FELONY CHARGES IN ROBBERY

A marijuana plant heist planned with information provided by an
insider went fatally awry one morning in March, resulting in a botched
robbery that left three men dead and, this week, criminal charges
against the woman who got away.

Erin Van Epps, 23, a Dodgeville native, who claimed to be a reluctant
tag-along, faces felony charges of theft and burglary, with
"party-to-a-crime modifiers" because weapons were involved.

The criminal complaint was filed Tuesday in Lafayette County, after
five months of investigation by the state Justice Department's
Division of Criminal Investigation, and includes a six-page
handwritten statement by Van Epps in which she describes the shootings
and claims to have warned her boyfriend and another man against the
robbery.

"When we drove by (the) house the lights were on in a room closest to
the road. I told them over and over that there (were) people home,
that it was a bad idea," she wrote on March 17, the day after the shootings.

Lafayette County District Attorney Charlotte Doherty, asked Wednesday
if additional charges would be filed in the case, said "not yet, the
investigation continues." According to the complaint, Van Epps, her
boyfriend, Jaeson Shepard, 29, and Eddie Harris, 24, drove in two
vehicles to the home of Bradley and Jeanna Fandrich on Highway N
several miles south of Blanchardville early March 16, according to the
complaint and her statement.

They knew Fandrich was growing marijuana because, Van Epps wrote, Joe
Murphy told her about "taking care of Brad's marijuana plants."
According to Van Epps' statement and the complaint, Shepard and
another man, Aaron "Buckwheat" Watrud, of Madison (a former roommate
of Shepard), talked about stealing Fandrich's marijuana. Murphy is
listed in court records as a former roommate of Watrud, and a car
registered to Murphy was parked in the Fandrich driveway on the day of
the crime.

"I heard Jaeson and (Watrud) planning on going to Brad's when nobody
was home." She said they drove by the Fandrich home three or four
times in preparation after Watrud drew a map.

Harris, of Mount Horeb, entered the planning when Shepard asked him if
the marijuana plants could be stored at his house. Harris "asked if he
could come and Jaeson said OK."

Watrud did not show up that night, so the three parked one of the
vehicles and drove a minivan past the Fandrich home, where the lights
in one room were on, prompting Van Epps to suggest abandoning the
plan. In an earlier interview, a roommate of Harris said he thought
the three were high on drugs when they left Mount Horeb. Doherty said
Wednesday that toxicology reports confirm that but could not be more
specific.

"But Eddie said he wanted to do it," Van Epps wrote. Harris, carrying
a single-shot shotgun and leading, kicked in the door and "they went
into the house screaming, 'Get on the floor, we have (a warrant) to
search, Lafayette County sheriffs.' "

Van Epps said she saw a woman in the hallway, later identified by
Lafayette County deputies as Jeanna Fandrich. While Shepard confronted
and drew the woman into a laundry room, Harris went into the hallway.
Brad Fandrich appeared at the bedroom doorway and started shooting.
Van Epps wrote that Harris screamed "I'm shot, what did you shoot me
with? Call an ambulance." Van Epps then ran out the door and back to
the minivan.

Both Harris and Shepard were shot to death.

Van Epps waited several minutes, she said, during which she heard more
gunshots. Then Fandrich appeared on the porch, saw her in the van and
started shooting at her. She drove to Blanchardville, where she waited
to see if Fandrich would follow.

With several deputies, Sheriff Scott Pedley, the county coroner and
his wife in the house, Fandrich was explaining the presence of a cache
of weapons and prescription drugs to a detective when he pulled a
small handgun from his waistband and shot himself.

The next day, March 17, accompanied by her lawyer. William Remington,
Van Epps turned herself in to Dane County authorities and supplied the
statement.

On March 18, state investigators found - after Van Epps made her
statement about intentions to steal plants and after a tip from a
Fandrich relative - a large, self-contained marijuana-growing
operation in a hidden room in the basement.

Since the shootings, Van Epps, an admitted heroin user who was on
Methadone treatment at that time, has participated in a drug
rehabilitation program, testified in a federal drug case against a man
convicted selling heroin in Madison and been arrested for violating
conditions imposed because of an earlier arrest. Her mother and
grandfather died in the past several weeks.

While the complaint and her statement fill in some blanks of the
crime, there was no new information on the death of Bradley Fandrich.

Pedley, in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal earlier this
summer, speculated that given Fandrich's involvement in the marijuana
enterprise, if Fandrich had killed Van Epps, "we would never have
gotten a call . . . there would be three shallow graves out there and
the cars would have disappeared."

Van Epps, who had been living in Dodgeville with family members, was
not arrested, Doherty said, because she is not a flight risk. She was
told to appear in Lafayette County Court Aug. 28.

Rebecca Young, the mother of Eddie Harris, said some of Van Epps'
statements appear self-serving or "just not possible." Storing the
stolen marijuana plants at her son's rented home in Mount Horeb was
unlikely because she and her son were moving from that residence on
the day before the shootings.