Third Murder Suspect Pleads Innocent

Sat., Dec. 16, 2000

By John Craig johnc@spokesman.com

John D. “Chooey” Grange pleaded innocent Friday to shooting two men and burning their bodies last June on a logging road in northern Stevens County.

Grange, 26, is the third suspect to be charged in the deaths of Nicholas Kaiser and Josh Schaefer, both 21. Grange faces trial Feb. 5 on two counts of second-degree murder.

Jeffrey S. Cunningham, 25, and Dane M. Williams, 27, pleaded innocent earlier to charges of first-degree rendering criminal assistance for allegedly helping Grange put the victims’ bodies in a pickup and set it afire. A hunter found the burned-out vehicle three months later on a logging road about 15 miles north of Colville.

Authorities say the suspects were associated with a drug ring that considered Kaiser an informer.

Kaiser, from Waynesboro, Pa., had been living as a transient in Western Washington. Schaefer is from San Diego, where his wife reported him missing in June.

Schaefer and Kaiser went to the Northport Bartre Faire together, where the suspects allegedly spotted them and lured them to a remote cabin where Grange shot them with a .22-caliber rifle.

Stevens County sheriff’s officers arrested Cunningham Nov. 3 in Broward County, Fla. Then Williams was arrested Nov. 8 near Vancouver, Wash., and Grange was nabbed Nov. 14 in Portland.

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