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They Barged In and Met Death
George Hesselberg | Madison.com | July 22, 2006

In early March, Jaeson Shepard sat down with his mother and said he, his girlfriend, Erin, and a guy named Eddie were going to rip off a marijuana grower.

"Don't do it," Donna Fox told her son.

"You're going to go in there and come across some mean (expletive deleted) and he'll blow your head off," she told him.

That's exactly what happened.

Shepard, 29, was fatally shot in the hallway of a converted cheese factory along a little-traveled road a few miles south of Blanchardville at 3 a.m. March 16.

As his mother predicted, he was shot in the head. He may have gotten off one shot, into the ceiling, from his 9 mm handgun.

His accomplice, Eddie Harris, 24, a Verona High School dropout who struggled to shake an addiction to pain pills and who aspired to a job installing garage doors, died from three shots to the chest.

Harris died in that same hallway, and the person who shot him leaned over his prone body and "keyholed" a parting shot to his chest, putting one bullet hole right next to another, but at an angle, leaving an imperfect hole. Harris' shotgun was not fired.

Erin Van Epps, 22, who shared her boyfriend Jaeson's addiction to heroin, survived, but only because she could run and drive fast.

"My instincts tell me we would never have gotten a call if he had shot Erin, too," said Lafayette County Sheriff Scott Pedley. "There would be three shallow graves out here, and the cars would have disappeared."

Bradley Fandrich, 34, was heavily armed and, police believe, waiting for the trio of would-be armed robbers to arrive at his home.

Fandrich shot and killed Shepard and Harris and aimed several shots at the fleeing Van Epps. He won't be charged with any crime, however.

That morning, as he was talking to investigators, Fandrich realized the story he was spinning was building to an inevitable conclusion. His stunned wife, Jeanna, sat a few feet away in the corner of the rec room as he tried to explain his heavy arsenal and bottles of pills to progressively doubtful detectives. Surrounded by questioning deputies, he decided to take a third life.

His own.

A decision on criminal charges is expected soon in what was first described in March as an "armed intrusion" that took three lives at the isolated town of Argyle home of Brad and Jeanna Fandrich.

Lafayette County District Attorney Charlotte Doherty has received stacks of reports and files from the state Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation.

The DCI has been silent on its progress, and the communities of Dodgeville, Mount Horeb and Blanchardville at first were percolating with rumors, which surely will resurface if charges are filed. Speculation about motive has ranged from a drug-buy-gone-wrong to a drug ripoff, to a drug-informant set- up, even to a quarrel over a relationship.

Since the shootings, Van Epps has been through a drug rehabilitation program and has been arrested for a hit-and-run traffic offense. Her mother, Julie Ann Van Epps, 50, a longtime Dodgeville educator, died of cancer July 8.

The other survivor of that night, Jeanna Fandrich, whose husband of four years had filed for divorce in January, has not returned to the 1.33- acre home the couple bought in April 2002 for $77,000. The yard is untended, a porch has been removed and burned.

The state crime unit, which took over the investigation because local authorities were present when Fandrich shot himself, searched the home but did not immediately contact neighbors.

It was not until two days later, acting on a tip from Jeanna Fandrich's uncle, that DCI agents found an entire marijuana-growing room they had overlooked inside the house basement.

Shepard and Van Epps were, according to testimony last month in a federal court sentencing for a heroin case, drug informants for several agencies, including the DCI.

But relatives and friends of Shepard and Harris and Van Epps say the trio had no idea of what they were getting into that Thursday morning in rural Blanchardville. Neither of the two men was very familiar with guns, friends and family said.

Though they cased the home several times, they were apparently unaware that Fandrich was a gun dealer. If they knew of the motion detectors, cameras, heat sensors and scores of weapons Fandrich had installed or kept at the home, it didn't deter them.

Erin Van Epps was doing about a gram of heroin daily when she and her boyfriend, Jaeson Shepard, were visited Nov. 30 in a Madison apartment by a police informant seeking the drug.

That day, they sold the snitch one gram of heroin for $350. Six days later, Dec. 5, they sold the same informant a similar amount for $300.

The two were stopped by police the next day, Dec. 6, at a West Side intersection, where narcotics officers found two baggies of heroin in Van Epps' pocket, an amount of 3 grams. (The "street price" today of a gram of heroin in Madison is about $200.)

According to police reports, later that same day, Shepard - now confidential informant CI 9XX - telephoned Alto Dilworth, an out-of- work mechanic, to arrange a drug buy at a Walgreens on Old Sauk Road.

Dilworth was arrested with 10.74 grams of heroin and 2.35 grams of cocaine base, hidden in the fuse box under the hood of his car. He was quickly charged in federal court with two counts of selling a controlled substance, and by Dec. 7 was in jail.

Shepard told authorities he bought heroin from Dilworth for $100 per gram 15 to 20 times, a frequency disputed hotly by Dilworth's lawyer, Reed Cornia.

It was not until the end of January that Van Epps and Shepard were brought to court on their heroin arrests. Both had records of drug convictions, with Shepard cataloguing numerous contacts and arrests.

And both informants were out on bail when the couple and Eddie Harris drove to Brad Fandrich's home on March 16.

The mothers of both young men admit, without hesitation, their sons' drug abuse. But they also say the young men had never been violent and were sensitive to their family's needs. Shepard's drug-related criminal history is extensive. Harris' run-ins with the law have mostly been traffic- related.

