- I have never been involved with such a bizarre case
in my entire career.
- My gut's telling me something's not gonna
turn out well here.
- It was very confusing to me
why somebody would come to Fargo, North Dakota
and start living their life
as if they are somebody else who is still alive.
- His motive was not to get caught,
and he needed to do something to fix that.
- And that's when the whole lie came crashing down.
- Oh, God, it was awful. It was just awful.
- This was no longer just an identity theft
and an embezzlement case.
This had turned into a murder investigation.
- He lived a lie, and he was successful at it
until he wasn't.
- I never could have expected that he would murder someone.
[pensive instrumental music]
[dramatic music]
- Tim Wicks was a housepainter, so he kind of freelanced.
He would take on painting jobs around the neighborhood.
He just kind of did it whenever the spirit moved him,
whenever he needed money.
- Tim Wicks was a real good friend of mine.
I had met him a long time ago, back in 1979.
And Tim was a real laid-back type guy.
He didn't have any kind of a real temper
or anything like that.
A real easy-going type person,
real easy to get along with.
The main thing that Tim wanted to do with his life,
and, really the only thing
that he wanted to do with his life, was play music.
- He enjoyed drumming, and he actually attended
Berklee College of Music
and was a particularly gifted musician.
[solemn music]
Dennis Gaede would do your taxes for $25.
So Tim Wicks saw this ad, goes to see Dennis Gaede.
And as they get to know each other,
they discover that they're both drummers.
Dennis wasn't very good at it, but he was very enthusiastic.
They become friends and they decide
that they're gonna do some drumming together,
go to open mic nights, things like that.
Dennis was working as an accountant,
and he was renting space in the lower level
of an apartment building.
- My mother Diane Fruge was a property manager,
and he showed up at our door for an appointment.
So he came, knocked on the door,
and he was just huge.
And he said he was here to rent a unit,
and from that point on, she fell in love with him.
Dennis was very funny. He was a great storyteller.
He loved to cook.
[somber music]
She was a single mom.
She worked very hard to provide for us.
She always tried her best
to be there for me and my brother.
- When he asked her out for the first time,
she said, "Oh, I can't go.
I've got my kids with me tonight."
And he said, "Well, bring them along."
And so he took the whole family out
to their favorite restaurant
and kind of really impressed her that he... yes,
he was this big, burly guy,
but he was just a big teddy bear
and just swept her off her feet.
- He believed in respecting women.
She hadn't seen that since my father.
- Diane needed a good relationship,
needed someone to save her,
kind of needed somebody to take care of her,
and just needed a good man.
[tense music]
When Diane met Dennis and fell in love with him,
she was not aware of his past.
And in fact, it was not until after they were married
he told her he had been charged with some felonies,
and he had a trial coming up.
He got convicted,
and they let him out on bail pending sentencing.
And that is when the family all high-tailed it for Fargo.
- Tim had called me on the telephone
in December of 2001 to let me know that he had
a job offer in Canada
working as a musician at a bar up in Manitoba... Winnipeg.
Tim was pretty excited about it.
I had not known who he was going up there with,
or who he'd be staying with,
except for the friend that was doing his taxes.
I thought that maybe somewhere down the road
Tim would give me a call to see how things were going
up there, but never did.
[dramatic music]
- January 15th of 2002,
here in this room, here in my office,
friends of Tim Wicks came into our department
and reported him as a missing person.
Got a physical description of Tim.
Tim was in his 40s, and he's, like, 5'8"-ish,
medium build, maybe 150, 160 pounds,
white hair, just average.
Tim was friendly to everybody.
Tim didn't have any enemies.
He... they really had nobody
I could really reach out to or suspect anything was wrong.
I asked his friends when was the last time
they heard from him or saw him,
and they said it was right at Christmastime.
Now it's over two weeks later
that they haven't heard anything from him.
It was unusual for him to not stay in contact.
That's why they were being so concerned.
So I thought, "Okay."
I figured it'd take a couple hours,
and I'd find Tim and it'd be done.
