Stock photo, blog post by John Hoff
A confession, here: I'm only writing about Charles Ortley by accident.
There was an article in MPR News which made mention of somebody ("John Doe") who had been arrested on March 13 who may be a suspect in the Demetrius Harper and Erick Felton murder at a Northside "after hours" club. This little scrap of info (an arrest on March 13) sent me running to the Hennepin County Jail roster to see if I could scavenge the name of the suspect, and BLOW THAT INFO UP.
I'm a blogger. This is what I do, at least sometimes. Bigger media fish leave scraps of info laying around (names and addresses and dates, mostly) and, opportunistically, I see if I can follow the trail of bread crumbs to an interesting story. In this case, when I looked at the jail roster I found only one person arrested on March 13 with anything resembling a murder charge.
The more I looked at the info, the more I thought "This doesn't look EXACTLY like the Harper/Felton murder." But, then again, I also couldn't rule out a connection because it was the only March 13 arrest with any mention of a murder, after all.
Finally, I decided to just go with what I had and make sure I only wrote the facts I could confirm and NOT mention the Harper/Felton murder. (Click here for previous story) I figured even if it turned out to be the wrong murder, it was still a MURDER or an ATTEMPTED murder. (The jail roster has an annoying tendency to muddle the distinction between the two in favor of an understandable economy of words)
But now I've obtained copies of criminal complaints and (oh, my goodness) an actual statement issued for this blog by the Hennepin County Prosecuting Attorney's office.
Turns out Charles Ortley is NOT IN ANY WAY INVOLVED in the Harper/Felton shooting. (Well, good thing I never said he was!) In retrospect, data about the suspect arrested on March 13 must have been purged from the system before I went looking for it. Damn. I'm trying to obtain the name by other means.
But back to Charles Ortley.
There are fascinating allegations (not proven, and in fact the case was dismissed) about Ortley's supposed involvement in another murder in South Minneapolis on New Year's Day...