The Thanksgiving Crimes Of Byron David Smith
Meshbesher & Associates, PAByron David Smith, the victim of repeated home invasions and killer of two teenagers.
Thanksgiving Day 2012 in Little Falls, Minnesota, should have been a time for turkey dinners and family gatherings. Instead, it became the setting for a double homicide that would ignite fierce debates about self-defense, castle doctrine laws, and the limits of justified force.
Byron David Smith, a 64-year-old retired security engineer, spent that Thanksgiving alone in his basement, armed and waiting.
His home had been burglarized multiple times in the preceding weeks, with more than $50,000 worth of valuables stolen, including firearms. An October break-in had left a shoe print on his kicked-in basement door — evidence that someone had violated his sanctuary.
Worried the burglars would return, Smith had begun carrying a gun inside his own home.
On Thanksgiving afternoon, while families across America carved their holiday turkeys, 17-year-old Nicholas Brady approached Smith’s residence. Brady first peered through windows and tested the home’s doorknobs before breaking a bedroom window and climbing inside.
As Brady descended the basement stairs, however, Smith fired his rifle, killing the teenager. Smith dragged Brady’s body into another room on a tarp before sitting back down.
Just eight minutes later, 18-year-old Haile Kifer — Brady’s cousin — entered through the same broken window. Like her cousin, she descended the basement stairs, and Smith opened fire.
Smith struck Kifer once, but then his rifle jammed. According to court records, Smith told Kifer, “Oh, sorry about that,” before pulling out a revolver and shooting her five more times. The sixth shot, which Smith called “a good clean finishing shot,” killed Kifer.
The brutal Thanksgiving crime was complete, but Smith did not call the police.
Instead, he kept the teenagers’ bodies in his basement overnight, spending the rest of Thanksgiving Day and the following morning alone with the corpses. Only on Friday did he ask his neighbors to contact the police. When investigators arrived the day after Thanksgiving, Smith led them to where the bodies lay.
Family PhotosHaile Kifer (left) and Nicholas Brady, the teenagers shot by Byron David Smith on Thanksgiving 2012.
“I fired more shots than I needed to,” Smith admitted to investigators. Neither Brady nor Kifer had been armed. While authorities recognized Smith’s right to defend his home — even with deadly force — prosecutors argued that his actions that Thanksgiving afternoon went far beyond self-defense, constituting premeditated murder.
At his April 2014 trial, Smith’s defense team argued the Thanksgiving crime was a justified response to repeated victimization. They sought to introduce evidence that Brady and others had committed the prior burglaries, explaining Smith’s fear and preparedness that day.
The prosecution, meanwhile, countered that Smith had set a trap, positioning himself in the basement on Thanksgiving Day and executing two teenagers who posed no immediate threat once wounded.
In the end, the jury convicted Smith of first-degree premeditated murder. He received a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