Fox says the plan's originator was Eddie Harris. Anderson and others suggest it was Jaeson Shepard's idea.

In interviews with the mothers, friends, roommates and others, including Lafayette County authorities, an incomplete picture emerges of what happened that night.

Fox said her version of what happened comes from her dead son's girlfriend, Van Epps, in conversations during her son's funeral arrangements in Antigo. Van Epps "completely, flatly denies she related any such information to Ms. Fox," said her lawyer, William Remington. He also said she denied making any statements that were quoted in other publications. Remington said Van Epps could not comment until her current court cases are resolved.

Jeanna Fandrich did not return calls or requests for interviews through her lawyer, Timothy McKinley, of Dodgeville.

The plan, said Shepard's mother, was simple.

Her son told her they were going to rob a marijuana dealer. "The reason they were going to do it was because they were stone broke, they were going for the big haul."

The trio did not know of any other drugs in the house except for marijuana plants, she said. To accommodate the stolen plants, said Fox - and Lafayette County authorities agreed - they brought two vehicles, parking a Chevrolet Suburban belonging to a Van Epps family member at an intersection about a mile and half away and approaching the house in a minivan owned by a Harris' family member.

To prepare, said Harris' roommate and longtime friend, John Bowman, the three got high and Shepard brought a handgun.

"I saw the handgun. Pretty nice, it looked new," recalled Bowman, who was not otherwise involved in the incident. "Jaeson, it was his gun. They were showing it off.

"I could tell Eddie was high, and he looked pretty stoned. I don't know what (drug) they were doing," he said. "His main drug was (the painkiller oxycodone), but he would resort to anything once, if he couldn't find (any)."

"I don't think they used a lot of judgment. I think it was just a lot of scheming while they were high. Saying, 'Let's do this, it will be easy money.' I guarantee they didn't know (Fandrich) had all those weapons."

Bowman believes the trio knew someone "inside," who had personal knowledge of a lot of marijuana plants at the home.

"Once Jaeson came around, that's when Eddie started talking about some plants," said Bowman. "I was shocked. I didn't see (Eddie) as being that desperate."

The Fandrichs lived on Highway N, about 25 miles from Mount Horeb, seven miles southwest of Blanchardville.

In Fox's version, after noticing lights on in the house, Harris parked the minivan and went into the house, kicking open the door. Shepard and Van Epps followed after hearing gunshots, Fox claims. Van Epps escaped and drove away in the minivan after her companions were shot.

Deputies found at least three spent casings on the porch, where Fandrich shot at the minivan. Harris was shot at least three times in the chest, and Shepard once in the head. One round was fired from Shepard's handgun, though it may have been unintended, and hit the ceiling. Harris' shotgun was not fired.

Fox disputed an early police statement that her son had Jeanna Fandrich in a chokehold. She said he was holding her by the arm, just before he was shot.

While police believe Fandrich was aiming to remove all witnesses, none could corroborate Fox's version of what happened in the house before they arrived.

A search warrant notes Van Epps "was present with Jaeson Shepard during the intrusion . . . and escaped from the residence when shots were fired."

According to Pedley, the Lafayette County sheriff, the evidence at the scene shows the first shots fired by Fandrich came from his bedroom into the hallway. Before that, said Pedley, Jeanna Fandrich was awakened by the dog barking and had gone to the hallway to see what the barking was about.

After Van Epps sped away, Jeanna Fandrich called the Lafayette County Sheriff's Department to report an armed robbery. She said there were intruders in the house who had been shot, that a third intruder left in a minivan. When deputies arrived, Harris was dead but Shepard was still breathing. He died shortly after arriving at the Monroe Clinic Hospital.

At least five deputies and detectives were in the residence, along with Pedley, who was conferring in the kitchen with Virginia Douglas, the county coroner.

Around the corner, in the recreation room, Lafayette County Detective Sgt. Joseph Thompson was questioning Brad Fandrich, Pedley said.

Fandrich had already given up his Glock Model 30 .45 caliber handgun, used to shoot the intruders, and Pedley said that initially, he was being treated as a crime victim.

"Why would they choose your house?" Fandrich was asked.

"Maybe because of my gun collection," he answered.

Fandrich showed the detective and other deputies his gun safe, in a closet, where they found numerous weapons and bottles of oxycodone pills. Thompson moved Fandrich away from the gun cabinet, stationing a deputy in front of it, while Thompson and another deputy continued questioning Fandrich.

"For your safety and mine, do you have any other weapons on you?" Thompson asked him.

He asked again, and Fandrich pulled a key out of his pocket and placed it on the pool table. Then, as Thompson began to do a pat search, Fandrich reached into the waist of his pants and pulled out a small revolver, a .357 Smith & Wesson Air Lite. He put the barrel beneath his chin and pulled the trigger.

Hearing the shot, Pedley came out of the kitchen in time to see Fandrich falling and the two lawmen holding their hands over their ears. Jeanna Fandrich was in a chair in the corner, sobbing.

Pedley, who realized his county's investigation was going to be curtailed, had to call in the state.

"Then we were all witnesses, we were all there," he said.

He and his deputies have heard the criticism of the way the situation was handled.

"Based on what we know at this time, and given our limited resources, there is nothing I can think of we would have changed," said Pedley. "In hindsight, a search of Brad Fandrich would have been completed sooner in the investigation."