DENVER — Jesse Trentadue couldn't believe it when he was told his brother, Kenneth Michael Trentadue, had hanged himself with a bed sheet while being held in a federal detention center in Oklahoma City for a parole violation.
Sure, his brother had spent prison time for bank robbery, had battled heroin addiction and alcoholism, but he was a proud new father. A message was found in his cell scrawled on a piece of paper, "My mind no longer it's friend love ya. Familia!"
After spending nine days after the Aug. 21, 1995, death getting the body back, Trentadue's family was not prepared for what met them at the funeral home.
"It's just like burned into my brain. It's horrific. His head split open, throat slashed. He was bruised from head to toe," Trentadue said. Federal officials were quick to rule Kenneth Trentadue's death a suicide, but the bruised and bloody body lying before them told a different story.
An autopsy initially concluded the cause of death as "unknown" due to the extensive injuries. However, under reported pressure by federal officials that cause was later changed to "suicide."
The Deseret Morning News has obtained photos of Kenneth Trentadue's body but has deemed them too graphic for publication.
For 11 years Jesse Trentadue, an attorney in Salt Lake City, has battled the federal government to unravel the mystery behind his brother's death. Based on hundreds of pages of documents from the FBI and Federal Bureau of Prisons, Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by the FBI shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing in a case of mistaken identity. The government denies that.
Trentadue and his family filed a wrongful death suit against the U.S. government. During a monthlong bench trial in 2000 a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled there was not enough evidence to show that Kenneth Trentadue was murdered. However, the court did find there was enough evidence to show that the U.S. government intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the Trentadue family by withholding information about his death and shipping his body without explanation and by conducting an autopsy without the family's consent.
"They even tried to have him cremated, twice," Jesse Trentadue said, but Oklahoma state officials said that required family consent.
In the latest legal battle between Trentadue and the federal government, the government has appealed the district court's decision that found evidence of intentional infliction of emotional distress and the $1.1 million judgment for the family.
During oral arguments before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, government attorney Michael Robinson argued that the district court did not adequately detail its reasons supporting its emotional distress findings. It is the second time the 10th Circuit has held a hearing on the issue.
Robinson also argued that under Oklahoma law, which applies in the case, only family members present at the funeral home can make a claim.
Appellate Judge Terrence O'Brien said the damages went beyond viewing the state of Kenneth Trentadue's body but also included the federal government "hiding and obscuring some of the facts" behind the man's death.
Court documents also show that after the family complained, federal officials accused the family of inflicting the wounds on the body and insinuated that he killed himself "because he had AIDS."
Jesse Trentadue told the panel of judges that the federal government has had a history of dirty dealing in this case. He said there is evidence that the FBI destroyed documents pertaining to his brother's death and the government has twice attempted to have him indicted for obstructing justice by using "manufactured" evidence from some federal inmates who have testified he had arranged to pay other inmates for their testimony.
Trentadue argued that because of evidence that federal officials have misled the lower court, he should be allowed to withdraw his suit and refile it for a new trial.
Judge Harris Hartz said he would consider the arguments from Trentadue and the government for a written opinion to be released in the coming weeks.
Outside court, Robinson had no response to Trentadue's allegation that the federal government is trying to have Trentadue indicted in an attempt to silence him.
Also outside of court, Trentadue said that some inmates have wound up dead in connection with this case.
Trentadue said John Roe Guthrie, a man he claims agents mistook his brother for, also wound up hanging from a bed sheet in another federal prison facility in Kentucky. Guthrie reportedly had ties to a white-supremacist group that also had ties to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who were held responsible for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that took the lives of 168 adults and children.
At one point, federal officials explained Kenneth Trentadue's injuries by claiming his cellmate, Alden Gillis Baker, was a violent psychopath. Trentadue said a deposition of Baker showed that Baker was prepared to testify that he was not in the same cell as Kenneth Trentadue and that federal officials had recruited other inmates to pressure Baker to change his story. Baker, too, wound up hanging from a bed sheet in his cell in a federal facility in California.
Trentadue said his fight with the government has come with a price. "I've lost 11 years of my life with my wife and kids," he said, but added he is not about to let what he sees as a great injustice happen.
E-MAIL: gfattah@desnews.com