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Bradley Allen Weyaus (Mille Lacs County Sheriff’s Office).
A man has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for killing another who he believed was dealing fatal drugs.
Bradley Allen Weyaus admitted to killing Rodney Pendegayosh Jr., 25, according to a press statement from prosecutors in Mille Lacs County, Minnesota. His sentencing is scheduled for July 24 — but the terms of his plea agreement largely determine his fate.
According to the deal, he will spend between 25 years and six months to 30 years and seven months behind bars. His co-defendant, girlfriend Alexis Marion Elling, pleaded guilty in February 2024 to aiding an offender and her sentencing was set to wait after the resolution of Weyaus’ case. She had agreed to testify against Weyaus in exchange for a stayed sentence for five years in prison, and up to five years of supervised probation.
Authorities have said that the defendants, a couple, believed that Pendegayosh dealt Elling’s brother a fatal mixture of fentanyl and meth.
Their crime was anything but typical.
“This whole thing is truly bizarre,” Mille Lacs County Sheriff Kyle Burton in a news conference at the time authorities brought charges. “This body was moved multiple places for a period of possibly up to a week before the discovery was made.”
A public works maintenance crew that was cleaning garbage discovered Pendegayosh’s remains stuffed into a tote bag along a snowy highway in March 2023.
“They see what they believe to be a severed human foot,” the sheriff said. They closed the tote and called the police.
An officer on the way to the scene spotted a suspect vehicle, a white Saturn believed to be driven by Weyaus. Weyaus fled, and for a time, eluded capture. The officer eventually found the vehicle empty but stuck in a driveway. The homeowners pointed out the suspect hiding in a camper trailer on the property. The arrest ensued. In a duffel bag on Wayaus’s person, authorities discovered a hacksaw, hammer, and black tape similar to the tape found on the tote.
Other evidence pointed toward the couple. There was a spent shotgun shell in the suspect vehicle, although apparently no gun. Investigators found a bloody carpet, gloves, and a hardware store receipt in the dumpster at the apartment where the suspect lived — as well as Pendegayosh’s ID and credit card.
The sheriff said surveillance video shows the suspects carrying the tote bag out of the apartment and loading it into a black Chevrolet Impala a few days before police discovered the body.
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