Three years and $150,000 later, Ron Michaels still can't believe he was arrested and charged with murdering a man he didn't even know.

The former accounting manager in the state Department of Administration stood trial in 2006 in the death of Jeffrey Hammill -- more than a quarter of a century after Hammill was found dead by the side of the road in Wright County in 1979.

As a result of the charge, Michaels spent more than a year in jail awaiting trial. He also was ruined financially -- forced to spend, he said, about $150,000 on his legal defense. His health, already bad, deteriorated from being in jail for so long, he said.

"There was no evidence," said Michaels, now 55. "I couldn't believe it." He ultimately was acquitted in less than 30 minutes by a Wright County jury.

The case so incensed friends and supporters of Michaels that one of them, Kenneth Miller, wrote a book about his trial and acquittal. He researched the case and assembled the evidence, mainly court documents and trial transcripts, into a book published last month called "the Bison King."

"This never should have happened to him or anyone," said Miller, a high school classmate of Michaels in the 1970s and a former Wright County resident.

The 393-page account takes its title comes from the fact that Michaels was the homecoming king in 1972 at Buffalo High School, whose sports teams are called the Bison.

Hammill's death

Hammill, 21, died about 3 a.m. on Aug. 11, 1979, while hitchhiking near Montrose in Wright County. He suffered severe head injuries, which the Wright County Sheriff's Department initially concluded were caused by his being struck by a vehicle traveling along the road. The case was closed in 1979 as a hit-and-run accident.

Despite this conclusion, the case was reopened after Hammill's daughter questioned authorities about it in 2003. In the ensuing investigation, Michaels, Dale Todd and Terry Olson were arrested in 2005 and charged with murder in the death of Hammill.

The three men were questioned because they had been with Hammill at a bar earlier on the night that he died.

Todd, who cut a deal with Wright County prosecutors, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was released after testifying against Olson. Olson was convicted in 2006 of second-degree murder in Hammill's death and is serving a 40-year prison sentence.

Miller, a Chicago businessman, devoted much of the past three years to the book, released on the 30th anniversary of Hammill's death. "I hope to expose the injustice and the improprieties that occurred during the investigation and prosecution," Miller said recently in a telephone interview. "Wright County officials were more concerned with obtaining a conviction than in learning the truth."

Wright County Attorney Tom Kelly, whose office prosecuted Michaels, said he is not happy that Michaels was acquitted. But he said he can live with the jury's decision. "That is our system," he said.

He denied claims by Michaels, his attorney and Miller that the prosecution was malicious or that he was overzealous in pursuing the case.

"I am very comfortable with what transpired, how it transpired and how it went down," he said. "I don't lose sleep at night because Ron Michaels' friend wrote a book."

Michaels said he has been contemplating filing suit against the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and the Wright County Sheriff's Department, the two agencies that developed the case against him in 2005.

Hot to close a cold case?

Miller's research doesn't break new ground, and his book doesn't attempt to explain why Olson was convicted a year later in a case involving the same prosecution relying on essentially the same evidence.

But it does outline in detail the drama in the courtroom and, as the jury saw it, the unconvincing evidence against Michaels -- especially after the prosecution's key witness recanted his testimony.

The most damaging evidence against Michaels was supposed to be the testimony from Todd, who cut a deal to testify against him. But on the stand, Todd said he had lied about Michaels' involvement.

"Their case was the testimony from Dale Todd, and once he recanted it was over," Miller said in an interview. "Right there on the stand he told the truth to God and everybody."

Miller and Michaels' lawyer, Jim Fleming, blame overzealous prosecutors and investigators from the BCA, which they claim was too hot to close a cold case to get additional funding.

The BCA's cold-case unit works with the nonprofit Spotlight on Crime program, which since 2001 has offered more than $1 million in rewards to solve violent crimes in the state. Among the cases Spotlight has featured was the death of Hammill. Spotlight offered a $50,000 reward in the case.

About the same time the Target Corp. donated $150,000 to fund two cold-case investigators for the BCA. Among the cases the investigators claimed to have solved with that money was the Hammill killing.

"They were looking for another 'case closed' so they could go back to the foundation and get more money," Fleming contends.

No motive established

Although no clear motive was ever established as to why Michaels would have killed Hammill, there were a number of theories tossed around by BCA investigators. Among them: that the men were jealous because Hammill was flirting with the girlfriend of one of their friends. Another theory, presented in a criminal complaint, was that the attack could have been a hate crime because the attackers thought Hammill was gay.

But Hammill was not gay. Fleming points out that not only was Hammill considered a ladies' man, but at the time of his death, a woman was pregnant with his child.

"There were all kinds of theories that were getting tossed out," Fleming said. "None of them added up."

After Hammill's daughter contacted sheriff's investigators in 2003, the investigators contacted the BCA, which decided to re-open the case as a Spotlight cold case. Investigators re-interviewed witnesses and people of interest from the original investigation, focusing on Michaels and the two others, apparently because after more than 25 years, their stories had changed.

The case against Michaels fell apart as soon as Todd recanted his testimony on the stand. Fleming was able to show how investigators had guided Todd through his testimony, confronting him with false "evidence" -- for example, claiming that they had a murder weapon, that Hammill's DNA was on it and that Todd's car was seen at the murder scene -- none of which was true, according to the book and court transcripts.

"They sat him down for a five-hour interview and cooked him," Fleming said. "They fed him stuff. He didn't remember who Ron Michaels was because he had only met him once, that night."

BCA officials deny that they prepped the witness. But they do admit that agents didn't tell Todd the truth about what evidence they had. They defended the technique as necessary to get at the truth in such a case.

"There have been times when cops have been less than truthful," said Dave Bjerga, assistant superintendent of the BCA. "It's not a real common technique. You use it when you are absolutely convinced that they are involved and you want to move things along, to get them beyond the denials."

Bjerga, in an interview, also defended his investigators and interrogators. "I think they conducted a very thorough investigation," he said. "What our agents did doesn't bother me in the slightest. Just because he was found not guilty doesn't mean he wasn't involved. It just means it wasn't proved beyond a reasonable doubt."

However, Fleming and Miller remain angry over what was done to Michaels. Ideally, the pair would like the state of Minnesota to look at what they consider police and prosecutorial misconduct in the case, as well as the Olson conviction.

Neither is confident that will happen anytime soon. Kelly said he has no interest in reopening the case and noted that the state Court of Appeals last month affirmed Olson's murder conviction.

But Miller and Fleming hope public pressure can be brought to bear in the case.

"I'd like to see more people read the book," Fleming said. "I'd like to see more people get mad about what happened."

Heron Marquez Estrada • 612-673-4280