First thing I did is I went over to his apartment,
talked to his apartment manager,
and he had paid up his rent through January.
And she did say that "He did give me a note.
"If you do need to get ahold of me, here's a number.
I'm with my friend Dennis."
And so she turned that note over to me,
and so now I at least had a lead.
I made a phone call to this Dennis.
And I said, "Yeah, I'm looking for Tim Wicks,"
and he says, "I don't know any Tim Wicks,
and there's no Tim Wicks here."
Said, "Okay.
Well, just so I know, who am I talking to?"
And he said, "Dennis,"
and I said, "Well, what's your last name?"
There was this pause.
"Um... Johnson."
Well, cop instinct in me, you know,
we're skeptical people.
I'm going like, "Okay,
this guy's lying to me, I think."
I asked "Where do you live?"
And he gave me an address in Bismarck, North Dakota,
so I called Bismarck PD.
And I said, "Hey, I'm looking for this guy,
"Dennis Johnson.
Could you do some checking?"
And they said, "Yeah,
"we don't have a Dennis Johnson
"and that address is not a Bismarck address
"and that phone exchange
actually is Fargo not Bismarck."
I'm starting to think things are not adding up here.
This needs more work.
And I decided to go back to Tim's apartment
and take a look.
His clothes were still there,
there was still food in the refrigerator,
his toilet articles were still in the bathroom.
It looked like somebody just went on vacation
and had every intention coming back.
And then remembered that one of his friends
mentioned that Tim went to Canada to play drums
with his accountant friend,
and I come across his tax returns for 2000.
And at the bottom of the tax return,
it says that it was prepared by Lotus Financial Services
and Dennis Gaede.
I ran a check on Dennis Gaede
and turns out that Dennis Gaede is wanted.
He's got warrants for his arrest
for a child support case
and also for an escape
from Monroe County, which is a smaller county
in west-central Wisconsin.
Well, as I'm digging into this more,
I'm thinking "Dennis Gaede.
"Got this Dennis Johnson character on the phone
who paused with 'Johnson, ' so I know he was lying."
At this point in time, I was under the belief
that Dennis Johnson was truly Dennis Gaede
and that there's some lying going on.
There's deceit going on.
I'm feeling there's more to the story.
I called Fargo PD and asked to talk
to one of their detectives, and they gave me a detective
by the name of Tammy Lynk.
- I was sitting at my desk,
and I received a phone call
from Hales Corner Police Department in Wisconsin.
Detective Schoonover was asking me questions
related to a missing person's case that he was working on.
- "Do you have anything on a Dennis Gaede?"
"No, we got nothing on a Dennis Gaede."
"How about Tim Wicks?"
"Have you heard the name Timothy Wicks?"
- He identified his missing person as Timothy Wicks,
which I found very surprising,
because Timothy Wicks wasn't missing
as far as I was concerned.
He was my suspect in an embezzlement case.
[ominous music]
- I'm going, "Okay, back the truck up here.
What do you mean?"
Says, "Yeah, Timothy Wicks up here
"has been working for a company
and he's been embezzling from the company."
- One of the owners of the company
took a photograph of Timothy Wicks.
That photograph was ultimately presented to us
at the police department
to help identify the individual.
Picture indicated that Timothy Wicks
was a white male, balding, large build,
overweight, wearing glasses.
- I said, "Okay, you don't have Tim Wicks.
You have Dennis Gaede."
- We were specifically looking
for any blood evidence.
The entire floor luminesced.
- I just remember the hair
on the back of my neck standing up.
- "We found this torso.
Well, it's missing the hands and the head."
- Who was this person?
[pensive instrumental music]
- Timothy Wicks wasn't missing as far as I was concerned.
He was my suspect in an embezzlement case.
- "You don't have Tim Wicks. You have Dennis Gaede."
- It was a very strange phone call,
and it certainly put a whole new perspective
on this case,
and didn't know if there was something
much more sinister taking place.
- Tim's been missing for a number of weeks.
