[female narrator] in the wilderness of montana,
An outdoorsman is killed on his neighbor's land.
I noticed what looked like a gunshot wound to his hand
And a gunshot wound that hit his vest.
[narrator] but was the shooting justified?
He reached for a gun, so he drew first and shot him.
He said it was in self-defense.
When someone's shot in the back, how is it self-defense?
[narrator] the investigation reveals
A bitter and escalating feud.
[dan] he wanted to be king of the mountain.
He wanted to run the place.
[narrator] it's a case that proves
Fences might make good neighbors...
But sometimes they can start a war.
[leo] both were packing weapons openly
And were ready for trouble.
It was a constant fight and battle up there.
[dan] he said the next time you see him,
It's gonna be in a body bag.
[gunshot]
[theme music]
[music]
[narrator] nestled in the foothills
Of montana's flathead national forest
Is a remote getaway known as diamond bar x.
[dan] it's a, uh, sportsman's paradise.
There's a couple of rivers that run through the area,
The dearborn river in falls creek.
There's hunting, fishing, backpacking,
Horseback riding,
Any kind of outdoor recreation.
[jerome] people are down home.
It's a very nice, small, tightknit community.
[narrator] but on October 18th, 2013,
The serenity is threatened
When the local sheriff's department
Receives a 911 call from homeowner tani converse.
We've had trouble in that area before
With these two particular individuals.
She was concerned that there was trouble
And she wanted somebody right away.
[narrator] tani says her husband, joe campbell,
Is still arguing with tim,
And she's afraid things might get out of hand.
Unfortunately, the nearest deputy is over 20 miles away.
The response to this area is very difficult.
You get to go on, uh, a highway partway,
Then the road turns to gravel,
And then it turns to dirt.
I called in and I was told that there were two males
In a verbal argument at table mountain,
Joe campbell and tim newman,
And they needed me to go out and, and talk with them.
[narrator] before deputy steiner can get there,
A second call comes in.
[gunshot]
[sirens wailing] [radio chatter]
That stepped up that response from the deputy
Who run lights and sirens to get there.
It took me about 20, 25 minutes to, to get out to that area.
Once I crested the top of the hill, um,
I was able to see, uh, see the two individuals.
I saw joe campbell standing on, uh,
The opposite side of a cattle gate,
And then lying on the ground was tim newman.
[narrator] on the ground near tim
Is a .357 revolver and a pair of bolt cutters.
Campbell's gun, a semiautomatic pistol,
Is resting in his holster.
I started to walk up towards the gate
And just talking to joe,
Telling him to keep his hands up
Where I could see his hands,
And told him not to make any movements.
And then I, I checked on tim.
[leo] tim was laying on his back
With his hands outstretched.
I noticed what looked like a gunshot wound to his hand
And a gunshot wound that hit his vest.
I tried for a pulse.
I didn't feel any pulse, didn't see any breath movements.
And so I knew he had been passed away for a little while.
[leo] how did this end?
And how come it ended where we have
Tim newman dead on this road?
[music]
[narrator] born on August 27th, 1960,
Timothy bruce newman always had a passion for the outdoors.
Tim, I believe, was born in california.
Uh, spent his, his early childhood there.
And as he was starting out in life
And discovering what he wanted to do,
I know he came to montana a few times as a young man.
Uh, he's got family in eastern montana,
Multigenerational ranchers over there.
I think that's how he fell in love with the place,
And he was looking for his own piece of paradise.
[narrator] tim especially loved an area
Known as the bob marshall wilderness,
Which locals call "the bob."
The bob is one of the largest wilderness areas.
Horseback or foot is the only way in there.
It's pristine wilderness the way it was 10,000 years ago.
[narrator] in 2001, tim fulfilled his dream
Of moving to montana
After his first marriage ended in divorce.
[dan] he had moved to great falls,
And he had become an electrician.
And he was looking for a cabin to build or remodel.
[sue] he had a successful business.
