Nelson to plead guilty in Diemel brothers’ murders

A Missouri man has agreed to plead guilty in connection with the 2019 murders of two Shawano County area brothers, according to court documents.

Documents filed Sept. 27 in federal court in St. Joseph, Missouri, by the U.S. Attorney requested that the court release Garland J. Nelson to plead guilty in state court where he was been charged with murder of Nicholas Diemel, 35 and Justin Diemel, 24, of Bonduel and Pulaski, respectively.

The request, granted on Sept. 27, stated Nelson, 24, is expected to plead guilty within two days. Nelson faces two counts of murder in the first degree, abandonment of a corpse, and single counts of tampering with physical evidence, tampering with a motor vehicle, armed criminal action and felon in possession of a firearm.

If Nelson doesn’t plead guilty in state court, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri requests that Nelson be returned to federal custody for trial Oct. 4 for mail fraud, punishable by 20 years in prison, and felon in possession of a firearm, punishable by 10 years in prison.

The case against Nelson began on July 21, 2019, when Jack Diemel called Caldwell County authorities to report that his sons flew to Missouri from Wisconsin and were supposed to return home on July 21, 2019, according to an affidavit by the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office.

Jack Diemel said his sons never got on their flight home and had not answered their phones, which was unlike them.

Jack Diemel said his sons were coming to Missouri to retrieve a $250,000 check from Nelson for cattle that the business he operated, J4S Farms, had sold for them, according to the affidavit.

Nelson was contacted and throughout the hours-long investigation gave many misleading explanations and recollections of events in attempts to mislead law enforcement in locating Nicholas and Justin Diemel.

However, investigators found a factual basis to believe that on July 21, 2019, the Diemels drove a rented truck from Kansas City, Missouri, to Nelson’s cattle business near Braymer, Missouri.

Nelson said he was paid to feed and then sell cattle for the Diemels.

Nelson said that drove the Diemels’ rented truck from his farm to a location in Holt, Missouri, where he left it with the keys in the ignition and took the Diemels’ cellphones, disposing of them along a roadway. Nelson had arranged with different persons to be given rides that would eventually return him home.

Based on the investigation, Caldwell County authorities believe that Nicholas and Justin Diemel never left the J4S property after they arrived and were intentionally killed. They also believe that Nelson acted alone or with others in murdering the Diemel brothers.

After returning home, Nelson said he found two bodies he believed were Nicholas and Justin Diemel dead, each inside of a 55-gallon barrel located in a pole barn south of a residence at the J4S Farms.

The bodies were then each moved in a skid loader bucket through a pasture and burnt using an unknown liquid and diesel fuel.

The bodies were then placed in a manure pile near a metal barn and Nelson said he crushed the barrels using the skid loader.

Nelson added that he returned to the pole barn and used a shovel to remove blood from the floor where it is believed the Diemels were killed.

Nelson admitted to using a 30-30 caliber rifle to kill two small animals on July 20, 2019. Nelson is a convicted felon on probation, and the admission is the basis for the felon in possession charge.

Law enforcement conducted search warrants and burnt human remains were collected in a manure pile at J4S Farms. Based on DNA comparisons, the bodies are believed to be the remains of the Diemel brothers. DNA from a blood stain on Nelson’s clothing was confirmed to match Nicholas Diemel’s.

A neighbor said he heard multiple gunshots coming from J4S Farms about the time that Nelson had said he was with the Diemels and prior to driving their rented truck to Holt.

Other evidence recovered from the searches included two crushed barrels, a fired 30-30 caliber cartridge in Nelson’s clothing, which had been stained with Nicholas Diemel’s blood.

A 30-30 cartridge was found in a vehicle belonging to Nelson and the shovel used by Nelson to remove blood from the dirt flood of a barn.

The mail fraud charge Nelson faces in federal court alleged that, between November 2018 and July 2019, Nelson engaged in a scheme to defraud the Diemels who operated Diemel’s Livestock, LLC. Nelson agreed to care and feed cattle belonging to Diemel’s Livestock, and then send Diemel’s Livestock the sale price of the cattle minus the cost of raising them. Nelson also agreed to buy from the Diemels some cattle Nelson kept at his mother’s farm in Braymer.

However, cattle in Nelson’s care had high death rates due to underfeeding neglect or mistreatment. He dropped hay bales in a pasture without removing the plastic covering. Calves ate the plastic and died.

In December 2018, Nelson was raising 131 calves he co-owned with a Kansas farmer. Five months later, only 35 calves, many emaciated, infested with ringworm and had tags torn out of their ears, survived to be returned to the Kansas farmer.

The Diemels allegedly had similar problems in their business dealings with Nelson.