Missing is out of character for him.
This Dennis Gaede is a wanted person
with a criminal record.
He's tied in with Tim somehow.
I feel that I have enough probable cause
at this point in time to believe that
Tim is endangered in one way or another.
A few days later, we're in the station.
You know, we're talking.
And one of the officers says,
"You know, Michigan's got
that John Doe body that they found."
So I placed a call to Michigan State Police.
Says, "Yeah, we found this torso.
"It was found by a survey crew on the river
between Michigan and Wisconsin."
I said, "Okay, what do you got?"
"Well, it's missing the hands and the head."
[suspenseful music]
- I heard about a story
with a mysterious headless, handless body.
Who was this person?
- A couple weeks later, the same survey team,
they were working 35 miles upstream on the same river,
and they found a head.
The body was cut up, but the saw marks matched up.
We know that dental records are gonna be the key
to identifying this dead body, this John Doe in Michigan.
And if it's Tim Wicks,
I need Tim's dental records to say is this Tim
or is this not Tim?
Well, I'm thinking to myself,
"I got so many dentists in metro Milwaukee.
"I got hundreds, even thousands of dentists.
"Where do I start?
"Do I start in the phonebook,
and start calling each one of 'em?"
So we decided to go back in Tim's apartment.
And looking around, see if there's anything else,
maybe get an idea, a bill, something.
And there on the refrigerator was a dental appointment
reminder card from Tim's dentist.
Now all I need is his x-rays,
and then we can match it up to the teeth and the skull
that was found in Michigan.
[dramatic music]
I took the x-rays downtown to the forensics orthodontist.
He holds 'em up to the light and says,
"Yep, that's him."
[tense music]
- After receiving the photographs
from Detective Schoonover and realizing
that the person portraying himself as Timothy Wicks
was really Dennis Gaede,
I had to go about proving my case.
I had learned that Dennis Gaede had a wife,
Diane, and that she was with him in the Fargo area.
- Dennis told Diane that Tim Wicks had allowed him
to use his identity in Fargo
so that the cops from Wisconsin
wouldn't come back and take him to prison.
So Diane said, "Okay. I'll call you 'Tim Wicks'."
But she refused to be called "Diane Wicks."
[phone rings]
- I did receive a phone call one time,
and on the caller ID, it said "Timothy Wicks."
It raised suspicion, but I asked my mother.
Diane said, "It's just the previous owner
whose name is popping up on your caller ID."
So I took her word for it. "Okay.
Yes, ma'am."
- Dennis was fully living in North Dakota
as Tim Wicks.
- I started to put together a affidavit
for a search warrant so that I could
go to the Dennis Gaede home
and search for evidence related to the embezzlement.
[foreboding music]
While on site starting that search warrant,
I received a phone call that changed
this entire investigation.
- I wanted to get ahold of her right away
to let her know that Tim's been murdered,
frozen, and dismembered.
- It was an unbelievable surprise and a shock.
I just remember
the hair on the back of my neck standing up
and the color apparently drained from my face.
This was no longer just an identity theft
and an embezzlement case.
This had turned into a murder investigation.
[pensive instrumental music]
[tense music]
- I received a phone call that
just moments earlier, medical examiners verified
that a body recovered earlier in the month
had been confirmed to be Timothy Wicks.
This had turned into a murder investigation.
So I worked on amending the warrant
to now include evidence of a murder.
[menacing music]
- The residence,
it looked like it had been abandoned.
Most of the property had been taken out of it,
but it was pretty clear nobody was living there anymore.
[domineering music]
We were specifically looking for any blood evidence
or anything related to the possible homicide case.
I performed what is called a luminol test.
We basically mix up a chemical, which is luminol.
And what that does,
it reacts with the iron
in the hemoglobin of the blood,
so you can find trace evidence of blood using that substance.
We sprayed the entire residence down.
In the kitchen area was the only real significant area
that we found anything.
It was something I had never seen before.
The whole kitchen floor just luminesced.
