Missouri man who killed Wisconsin brothers over cattle deal gets 32 more years for fraud
A northwest Missouri man who is serving two life sentences for murdering two brothers over a cattle contract was separately sentenced Monday to 32 years in prison for federal crimes he committed.
U.S. Chief District Judge Beth Phillips also ordered Garland Joseph Nelson, 28, of Braymer, to pay more than $260,000 in restitution to his victims after he admitted he defrauded Diemel’s Livestock of Wisconsin, where the slain brothers worked.
Prosecutors said the $215,000 cattle contract drove Nelson to murder Nicholas and Justin Diemel.
Nelson agreed to raise cattle for the brothers and then sell them. Under the contract, the Diemels were to receive the proceeds of the sales minus the costs Nelson charged for raising the cattle.
For months in 2018 and 2019, loads of cattle were sent to Nelson’s farm in Missouri. But prosecutors said Nelson sold, traded or killed many of the cattle while fraudulently billing the Diemel brothers for his services.
In 2019, Nelson sent a bad check to the Diemel brothers for $215,936. There was only 21 cents in his bank account, prosecutors said, and the check was “intentionally damaged” to prevent it from being submitted for payment.
In July 2019, the Diemel brothers flew to Kansas City from Milwaukee and rented a pickup truck. They then drove to Nelson’s family farm, where he killed them and tried to dispose of their bodies, according to prosecutors.
The brothers were reported missing after they missed their plane home. Police found their rental pickup truck abandoned in a commuter parking lot in Holt, Missouri. Their disappearance was surrounded by mystery for months.
Law enforcement agencies later scanned the 74-acre Nelson farm in Braymer, where human remains were found.
In September, Nelson pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in state court in Johnson County, Missouri, and was sentenced to life in prison.
He later pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of mail fraud and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
In 2020, the victims’ family reached a $2 million settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Nelson, his mother and their family’s cattle business, J4S Enterprises.
Before the murders, Nelson spent time in prison for other cattle-related fraud.
In 2016, Nelson was sentenced to two years for selling more than 600 head of cattle that didn’t belong to him. He pleaded guilty to conducting a cattle fraud scheme that resulted in losses of more than $262,000 to his victims, prosecutors said at the time.
