FARGO — From behind a podium at the Fargo Police Department, Chief David Todd chose his words carefully for a room full of inquisitive journalists. Behind him, Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick and James Cheney, a Catholic priest and director of the St. Paul’s Newman Center stood, heads bowed.
“A good young man unknowingly opened his door to a monster,” said Todd, breathing suburban nightmares to life. He was referring to the 2015 double-murder case of 24-year-old Samuel Traut, a Bible study leader who was killed with a hammer minutes after a killer knocked on his back door and asked for a glass of water.
Unbeknown to Traut at the time, about seven hours earlier, the “monster,” Ashley Kenneth Hunter, had already stabbed to death his first victim, 48-year-old Clarence Flowers, just a few blocks away. Hunter stabbed Flowers 77 times, severing his spine, over disputes about methamphetamine and girlfriends, according to police records obtained by Forum News Service.
What drove Hunter to murder two separate men on June 22-23, 2015, quickly became apparent to investigators. Aided by Hunter’s confession in the police squad car and statements he made in the emergency room , prosecutors later argued their case, the jury deliberated for only a few hours, and the “monster” was sentenced to life imprisonment on Sept. 5, 2017.
During closing arguments in the 2017 trial, Burdick opened his remarks by saying: “When you live life in a meth-induced haze, reason is hard to come by — chaos, destruction and death is the norm.”
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The murders weren’t the first time Hunter used violence when he became angry. In 2013, he stabbed Orlando DeWitt, a friend, with a 12-inch butcher knife hidden in a couch after he refused to change positions during a threesome at a home in Fargo.
In May 2013, Hunter was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and time served after he entered a guilty plea to an amended charge of misdemeanor assault.
Hunter became the brunt of jokes across the nation after the stabbing. He became known as a “Cry-baby of the Week” by Vice News.
Forum News Service has recently learned from Burdick, the lead prosecutor in the state's case against Hunter, that a section of Traut’s skull where one of the hammer blows punctured a hole was taken during the autopsy and kept for a time by the medical examiner’s office. While the person who performed the autopsy said the procedure was protocol, others were left in shock.
Clarence ‘Poppa C’ Flowers
In 2015, Burdick lived half a block from where Flowers was killed. When he found out about the incident, he walked to the crime scene, he said.
“And I walk by that house every day when I walk my dog, and I tell you that there is not a day that I walk by that house and I don’t think back to Clarence Flowers’ death there. It was so close to home,” Burdick said.
Using an “exceptional amount of violence,” Hunter attacked Flowers in his home early in the afternoon on June 22, 2015, because, he later said, the man overcharged him for drugs and stole his girlfriends. Family and friends painted a different picture of Flowers, saying he was a churchgoer who would help anyone.
Flowers, also known as “Poppa C,” was a divorced father of four children. He was excited about becoming a grandfather for the first time, said his mother, Carolyn Conner, from Georgia. He drove limousines, and at one time wanted to be a certified nursing assistant.
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On a Facebook page dedicated to Flowers and open to the public, Conner said she still grieves for her son.
“My son was not perfect, but he had more good than bad characteristics. I still listen to his last voice mail message, and I look at the stars in the sky in remembrance of Clarence. I feel broken,” Conner wrote in 2017.
“He was righteous, he was gospel," said Jessica Kapaun, the mother of one of Flowers’ children.
The family did not return calls made by Forum News Service for more information.
‘Help me’
The days leading up to the murders, Hunter was “mething and tweaking extremely bad,” according to statements to police from Sarah Marie Bluecloud, who called Flowers her uncle. At one point, Hunter robbed Flowers for drugs, but Flowers robbed the drugs back, she stated.
Tension between the two men grew.
People who knew Flowers told police he was selling drugs, and that Hunter “was the running boy for Clay (Flowers) and was running dope for him. Clay was supposedly promising bigger things and a better life for Ash (Hunter),” according to a friend of Flowers whom police identified as Hope Schmalz.
