rarely enough. the assumptions are not the same thing as evidence. and we didn t have any evidence to support that they are directly involved other than what jennifer thompson told us. why not just call them in and ask them? they wouldn t talk to us. we got a letter and a phone call from wally s attorney immediately after michiel oakes arrest, stating that wally opdycke would not talk to us. well, had you asked him by then? no, we have not even requested to interview wally. we hadn t even called him. what did you think? well, i thought, wow, huge red flags. i thought, wow, this guy, we haven t even asked to talk to him and he already has an attorney. and the attorney is already contacting us telling us not to contact wally opdycke? it was crazy. same with linda. she hired an attorney right away. linda invoked her fifth amendment right to remain silent. a judge ultimately ordered her to sit for a deposition. still didn t say anything. pretty much every question
him? i went and i got shot. and i won. so because i won the gunfight, i know that i will not be standing on the side of my children s graves and people aren t going to be patting me on the back and saying, there s nothing you could have done. i did. oakes claimed mark stover shot first. thus the claim he now made. it was self-defense. even though no evidence ever surfaced to suggest stover was in possession of any firearm at all or that stover had ever arranged any meeting with oakes. and as for the story that he was a hired gun for the opdyckes, just not true, said michiel oakes. a great many people believe that one or both of the opdyckes are involved. were they involved? not at all. but of course it was all michiel s story. about a crazed dog whisperer,
oakes, apparently not aware he was being watched, took a white bag out of his car, said the officer and tossed it over a 20-foot embankment outside linda s house. he immediately questioned michiel about what he threw over the embankment. michiel said it was garbage. garbage? garbage. but they went to retrieve that bag of garbage. what was actually in it? it was a gun. inside michiel oakes garbage was a.22 caliber browning pistol. also in the bag, a bloody swatch of carpet and an overwhelming odor of bleach. and then here s what they found inside linda s house. bizarre. oh, there was all sorts of ammunition and guns, firearms on magnets behind tapestries, firearms in drawers. loaded guns all over this house. including semiautomatic weapons and big-time stuff? yes.
it. the lens i look at the world through is really that of a single dad. i m a nurturer, i m a father, a very peaceable person. i just happen to be a single dad who s kind of in a very unfortunate limelight right now. well, yes, charged with first degree murder. so how did he get to this place? the story began, he said, when someone asked him to contact a frightened woman he did not know. that s how he made that first call to linda opdycke. she said i m dealing with a really frightening stalking situation. michiel, remember, was a security expert. he trained s.w.a.t. teams in close quarters combat. he offered to help. she put in my hands this very thick file including video recordings, audio recordings, police reports, page after page, threatening voice mails. linda told him she d been stalked for years by her ex-husband.
so well he s written numerous articles for gun magazines, has even trained police s.w.a.t. teams. but has no criminal record and, insisted browne, he isn t a murderer. still, he must have done something to mark stover. didn t he? well, here s where it all began to get tricky. if stover was really dead, said john henry browne, and if the prosecution could prove oakes killed him, then, and only then oakes might provide an explanation. through the legal fog a little hint came popping out. the prosecution had already indicated it would introduce into evidence a bulletproof vest found in michiel oakes suv. now attorney browne seemed to be suggesting that vest would be important to any claim the defense might decide to make. just to make things clear, your honor, it s not just a vest. it s a bullet that was found in the vest. and then the defendant tells his story to dateline. even before he had does in