I guess I partly base that on the fact
That he was able to buy a place up the diamond bar x,
To have an extra home.
Tim was great friends with my parents.
Tim had recently purchased his property.
And as a cabin owner, my dad and tim
Had just a ton of interests together,
And so they just automatically clicked.
The love of horses, love of the land.
Hunting, fishing.
They really hit it off.
[michael] he was a avid hunter.
Loved being in the rocky mountains.
And that cabin afforded him the ability to do that.
[narrator] tim's cabin had fallen
Into disrepair over the years,
So he spent most of his free time renovating it.
In diamond bar x, he found a community
Full of kindred spirits.
Everybody had the same interests and the same mindset
To come up on the weekends,
Enjoy your cabin, enjoy your friends,
Enjoy your neighbors.
It was very friendly. The bottom bar was open,
And they had a restaurant there and everything.
And everybody'd stop and visit and stuff
And then head on up to their cabins for the weekend.
[michael] tim was a great guy. He was one of those persons
That would do anything.
He'd give you the shirt off his back.
Tim was just, uh, a kindhearted soul, I believe.
[narrator] in 2003, tim's neighbors repaid his kindness
By setting him up on a date with a divorcee named jackie.
[dan] tim and jackie were both freshly divorced
Off of other marriages, and they fell in love,
And they found their soulmate.
[michael] jackie's a beautiful lady,
And I know that tim, uh, loved and respected her,
Not only for her physical beauty,
But she's a very beautiful person on the inside,
Very, very caring and giving person.
Tim proposed to jackie after, uh, only two weeks.
[narrator] in may 2004, tim and jackie got married.
They lived and worked in nearby great falls,
But spent their weekends in diamond bar x,
Transforming the cabin into their dream vacation home.
They were both very hard workers,
And they would set a goal and work together
To obtain those goals.
All the work that they did is just incredible.
If you could see before and after pictures,
It's, it's amazing.
[michael] you could see they were soulmates.
They belonged together.
They belonged up there.
This was just kind of their, uh, heaven on earth.
[music]
[narrator] but now, those dreams have been shattered.
Tim is lying dead on the trail to his beloved wilderness--
Shot by one of his neighbors, joe campbell.
[jerome] joe is standing there with his hands up.
I had a thing of, like, how am I going to get him
To come through the fence
Without him putting his hands down,
Because it would get too close to his gun for me.
So, I explained to him to keep his hands on his fence
And put the holster next to the gate,
So I can unholster his gun.
When I removed joe's, uh, gun from his holster,
The magazine was still in the gun
And there was one in the chamber.
Joe relayed to me that tim pulled a gun on him,
And that joe said he had defended himself.
[leo] we know that there's history.
We'd been there multiple times.
This is something that we had hoped, uh,
For a day that would never come.
So, we are at an index of suspicion
That we needed to investigate this very thoroughly.
[jerome] there's two sides to the story.
We were able to talk to one.
[narrator] coming up,
Investigators learn more about a longstanding feud.
[joselyn] he right away said, "that's private property,
And you can't trespass on my property."
And grabbed the shotgun and pointed it at us.
[narrator] and one story isn't quite adding up.
I think it was staged after the fact.
[theme music]
[narrator] montana sheriffs are investigating
The death of 53-year-old tim newman,
Who was shot during an altercation
In the remote area of diamond bar x.
Who shot him is no mystery.
Tim's neighbor, 67-year-old joe campbell,
Has already admitted to pulling the trigger in self-defense.
[leo] when I got there,
Joe was in the back of deputy steiner's vehicle.
He seemed emotional, as you would expect.
He was just in a shooting.
At that point, I read joe his miranda rights,
And he agreed to talk without a lawyer present.
He was angry that he'd been handcuffed
'cause he felt that it was self-defense,
And he shouldn't have been handcuffed.
I'd never really talked to joe before,
So I have to use that moment in time
And all my years of service
To figure out, okay, is this guy telling me the truth or not?
