Tresa's Blog

You can read about the triple murder of the members of the Leutjen family here.
The Suspect is apprehended here.

It seems the murder suspect is Donnie and Sharon’s nephew and they are speculating the motive was robbery. Does this make us feel any safer in our homes around here. Maybe a bit. I know if my nephew wanted money all he would have to do is ask, I’d probably tell him I’m broke but it would be close to the truth. I still lock the door when I’m in the other end of the house. Don’t know if this botched robbery was because of the economy or just plain greed. I can’t see how the nephew thought he was going to fence anything (most of Donnie’s collections were quite famous, hard to fence stuff like that) or that Donnie would just keep money laying around the house but maybe there’s more to it than that. They are still looking for other suspects or actually they said “We have evidence that links at least one more, if not multiple suspects to this homicide.”

I’m lucky in that I have police officers living next door and we all work different shifts that change, like we have anything worth stealing but……. I know my security system works because the kids have came to the house unexpectedly more than once and been VERY surprised, IE I call the house and ask them what they are doing there or someone comes in in the middle of the night demanding to know WHO’S THERE. Also being known as slightly crazy and having a temper doesn’t hurt either?

So I’ve booked way too much into the next two weeks so my blogging will be on hold mostly. Suddenly realized my drivers license was up for renewal, need birth certificate here in MO now, need to get it because I spent two hours looking for it and nada, nothing. Wienie roast, need to clean house, trip to dentist, and there’s that work thing that keeps getting in there.
Got the lawn mowed, yey me!!! but it will need it again soon because we have had like 2 real days totally without rain. Oh yeah, my daughter is coming to visit and I’m squeezing a short trip in there? Mountains of laundry, have to go pick up a vehicle……. better get busy. It’s good to be able to walk and do again though! Here’s the scoop on my bloodclot on that on Animals That Give Pause, this is the most recent post.

Not much time to write but I just had to share this with you. Here’s the link from abc. Now I’m sure the mayor has a law to back this all up but I’m also sure this law was put into effect to prevent you from being a shade tree mechanic on your own front lawn. Basically in Toledo Ohio the police are giving tickets to people who park in their own gravel driveways? I know cities are strapped for cash just like the rest of us but making it impossible and a further financial drain on it’s citizens to even exist in those cities isn’t solving anything, even in OH. This is just plain stupid.

Also this article reminded me of a story that was told to me by an executive in a shipping company in Wisconsin. Said executive had several children, one of the boys got married and the new parents-in-law and his wife went down to Arkansas from Wisconsin to meet the in laws. People from Arkansas are really going to think I’m mean after this one but some of my best friends live in Arkansas. Anyway the daughter-in-law told her parents-in-law to turn left @ the house that had a washer and dryer and a couple couches sitting in front of the house, (that wasn’t her parents house, it was just a turning point) then turn right @ the house that had the car on blocks in the front yard and the dog pens and orange stuffed chairs sitting outside (another turning point) and go on one mile or something like that. Rick thought the daughter-in-law was kidding but she was giving precise detailed driving directions. This was several years ago, we have become more homogenized since then as to the appearance of our lawns and homes but I used to notice the sharp differences between states and the appearance of homes and lawns in each. Driving to Wisconsin from Missouri through Illinois or going further east to Ohio was like “where do these people get their time and money to make their homes look like THIS?” (Also with all the new Mc Mansions going up previously it was like, how come there are so many rich people now but we know they weren’t really rich, just in above their heads) No I don’t have appliances or stuffed furniture outside but I’m sure within 5 miles you can find some. I’m also not above letting the dogs have a pop bottle to play with if they leave it laying on the lawn and I do have a fish stringer and fishing line from the boys laying by the back door plus a pair of my husbands rubber boots, I’m hoping the rain washes the mud off of them eventually?

Just my viewpoint. Have to go get gas for the mower after that little diatribe. I can’t mow I don’t think though, buckhorns and clover that we call lawn is getting tall but we have had like 4 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. Part of my lawn furniture was 100 ft from the house and the glass table blew over, it’s never blown over before, hopefully the storms are over for awhile. Photos are my lawn, not Ohio.

Three people were killed earlier this week in Cole Camp, killed were the grandparents and granddaughter who lived with them, 61, 64, and 15 years of age respectively. The authorities have now declared it a triple murder. Motive? Either it was a robbery gone bad or someone had a grudge. My sympathies go out to the family and I in no way am making light of this tragedy by writing about it. Read more here. I didn’t know these people but I’m sure I knew them to say hi or recognize them. They were close friends of one of my best friends. There is a news conference in an hour or so and I’m hoping there is some closure and answers.

