Chester's Murder

0:08 Dispression. On March thirteenth, two thousand, four, young men met up at a house in Spearfish, South Dakota, to play video games together. The home belonged to Chester Alan Pogue and his family and had been a long winding road for them to end up in this quaint rural city. Chester himself had been born on July fourth, nineteen eighty on a farm in Norton County, Kansas. The farm had been in the Pogue family for generations over one hundred years, and it looked like it was primed and ready to pass on to the next generation. First, Chester and then his younger sister grew up living and working on the parents farm. The work was tough and physically demanding, but despite Chester's small stature, he was tough. When he was done with the hard farm work for the day, Chester could be found playing baseball and basketball with the other kids of rural Norton County. But Chester was small and short for his age, and kids can be cruel. The other members of the basketball team and baseball teams bullied him, and he was almost always picked dead last. By nineteen ninety four, things had started to fall apart

1:44 at home too. The marriage between his parents was feeling a strain, and to try to smooth things over, the family moved to Rapid City, South Dakota, looking for a fresh new start. It wasn't meant to be, however, and in nineteen ninety six, Chester's parents filed for divorce. Only four days later, his father took his own life. Reeling from sudden loss, his mother moved Chester and his sister back to Norton to be closer to their grandparents. Chester grew up now over six feet tall. He became good with his hands and interested in technology, which is partially the reason why he chose to study communications technology at Northwest Kansas Technical School. While Chester was away at college, his mother and sister moved to Spearfish, South Dakota, and that's where they finally settled. In two thousand, Chester was nineteen years old.

2:39 He had just finished an internship and was six months away from graduating when he decided to take a short break of a few months. He moved out to Spearfish to be closer to his mother and sister, who were delighted to see him and happy that he was doing so well. But by March of that year, they also needed a little break, not from Chester, but from the harsh South Dakota in winter, so they booked a long trip to Florida to try to warm up. Chester decided to stay both to look after the house and because he'd made some new friends. Elijah Page was eighteen years old and originally from Titusville, Florida. His journey to Spearfish, South Dakota had been marked with tragedy and abuse, and unfortunately, the side effects of that were starting to show. Growing up, Elijah had been moved from abandoned building to abandoned building by his mother and stepfather. These derect homes often had no heating or even plumbing, and every cent his mother and stepfather came by went into fueling their drug addictions. When the money ran out, Elijah's mother found a cruel way to get what she wanted. When he was only two years old, his mother began selling Elijah to her dealers in exchange for drugs and money. Both she and these men allegedly physically and sexually abused him, and that was only the start. When an angry and irate dealer showed up at their front doorstep demanding to be paid, Elijah's stepfather used the child as

4:12 a human shield to try to fend off the drug dealer. Finally, Elijah was placed into foster care, which was how the then eighteen year old ended up in Spearfish. But by then the damage had been done. In his teens, Elijah began showing the signs of psychopathy. He had rage issues that threatened to turn violent, and he showed no remorse or empathy to those around him. With Chester and Elijah inside Chester's home that day was twenty one year old Daryl Hoadley, another young man plagued with a troubled upbringing. His childhood had been shadowed by emotional, physical, and sexual abuse from his mother and the men that were in and out of her life, and by the time Daryl walked into Chester's house that day, he himself was already the father to an infant daughter. Wrapping things up. The supposed leader of this gang of misfits was the nineteen year old Alaskan born Briley Wayne Piper. At just nine years old, he'd set his parents' bedroom on fire. At thirteen, he'd been arrested for molesting a woman, and then later arrested again for robbing a classmate at knife point. He was later described as someone apt at manipulating others, but it was actually Elijah who set the wheels into motion that day that would lead to a devastatingly bitter and cruel end. With Chester's mother and sister away in Florida and the four young men over at Chester's family home to play video games. The scene was set. While the others were hanging out,

5:46 Elijah began stalking through the home searching for valuables. At some point during the evening, he approached Darryl, and the pair of them agreed that Chester and his family had things that were worth taking. At around time ten p m. Three others convinced Chester to head over to the house that they were currently living in. Chester agreed and even drove them in his Chevrolet Blazer, unaware of what his supposed friends had planned for him. When Chester walked into their house later that evening, Elijah pulled out a gun and aimed it at Chester. The gun was Chester's mother's gun, and Elijah had stolen it during his stakeout earlier. Elijah ordered Chester to the floor, where Briley began repeatedly kicking him. He kicked Chester so hard that he ended up, cracking one of Chester's teeth, and Chester went unconscious, completely caught off guard and vulnerable.

