Almlie Funeral Home

Jim and Cathy Hively knew something was amiss after the first rap on their farmhouse door. It's not as if people randomly came a-knocking in Balaton, a prairie town an hour east of the South Dakota border.     The retired couple recognized the unexpected visitors. Brothers Devin and Derek Hexum lived with their father, his girlfriend, and their oldest sibling, Drew, in a scraggly rental a mile across the field. Their truck had run out of gas. Could the Hivelys spare some? asked 21-year-old Devin, whose Jesus mane could not have been a bigger contrast to the military cut sported by Derek, two years his junior. The Hivelys wore their Christianity like a chestplate. But intuition sensed something unholy on this early summer day in 2014. Maybe it was the boys' eyes wide pupils that appeared unmoored to anything of this earth. Perhaps it was the stink of their perspiration that hadn't been achieved by a hard day's work.   -- No, sorry. We can't help you, Jim said. The Hivelys would never see Devin again. The criminal justice system would tend to that. -- Yet Derek would return. He'd be carrying a 12-gauge shotgun. The brothers grim Derek and Devin had only been reunited for about six months when they paid the Hivelys a visit. Derek returned to the prairie earlier that year after spending his high school years in Georgia with his mom. Only weeks after the Hivelys turned the brothers away, Daniel Scheff made their acquaintance. Scheff, age 30, had schlubbed his way into adulthood, racking up more than a dozen petty arrests. Underage consumption. Drug possession. Selling pot. DWI. On July 18, 2014, the Hexums asked if he'd like to hop into Derek's truck for the short drive to Prairie's Edge Casino, where they'd try their luck. -- En route, the pickup's engine conked. Devin and Scheff set off on foot for help down the road. Derek stayed behind. The two plodded along, nary a light on the landscape. It was the perfect backdrop for a set-up.      &nb... (City Pages)