[narrator] according to campbell,
This isn't the first time he's locked horns with tim newman.
He says the shooting was the culmination
Of a longstanding feud.
Joe campbell came into the area in 1998.
Tim and joe used to get along.
[michael] he did mention that when he first met joe campbell,
He seemed alright.
Seemed like he was just gonna be another guy up there with horses
And an outdoorsman and a hunter.
Then, uh, he partnered up with someone else.
So, they, they bought up all the land up there
That was available.
And that's when things started to change.
Joe bought up land and didn't want anybody crossing it.
Tim took offense to that,
And that's where the dispute came out.
[jerome] tim newman believed that there were some trails
That were public access to get into the forest service
Where joe campbell believed that public access
Was not able to go through his land.
There was a historical path that was called the pony trail
That people probably in the early 1900s
Had gone on this area.
It's a way to get to public land
And go through joe's land.
He felt that people were abusing the privilege
Of crossing his land
And not respecting whatever he had,
So he locked the gates, said, "no more.
I don't want anybody crossing."
Tim newman felt he couldn't do that,
That it was a historical easement.
There was no easement. There was nothing.
But I think he was just determined
That that's the way he was going to go.
[narrator] campbell says after purchasing the land in 2000,
The feud heated up when tim cut the locks he'd installed
And reopened the path.
He'd caught tim before moving across his land.
Code of the west, you just don't go crossing
People's private land without talking to them,
Acquiring permission. There's laws about trespassing.
Joe felt that tim was not respecting him,
And joe was calling the sheriff's office.
Everyone knew that joe and tim were fighting all the time.
I mean, it was a common occurrence up there.
Tim would cut a lock. Joe would put a new one on.
[leo] it just kept escalating and escalating.
Newman forcing the issue and cutting locks
And continuing to trespass, continuing to get tickets.
[narrator] campbell tells investigators
It all came to a head that afternoon,
As he and his wife, tani,
Were taking a walk along the access trail.
Tim had been following them on a four-wheeler
As they had been walking.
[jerome] so then, uh, joe's wife, tani,
Went down the hill to make the initial 911 call.
[narrator] a moment later, campbell says,
Tim approached brandishing a pair of bolt cutters and a gun.
Joe said, "I told tim that I was armed
Just so he would know that I was armed."
[narrator] but the warning went unheeded.
What he described initially was plausible.
Was it possible? We didn't know.
So, we didn't arrest him.
We didn't take custody of him at that moment.
Following the law, we had to let him go.
There was not enough to overcome the law that said
We have to prove that it wasn't self-defense.
Our stand your ground law is extremely strong.
If you are in reasonable fear of bodily injury,
You get to use reasonable force to defend yourself,
Including a weapon.
[narrator] after taking campbell's statement,
Detectives inspect the crime scene.
We got together with the coroner,
And once the death was pronounced,
Then we were able to process, um, process tim.
I hate to say it that way, but, you know,
We start taking pictures of tim,
Unzipping clothes, rolling, rolling over, taking pictures.
Just seeing where everything is at.
Crime scene was consistent because, you know,
Joe talked about where tim had parked his four-wheeler,
And there was a four-wheeler on scene.
Joe talked about tim walking up to a gate,
And tim was found within a few feet of the gate.
Joe said he was on his property, on his side of the gate,
And that's where joe and, and all the shell casings were.
Next to tim was his, uh, revolver.
It was a six-shot revolver laying on the ground.
I didn't see any evidence of his gun being fired.
[narrator] investigators collect the evidence
And transport tim's body to the medical examiner for autopsy.
Once the crime scene is secured,
Officers turn their attention to joe's wife, tani,
To corroborate his story.
[leo] joe's wife was there to support joe.
Tim newman was the instigator
And tim newman was the aggressor
And tim newman was the one who had caused all of this,
And that joe had to act in self-defense.
[narrator] less than an hour into the investigation,
The case already appears to be closed.
But not everyone believes joe's story.
As we were leaving the area, uh,
A female had flagged us down, and it was tim's wife.