We did not find any blood evidence,
but luminol also reacts to some bleach agents,
which are cleaning products.
It almost appeared to me
that they used straight bleach on the floor.
I've never seen a reaction like this one.
So we searched the surrounding outbuildings
and while searching outside,
there appeared to be dig marks in the dirt.
- Our belief is that it looked like
someone tried to dig a hole with a backhoe
to bury the body.
- Based on the apparent attempt to dig
in the frozen ground, and the extensive bleach
in the kitchen, the natural conclusion was,
Dennis Gaede was cleaning up and trying to hide something.
- That certainly made us consider the possibility
that the murder happened right there in that residence.
[solemn music]
- The way investigations go
is you get bits and pieces, and it's a puzzle.
You try to put the pieces together.
Sometimes they fit, sometimes they don't fit,
but eventually, you end up with a full picture.
We decided, "Let's get some more information
about Tim's car."
When I called the dealership
where Time purchased his car,
they said, "Hey, we have Tim's car here."
And I'm like, "What do you mean you have Tim's car here?"
He said, "This lady came in, dropped the keys off,
"said, 'We can't afford the car anymore, '
"went out the other door,
didn't leave a name or anything."
They didn't see anybody with her.
She just got into another car,
and they drove off.
So I thought, "Okay, talk to the salesman,"
and I said, "Can you identify
the lady that did this?"
He says, "Yeah, I could."
So I called a forensics artist,
and he came up and he did a composite.
[dramatic music]
And it was a composite of Diane Gaede.
At this point in time, this case was moving rapidly.
We're talking just a matter of a week or two
that all this was falling into place...
Tim being reported as missing, Tim's body being identified,
Tim's car being recovered.
At this point in time too,
we're looking at more of Tim's past,
more of Tim's life.
And I come across Tim's bank accounts.
We made contact with his bank, and they say,
"Yeah, his account's been emptied."
It turns out that Tim had a savings account,
and he also had a CD.
And the bank had records of a person
identifying himself as Tim Wicks
making a phone call to the bank
telling them to cash out the CD
and put the money into the savings account.
And they said, "Okay."
Well, they asked some security questions:
"What's your mother's maiden name?"
Dennis had all that information on Tim.
Dennis is the one that made that phone call.
[ominous music]
- Timothy Wicks had used Dennis Gaede
as a tax preparer.
So, as you know, when you file taxes,
all your information is with that taxman.
He took out, I believe, $1,500,
and then later took out $15,000.
With that money, they bought a motorhome
to make their escape.
- So now we're looking for a motorhome.
We go through the phonebook.
We start calling RV dealerships.
First one we call is the one they bought it from.
So a lucky break there.
Came up with the license plate number
with current registration on it.
We could enter that into NCIC as a wanted vehicle.
- Rather than cutting off the credit card
and shutting it down, we left it open
hoping that we could track them.
- Credit card transactions pop up in Minnesota,
in Wisconsin, in Ohio, just travelling around,
but we're not really sure where they're going.
What we feel is, Dennis killed Tim.
Why did Dennis kill Tim?
When did Dennis actually kill Tim?
There is no hard evidence against Dennis,
except for the identity theft to Tim.
I did get Dennis charged for stealing
all of Tim's money.
[suspenseful music]
I can charge Diane with interference
of custody of a child,
which is a felony in this state.
That way when Dennis and Diane are found,
we can arrest Diane and hold her
until we can question her.
That was the plan.
We have a manhunt going on now for Dennis.
Diane's son Josh, he's three years old,
he's with his mom.
She's with Dennis.
We do have some concerns about his safety
and frankly, I have concerns about Diane's safety.
When he gets cornered, is he gonna kill Diane?
Is he gonna kill Josh, gonna kill himself?
Is he gonna try to kill cops?
We don't know. We don't know what to expect.
We are preparing for the worst.
- I was in a state of worry.
I didn't know what happened to my mom and my brother.
- We can still get justice. We can solve this case.
[pensive instrumental music]
- For three months,
we're looking for Dennis and Diane.
