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Unknown

The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals providing them. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

Julia Villanueva

On the night of January 8, 2022, Daniel Villanueva was finishing a 12-hour shift as a security guard, patrolling a private compound under construction in Lakecastle, Minnesota. That night, Daniel was scheduled to patrol the southern end of the property at the bottom of a steep cliff. The sun had set just after 4:30 p.m. Daniel's shift was scheduled to end at 7 p.m. At 6:15, a snowstorm rolling in from the west hit the town of Lakecastle. Normally, Daniel was dropped off and picked up from his post by a four-wheeler. But the thick snow and lack of visibility quickly made the trails impassable by vehicle. Daniel had to walk up the cliff in the dark in a foot of snow as temperatures dropped below zero. If you aren't from Minnesota like I am, you may not have a visceral sense memory of this type of blizzard. It is physically debilitating. In 60 mile-an-hour winds, snow falls horizontally. The cold feels like an open-handed slap on your bare skin. You gasp for breath. Your eyelashes freeze together. If you're not wearing the right clothing, you start to lose sensation in your extremities and limbs within minutes. And an ambulance was immediately called. Daniel was 64 years old with a history of health problems, including diabetes and high blood pressure. He was having a heart attack.

Mary Villanueva

He hadn't come home from work that night. Wasn't answering his phone.

Julia Villanueva

That's Mary Villanueva, Danny's wife.

Mary Villanueva

I figured he was out grabbing a beer with his co-workers, maybe. That wouldn't have been out of the ordinary. But I was getting worried because of the storm. I texted him a few times and then I dozed off around 10 or 10 30 with a TV on. And I slept a few hours.

Julia Villanueva

What were you watching? What was on the TV?

Mary Villanueva

I don't know. Pawn Stars.

Julia Villanueva

What channel is that even on?

Mary Villanueva

It's on the History Channel.

Julia Villanueva

History channel, really? History?

Mary Villanueva

Yeah, really.

Julia Villanueva

Okay.

Mary Villanueva

What was I saying? Fell asleep. I woke up around midnight. He still wasn't back. And that's when I got the phone call from Forester Hospital.

Julia Villanueva

And what day was this? Just say the date and the time for me.

Mary Villanueva

January 9th, 2022. She said, She said, I'm so sorry. We tried to save him, but your husband has died. And I called you, and Chi Chi was barking so loud. Dogs are supposed to be emotional support, licking your tears away, right? But Chi-Chi didn't comfort me at all. He just kept yapping and yapping. He was trying to call your dad home.

Julia Villanueva

My name is Julia Villanueva. I'm Danny's daughter. And I'm not a journalist. But ever since that day, January 9th, 2022, I found myself in the middle of a story that just keeps getting deeper the more I keep digging. My mom maintains that she was not told the exact time of my dad's death over the phone, or maybe she was told, but she just doesn't remember. In any case, when she got to the hospital, she was told the same thing I was told when I arrived after flying in from LA. That my father had died at 1 a.m. that day. Over the next couple days, I was told the story that I just told you. We weren't processing it at first, we weren't processing much at all for many days. It was only weeks afterwards when I started to question the timeline of it all. Especially the six hours between the end of my dad's shift and his being pronounced dead. And I also started to wonder, why did my dad have to sign a non-disclosure agreement for his part-time security job? Why weren't there snow tires on the ATVs? What were they building out there exactly, up on that cliff? And why? To get to the bottom of this with me, first you have to understand what's happening in the town of Lakecastle. You have to understand the man who's behind that private compound at the top of that cliff, which is still under construction four years later. And this may sound over the top, but I promise you it's not. You have to understand how quickly the meaning and worth of human life itself is changing. This is a story about climate change, big tech, and an ongoing cover-up that's happening right now under my nose in my own hometown. From Sansrival, t his is Lakecastle. I'm Julia Villanueva. Episode 1: The Farm.

Sara Novak

You're making a podcast!

Julia Villanueva

Yeah.

Sara Novak

That's so cool. Wow.

Julia Villanueva

Uh so I'm trying to like set the scene. Um, I'm asking people, folks from Lakecastle, what do you think of when you think of Lakecastle? And what is iconic about Lakecastle?

Sara Novak

The lighthouse, probably. The fudge from Auntie Moose.

Julia Villanueva

The candy store.

Sara Novak

Yes. And the county fair. The boat show on the lake, the parades.

Julia Villanueva

All the fried food.

Sara Novak

Yeah, and the beer.

Helga Grant

So I I am Minnesotan through and through, but you know, I'm from Minneapolis originally. And I moved to Lakecastle about 20 years ago. And for a long time I I felt like people could smell it on me. Minnesota nice, right? Uh that's the technical term. Folks are polite, but you know, they stick to their own. They don't open up right away.