My memory is sometimes faulty but there have been few murders close by here. A VERY close family friend in the 70s who left 3 young sons was killed in a robbery gone bad, a man was found dead laying in the highway not 300 ft from our house, he’d been laying there either dead or alive when a car ran over him, that happened in 2004 I think. Two people were killed in the 80s by a family member about 7 miles west of here as the crow flies. A boy I knew evidently went nuts and started shooting @ his family members in the 90s, someone shot someone in a trailer we had listed when I was a real estate agent in 1991. A boy whom I grew up with was shot and killed a few years ago when he walked back in a house he’d been in as a guest, I mean he walked out and walked back in? We aren’t heavily populated here but crime isn’t non existent but traffic tickets make up a great bulk of police work here in the country and smaller towns. This is a shock to our systems. I hope it reminds everyone to pull their loved ones closer, watch out for your neighbor, and we will all be locking our doors more frequently. I don’t know if our low crime is due to the heavy German population and Mennonite population or the fact everyone knows everyone and we all have guns?

I hope anyone who has information will come forward to shed some light on this senseless tragedy.

Postscript: It’s Saturday and I should be doing my eternal yard work but this crime is still preying on peoples minds around here. Cole Camp had not had a murder in all 170 years of it’s existence, the other crimes I cited were in neighboring towns, none of which can boast of such a record, not even our little town of maybe 75 with 500 people in the suburbs (small farms and acreages surrounding the town). The news media and police have descended on the town en masse as you can imagine. People are locking their doors more, even when they are home and awake which is unheard of here and taking the keys out of everything they can think of. My personal feelings? It’s rumored to be someone the victims knew well, if so it was perhaps a robbery but perhaps also a crime of passion, this is a horrible scenario but almost better than the alternative. If it was a random act of robbery from a stranger it could happen to anyone anytime anyplace. After visiting and living in larger cities in the 1990s I always said here where we live if you got shot you knew who did it and probably why, not like the larger cities where crime is not only more rampant but is often completely random.

I’ve learned more about cell phones and bluetooth than I ever wanted to know in the past day. My husbands company gave him a bluetooth for his phone because they aren’t supposed to be distracted @ all during the day which is a great safety policy! So now he can answer the phone and talk without using his hands. Problem is he has me do all the phone and computer things and he is 700 miles away and he had to connect the bluetooth. I’m pretty good on computers but haven’t messed with them much lately, phones I can punch the numbers in and send pictures etc. connect with the web but that’s about it. I’m always afraid something is going to cost money after our first bag phone cost like $11 a minute when roaming in Utah once. Does anyone even remember bag phones?
So he gets the bluetooth and tries to connect it to his phone, trouble is I was @ a family gathering till late and he was out to dinner so he didn’t try to get this all working till almost 11pm last night, I was in bed TRYING to go to sleep. We had both been up since 5 am. He says he’s not firing up his computer so we will see if he reads this, LOL. Anyway after a couple conversations, the last one consisting of I thought we were going to get this going in the MORNING!, we said goodnight, or rather he said love you bye right after that. So I couldn’t sleep then and got up and googled how to connect a motorola to a samsung. Turns out I had the wrong samsung and the menu options were different. Neither one of us had the owners manual for his phone since it’s my old one that I got from my grandson who got it from my daughter when she got a state of the art phone from my other daughter, got that? I bought husband a new phone but he didn’t like it so I have that one and he got my old one which isn’t old, it’s a slider and actually pretty neat. I have one with a keyboard which is what I was after all along but I need a memory card now and a bigger texting plan, I can see this!
Somehow my husband who is not dumb @ all and in some ways is probably smarter than I am (read he’s a genius but I don’t like to admit it) is convinced computers and anything related to them such as cell phones and bluetooth are evil beings set upon this earth to torment him. He can figure out what’s wrong with an engine by listening to it or looking @ the exhaust quite often. I swear he’s not as computer illiterate as he says because somehow when we first got internet back in the 90s he figured out how to go to history to see what web pages I’d been on? This was like the FIRST time he was on the internet so I think he’s playing dumb quite often so I will do things for him?
So after 3 phone calls this morning and a few web pages, downloading the proper owners manual we finally figured it out.
The steps are:

1. Enable bluetooth on your phone usually under settings. (OK, for those who are truly phone illiterate you get to settings under menu usually)
2. Turn your bluetooth headset on, this might require holding the button for several seconds.
3. Go to Tools or Connectivity (the connectivity one is the one that had us stumped) look for bluetooth and click on add new device or something like that. It should find the headset, you might have to enter a pin code off of the bluetooth device or the phone or both.
4. The phone should pick up the headset and you can click on connect and voila! it should all work just fine.

So that’s a short and dirty guide for all of you who may have been putting off getting a bluetooth headset. If you have problems call BR 549.
Now I think there is a way to get my cell phone pictures off of the sim card and onto my computer but I’m not sure how, going to find out!
Postscript, duhhhh, figured it out, email them. Didn’t know I could do that, told you I was phone challenged.