We know they're on the run.
We just don't know where they are.
[tense music]
Dennis was the target, not Diane necessarily.
And we have not been able to get anybody
to charge the homicide.
It's not from the lack of trying.
I was really pursuing that.
I was pushing hard to get that charge,
but there really is no hard, absolute evidence
The FBI in Fargo has now been brought
into the case to assist and get subpoenas
for phone records,
credit card transaction records,
things of that nature, which will assist us
in trying to locate Dennis and Diane.
- We know that he spent time in Michigan,
he spent time in Wisconsin, and then eventually
he fled the area.
[suspenseful music]
After January 7th, 2002,
when employers of Compressed Air Technology
took that photograph of the person we now know
to be Dennis Gaede, he left for lunch
and never returned.
And from that point forward,
he was on the run.
- I was in a state of worry for almost three months.
They were on the run. I had no contact.
My mother never contacted me.
I was very confused. I was mortified.
I mean, this was my mom and my brother,
and they are missing and there's a murder involved.
I didn't know what happened to my mom and my brother.
[pensive instrumental music]
- Then all of a sudden we get a hit.
The motorhome was found, a cop ran the plates,
came up with a hit.
We found them.
The plan was that they were gonna
utilize a SWAT team to take Dennis down.
[sinister music]
But Dennis spotted one of the squad cars
and surrendered.
Just came out, threw his hands up,
and said, "I give up," which was good,
because Diane and Josh were now safe.
They weren't injured.
That was a good thing.
- I did hear. It was on the news.
No one called and told me.
"Dennis and Diane Gaede found in Lincoln, Nebraska."
I honestly was relieved that my mom was alive.
[tense music]
- There's been missed court appearances by Diane.
There's also been some missed exchanges
of the child between the two of them.
- Dennis Gaede had stolen
from his employer, embezzled.
And he had also filed false insurance information
as the identity he had adopted, Timothy Wicks.
[gavel pounds]
- Dennis Gaede got approximately
four years imprisonment on those embezzlement
and false identity charges.
We also knew that Timothy Wicks had died
and that Dennis Gaede had assumed his identity
before Timothy Wicks died.
So we liked him for the murder of Timothy Wicks,
but, of course, you need the evidence to prove it.
- Dennis Gaede was locked up for four years,
and so we had time.
We had time to try to build the best case
we possibly could related to the murder.
- At that time, we wanted
to try and speak with Dennis Gaede
about the murder.
- Dennis would not confess to the homicide, obviously.
[tense music]
Diane is in my jail down here in Milwaukee.
I go visit her every other day,
building the rapport that I need to have with her,
because my gut's telling me she's the key to this.
The problem that Diane had is
she was madly in love with Dennis.
I'm telling her, "Dennis is gonna put it
"all on you.
"He's gonna sell you out.
He's gonna throw you under the bus."
She was believing me. She was understanding.
Next day or so she'd get a letter from Dennis.
Dennis would badmouth me,
tell her that I'm lying to her and everything else.
Next time I go see Diane,
I have to start from square one.
Then all of the sudden
she told me Tim was sexually assaulting her.
She was able to get a gun,
and she shot him in self-defense.
I knew that was a lie.
Tim was nowhere near a rapist,
nowhere near the personality.
It just would not have ever happened.
And Diane was bigger than Tim
and could basically take him and throw him across the room.
Okay?
She would not have to shoot him
to fight him off,
and he would never do that in the first place.
So I knew that was a lie.
- You're left wondering why anybody would confess
to a murder they did not commit.
In the end, my thought on that was love.
He convinced her that if she confessed,
that she either would not get sentenced
if she came up with a story of why it was self-defense,
or that if she was convicted that she would serve
a short period of time.
- Diane thought when she got out,
Dennis would be there, and they could have
this wonderful life that they always wanted still.
Despite everything that had happened.
- I felt for Diane,
but I still knew that she was the key
to this case.
If I'm gonna get Dennis,
I'm gonna get him through Diane.
