Detectives investigate missing Wisconsin brothers’ business deal at Missouri farm
Investigators are still searching for the remains of two Wisconsin brothers who disappeared earlier this month during a trip to a northwest Missouri farm, where they went for a business deal involving cattle, the local sheriff said Monday.
Hours before Clinton County Sheriff Larry Fish spoke at a news conference, a judge denied a change of bond request for the Missouri farmer who has been jailed on accusations he illegally used a truck rented by one of the brothers. That man remains the only person charged in connection with the disappearances.
The brothers, Nicholas Diemel, 35, and Justin Diemel, 24, went to the farm for a business deal that “has been going on for a few months,” Fish said. Detectives were still trying to determine what occurred during the business transaction at the farm, he said.
Initially reported missing July 21, the brothers’ disappearances have since been called a “long-term death investigation” by authorities.
Fish said investigators have still not found their remains. Braymer, Missouri, where Fish spoke Monday, is about 70 miles northeast of Kansas City.
The brothers traveled to Clinton and Caldwell counties for business related to a livestock company they run in Shawano County, near Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Nicholas Diemel rented a 2019 Ford F-250 truck from Budget Rent a Car. The vehicle was found the day after the brothers were reported missing, abandoned in a commuter parking lot in Holt, near Interstate 35.
Garland Joseph “Joey” Nelson, 25, of Braymer, was charged Friday with tampering with that truck. He admitted to driving the vehicle from the farm to the lot, though he did not have permission to do so, according to charging documents.
GPS route information from the truck’s black box showed the Ford was at the farm on the morning the brothers went missing, court records show.
More than two hours after it arrived there, it left and was later seen on video near a Casey’s General Store in Polo, according to charging documents. There appeared to be no passenger in the front seat of the truck, a deputy wrote in the records.
The truck was left running. It was found with the keys in the ignition and the lights on, where Nelson admitted he left it, according to charging documents.
After the truck was located, the search became a death investigation, Fish said.
Nelson has been held without bond at the Caldwell County Detention Center. During his initial appearance Monday morning, a judge denied his request for bond change and set another hearing for Thursday.
In court records, a deputy with the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office said Nelson was a danger to the community and had tried to mislead law enforcement, though a probable cause statement did not say how.
Nelson did not yet have an attorney listed in public court records who could be reached for comment.
Fish said investigators were sifting through several properties, including the 74-acre Braymer farm where Nelson worked, as they searched for evidence. Several agencies were investigating “a lot of leads” that have come in, he said.
Recent weather that included 5 inches of rain slowed down the search for the brothers’ remains, Fish said.
“It’s going to take some time,” he said.
About 20 community members gathered to listen to the sheriff’s seven-minute long news conference in the Braymer High School parking lot. One said Nelson was well known in the small town of about 860 people and that the community was shocked by the disappearances.
“We really feel for those people,” another woman, Virginia Owen, said of the brothers’ relatives.
After authorities called the case a death investigation, a Facebook group called “Prayers for Nick Diemel and Justin Diemel,” which has more than 29,000 members, described the brothers’ lives as being “senselessly cut short.”
Records show Nelson has been previously convicted in federal court in a separate case.
In 2016, Nelson was sentenced to two years in prison for selling more than 600 head of cattle that didn’t belong to him.
Nelson had pleaded guilty to conducting a cattle fraud scheme that “resulted in losses of more than $262,000 to his victims,” including the USDA Farm Service Agency, Cyclone Cattle Company and individual victims, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Missouri announced at the time.
The brothers who vanished last week were not named as victims in Nelson’s previous case.
Nelson was released from prison in March 2018, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
This story was originally published July 29, 2019 at 6:53 PM.