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The night before Flowers was killed, he went to Dakota Magic Casino in Hankinson, North Dakota, with a friend, Mitchell Spitzmiller. While there, Flowers won about $2,000, Spitzmiller told police, adding that two weeks before, Flowers and “Ash” had an argument over who would date a woman.
But on June 22, the tension boiled over. Megan Wartman, who was originally thought to be an accomplice, was at Flowers’ house at 3319 12th Ave. N. in Fargo when he was murdered, according to police reports. She was sleeping on Flowers’ sofa when she heard him yell: “Megan help me!”
“She said she got up, grabbed her cell phone, went into the room where he was at and saw him on the floor and bloody,” according to police reports.
Hunter, who stood nearby, “Told her he may have to kill her too. Hunter then told her to take the knife and stab the victim, but she refused. He then told her she had to hold the knife so that her DNA was on the knife,” according to police reports.
Hunter also ordered Wartman to hold a gun, and “she did these things because she feared Hunter would kill her.”
Hunter stole a Remington 870 Express Magnum shotgun and “a bag of dope” from Flowers’ apartment and put it into the back of a truck, a black and silver Dodge Ram pickup, which was already on police radar for being stolen.
After leaving the scene of the crime, Hunter and Wartman eventually went to Christopher Doss’ home on University Drive North, directly behind Traut’s house.
While there, the four of them sat in the living room using methamphetamine he had stolen from Flowers when the 10 o’clock news came on.
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“There was a big story about Ashley Hunter being wanted for murder on the local news,” police reports stated.
Doss and his girlfriend left, and shortly after midnight, Hunter climbed a fence in the backyard. A witness who was not named told police she spotted a tall African-American man knock on Traut’s back door. Less than five minutes later, she heard a muffled scream.
Samuel Traut
“Besides a child, there couldn’t have been anyone more innocent. He was sitting in the dining room at that house working on his computer and had just come back from a mission trip. He was sitting beneath a picture of the Pope hanging on the wall behind him. I thought to myself, ‘How does this happen?’ ” Burdick said, recalling the case with Forum News Service.
“He was a man of tremendous courage and virtue, and he’s going to be really missed,” said James Cheney, director of the St. Paul’s Newman Center.
Described as a “good young man” by then-police chief David Todd, Traut was a Bible study leader for St. Paul’s Newman Center, a chapel attached to faith-based housing known as Newman Living, home to more than 80 students. He also worked as a civil engineer and road designer for Stantec in Fargo, according to his obituary.
Choked with emotion, Traut’s sister Sally told the court during Hunter’s sentencing: “What used to bring me smiles of joy now leaves me with heartbreaking emptiness. We are the victims, with no possibility of justice.”
Traut was a eucharistic minister, or a Catholic layperson who assists during Mass, a member of the prayer team and the Catholic fraternal organization Knights of Columbus, according to his obituary.
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“He experienced great joy in doing evangelization… well known for his great smile, genuine, fun-loving character, prank playing, energetic swing dancing, mechanic skills and his way of just helping out anyone anywhere.”
The family did not return calls made by Forum News Service for more information.
‘It was brutal and it was senseless’
Before Hunter knocked on Traut's back door and asked for a drink of water, Traut had made a pizza, enjoyed fruit with a friend and sent a text message to his mother, MaryAnn, who lived in Traut’s hometown of Sartell, Minnesota, according to police reports.
“All he did was answer the back door when someone knocked on it and tried to give the guy a drink of water. Ashley Hunter had been hanging out in a yard of a house on the University Drive side of that block,” Burdick said.
“Our sense of it at the time was that Hunter thought getting this drink of water was taking too much time. Maybe he thought Traut called the police instead of getting him a drink of water. It was brutal and it was senseless. And he killed him,” Burdick said.
Initially, the call for help came from a neighbor who saw smoke and heard fire alarms coming from Traut’s house at 1122 12th St. N.
When police arrived, however, they discovered only smoke. The fire that Hunter apparently tried to set didn’t take, and officers found Traut, dressed in blue jeans, a white shirt and boots, lying near a doorway.