6:41 He was then tied to a chair with a tire iron place between his feet to keep him from moving. When he regained consciousness, Briley was standing on top of that tire iron, crushing Chester's feet. They then forced the remains of an old beer tainted with various pills and hydrochloric acid, down Chester's throat and finally explained to Chester what was going on. Elijah, Briarly and Daryl were going to rob Chester's house and they were simply getting rid of the only witness. But the beating and poisoned Beard didn't kill Chester and left the three criminals in an unexpected predicament. In front of their friend turned victim, they began discussing potential ways to kill him, ignoring Chester's please and the damage that they'd already inflicted on him. They then stole his ATM card and ordered that he give up the pen number. Chester complied, all the while begging to be let go. Instead of listening, Elijah, Briley and Darrell forced Chester back into his car and drove him out to the remote Higgins gulch where they reckoned they would kill Chester. No one would ever find out. Out in about twelve inches of snow, they ordered Chester to strip naked and marched him out towards an icy creek, beating him more along the way and jeering at him. They forced Chester down into the frigid water, where they beat him again, thinking that either the blows or hypothermia would eventually kill him. When

8:13 that seemed to be taking too long, they then pulled Chester out of the water and started kicking him between them. They kicked him so hard and so often that they ended up ripping both of his ears off and partially scalping him. But still Chester clung to life. He survived being thrown back into the icy creek, stabbed in the neck, stabbed through the skull and into the brain, and then through the ear. When he cried out after the last stabbing, he was beaten again as punishment. By then, Chester had accepted that he was going to die, but he made one final plea. If he was going to die, he wanted to die in the warmth of his car, not out in the cold than the snow. His attackers agreed to this request and told him that he could only get back into the car if he washed the blood from his body. Chester dragged himself back into the water's edge and cleaned himself. While he was stumbling back towards his car, his attackers pounced again. Between blows and kicks, they confessed that it had all been a trick and they weren't ever going to let Chester back into his car.

9:24 Instead, they pulled him back into the water. This time. Chester didn't fight, He didn't complain as the three men tried to drown him instead. Whenever he caught his breath, Chester either just stayed quiet or begged for it to be over Between them, Briley and Darrell began lifting heavy rocks and bashing Chester over the head. With him, Elijah had supposedly returned to the car. By the time the finishing blow had been dealt. Somewhere over the span of one evening, Chester had gone from being surrounded by friends to lie dead, half submerged in an icy creek in the middle of the Decote and wilderness. His killers then returned to his home, where they ransacked the place and took anything of value that could fit into Chester's car. Splitting town, They then drove down to Missouri, pawning off items and collecting money from Chester's ATM card along the way. They arrived at Elijah's sister's home, thinking that she would let them stay for a while, but she refused. The three killers then went their separate ways. When Chester's mother and sister returned from their Florida trip, they found their home in disarray and Chester gone. Knowing that something was wrong, they filed a missing person's report, but nothing came of it until six weeks later, when a woman found the remains of a young man in a creek near her property. Authorities advised Chester's mother not to identify her son's body herself because the damage inflicted on him in his final hours had

10:56 been so brutal. Five days after chack Ester had been found, police brought in Daryl Hoadley, the only one of the three killers to return to Spearfish since the murder. Daryl quickly confessed and coughed up the names of his two accomplices. Elijah was arrested down in Texas and Briley was arrested in Alaska. Both Elijah and Briarley pled guilty and were found guilty of first degree murder. Both were sentenced to death for their crimes. Daryl was sentenced to life in prison, and he remains behind bars in South Dakota State Penitentiary. Elijah first waived his right to have a jury determine his sentence, and in two thousand and six he ordered his lawyers to stop and he appeals. He was executed by lethal injection in two thousand and seven at twenty five years of age.

11:46 Briley, however, continues to appeal his sentence. He was resentenced by a jury in twenty eleven, a sentence that was upheld in twenty nineteen. He is currently the only prisoner left on death row in South Dakota, where he still awaits his execution.