Nelson To Serve Life in Prison for Diemel Murders
A northwest Missouri man will serve two consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole after he pleaded guilty Friday to the 2019 murders of two Shawano County, Wisconsin, brothers.
Garland Nelson, 28, Braymer, MO, admitted to shooting Nicholas Diemel, 35, and Justin Diemel, 24, burning their bodies and hiding their remains, according to the Caldwell County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
In exchange for his plea, charges of abandonment of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, armed criminal action and tampering with a motor vehicle were dropped, the St. Joseph News-Press reported. One of Nelson’s defense attorneys said two years ago the state planned to seek the death penalty if his client was convicted of the killings.
"We are glad this matter has now been resolved. We are now assured that the person responsible for this heinous crime will never be out of prison," Caldwell County Prosecuting Attorney Brady Kopek, who represented the state of Missouri in the case, said in a statement.
Prosecutors said Nelson had entered a business arrangement with Diemel Livestock of which Nick and Justin were principals. Nelson agreed to feed and pasture cattle and sell them on the Missouri farm owned by his mother. Nelson agreed to send the proceeds to Diemel’s Livestock.
The Diemels shipped several loads of cattle to Nelson between November 2018 and April 2019, and he allegedly sold, traded or killed the cattle without sending payment to the Diemel brothers. Prosecutors said Nelson “continued to fraudulently bill the Diemels for feed and yardage for cattle that had been sold, traded or had died.”
The indictment said Nelson “did not properly care for cattle due to incompetence, neglect, or maltreatment. Cattle entrusted to Nelson had high death rates dues to underfeeding, neglect, and/or maltreatment. Nelson fed cattle inadequately and poorly,” reads a statement from the prosecutor’s office. “For example, he dropped hay bales in a pasture for calves but did not remove the plastic covering so that calves ate the plastic and died. In another example, in December 2018, Nelson was entrusted with feeding and caring for 131 calves he co-owned with a Kansas farmer. On May 23, 2019, Nelson dropped off 35 calves at the co-owner’s farm in Kansas, apparently all that survived of the 131. Of the surviving 35 calves, many were emaciated and had ringworm. Some calves had their ears torn as though identifying ear tags had been removed.”
Nick Diemel continued to press Nelson for payment and sent no more cattle to him. The indictment states Nelson sent the Diemels a $215,936 bad check. His account had a balance of 21 cents at the time. Prosecutors say the check had been intentionally torn so it could not be cashed.
In an attempt to collect on the debt, the Diemel brothers traveled to Nelson’s farm near Braymer, Missouri, on July 21,2019. They were never seen again. When the brothers missed their flight back to Wisconsin their family reported them missing.
Prosecutors said Nelson shot the brothers and drove their pickup truck off of his farm. He told authorities he put the men's bodies in 55-gallon barrels and burned them. Nelson told investigators he dumped the remains on a manure pile and hid the barrels on the property, about 70 miles northeast of Kansas City, Missouri.
The remains were later found in Missouri and in a livestock trailer in Lincoln County, Nebraska, that had been purchased in Missouri.
In 2020, the families of the victims reached a $2 million settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Nelson, his mother, Tomme Feil, and the family's cattle business, J4S Enterprises.
At the time of the brothers’ deaths, Nelson was on parole after serving 17 months in federal prison for an October 2016 conviction for cattle and insurance fraud. Prosecutors said he sold more than 600 head of cattle that did not belong to him, causing more than $262,000 in losses.