So then we decided,
"Let's do a forensics interview with Joshua."
Diane's son Joshua has now been in therapy
for a while.
He's been telling his therapist things.
So we set it up.
She shows him a picture of Diane.
Says, "Who's this?"
"Well, that's a picture of my mom Diane."
- "Okay."
Shows a picture of Dennis. "Who's this?"
"Oh, that's my daddy Dennis." "Okay."
Show him a picture of Tim.
"Oh, that's my friend Tim.
He was teaching me how to play drums."
"Oh, good.
What else can you tell me about Tim?"
He said, "Daddy Dennis shot him."
Diane told me that Dennis hung up the phone,
he turned to her and he said, "Tim's gotta die."
- His motive was not to get caught.
[pensive instrumental music]
[tense music]
- He said, "Daddy Dennis shot him."
Just pure and simple.
Innocent little four-year-old boy,
he just says it the way it is.
That testimony is not admissible in court,
but at least he confirms what we were believing.
So I take the information that Joshua gave us
in that interview as I keep continuing talking to Diane.
There is no hard evidence against Dennis Gaede.
It's circumstantial.
Until we have that direct testimony,
we're not gonna have a good case.
So, after Diane was released from jail,
I continue to go see her.
I would go down and visit her, sit down on her porch,
just talk, see how she's doing,
keep continuing building that rapport.
And that went on for a couple years.
[dramatic music]
It was during these couple years
of me talking to her,
convincing her that Dennis was evil
and he was gonna use her and sell her out,
finally convinced her that she needed
to get rid of Dennis,
and I finally got the answer
that I'd been hoping for.
She was gonna tell me everything.
The FBI came down here,
and we conducted an interview on video with Diane
here in this room.
She didn't waver on anything.
It was consistent without any coaching,
so we knew it was the truth.
Do you ask him why he did it?
What does he say?
- Because...
- Diane told me that Dennis was the bad guy.
Diane did play a role,
but Dennis was the evil one here.
- Dennis Gaede had fled from justice in Wisconsin,
and he was hiding out in North Dakota
under somebody else's name
so that that justice wouldn't catch up with him.
- Diane told me that around December 23rd of 2001,
Tim calls Dennis.
Tim was buying a house
for the first time, and when they were doing
the mortgage information,
he found that he already owned a house in North Dakota.
- Timothy Wicks determined
that somebody had stolen his identity
and asked his friend Dennis Gaede
what to do about it.
Gaede then understood that his gig was somehow up,
and he needed to do something to fix that.
- At the end of that phone conversation,
Diane told me that Dennis hung up the phone,
he turned to her and he said, "Tim's gotta die."
- In the end, Gaede did not wanna go back to Wisconsin
and into the Wisconsin penal system.
His motive was not to get caught.
- And over the next couple of days,
Dennis talked to Tim, concocted that story
about playing drums for a band up in Winnipeg.
It was Tim's dream all along, and Dennis knew that,
so he knew that would be an easy sell.
So then on December 26th, Dennis came down to Milwaukee,
got together with Tim, loaded up his drums,
and they drove back to Fargo.
On December 28th, Dennis and Tim were sitting
around the kitchen table drinking, laughing,
smoking marijuana, having a good time.
- Diane did not smoke pot,
and she didn't want Joshua exposed to it.
[gunshot cracks]
- She comes downstairs,
and there's Tim lying on the kitchen floor.
- Gunshot wound to the head, but he's still alive.
[suspenseful music]
- Next, she helps Dennis drag Tim's body
out to the shed and put him out there to freeze.
- They use bleach, scrub the kitchen up and down,
get it all cleaned up,
eliminating all the physical evidence.
Dennis then comes up with a bright idea.
"Get a backhoe, we'll bury the body."
Well, it doesn't take any rocket science
to figure that one out.
You can't dig a hole in North Dakota in December.
- It seemed obvious to us that he was hoping
to bury the body,
but he couldn't get into the ground.
- Then he comes up with the idea,
"Let's take Tim and go to my dad's place
"up in the upper UP of Michigan.
