Minneapolis man charged in friend’s fatal overdose at White Bear Lake hotel

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
·3 min read

A Minneapolis man has been charged with third-degree murder for allegedly selling fentanyl-laced heroin to a childhood friend who then overdosed and died at a White Bear Lake hotel in 2021.

William James Dykes was charged by warrant in Ramsey County District Court on Monday in connection with the death of a 28-year-old man at the Best Western Plus along U.S. 61 on Nov. 8, 2021. Dykes, 30, was not jailed as of late Tuesday.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office opened a case for review in late February, spokesman Dennis Gerhardstein said Tuesday.

According to the criminal complaint:

Police officers responded to the hotel just before 11 a.m. on a possible overdose and found the man, identified in the complaint by his initials JMN, unresponsive in a second-floor room. Medics transported him to Regions Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

A 27-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man were in the room when officers arrived and they both said JMN had used heroin shortly before his death. They didn’t tell officers where JMN got the heroin and neither of them made themselves available for follow-up interviews throughout the investigation.

An autopsy showed JMN died of mixed drug toxicity and that he had fentanyl and alcohol in his system.

JMN’s former girlfriend told officers that she had spoken with the 25-year-old man and he said JMN asked him if “snorting heroin was better than smoking it,” the complaint says. JMN snorted the heroin and went unresponsive five minutes later.

Investigators spoke to JMN’s mother. She said that on the night before his death, JMN left his Apple Watch at her home and that she was able to monitor messages between her son and Dykes. She said her son and Dykes grew up together, played football together. Dykes also used to work for her family’s business, she said.

In the messages, JMN asked Dykes when he was going to arrive at the hotel. She said that she called Dykes the morning of her son’s death because she was looking for him. Dykes said he sold her son marijuana.

In a recorded phone conversation, the 25-year-old man told JMN’s former girlfriend that Dykes had delivered what was “supposed to be heroin but that everything is cut with fentanyl these days,” the complaint says.

Cellphone records showed texts between JMN and Dykes that mentioned meeting at the hotel the night before the death. They also showed JMN paid Dykes through Venmo.

Dykes told investigators that he and JMN were childhood friends and that he had worked for JMN’s family for four years. He said he was not sure when he last saw JMN. When asked what he knew about JMN’s death, Dykes asked to end the interview.

Nearly a year after JMN’s death, Dykes received a text message that read, “I don’t blame you for the [JMN] situation,” the complaint says. “And I would never rat on you hence why I never went in to give a statement.”

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