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Killing Crossroads

Kaestel rolled through Fort Smith on the heels of a string of sordid murders. And then-county prosecutor and rising star Ron Fields says he and his community were fed up with the crime that seemed to trickle through town, which, three decades ago, sat at the junction of an interstate and a major highway.

1981 "was a tough year for this area," Fields says, noting that he was preparing to prosecute four capital murder cases when Kaestel robbed the taco hut.

According to a story in the Arkansas Times, a weekly newspaper based in Little Rock, Ark., in the '90s, Fields had sent more people to death row than any other prosecutor, and his office in Fort Smith had shipped more people to the state penitentiary than any other jurisdiction in the state.

"I had the second-highest number of convictions of death penalty cases in the country," Fields recalls, adding that, "regrettably, a number of serial killers went through this area. I think the public was just absolutely saying we're going to stamp this out one way or another."

The people traveling with Kaestel all agreed to testify against him. Kaestel says this was OK with him, since they didn't rob the store; he did. But Kaestel recalls that the defense attorney assigned to him was also representing the people who would be testifying against him, and court records show that this was the case. So Kaestel, who had become savvy with legal affairs by now, and was oddly smart for a man with only a seventh-grade education, opted to represent himself.

Kaestel took his duties seriously. A clerk at the Sebastian County Courthouse who pulled Kaestel's file says it is filled with around 400 pages of motions and briefs, most handwritten by Kaestel. They include a motion for a separate trial from the other defendants, motions seeking release of evidence from prosecutors, motions to suppress evidence and even a motion to amend a motion to suppress testimony.

"It just goes on and on and on," the clerk remarks. "He liked to write, it looks like."

Fields didn't take kindly to Kaestel's confidence.

"Fields and I were at each other's throats," Kaestel remembers. "He just told me he was going to get me."

Fields says he recalls that Kaestel's insistence on representing himself worked against his case, and that perhaps he received a stiffer penalty because he chose to represent himself.

"It was a pretty serious case, and it was probably complicated to some extent by Mr. Kaestel's insistence on representing himself," Fields says. "I think that tended to add to his sentence, because I don't think he did himself a service in the way that he did represent himself."

Kaestel says he believed the jury would give him a fairer penalty than Fields. And with the men at each other's throats, a jury trial commenced.

"We had a four-day fight in that courtroom that he couldn't believe, the judge couldn't believe and I couldn't believe," Kaestel says.

But despite his efforts, Kaestel was found guilty and given a life sentence without parole. He was also assessed a $15,000 crime.

Fields says that even though he's the man who put Kaestel in jail for life, he's a little surprised that the man hasn't found a way out.

"It's unusual for someone to serve so much time without, at some point, either getting clemency or parole," Fields says.

And, had the circumstances been different, and the violence level in the area toned down a notch or two, Kaestel might have received a more lenient sentence.

"Would he get life today? I don't know," Fields says. "There just hasn't been the violence lately in this area that would make the juries tend to be a little bit harsher than normal."

One thing Fields does recall is that Kaestel was smart—perhaps so smart that it somehow worked against him.

"Rolf was one of those guys that they say was too smart for their own good," Fields says. "He knew he was the smartest guy in the room, and again, I think that hurt him a bit with the jury. I don't think that came across well."

Too Smart

Condemned to prison for his natural life, Kaestel resolved to draw attention to his case by using his head.

"I had to make myself visible somehow," he says. "To do it lawfully was the only way."

Kaestel entered the Arkansas prison system at a tumultuous time. In the 1970s, federal courts had ruled that the entire Arkansas prison system, largely financed by inmate labor, amounted to cruel and inhumane punishment and violated the constitutional rights of inmates.

One of the ways the prison system was generating revenue was by selling plasma donated by inmates. This was also a way for inmates to make a couple of bucks on the side.

Kaestel began donating plasma. Along the way, he discovered sweeping health concerns with the plasma program, including lack of testing for diseases like hepatitis C and HIV. He began collecting documents on the plasma program.

He also took a night job in the infirmary, joined the staff of the prison newspaper, The Long Line Writer, and filed a string of lawsuits against the prison system.

Sara Merritt was an assistant attorney general for Arkansas when Kaestel filed his wave of lawsuits. Merritt remembers that, alone, few of the lawsuits had teeth, but when lumped together, they had a "bad smell."

And, as Merritt recalls, a judge decided to combine the lawsuits into one action, which gave Kaestel some standing. A settlement was arranged, and all Kaestel asked was that he be provided a computer and printer to help him put out The Long Line Writer.

"To me, the choice between going to court for four or five days and possibly having a jury do something unexpected was certainly not worth the price of a computer and printer," Merritt says.

Merritt says the couple of hundred dollars the state spent on the computer equipment was well worth it. And when an attorney who had represented Kaestel in the early hours of the lawsuits, but later withdrew as counsel, hit up the state for $50,000 in legal fees, Merritt says, it was Kaestel who said he didn't think the state should pay.

Years ago, when Kaestel requested clemency from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Merritt says, she sent a letter asking for Kaestel's release, crediting the prisoner for saving the Natural State $50,000.

"I personally don't think the man has a threatening bone is his body," she says of Kaestel, noting that she considers the man's life sentence "ludicrous."

Meanwhile, the blood plasma case began drawing attention in countries where the blood was sold. And a documentary filmmaker named Kelly Duda contacted Kaestel to see if he would speak on camera about the blood flowing out of the prison.

Duda was allowed to interview Kaestel at the prison. The film, Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal, was released in 2005. It opens with damning statements from Kaestel, who says on camera and in front of a prison official that the prison system is ripe with "graft, corruption and money making."

"It was literally a river of money flowing out of the blood bank into our prison system here, and it went its way into every crack and crevice of this institution," Kaestel says in the film, which failed to gain widespread attention.