"There's an old cistern on the property.
"We'll cut up the body, we'll put it in the cistern,
we'll burn it, nobody will ever find it."
She and Joshua get in the front
of the truck with Dennis.
They drive from Fargo to get up to the cabin.
Dennis can't find the cistern.
Now he doesn't know what to do.
So they start driving to Milwaukee.
They get to the bridge that crosses the river
between Wisconsin and the upper UP.
Dennis stops the truck.
"Let's do it here."
So then how did you dispose of the body?
You just pulled over...
- Diane and Joshua stayed in the front,
Dennis went in the back, and they could hear banging
as he was dismembering Tim's body.
[saw buzzing]
She tried to keep Joshua calm and just said,
"Daddy's got some work to do.
It's okay."
- She helps him throw the torso over the bridge,
and they miss the water.
Well, Dennis is just too lazy
to go down and push it in, so they just leave it.
- You were full of blood?
- From what?
- Diane doesn't tell me how the head ends up
35 miles upriver.
She never told me that.
After they dumped the body,
they get back in the truck, they drive down to Milwaukee,
steal Tim's money, buy the motorhome.
[pensive instrumental music]
[tense music]
- Do you ask him why he did it?
- They end up in Nebraska on their to Canada.
Obviously not a good sense of direction,
but that's where they get caught.
[somber music]
- We felt we had all the evidence.
We then charged Dennis Gaede
with the murder of Timothy Wicks.
That case, it went to trial
the first week in April in 2006.
- The trial was scheduled for two weeks.
It happened in a week.
Diane's testimony was a huge part of the case.
She held it together. She was truthful.
Diane was never offered immunity from prosecution.
It would have been fear that we wouldn't be able
to get Dennis if we charged Diane.
I needed Diane as a witness more than a suspect.
- Diane decided to testify for two reasons.
One was she really wanted Dennis Gaede to go away
for this crime so that
she would be protected from him.
And she knew that her testimony
was basically the strongest piece of evidence
that they had that he had killed Timothy Wicks.
She also, at that point,
felt that it was very important
to tell the truth, to do the right thing,
to be an example for her kids,
that even if you make mistakes in life,
even if you associate with the wrong people,
you can do the right thing in the end.
- The man standing before you is not a monster.
However, the real one still does roam the countryside.
- The jury deliberated for about 3 1/2 or 4 hours
on this case.
And then they came back, and they told us
that Dennis Gaede was guilty.
That's a good moment, because that's the start
of justice being visited upon somebody
who's committed a terrible act.
When we got to the sentencing hearing,
we made an argument as to why this case
on these facts warranted the most strong sentence
North Dakota has to offer,
which is life without the possibility of parole.
The court imposed that sentence.
- This was a case of pure premeditated murder
as cold and as calculated as one will ever find.
- I think it was the right sentence.
- At first, Diane was genuinely in love
with Dennis Gaede.
She thought he was gonna take her away
from all her problems, he was gonna protect her,
he was gonna be the kind of man she had always wanted.
Later, I think she was afraid to let go of that dream.
So even after Dennis committed this crime
and was doing all these things
that were not part of the white picket fence life
that he had promised her,
she still wanted it to be true so badly.
But by then she had realized it was all a deception.
It was all a lie.
- I did have positive feelings towards my step-father
until he ripped my family apart,
and it was all for lies and deception.
He used us, and once that was clear,
that bond was broken.
I just wish that none of it would have ever happened,
'cause I feel like our lives would be way different.
But unfortunately, we were deprived
of that opportunity.
- Dennis Gaede at his core was a liar.
He lived a lie.
He built his identity here in North Dakota
as a liar, and he was successful at it
until he wasn't.
- Really what the saddest part is
Tim did not have to die.
Dennis could have gotten away with identity theft.
Tim is just too nice, and Dennis was just evil,
and took advantage of a super nice guy
and then took his life.
And that's not fair. It's just not right.
- For more information, go to Oxygen.com.