Someone had already told her that tim was dead.
She was very sad, frustrated, angry,
Mad at the situation.
She was crying and said, "I asked tim not to do it."
[theme music]
[narrator] hours after the fatal shooting of tim newman,
Investigators accompany his grieving widow, jackie newman,
Back to their idyllic cabin in the woods.
They find a group of friends and neighbors
Gathered there in support.
[dan] sue called me, my wife, and told me what had happened,
And within an hour and forty minutes, the word had spread.
When I talked to jackie,
She clearly was in mourning and distress.
Jackie didn't say a lot to me, and I didn't expect her to.
Just found out her husband had been killed.
Crying, angry, everything that you would expect.
[narrator] although no one saw the shooting,
Several mourners think joe campbell made up
His story of self-defense.
It seems many of them have also had problems with campbell.
They got the drift that joe campbell
Had been pretty oppressive to these folks.
[josslyn] I'm not sure what prompted the change in joe,
But when people have an opportunity to behave badly
And they get away with it,
It emboldens them to continue that behavior.
I believe he thought he could get away with murder.
There was, uh, years of frustrations
And years of confrontations leading up to that day.
Joe was always rubbing everybody the wrong way
And saying things and doing things by actions that
Weren't part of the community up there
That, uh, that we were all used to.
[narrator] but it didn't start out that way.
At first, joe and tani seemed to get along with everyone.
They owned property up the hill from us.
It's a little ways, as the crow flies.
[dan] he worked for the forest service
For a number of years,
And then they had retired up to the diamond bar x.
And tani was doing some computer work from home,
Which back in those days nobody did,
But now everybody's doing it.
[sue] they did a lot of trail running,
And so we'd see them go by our place and they'd wave.
And we got married at the waterfall
That's just below our place.
And joe and tani were there,
Just like all the other neighbors.
[narrator] however, things took a turn
Once campbell bought up all of the undeveloped property
In the area.
[sue] there was little over 600 acres
Kind of patchworked all over the mountain.
A lot here, a lot there.
You know, some bigger chunks.
[bruce] as soon as he got that other land,
They just changed a hundred percent
And wouldn't talk to ya.
I mean, he'd just complain about everything.
If you crossed any part of his land,
He was havin' a fit.
Campbell started putting up gates
On all the roads that we had accessed.
In particular, the trails and the roads we had used
To access forest service land
And claimed that he owned them
And everybody who had been using them
Didn't have that access.
[dan] he can block off all these access points
That we had used for years and years,
And it had been a traditional use in there
For a hundred years,
And all we were doing is passing through his property
Into the forest service.
And he was gonna do whatever it took
To stop people from going through his land.
[narrator] tim newman wasn't the only one
Who had a problem with the changes.
There was some bad blood between joe campbell
And anyone else that wanted to exercise their rights
To enter the wilderness.
Every place you'd go, you'd run into him,
And he was always hollering at you to get back on the road.
You gotta have permission to come up here.
[narrator] neighbors say they tried reasoning with campbell,
To no avail.
We tried to have a community meeting
To talk about it.
He came to that community meeting
And basically said, "I own the land.
I can do what I want."
[bruce] some people are greedy.
He just wanted it all for himself
And didn't want anybody else going anywhere on the land.
Several times, he'd--
Campbell would stop people on their horses,
And actually pointed guns at 'em,
Told 'em to turn around.
Then he had the incident with joe aberle
And his daughter, josslyn aberle.
[josslyn] my dad said, you know, "we'll take a ride."
It was my last day in country before
I had to fly back to iraq.
There was an access for horses to go on the pony trail.
And so we jumped on on our horses and,
At that point, joe campbell had put up a gate
And the lock on the pony trail, so we couldn't go any further.
And as we approached the gate,
He came running up to the gate,
And he also had a shotgun
That was leaned up against he post.
And he right away said, "it's private property,
And you can't trespass on my property."
And he and my dad got into a verbal altercation.