When Kaestel appeared on camera for Duda in 1999, he'd been in prison for 18 years. And one morning on his way to breakfast shortly after being interviewed by Duda, Kaestel says, he found himself hauled out of line, loaded into a van, and spirited away to Utah.

With the lawsuits he'd filed, combined with his participation in the documentary and an Internet writing effort he'd dubbed the Prison Reform Unity Project, Kaestel says, he wasn't surprised to find himself in the back of a van.

"For 20 years I'd been raising relative hell," he says. "I think the Prison Reform Unity Project was what made them move me out to Utah."

In a letter, Kaestel says the motive for his move, while most certainly "conspiratorial," was not punishment but an effort to "neutralize" his reform projects and separate him from his legal contacts, for whom he had been performing paralegal duties—an effort that he says was "really successful."

Duda believes that Kaestel's move was due to the truths he told in the film and the very high levels of government it implicated. Former President Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas part of the time that the blood bank was in operation, and when Duda began poking around for his documentary, and Kaestel began agitating, Clinton was president.

"Rolf Kaestel, I believe, at this point is a political prisoner," Duda says. "I know that's a big thing to say; I believe it is the case with all my heart."

To Zion

When he first arrived in Utah, Kaestel says, he was labeled a "severe management problem," and was placed in a maximum-security housing unit at the Utah State Prison in Draper.

Even though he had been a thorn in Arkansas' side, he had had only three disciplinary write-ups in his nearly two decades there. According to an Arkansas Department of Corrections spokesperson, Kaestel was disciplined twice for unauthorized use of state property and once for using abusive language.

"I came here as a model prisoner," Kaestel says.

But after he raised some fuss about his classification as a management problem, Kaestel says, Utah officials remedied the issue and he was treated normally. And aside from a handful of dustups, including complaints he filed about the Utah prison system's efforts to confiscate prisoner property and kinks in its now-shuttered college-education programs, Kaestel has been silently serving his time.

Before he was transferred to the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison without explanation in 2013, Kaestel took full advantage of the Utah State Prison's educational programs. He was a prolific student, he says, noting that he's a few credits shy of obtaining multiple bachelor's degrees.

One of Kaestel's professors, Norman Zurn, who taught communication and public speaking for Salt Lake Community College at the Draper prison, remembers Kaestel as a "great student."

Though initially skeptical about Kaestel's unlikely story, Zurn, who remains an adjunct professor at the college, turned into an outspoken advocate for his release. In late 2012, Zurn sent a letter to the Utah Board of Pardons & Parole, which was conducting an interview with Rolf. This interview was purely procedural, the results of which would be passed on to Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, who was considering Kaestel's request for clemency.

Despite a favorable letter from Don Blanchard, a former member of Utah's Board of Pardons, who conducted the interview, Beebe did not act on Kaestel's request.

But Blanchard's opinion of Kaestel is crystal clear: He should be free.

"I believe the ends of justice have been served in this case, and urge both the Arkansas Parole Board and governor to grant clemency and a release," Blanchard wrote. Blanchard also asked Arkansas to forgive Kaestel his $15,000 fine.

In his letter, Zurn said he's willing to serve as a sponsor for Kaestel and find him housing should he stay in Utah.

"His loved ones have died off," Zurn says. "He's paid his dues over and over and over."

Dreams

Kaestel no longer dreams of visiting the Pyramids, walking the streets of Jerusalem or encountering the wildlife on the island of Madagascar.

He also has no desire to commit more crimes, and feels he could find a job doing paralegal work almost anywhere.

On multiple occasions over the years, Kaestel says, he's thought he would get out. According to Dina Tyler, deputy director of Arkansas Community Corrections, Kaestel's requests for clemency were denied in 1995 and in 2003, and no action was taken in 2013. If Kaestel's pending request is denied, he'll have to wait six years before he can re-file. If no action is taken, he can immediately reapply.

In the 1990s, Tyler was a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, and she appears in Duda's film. She says she doesn't think Kaestel's move to Utah was punishment, but that the people who might have the direct knowledge about his transfer have long ago retired or died.

"I remember his name and I remember he went to Utah, and beyond that, I don't really remember. I don't," Tyler says,

The severity of his sentence—by Utah standards, at least—ranks him with a rough crowd. In May of this year, Esar Met, a man convicted of sexually assaulting and beating to death a 7-year-old girl, was given a life sentence without parole. Brian David Mitchell, the man convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting Elizabeth Smart, received a life sentence in federal prison, where parole is not afforded to inmates.

During his time in prison, Kaestel's Christian faith has buoyed him, and he says a program at the prison in Gunnison called Success through Responsibility, Integrity, Values and Effort (STRIVE) keeps him busy doing 40 hours a week of teaching and participating in other self-improvement programs.

When Duda waded into the Arkansas prison world to make his documentary, he didn't bargain on finding out about Kaestel. And ever since, he's been a reluctant, though vigilant, advocate for his release.

"I still want and hope that the system will do the right thing," Duda says. "Like anything else, you have to draw public attention to it, otherwise the guy's just completely invisible."

In 2013, Arkansas Gov. Beebe, a Democrat who will be termed out at the end of this year, commuted the sentences of five prisoners. Four had been convicted of manufacturing methamphetamine, and several other related charges, including weapons and distributing drugs. The fifth inmate given a reprieve had been convicted of delivering cocaine.

Soon, the long-lost name of Rolf Detlev Kaestel—a man who never harmed a hair on a single Arkansan's head, and yet received one of society's most severe punishments, will once again cross Beebe's desk.

And Kaestel is ready to be set free.

"I don't have these big dreams anymore," he says. "What I want to do now is contribute the way I always should have been contributing."