'I did not kill Mike Crites': Day four of the trial of Leon Michael Ford

Leon Ford is on trial for the 2011 death of Mike Crites. He is seen here in Judge Mike Menahan's court on June 1, 2023, in the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse.

The fourth day of the Lewis and Clark County District Court trial where Leon Ford has been accused of killing John Michael "Mike" Crites over a 2011 land access dispute started Tuesday with the last person to see Crites alive, his friend Chris Forseth.

Ford was charged with deliberate homicide and felony tampering with evidence in 2020. There's a long history of property access disputes among the residents of Turk Road with access via Birdseye Road. Ford and Crites had some disputes dating back to 2002 over Ford using a road on Crites’ property to access his property north of Crites.

Forseth and Crites had dinner the evening of June 24, 2011, before they drove up in separate cars to Crites’ property on Turk Road. Forseth noted that Crites was in a strange mood that day.

"He came in very sober all day," Forseth said. "My mom even noticed it. She was going like, ‘He's pretty sober’ because he's usually pretty fiery and that day he wasn't. He was really quiet for Mike."

Crites asked Forseth to help him make a list that night of his belongings, and Forseth didn't think anything of it until Crites went missing.

"I didn't think there was anything poignant in it because I mean, who's gonna kill you over a road?" Forseth asked.

Forseth said he left Crites' house around 1:38 a.m. and never heard from his friend again.

David Peterson, who was deputy sheriff for Lewis and Clark County Sheriff's Office in 2011, talked about how calls over property disputes near Turk Road "consumed" his office at times. He said it got to the point where if they had the manpower, they would send two deputies out together when a call came in.

Peterson was present at investigations where Crites’ remains were located. The first bag of remains was found on Oct. 5, 2011, by a U.S. Forest Service employee at what used to be Porcupine Campground halfway up MacDonald Pass. The second discovery of remains was in September 2012, when a dog came back with a human skull after people had let it out of a vehicle on Lime Quarry Hills Lane on the other side of MacDonald Pass near Elliston.

The skull was moved from a 10- to 12-inch deep hole, Peterson said. A cadaver dog found another bag of Crites’ remains in heavy brush about 20 to 30 feet from where the skull was found. Both were found in heavy-duty black garbage bags with cable ties.

"It was obvious to us that animals had disturbed both bags, you know, the head was completely exposed, and then this one here had some holes in it, and it was kind of pulled apart," Peterson said.

After Crites’ skull was discovered, the deputy state medical examiner listed his cause of death as gunshot wounds to the head. In a lab report from July 2013, the projectile recovered from the head was determined to be consistent with a 38-class, 95-grain hollow-point bullet.

The 38-class bullet includes calibers in .38 special, 357 Magnum, 9 mm Luger and 380 Auto firearms. During an October 2012 search of Ford's Oak Harbor, Washington, home, authorities seized a Ruger 357 Magnum revolver, a Colt 380 semi-automatic handgun and a Smith and Wesson 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.

"The first time we went (to Ford's home in Oak Harbor) on Jan. 9, we only had part of the body. We didn't know if guns were used or anything like that, and all we really had was zip ties and plastic so we were pretty limited to a search, and we didn't want to infringe on Mr. Ford's rights, so we didn't stick around very long," said Peterson. "… After we found the second portion of the body on the Powell County side of MacDonald Pass, we decided we were actually going to go out and do a search warrant."

Lewis and Clark County deputies went to Oak Harbor to interview Ford in January 2012, and again in October 2012.

In a recorded interview from January 2012 with authorities that was played to the court, Ford detailed a timeline of events from his visit to Montana in June 2011. He said that he had sent a letter prior to his arrival to Crites to let him know to have the lower road gate unlocked when he arrived in late June so he could spray weeds on his property.

Ford stated that he had only really had about six or so run-ins with Crites since Crites moved to his property in 1996. The Fords have owned property up near Turk Road since 1993.

Ford said that when he arrived in Helena, he drove up on the night of June 25, 2011, and saw that the gate had been welded shut. He then went to confront Crites about it. He said they sat on buckets and talked for about two hours, and when he came up the next morning, the gate had been removed across the road.

Law enforcement said that Crites’ detailed the meeting with Ford the night of June 25, 2011, differently to a friend, saying that Ford showed up and yelled at him, and Crites told him to come back and talk in the morning. Ford posed a question while being interviewed why Crites didn't call law enforcement to witness the meeting he told his friend he was worried about.

"If whoever is really truthful about there being some sort of a fearful confrontation, why didn't -- why wouldn't Mike call (authorities) to come up there?" asked Ford.

In the January 2012 interview, Ford noted that he sprayed weeds on his property for three days, making multiple trips down the road to a neighbor's house, the Shaws, to refill the weed sprayer with water. Ford was in a weed mitigation plan with the county for his property. However, game cameras only recorded Ford going up once around 2:50 p.m. and leaving once around 4:25 p.m. with the weed sprayer on June 27, 2011.

When interviewed on June 28, 2011, Ford told investigators that he never saw Crites on June 26, 2011, and that he and his wife sprayed weeds that day.

This statement was proven contradictory when investigators found that Ford didn't rent a weed sprayer from Lewis and Clark County Weed District until June 27, 2011. In the January 2012 interview, Ford changed his statement saying he didn't spray weeds on June 26, 2011, but spent hours searching for booby traps with a metal detector because his friends told them that Crites’ may have scattered metal parts over Fords’ property to perhaps pop a tire or something like that. Ford said was having trouble with details because it happened eight months prior to the January 2012 interview, and he was on heavy cold medicine.

Ford stated he had no reason to kill Crites because he had an easement granting him use of the lower road on Crites’ property to access his own. He mentioned there was a lawsuit filed in April 2011 by some neighbors against Crites, citing they lived in fear of the man. Crites worried that he might lose his property due to the lawsuit, which would solve road access disputes between the two, Ford noted in the January 2012 interview.

Ford left to head back to his home in Washington on June 29, 2011, after his short trip up to his property in Montana.

"I did not kill Mike Crites," Ford said in the recorded January 2012 interview. "I do not know who killed Mike Crites, if anybody did kill Mike Crites."

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