And joe grabbed the shotgun
And started waving his hands and waving the shotgun
To spook the horses.
And then joe takes the shotgun and points it at us.
I was scared.
It was just so surreal.
It, it was just like, you've got to be kidding.
I'm coming back from iraq,
Where I've had three tours where we get shot at every day.
I said, "I'm here. I'm in my, my backyard.
And this crazy man's waving a shotgun at us."
I said, you know, "what the blank is going on?"
My dad's determined. He says,
"we have every right to go on these trails.
We're going to go up."
And I just told my dad, "you know what, dad?"
I'm like, "let's stop.
We'll go back, make a sheriff's report on this.
I'm like, "I want this followed up on.
I want to press charges."
Crickets.
Never heard anything again.
[narrator] by September 2009,
The situation had gotten so bad
That a group of residents sought legal help.
[sue] me and several of the neighbors
Write a letter to the lewis and clark county attorney
And the lewis and clark county sheriff
To say we've had so many incidences up here
And he's now pulled a weapon.
Nothing's been done and someone's gonna get shot.
[dan] we were told, unfortunately,
That it was a civil problem.
But in my mind, pulling a gun on a guy is a criminal offense.
They never charged him with anything.
We thought, okay, before violence comes to it,
We'll just fight him legally.
So, we did that.
We decided to pool our money,
Whoever wanted to get involved in it,
And, and fight him legally with a, a lawsuit.
So, there was ten families.
Tim did become involved in that.
He was one of the original ten.
[narrator] but a costly court battle with a wealthy landowner
Proved impossible to sustain.
After that pool of money was spent,
We had to go back to each cabin owner and say,
"okay, we're out of money. We need more time.
Is everybody still in?"
We lost two or three, I think. Tim was one of 'em.
He said, "I just can't afford to do this anymore."
[narrator] that's when tim decided
To take the direct approach.
[michael] he was just frustrated.
Tim thought, "I'll just get in trouble
So I can get in front of a judge and assert my rights."
And he did that by cutting chains and locks
And opening gates.
That was his civil disobedience,
And for all the other cabin owners to gain access.
He was doing it for everybody.
'cause that's the kind of guy tim was.
[narrator] neighbors say tim's plan seemed to work.
After several trespassing charges,
He was set to face campbell in court that October.
But it never came to pass.
On August 14th, two months before the shooting,
The lewis and clark county attorney's office
Made a motion to drop the criminal charges,
Deciding it was a civil matter.
That's when things started to really go sour
Between joe campbell and tim.
[dan] when joe campbell found out
That the charges were dropped,
He became very irate and made threats to people like,
"the next time you see tim, it's gonna be in a body bag."
And those were his exact words.
[narrator] it didn't take long for tim
To hear about campbell's threats.
A group of us got together and tim had a gun.
It was my understanding that a neighbor asked him about it,
And he said, "I'm carrying it because
"I'm afraid of joe campbell.
I'm afraid he's gonna pull a gun on me."
Both were packing weapons openly.
And they were ready for trouble.
[narrator] coming up,
Forensic evidence tells tim newman's side of the story.
That's where our alarm bells went off.
This is wrong.
This didn't happen the way he said.
[narrator] but his killer might get away with it.
[bruce] there was a lot of people upset about it,
But you didn't know if you're gonna be next.
[theme music]
[narrator] after interviewing the other residents
Of diamond bar x,
Detectives reexamine joe campbell's claim
That he killed tim newman in self-defense.
[zander] there had been a longtime dispute,
Not just with tim newman,
But with a vast number of the people
At the residence up there.
[narrator] but if they're going to charge campbell with a crime,
Investigators need more than a rumor of threats.
Self-defense in montana is implied.
We need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
It wasn't self-defense by the forensic evidence.
[narrator] the day after the shooting,
The state medical examiner conducts an autopsy.
Police are hoping the results
Will give them an objective account
Of how tim was shot.
Mister, uh, campbell described that the confrontation
Happened right at the gate.
