Chapter 1: What challenges did Ed and Bertha Briney face with their farmhouse?
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Well, everyone knew everyone in this very small town called Eddyville, and everyone apparently knew the Brineys.
In 1957, a couple named Ed and Bertha Briney inherited an old farmhouse from Bertha's parents in a rural part of Iowa.
And they left it unoccupied for 10 years. And it was an uninhabited old farmhouse and out in the middle of nowhere, basically. But they kept items of value apparently in there.
Bertha Briney's grandparents and parents had lived in the house. After her parents died, Bertha Briney had wanted to keep things as they were, down to the plates and silverware on the kitchen table. We're hearing about the Brineys and their farmhouse from retired law professor Andrew McClurg.
People had repeatedly broken into this house.
According to the Brineys, in the decades since they inherited the house, it had been broken into 50 times. Ed Briney later said he'd nailed doors and windows shut, posted seven no trespassing signs around the property, and complained to sheriffs in two different counties over and over. But nothing seemed to work.
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Chapter 2: What drastic measures did the Brineys take to protect their property?
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Courts have been hearing cases about people setting off what's called a spring gun trap, a booby trap, or sometimes a man trap for a long time.
So one of the most notable and earliest cases was a case from England in 1825, so almost 200 years ago, called Byrd v. Holbrook. And the defendant, Holbrook, maintained what were apparently very valuable tulips that he grew about a mile from his house.
He set up a booby trap with tripwires running across a few of the paths in the garden. One day, a neighbor's peacock flew over the garden wall, and a 19-year-old climbed over it to help find the bird. He set off the tripwires and was shot in the knee. Then he sued the tulip gardener and won.
So one of the problems with booby traps is they're indiscriminate. They can't discern between a dangerous criminal and a 10-year-old kid who's just out, you know, doing mischief.
A 1986 case involved an electrified booby trap. A store owner whose store had been robbed multiple times installed an electrified metal grate above his front door When a man broke in through the ceiling, the rubber soles of his sneakers protected him, but he touched the metal grate as he tried to climb out and was killed. The store owner was arrested and charged with manslaughter.
He said, I didn't mean for anyone to be killed. I just wanted to shock him and warn him. His store had been robbed six times in the past month alone, and he said that the police hadn't done much about it. He said, the police come by and fill out a report and put down that fingerprint dust, and you'll be cleaning it up for two days after that, but they'll never even call you.
A grand jury voted to release him.
You know, and these are all cases involving people who are fed up with people breaking into their property, so it's not like that was their first idea to set a deadly booby trap.
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Chapter 3: How did the shotgun trap work that the Brineys set up?
Wade, the liquor store owner, said his machine had been broken into five times and that he'd put in the dynamite to try to scare off potential thieves. He said, the solution was to sacrifice the machine. It was the only thing I could come up with.
He had not attempted to see what the amount of force would be. Would it be a killing force, or would it just be a scaring tactic? But I think a third a stick of dynamite is a significant force, and of course it turned out to be a deadly force.
Just after midnight on August 23, 1974, a 16-year-old boy named Robert Joel McKenzie and his 15-year-old friend reportedly tried to pry open the machine with the tire tool. The dynamite went off and the machine exploded. Both of the boys were hurt. Papers reported that the 15-year-old left the scene to seek medical help, leaving his friend behind.
He was eventually questioned by police and brought the deputies back to the liquor store. Robert Joel McKenzie was still at the scene, very badly injured. His leg had been hit by a piece of metal from the machine during the explosion, and an artery in his thigh was severed. He died shortly after he was taken to the hospital. A.C.
Wade said that he felt terrible and cooperated with police from the start.
He admitted everything. He admitted that it was rigged as a man trap, He didn't boast about it, but he actually felt that he had done nothing wrong.
He told papers, I gave it lots of consideration. I never activated it until after hours. There was no way an innocent person could get hurt. He had to be breaking in. I figured it would knock them down on the pavement. He said, you just never think of everything. and that some people had been sympathetic to his position. But he said, in lots of people's minds, I'm a villain.
The county sheriff said he wasn't planning to file charges because he said he, quote, The sheriff said the death was accidental. He said the dynamite itself wasn't powerful enough to kill someone, and that Robert Joel McKenzie had died because a piece of the machine had come off and cut his leg, and he bled to death.
Nobody was willing to prosecute this man for doing this, and so we then filed the civil suit.
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Chapter 4: What happened when Marvin Katko broke into the Brineys' farmhouse?
It wasn't maybe two or three Sundays after that, I got there and found out that the door was smashed in again, and more of my equipment was gone.
Were you surprised that it happened again?
Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. I thought, you know, a one-time deal. But, you know, it was just the start of many. After about the second or the third, I got used to it, you know. I didn't know what to do. I can't remember how many times they came through that back door until I finally rebuilt the door. And then I put sheet metal there. And then I backed it up with more wood.
And the next time I got there to work, he had taken a hatchet or an axe or a claw hammer or something and tried to break in, and he absolutely just shattered the wooden door until he came to that piece of metal. And he didn't have any way to get through that metal.
Phil says he'd set up an alarm that would call 911 when it was tripped. But he says whoever was breaking in somehow knew to turn off the electricity. He says that each time he saw that there had been a break-in, he called the police and made a report. Eventually, he was calling them so much that they asked him to just mail them a list of the items that were stolen.
The place was so off the beaten path that They just couldn't seem to get a patrol car to go down in there and check the place. They were too busy where there was business and people and cars and so forth, you know.
A columnist at the Denver Post wrote an article about all the robberies. And some readers felt so bad for Phil Conahan that they sent him money and replacement tools. It didn't take long, though, for those donated tools to be stolen, too. Phil Conahan says that he had no idea who was doing this.
But he was incredible. He was an incredible mechanic at getting into things. The final, the thing that broke my back was the fact that I had rebuilt the back door to where he couldn't get in that way anymore. And so he tied his vehicle to my front door and pulled the front of the building down to get in. And then he took everything he wanted that trip, I guess. I thought, I can't get any help.
Figure it out, Colin. I remember getting that shotgun and going back to the back room and sitting on that stool and putting it all together and testing it, make sure that it was gonna work. And I ran a trip wire about foot off the floor and then loading it and getting it ready to do its job. I didn't really plan on it.
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Chapter 5: What legal case arose from the shotgun incident involving Marvin Katko?
I just did it. I guess it was the only thing that I thought would catch him.
Were you worried about it shooting the wrong person and someone who wasn't doing anything wrong might get hurt?
Never did. He and I were the only ones that ever went back in that room. There wasn't any reason for anybody else to go in there. They couldn't get in there.
How did you hear that something had happened?
It was Easter. Easter morning. And I had worked to put the front of the building back together. And I got in my little MG and headed for Kansas City and was gonna spend Easter with some friends over there. And we were at my friend's farm and telephone rang and they said it was for me. It was my daughter. She told me that she was with the police and they wanted to talk to me.
And I don't know if you've ever had dry mouth, but I almost died of dry mouth that day. It was awful. And police got on the phone and wanted to know if I was Phil Conahan. I said, yeah. They said, well, we're at your warehouse and there's been a problem.
Did the police tell you anything? What did you learn had happened?
Well, I kept asking this cop, you know, what division are you with? And he'd say, Denver Police Department. And I said, no, you know, what division are you with? And he finally said, he said, I'm with Homicide, and that's That's when I about came undone, because I knew then.
Four people had broken into the warehouse the night before. One of them, a 19-year-old, set off the shotgun and was killed. His three companions ran away. Police waited until the morning to go inside the building and retrieve the body because they were afraid of another booby trap going off.
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