Ongoing Murder Trial a Reminder the North is not Always All Things Beautiful

GRAND MARAIS – This isn’t Mayberry, folks.

Levi Axtell, the 29-year-old charged with murdering a Grand Marais man here two years ago, appeared via Zoom in the Cook County Courtroom Tuesday, April 8. Previously, the state of Minne­sota ruled Axtell is mentally ill, dangerous, and not competent to stand trial at this time. Tuesday’s hearing was an update on Axtell’s competency. A string of doctors and mental-health specialists were on the witness list for Axtell’s hearing Tuesday. The hearing was sparsely attended, with Axtell’s parents sit­ting in one corner of the courtroom, while several members of the local and regional press sat in another. Other than that, it was mostly law­yers and county officials who were present.

Outside the courtroom Tuesday, it was a spectacular day. The sun re­flected off of Lake Superior, while simultaneously beaming warm rays down from above. The first birds of spring were calling from trees a block down from the courthouse, cool temperatures keeping the leaves from budding on skinny as­pen limbs. If ever there was a post­card waiting to happen, the scene looking down from the courthouse toward a pair of local restaurants, North House Folk School, and the big lake was it.

And that’s the reality of Cook County. It’s beautiful, and it has many layers of darkness. It’s this, and that.

In addition to the Axtell case, which this newspaper will be re­porting more on in the weeks and likely months ahead, there’s the re­cent case in Cook County involving a man who was once on the FBI’s “10 Most Wanted List” at the same time as Osama Bin Laden.

Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned lead­er of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was scheduled to appear before the local judge for a motion hear­ing Monday, March 31 at the Cook County Courthouse. Joining War­ren Jeffs on the court calendar two weeks before Axtell made his ap­pearance was his brother Seth Jeffs, who became something of a house­hold name in Cook County after he purchased property on Pike Lake Road, about 8 miles west of Grand Marais, in 2018.

The most recent legal wranglings attached to the Jeffs brothers in­volve money transfers and the sale of the Pike Lake Road property in 2023. The civil case involves the transfer of money between the Jeffs brothers and money owed to a woman listed on court documents as “MJ, aka Elissa Wall.” During the past two years, the case has in­volved an ex parte order, freezing funds in Seth Jeffs’ bank account, and a collection of back-and-forth legal discord in Cook County be­tween Wall, the Jeffs brothers, and their attorneys.

According to testimony she’s pre­viously given in court and her high­ly publicized story, Wall was only 14 when Warren Jeffs and others in the FLDS church forced her to marry her 19-year-old first cousin. Warren Jeffs officiated the wed­ding. Wall’s testimony about the 2001 marriage helped convict Jeffs in Utah of being an accomplice to rape, Brower said in a conversation with this reporter March 24, though the verdict was overturned on a technicality. Warren Jeffs was later convicted in Texas for assaulting his child brides and is serving a life term there, according to sourc­es this reporter spoke with for an article.

Then there’s Lutsen Resort. As this newspaper recent­ly reported, the investigation into the February 2024 fire at the iconic resort on the North Shore is ongoing. Its embat­tled owner, Bryce Campbell, is now living in Canada, leaving a trail of debt, uncertainty, and ashes in his wake. Campbell maintains he had nothing to do with starting the fire at Lutsen Resort. The State Fire Mar­shal’s Office confirmed with this reporter April 4 that the investigation into the fire’s or­igins remains active. Regard­less of how it started, the fire at Lutsen Resort significantly impacted the community and the landscape of tourism on the North Shore.

Just down the North Shore, in Tofte, the Star Tribune (along with the support of this reporter) is working on a story about Joe Swanson, the self-proclaimed “billionaire” who is a co-owner of Bluefin Bay. The story details, in part, how Swanson and his business partner, Pipasu Soni, are buy­ing a vast network of resorts across Minnesota, including numerous properties in Cook and Lake counties. Soni hap­pens to be the CFO for U.S. Steel. Swanson is the brother of Chris Swanson, the former mayor of Two Harbors who was recalled out of office in 2022. A state auditor’s report from that year supported the Two Harbors city attorney’s decision to review Swanson’s activities and potential con­flicts of interest in his role as mayor. The 75-page report re­leased by the auditor’s office focuses, in part, on the financial conflicts of interest connected to Swanson and businesses he and his family owned in and around Two Harbors when he was mayor. In addition, the Star Tribune reported in 2022 that Swanson acknowledged he was sentenced as a juvenile for allegedly sexually abusing a young girl when they were growing up in Silver Bay.

The North Shore, Lake County, Cook County, and the Boundary Waters are amaz­ing places. Tourists come here from all over the globe to experience and enjoy this glorious pocket of the earth. Great people live in the small communities here, from Knife River to Grand Marais to the end of the Gunflint Trail. We can, and should, celebrate our snow plow drivers, public health workers, nonprofit orga­nizations and others who strive to improve life in these com­munities, and the countless others who care about these communities. At the same time, we must acknowledge there is darkness beneath the glitter we see on the surface of this place. To recognize this might not put “heads in beds,” as some in the tourism industry say, but is the purpose of com­munity to simply thrive, or is it also to be authentic? As the late writer Madeleine L’Engle wrote: “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”