Mr. Newman reached down to pull out his gun
And then mr. Campbell shot.
And he shot him in the hand.
And then, as he spun, he was firing another one
And shot him in the back.
The first shot that we looked at
Was the one that hit him in the spine.
The angle indicated opposite of what he said.
That's where our alarm bells went off of, this is wrong.
This didn't happen the way he said.
[narrator] did the stress of the moment
Cause campbell to misremember?
Or is he covering up a coldblooded murder?
To find out, detectives bring him in for another interview
On October 28th.
When you interview someone right after something happens,
There can be times where there are truly a memory blank.
We did say, "joe, what you're telling us
"doesn't line up with what we found with the autopsy.
"can you tell us again? Tell us about this,
Because what you're saying doesn't, doesn't add up."
[narrator] despite the discrepancies,
Campbell sticks to his story.
[zander] it's extremely hard to prove a criminal case
Unless you've got some super physical fact
That countermands everything else.
If you can show that physically it had to happen,
You're going to have a lot better chance of
Removing all reasonable doubt.
We need to take the forensic evidence
And have someone that can do ballistics
And reenact this type of thing where the evidence was found.
[narrator] the district attorney's office
Hires a forensics team to do the reconstruction
In the exact same circumstances.
But mother nature doesn't cooperate with their plan.
This was a time of year where
It was beginning to get into the fall.
It snowed.
We weren't able to get up there.
[narrator] for several months,
The answers lie buried beneath the snow.
And joe campbell remains a free man.
There was a lot of people that were very upset
That he didn't get arrested and go to jail.
[dan] the feeling up there then was,
There's a guy living up here
That's capable of killing somebody,
Shooting him in the back.
It scared off a lot of the neighbors.
They decided to stay away because they were afraid.
Consensus was around was just to stay clear of the guy.
But you didn't know if you're going to be next, or what.
[music]
[narrator] finally, on may 19th, 2014,
The snow melts enough for police to conduct
A reenactment at the scene.
Using a mannequin and measurements
Taken the day of the shooting,
A forensic specialist tests joe's version of events.
The scientist came back and looked at
Different plausible scenarios,
What joe had said had happened,
What we felt was happening.
What fit with how the body, how tim's body, was shot.
[narrator] joe claimed to shoot tim first in the front.
This spun him around,
And joe's second shot was to tim's back.
[leo] but the body was found laying on his back
With the legs spread.
If you are shot just standing there,
You're gonna fall and your legs will be together
Because there's no momentum.
If you're running, chances are one leg
Is already out in front,
And it's going to be spread away,
Such as tim newman was.
It was shown beyond a reasonable doubt
That tim was turning away and running away
When he was shot in the back.
[narrator] to forensic specialists,
Evidence indicates tim was shot first in the back
And spun around to land face up.
And the trajectory of joe's second shot
Negates his self-defense argument.
He was shot when he was laying down.
[sue] for him to be shot the way joe said,
They had him doing some type of a matrix move
Like you would see in a cartoon animation.
That he would have had to bend way back and, um,
It just doesn't seem logical that a person could do that,
Um, to make their scenario fit.
The other important piece was the bolt cutters.
Joe campbell claims tim was cutting the lock
When he apparently took these bulky bolt cutters
And dropped them
And was able to grab his gun,
Point it at joe,
And then, of course, joe campbell outdrew him.
So, the placement of the bolt cutters was very important
Because they weren't right at the gate.
They appeared to be right where tim fell over
After he was shot in the back.
[narrator] the reenactment reveals another inconsistency.
Tim was left handed,
And when he was shot and killed,
The gun was laying by his right hand.
I don't think that tim ever drew a gun.
I think it was pulled out of the holster
And placed by his right hand.
I think it was staged after the fact.
Where the bolt cutters were, where the gun was,
It's all great evidence that this wasn't any of the scenarios
That joe campbell gave as his stories.
The forensics showed that tim was shot in the back
When he was running away from the gate.
