, and drove on and stopped in another alley. This time, she said, they told her to march over by a nearby garage and stand there 15 minutes "or we'll kill you."
During the drive, she had pleaded with them not to harm her, as she had two children, Mrs. Anderson said.
Her final words to the brothers were to thank them for not harming her, Mrs. Anderson said.
She said she visited the mortuary where the bodies of Roger and Ronald were taken and that she identified them as the two men who had been with James. At the time she was held as a hostage, she said, she did not know they were brothers.
Mrs. Anderson's husband, Alvin, described how he was forced to pull his car to the curb at gunpoint.
Philip J. Moore, 3912 Van Nest Avenue, who witnessed the gun battle, identified James O'Kasick as the man who shot Canfield. Moore said he saw Fossum fall to the ground, but was not able to see who had fired.

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When she hesitated, one of the men grabbed her arm and pulled her from behind the wheel. She identified the man as James O'Kasick.
Although she didn't see the other two men as clearly as James, Miss Langford said, they all were wearing gloves.
John B. Borgeson, Jr., 3201 Thirtieth avenue S., an internal revenue agent, followed the three men as they drove Miss Langford's car out of the station. He called police when the three men abandoned the car in the middle of the street near Park Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street.

James M. O'Kasick, 20, said Thursday he and his two brothers "never had no intention at all of shooting anyone" the night they killed one policeman and critically wounded another in a street gun battle.
"It was just as much of a nightmare to us as it was to anybody else involved," he said as he told a Hennepin county district court jury of the brothers� activities from the night of the shooting to the night his brother, Ronald, died in his arms a month later when they were apprehended.
O'Kasick denied he saw Patrolman Robert Fossum, for whose death he is charged with first degree murder, but admitted he shot Fossum's partner, Ward Canfield, as Canfield "came at me swinging a rifle."
James' brother Roger shot Fossum, James testified.
O'Kasick took the witness stand in his own defense in Hennepin county district court, as his attorney, Lewis E, (Scoop) Lohmann, public defender, sought to cut down the first degree murder charge against the youth.
TESTIMONY was concluded yesterday, and the case is expected to go to the jury today.
The state pounded away at its contention that O'Kasick is guilty because he aided and abetted his brothers in Fossum's slaying, and that there was premeditated intent to kill. Premeditation is a necessary element in a first-degree murder charge.
O'Kasick admitted his part in the shooting and described events from the time the brothers prepared to rob a Red Owl store. Aug. 17 until they were captured in another gunfight on the Carlos Avery game farm in Anoka county Sept. 14. ,
O'Kasick's brothers, Roger, 26, and Ronald, 24, were killed by police bullets that day, and James turned a gun on himself. He was in General hospital until about two weeks ago, and still has a serious heart condition from his injuries, doctors said.
"Roger got hit first and then my brother Ronald did," O'Kasick testified yesterday.
"I RAN to him and he died as I was holding him.
"I ran a little further and waited, and prayed, and then I shot myself. I held the gun for the heart but I hit just off the sidle of the heart."
O'Kasick, wearing dark slacks, a gray sport coat and blue shirt open at the neck, spoke quietly, almost indistinguishably at times, through 50 minutes of direct testimony and the ensuing cross-examination by Bruce C. Stone, assistant county attorney.
HE WAS the only defense witness called.
The slim, 5-foot, 5 1/2inch youth, a veteran of three years in the Marine Corps, sat with his eyes downcast and his hands folded during most of the three-day trial.
He scarcely glanced at jurors, witnesses or spectators, and showed animation only when conferring in whispers with his attorneys.
His father, Michael, 58, who is on parole from Stillwater prison, and an older brother, Richard,
spoke to James several times as he sat alone during court recesses, a deputy sheriff nearby at all times.
YESTERDAY the Rev. Leo B. Vetvick, Protestant court chaplain, who has visited O'Kasick in his county jail cell each morning during the trial, also was in court and spoke with the youth briefly during a recess.
The fourth-floor courtroom has been filled each day, with a deputy sheriff holding back crowds in the corridor.
Yesterday the jury heard O'Kasick tell this version of what happened from the Aug. 17 shooting to the Sept. 14 capture:
The brothers planned to rob the Red Owl store at Twenty-fourth Street and Nicollet Avenue in order to "straighten up family indebtedness
THEY "CASED" the store a few days before Aug 17, bought four steel armor plates at a junkyard to use as shields and a pound of 11/2-inch roofing nails to throw in the path of any pursuing police. Then they stole a white Chrysler from a parking lot at tenth street and LaSalle Avenue.
Roger had had guns, James said, and gave him a .300 caliber Savage rifle and a .45 pistol for the back seat.
Fossum and Canfield began pursuing the stolen car before the robbery, James said, and "something splattered the (O'Kasicks') back window."
Roger fired a shot out the front window and told James to aim his rifle at the police car's tires, James said.
James repeatedly emphasized that his intent was only to hit the tires of the pursuing car.
HE EMPTIED five or six rifle Shots at it, he said. Two struck the car, it was found later, the rest apparently going wild.
Then the brothers' car struck another automobile, the squad car careened to a halt, and the shooting began. Fossum was killed by a shot in the head from close range, and Canfield critically injured by a bullet wound and from being run over and dragged about 20 feet by the fugitives' car.
"I didn't know we had ran over Canfield with the car until we heard it on the radio that night," James said, "We didn't intend to kill him. We didn't intend to kill anybody."
After fleeing, in two stolen cars and letting an abducted woman go the brothers went home, James said, and listened to news of the shooting on the radio that Saturday night.
SUNDAY they made their plans, and at 7:30 a.m. Monday, Aug. 19, they drove to Superior National forest in northern Minnesota, James said.
They lived in the woods eight days there, sleeping in Ronald's car or on the ground, going out one at a time to buy groceries, and listening to news of the case on the car radio, James Said.
Aug. 26 they drove south and found a deserted spot in a swampy area near Forest-Lake. It was there they were surrounded by some 300 law enforcement officials after two Anoka county deputy sheriffs picked up Ronald as he walked along a road with a gas can, and a gunfight ensued.

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