Julia Villanueva

If you had to describe the town of Lakecastle in a word or two, is there an image or a word or a phrase?

Abe Carter

Pride. There's a lot to be proud of here in uh in this part of the state, in this town.

Wendy Watts

We live on the edge of an ancient wet footprint of a glacier, the largest of the Great Lakes. I've lived in Lakecastle all my life, and some evenings at sunset, it just takes my breath away.

Matt Larsen

You know, Lakecastle isn't a perfect place. You know, nowhere is, but but Lakecastle, I mean, it means a lot to a lot of people.

Julia Villanueva

Those were the voices of Sara Novak, Helga Grant, Abe Carter, Wendy Watts, and Matt Larsen. You'll hear more from each of them later on. The population of Lakecastle is about 15,000 and growing. It's less than half an hour's drive from Duluth up the north shore of Lake Superior. Tourists stop through on Highway 61 on their way to the boundary waters or any of a dozen state parks. There's a thriving local art scene with a sculpture garden, a farmer's market, several breweries, and an old lighthouse, a remnant from the region's shipping and mining days. It sits high above the water, which probably gave rise to the town's imperious sounding name. As a kid, I always thought the town was named after the ore docks, sitting on the edge of Lake Superior. They seemed like castles to me, or like something from another planet. These big, ominous concrete structures looming high above the water, scary, rusty, five stories high. About eight miles inland from Lake Superior, on the north side of Lakecastle, is another smaller body of water. There's a reason Minnesota is called the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. This one is called the Nelson Reservoir. The Nelson River, which flows into Lake Superior, is impounded by several dams and an ancient prehistoric rock formation, which fuels Lakecastle and most of the North Shore. The reservoir generates power and is also a popular local spot for fishing and boating. We're in life vests, sunglasses, and wide-brimmed hats. It's a bright summer day with the blue sky reflected in the water. I'm about eight years old, so he would have been about 40. He's tickling me. I usually hated when he did that, but in the picture, I'm laughing. And we both are. Mom, do you remember your first impression of Lakecastle?

Mary Villanueva

Peaceful. We thought it was a little piece of heaven.

Julia Villanueva

My parents came to Minnesota from the Philippines in the '80s with the help of my dad's uncle who lived in Duluth. But they fell in love with Lakecastle. My mom is a retired nurse. My dad worked in construction, mainly for the Department of Natural Resources and the State Park system. Until I moved to the West Coast for college, I was the only Asian kid in my entire school. But if you're thinking I'm gonna tell you that I was bullied in the school cafeteria because of my smelly Asian lunch food, I don't have a story like that. I played goalie on the girls' hockey team. My dad loved to hunt and fish, and my mom was obsessed with orange jello fruit salad with cottage cheese, marshmallows, and cool whip. We were a super Minnesotan family.

Julia Villanueva

My dad was laid off from his construction job in 2020 during the pandemic. He was struggling to find odd jobs until in 2021 he began working part-time at Blue Orchard Farm, LLC. Blue Orchard Farm is a construction project in the northern part of Lakecastle that's been going on for 10 years now. A project run by Jonathan Lindeman.

Reporter

Tech giant Jonathan Lindeman has expanded his property on Lake Superior's North Shore by 1,000 acres. A spokesman for Blue Orchard Farm confirmed the purchase.

Julia Villanueva

Lindeman is the chairman, CEO, and controlling shareholder of Datum, a global tech conglomerate which operates several messaging applications and cloud computing services with billions of users, most likely including you. I was unable to confirm the story. In 2019, Lindeman posted to social media a photo from inside an ice fishing shelter. Outside early morning light glows over a frozen lake. The caption reads: Jigging for Trout on Lake Superior. Three catches ranging from 18 to 30 pounds. We released them all. Here for the sunrise. This and Lindeman's subsequent social media posts about picking wild berries with his kids and kayaking in the boundary waters. It all must have been a little surreal to folks in a small town who had never seen this new neighbor in person. But by this point, Lindeman's invisible presence in Lakecastle was a fact of life.

Mary Villanueva

It was a job like any other job in a way. He did say that the construction was really intense, full force, day and night, just non-stop. And the only other thing I remember is one day he was getting ready to go to the farm, and kind of out of nowhere he said to himself, that man is richer than God.

Julia Villanueva

Alright, have I mentioned this? Jonathan Lindeman is a billionaire. A multi, multi, billionaire.

Julia Villanueva

On January 17th, 2022, my mom and I drove to downtown Duluth to pick up my dad's personal effects from Blue Orchard security manager Dean Vargas. The address was an unassuming warehouse building converted into office suites. We were greeted by a receptionist and shown into a small carpeted room where Mr. Vargas greeted us from behind a desk. He handed over a black garbage bag. Yeah. A garbage bag.