This feud had been going for some time.
I mean, it had been heating up.
And with the forensic evidence,
What we could find, we had enough evidence
To go before a judge and say,
"we feel that joe campbell murdered tim newman."
[theme music]
[narrator] on June 23rd, 2014,
Nearly nine months after tim newman was killed,
Montana police place joe campbell under arrest.
We took quite a few officers with us.
Uh, we had two or three go up to joe's house
Just in case something might happen.
And then joe was arrested peacefully
And there, there was no incident.
[dan] word spread like wildfire.
We thought, oh boy, they finally got that son of a bitch,
Here we go.
He's finally gonna get what he deserves.
[narrator] at his arraignment, joe pleads not guilty
Under montana's stand your ground laws.
The judge sets bail at one million dollars,
But the wealthy landowner hardly bats an eye.
He used his land that this incident happened on
As collateral, plus cash.
He didn't spend a night in jail or anything.
He bonded out right away, and that was the end of that.
[sue] when he was released on bail,
We were all super concerned.
It was already bad enough that he'd been up there
All those months before he was arrested.
The state negotiated that he could not
Come back on the mountain.
He had to be ten miles from his residence,
Because so many of us were witnesses.
[narrator] after several delays,
Campbell's trial finally begins on February 15th, 2016,
More than two years after the shooting.
Despite the evidence, prosecutors know
They still face an uphill battle.
We had to overcome that western mentality of
"this is my land, stay off my land,
"and I have the right to shoot you
If I think you're gonna pull a gun."
When someone's shot in the back, how is it self-defense?
[zander] when you sift through everything,
It seemed pretty absurd,
But you have to get twelve jurors to agree
Beyond a reasonable doubt.
[narrator] residents of diamond bar x testify
To campbell's history of aggression
And threats against tim newman.
Prosecutors also walk the jury through the reenactment,
Proving tim was shot as he attempted to run.
We brought in an expert to show
That our theory on how he was shot was correct.
[narrator] but campbell's defense
Produces their own expert to dispute those findings.
It was hard to sit and listen to conflicting experts.
The state's experts said one thing
And campbell's hired experts said another.
It was hard to heal and move on
When we're sitting in the court looking at a murderer.
[narrator] after a three-week trial,
The jury is sent to deliberate.
They return 13 hours later.
Everybody thought, here we go, justice is gonna be served.
Unfortunately, the jury didn't see it that way.
[zander] the prosecution was required to get
12 votes of guilty from 12 jurors.
If one of those jurors said, "I feel there's reasonable doubt,"
That would be a mistrial.
And that's what happened.
[sue] I was disappointed in the mistrial,
That we had a hung jury.
Realistically I knew all along it's hard to convince 12 people
Beyond a reasonable doubt
When you have two people telling a side of a story
And one's dead.
[narrator] after the mistrial,
The state quickly prepares to go back to court.
But two months later, campbell enters into a plea deal.
Instead of prison, he receives 20 years of probation.
Never spent a night in jail for killin' a fella.
I don't know, I don't know how--it's money.
It's money.
I guess the good thing that came out of it--
There were some good things--
Is he was banned from the mountain for 20 years.
Can't own a firearm for 20 years.
And he had to sell his properties.
And so just not having him around gave us a peace of mind
That we can go up there and enjoy life again
And return to normal.
[narrator] a memorial now marks the spot
Where tim newman was killed
Fighting for the land he loved.
Tim didn't die completely in vain.
There's still access to the national forest
For the general public, for the average guy.
And that's something that I'm grateful
To those that made that happen.
[dan] there's a tree back up there
Where we go all the time and go horseback riding and hunting,
And tim's got his initials carved in there.
We look at that.
It's hard not to think about him.
I was just at, uh, the spot where he was shot
Just a few days ago and, uh, it's very sobering.
And I always take a few seconds and, uh,
I just look around and I know he's there.
You know, I know he's there.
I'll see you in a few years, buddy.
[chuckles]
[music]