Three men plead guilty to 2023 murder in Bemidji

Three men pleaded guilty this week in the fatal stabbing of an 18-year-old during a Bemidji robbery nearly two years ago.

Andrew Fisher died from stab wounds on June 24, 2023. His mother decried the pleas, saying the proposed prison sentences, ranging from 35 to 15 years for the three defendants, weren’t enough for her son’s killing, which was captured on surveillance video from a nearby elementary school and a home’s front porch camera.

“I am very upset over the pleas. One for the fact that when everything happened it’s on camera … from two different locations. And I feel like at the beginning there should have been way more charges,” Donna Jones said of her son, who was the youngest of six siblings whose “hearts are shattered.”

“He was just a kid,” she said.

Beltrami County Attorney David Hanson announced the guilty pleas secured this week, thanking prosecutors and staff in his office for putting in long hours on the cases lodged against two brothers and their friend, while offering condolences to Fisher’s family.

Daniel Keezer, 21, of Detroit Lakes pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional murder; his brother, Robert Keezer Jr., 24, of Mahnomen, and James Burnette, 27, of Waubun pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting aggravated first-degree robbery.

All three were initially charged with aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder, but the investigation pointed to Daniel Keezer as being responsible for the murder, Hanson said.

It wasn’t clear whether the other two men knew the younger Keezer planned to kill Fisher.

“I know the mom really wanted the murder charge to stick,” Hanson said in an interview this week. “But we’ll never know if the three of them planned it together, like, ‘We’re going to kill the guy,' or if they just planned to beat him up and then, you know, Daniel just decided to stab him on his own. … We’ll just never know that because the three of them aren’t telling us.

“We can definitively say that Daniel stabbed him because we found the murder weapon, and the Bemidji Police Department did a really good job finding that. Without that murder weapon we would have had a very tough case.”

Investigators found a knife outside the residence where the defendants fled after the stabbing, but Hanson said it didn’t match the stab wounds.

During a second search of the home, Hanson said, an investigator noticed a loose screw in a sheetrock panel under the basement staircase. Inside the hidden space was a knife covered in Fisher’s blood and with Keezer’s DNA on the handle. The victim’s phone was found with the murder weapon.

According to the charges, police were called to an altercation on Minnesota Court, where they found Fisher in the street profusely bleeding and without a pulse.

The investigation found the three men lured Fisher to a home on Minnesota Court intending to rob him of marijuana. Daniel Keezer admitted he had a knife and used it to stab Fisher.

A friend of Fisher’s at the scene said Fisher approached the home and three men chased him off the property. Fisher ran toward J.W. Smith School and back to Minnesota Court. The three men surrounded him and assaulted him. Fisher’s friend rushed to help him and called 911.

Charges said that after the Keezer brothers chased Fisher down, Robert Keezer punched and kicked him while Daniel Keezer stabbed him. During the assault, they forcibly took a bag of marijuana from Fisher and his cellphone.

Jones, Fisher’s mother, said, “They’re gonna rob a kid for $10 in weed? Like, the whole thing don’t make sense.”

Instead, she said, Burnett had a beef with Fisher and was the one who led her son to the home that night. Hanson said he is aware of the allegations of a history between the two and said the attack wasn’t random.

Hanson said his office intends to seek a 35-year sentence for Daniel Keezer when he appears in court April 25, and 15-year sentences for his brother and Burnette at their sentencings March 25.