Judge: Release Trentadue Death Report

Salt Lake City (AP) ~ A federal judge in Utah has set a May 1 deadline for the government to release a report on a man who died while in custody in Oklahoma.

Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue (pictured) claims his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, died during an interrogation by investigators, four months after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

The government has denied the allegation and insisted that Trentadue committed suicide.
During a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart gave the government three weeks to release the report to Jesse Trentadue or face contempt of court action.

Kenneth Trentadue, 44, a convicted bank robber, was picked up on a parole violation in California in 1995 and transported to Oklahoma City for further proceedings.

During that time, the FBI was investigating the bombing of the Murrah federal building, which killed 168 people.

Trentadue's survivors filed a lawsuit claiming they suffered emotional distress because the government had not told them how he died or that an autopsy had been performed.
They said they opened his casket and found Trentadue's throat had been slashed with a toothpaste tube and he had been hanged with a braided bedsheet.

After a 2001 trial, a federal judge in Oklahoma City ordered the government to pay $1.1 million, saying the government's conduct was outrageous and caused the family severe emotional distress.
But the judge said Trentadue had committed suicide and that allegations of a conspiracy by prison officials to cover up a murder were just speculation.

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13 Years Later, Jesse Trentadue Gets Response

By Jerry Bohnen, NewsRadio 1000 KTOK ~ Attorney Jesse Trentadue's response to a government reply 13 years after he made a Freedom of Information Act request over the 1995 death of his brother, Kenneth, cannot be printed in total. In short, it was "same ole ****!"

Thirteen years after he made the request to the U.S. Department of Justice to learn more how his brother died in the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center, the Salt Lake City Attorney (pictured) received this week a letter from the government. Trentadue made the original request in November of 1995, a few months after his brother's mysterious death. In September, 1996, he appealed a decision by the Department of Justice to deny him prison records of any telephone calls to his brother during his stay at the FTC in Oklahoma City.

"This Office recently discovered, during an internal review of its administrative appeal backlog, that three of the eighteen administrative appeals that you have submitted to this Office since November 1995 remain open," wrote Janice Galli McLeod, the Associate Director of the Office of Information at the Justice Department.

Galli McLeod continued that after considering the more than ten year old appeal, she was "remanding your request for further processing of the records response to your request." In short, Trentadue faced another government review and delaly of his original request made in 1995.

But Galli McLeod also said that the original exemption stated for not releasing the records in 1995 no longer applied because of a "change in the status of the Civil Rights Divison investigation during the intervening period between your administrative appeal and today."

She said that any releasable records would be sent to Trentadue, "subject to any fees."

Trentadue continues to wage his fight with the government over his brother's death, a death that he believes is linked to the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah building. He believes his brother was beaten to death by government agents because of his similarity in description to a possible suspect in the April 1995 attack.

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