Page 12 - Flathead Beacon // 2.11.15

12 | FEBRUARY 11, 2015 NEWS FLATHEADBEACON.COM Marion Man Accused of Murder Fires Attorneys
By JUSTIN FRANZ of the Beacon
A Marion man accused of shooting
and killing his neighbor in January 2014 fired his attorneys less than a month be- fore his sentencing scheduled for Feb. 5.
Mark Bolton Ames, 53, is accused of deliberate homicide and had reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, but on Jan. 9 he filed a motion to dismiss coun- cil, stating that one of his public defend- ers, Nick Aemisegger Jr., “became vis- ibly angry with me and raised his voice
toward me while I was attempting to discuss important details of my case.”
According to court records, Ames lived in a duplex apartment next to Har- old Gordon in Marion. Just after mid- night on Jan. 12, 2014, Ames fired sever- al rounds from an AK-47 into Gordon’s apartment. Gordon grabbed a shotgun and was about to confront his neighbor when Ames allegedly shot and killed him with a .32-caliber semi-automatic pistol.
Ames and Gordon had a long and troubled history. Gordon had filed a re-
straining order against Ames, but he was still living in the duplex apartment that Gordon owned.
In a plea deal from Sept. 6, 2014, pros- ecutors agreed to amend the charge from deliberate homicide to mitigated delib- erate homicide if Ames pleaded guilty by Alford. An Alford plea is filed when a de- fendant believes that they are innocent but acknowledges that prosecution has enough evidence to find them guilty be- yond a reasonable doubt. The plea agree- ment stated that prosecutors would
recommend to the court that Ames be sentenced to 40 years in Montana State Prison with 20 years suspended.
However, just a month before his sentencing, Ames fired his public de- fenders, writing that they had been rude and had “put forth egregious misrepre- sentation of laws and facts related to key decision points in my case.”
A status conference has been sched- uled for Feb. 20. A new sentencing has been set for Feb. 26.
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Details Emerge in Fatal Libby Shooting
By JUSTIN FRANZ of the Beacon
Two Libby residents were arrested
on Feb. 1 after police found the body of a man who had been shot and killed 18 hours earlier.
Henry Carl Schroeder, 74, has been charged with negligent homicide and tampering with evidence, both felonies, and Kimberlee Ann Patterson, 43, has been charged with felony evidence tam- pering following the shooting death of Thomas Lawrence Veloz, 38, of Libby.
According to authorities, Schroeder
shot Veloz five times at about 8 p.m. on Jan. 31 but the incident was not reported until the following afternoon by one of Schroeder’s friends.
Shortly after 3:30 p.m. Feb. 1, 18 hours after Veloz was allegedly killed, police went to Schroeder’s home at 1305 Wash- ington Ave. Police called Schroeder and demanded that he come outside. Police then entered the home and found Veloz’s body covered under a blue blanket with a large pool of blood near his head. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police placed Schroeder under arrest and got a
search warrant for the home.
Schroeder was taken to the Lincoln
County Detention Facility and inter- viewed. There he admitted that he had shot Veloz five times the night before. He also said that Patterson had been inside the home at the time of shooting.
After obtaining the warrant, police went back inside and found a .380 cali- ber pistol and two shell casings. Police determined that someone had removed three of the shell casings from the scene of the crime. Two other witnesses con- firmed that Patterson was at the scene of
the crime during the shooting. Accord- ing to news reports, Patterson was ar- rested south of Libby after her car slid into a ditch on the afternoon of Feb. 1.
Veloz’s body was transported to the Montana State Crime Lab for an autopsy. Schroeder is being held on $500,000 bail. If convicted of negligent homicide he could face 20 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. Patterson is being held on $50,000 bail and if convicted of tamper- ing or fabricating evidence could face 10
years in prison or a $50,000 fine.
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