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While officers were searching Traut’s residence, Hunter left the house and approached officers with his hands full of mail from Christopher Doss' house, directly behind Traut's home. The letters were mostly religious material, handwritten notes, police reports stated. He also had seven pieces of woman’s jewelry and a cardboard jewelry box, $3.50 in cash, 14 grams of meth in a plastic baggie and women’s makeup.
“I am the one. I’m unarmed,” he told police. “I was the one that was beating him up with the hammer the whole time.”
After law enforcement set up the crime scene and began searching the area, Fargo Police Officers Terresa Durr and Wes Libner saw Hunter as he walked along University Drive from 12th Avenue and arrested him without incident.
“It’s all over the news,” Hunter repeatedly said while officers handcuffed him.
Before the trial, Hunter changed his tune, publicly stating he was innocent. The trial was postponed because he went through four attorneys before he was found guilty, and in 2018, his lawyer appealed the conviction to the North Dakota Supreme Court, which denied his claims that he received an unfair trial.
Missing piece of skull
Recently, nine years after the murders, Forum News Service learned that a piece of Traut’s skull was taken by the medical examiner during the autopsy and preserved at least until Hunter's trial two years later.
While Mark Koponen, the medical examiner who performed Traut’s autopsy, said the procedure was according to protocol, Burdick said he was surprised to later see the bone fragment.
“There was a time when I went up to Grand Forks and spoke with the medical examiner, and this was before the trial. He had cut a piece of the skull out that was reflective, that contained one of the hammer blows that the skull had received. The reason he did it was because he thought maybe we would need that for evidence,” said Burdick, lead prosecutor during Hunter’s trial.
“When I saw that, I was surprised. I figured pictures would be enough. The reason that disturbed me a little bit at the time … the family of Sam Traut was extremely religious. When the body was returned to the family to be buried or whatever they did, I don’t think they would have had that portion of the skull,” Burdick said.
Koponen, reached by phone, said: “I’ve done over 6,000 autopsies in my career and remember very, very few names.”
But he did end up remembering Traut’s case after an initial interview and called back to Forum News Service.
“On that piece of bone, if it was retained in the medical examiner’s office, it has probably been cremated," Koponen said, adding that evidence is kept until all appeals processes have been completed.
"In some homicides, that evidence may be kept indefinitely. I don’t have access to records. I don’t know if they are there anymore. It was a piece of evidence that was necessary to collect, and it was handled well,” Koponen said.
The Fargo Police Department does “not have any piece of skull logged into property” as evidence, said Fargo Police Support Specialist Mary Hughes.
Edward Bina, who works in the medical examiner’s office, told Forum News Service: “I wouldn’t know anything about that case. It’s Cass County’s case, so they would be in charge of any questions.”
Cass County Coroner Kriste Ross said her office was involved in the investigation in 2015 but did not have a chance to examine the bodies before handing them over to funeral homes. She was not aware of the missing piece of Traut’s skull.
“Are body parts kept behind? I am trying to think of a situation ... the only thing I could think of is if they need to keep something for evidence, but generally that is, if it’s held indefinitely or if it’s … you’re talking of an ethical situation and I can’t speak for the medical examiner, but I would think that the medical examiner would turn that over to be buried or cremated with the body at some point,” Ross said.
“That’s very interesting,” he added. “It would be up to the funeral home to alert me if there was something questionable.”
Deb Dingmann, funeral director for Williams Dingmann Funeral Home in Sauk Rapids, Minnesota, which took care of Traut’s funeral arrangements, said she refused to believe the news was true.
“That doesn’t happen, so I would be surprised that somebody actually told you that and certainly wouldn’t want any rumors to get out and I don’t believe that’s true,” Dingmann told Forum News Service.
“My heart still feels for that family; they were so understandably distressed by what happened to their good son. Not that Clarence Flowers deserved what he got, either. Their son was just a complete innocent,” Burdick said.
The Trust Project