Dean Vargas

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Julia Villanueva

Thank you.

Mary Villanueva

Thank you very much.

Julia Villanueva

I recorded the whole conversation on my phone in my purse, so the audio is a little muffled. My mom and I wanted to know why we hadn't been notified about my dad's situation earlier. Why hadn't Blue Orchard contacted us right away when the ambulance was called? Why had we gone several hours without knowing what was going on? Mr. Vargas explained to us that Blue Orchard was acting in accordance with their legal duty, namely to notify emergency responders of a medical crisis. He did express sympathy with our frustration.

Dean Vargas

I have spoken with the property owner and his wife multiple times since this happened. They want to express their condolences.

Julia Villanueva

Then Mr. Vargas mentioned the Lindemans directly by name.

Dean Vargas

Jonathan and Cathleen are very invested in making everything as transparent as possible, so we are all on the same page together.

Mary Villanueva

Okay.

Dean Vargas

Great.

Julia Villanueva

A couple things stuck out to me. One was that Mr. Vargas was apparently well aware of how difficult it was for Blue Orchard security guards to walk up a steep cliff during winter.

Dean Vargas

I will say, the guards do have trouble, um, especially in the ice and snow, yeah.

Julia Villanueva

The other thing was that Mr. Vargas suddenly asked us if we needed any help monetarily.

Dean Vargas

Jonathan does want to make sure you are taken care of.

Julia Villanueva

And he kept asking.

Dean Vargas

Do you need any help with the funeral uh expenses?

Dean Vargas

Well, let me ask you this. Do you you have any plans to start a memorial uh fund?

Dean Vargas

And in terms of burial expenses, uh the owners want to make a contribution. As I mentioned, uh Jonathan and Cathleen are are really wanting to be clear about how much they want to help.

Julia Villanueva

Okay.

Dean Vargas

Is there anything we can can do at all?

Mary Villanueva

That's very kind of you.

Dean Vargas

Um it's open. The offer is free and open. It's up to you, you know, it's on the table. Okay. Jonathan just wants to make sure that you are taken care of.

Mary Villanueva

Okay.

Julia Villanueva

Okay, well, we'll get back to you.

Dean Vargas

Please, yeah, reach out if there's anything we can help with.

Julia Villanueva

He brought up the issue of compensation seven times. My mom and I, who are both lapsed Catholics, chose not to hold a funeral service for my dad. It was a decision I would later come to regret. Looking back on this time, we were both pretty emotionally numb. In times of extreme stress, they say you can go into fight or flight mode or you can freeze. My mom and I were frozen. After helping with my dad's affairs for a few weeks, I went back to LA at the insistence of my mom. It seemed like the proper thing to do was to return to life as normal. Two days after I'd returned to LA, a month after my dad's passing, I got a call from my mom.

Mary Villanueva

I opened my mailbox and it was just sitting there.

Julia Villanueva

What does it say? Can you read it to me?

Mary Villanueva

I'm holding it in my hand right now. It's a check from Blue Orchard Farm LLC, made out to me for $9,700 and zero cents.

Julia Villanueva

That moment right there is when my brain kicked into what the f is going on overdrive. The next day I got a lawyer. We started preparing a civil suit against Blue Orchard Farm LLC.

Janice

Wrongful death, negligence, infliction of severe emotional distress, and punitive damages.

Julia Villanueva

This is our lawyer, Janice.

Janice

Hadn't bothered to put snow tires on their four-wheelers. It's Minnesota in the dead of winter. I mean, come on.

Julia Villanueva

We were taking Jonathan Lindeman to trial. On the next episode of Lakecastle, the lawsuit.

Janice

Yeah, this is the most high-profile, wrongful death lawsuit I have ever worked on. It doesn't get more high-profile than Jonathan Lindeman.

Unknown

It isn't about the facts. It ain't about finding the truth. It's about who can spin the best story.

Julia Villanueva

This is giving me goosebumps hearing you say all of this because there are lots of holes here.

Julia Villanueva

Lakecastle is produced by Isabella Dawis and Emma Lai. Directed by Desdemona Chiang. Sound design, mixing, and music by Dan Dukich. Thanks to Kathryn Fumie, Lia Rivamonte, Jenessa Iverson, Karen Wiese -Thompson, Reed Sigmund, Oogie Push, Tom Reed, James Rodriguez, and Sheena Janson Kelley. You can listen to all of our episodes and find out more about what's happening in Lakecastle at www.lakecastlepodcast.com. Support for Lakecastle comes from Butter Solutions, delivering the effortless results you crave. Butter, making life smoother. Lakecastle is a production of Sansrival.