A White Bear Township man who admitted to selling pills that contained fentanyl and caused a woman’s fatal overdose has been sentenced to 180 days in the Hennepin County jail and five years of probation.

Jesse Russell Lietzau, 26, pleaded guilty in September to third-degree murder in connection with the death of 25-year-old Kailey Caspersen in a Richfield hotel room on May 16, 2021. He was sentenced Thursday.

Jesse Russell Lietzau (Courtesy of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office)

The charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 25 years, although state sentencing guidelines in Lietzau’s case presumed a commitment of just over seven years.

Lietzau struck a plea deal with Hennepin County prosecutors. In exchange for admitting guilt, prosecutors agreed to probation and up to 240 days in jail.

Judge Jay Quam stayed a seven-year prison sentence for five years, during which time Lietzau will be on probation. The judge’s order does not permit work release while in jail and requires Lietzau to complete a drug treatment program afterward.

Caspersen’s mother, Nancy Caspersen, said Friday she was disappointed with the sentence. She said Lietzau should have gone to prison for her daughter’s death — and for his recovery.

“There’s no better place for him to do that than in prison, because you’re forced to sit,” she said. “Sometimes God just needs you to sit still for a while. And I think that he should have done that.”

Lietzau’s attorney, John Lesch, said Lietzau considered Kailey Caspersen a friend. He said they met in treatment when they were teenagers and kept touch over the years through Facebook. “She really supported him in treatment,” he said.

Police found messages

Caspersen’s fiance found her unresponsive and not breathing in a hotel room they’d been staying at off 77th Street, just north of Interstate 494. She was declared dead at the scene, and the Hennepin County medical examiner ruled her cause of death as acute fentanyl toxicity.

Her fiance told police they went to a St. Paul hotel the night before to buy drugs from a man they knew as Jesse King, who was later identified as Lietzau, the charges said. Lietzau worked as a security guard at the hotel. Caspersen had purchased pills from Lietzau in the past, and also bought pills for a friend that night.

Her fiance said he saw Caspersen take at least one of the pills she purchased from Lietzau that night. Her friend told police she had given her pills she bought from Lietzau.

The pills, identified as “perc 30s,” were fake pills made to resemble oxycodone hydrocodone 30mg tablets.

During a search of Caspersen’s phone, officers found messages between Caspersen and Lietzau about the drug sale, the charges said. In one of the messages, Lietzau allegedly warned Caspersen to break the pills into “quarters or halves.”

‘List of goals’

Nancy Caspersen, of Bloomington, said her daughter was her only child and “my go-to girl.” She was raised in the Apple Valley area, and befriended anyone she met.

Kailey Caspersen, right, with her mother, Nancy Caspersen (Courtesy of Nancy Caspersen)

“She had a heart of gold,” she said. “If you had a problem, she would want to help you. If somebody hurt her or screwed her over, she always gave them chance after chance after chance because she believed in everybody.”

She was a loving mother to her son, Brayden, who was 6 years old at the time of her death and is now 8, Caspersen said.

“I have her son now,” she said. “I wasn’t prepared for it. It’s tough, but I’m doing it. I just wasn’t ready to be a mom again at 55. But he’s been through a lot and he’s come really far.”

Although her daughter experimented with drugs, marijuana was always her drug of choice, Caspersen said. She said she started taking pain pills because of an abscessed tooth.

“She wasn’t a pill popper,” she said. “She was a pothead.”

And she had goals.

“A week prior to her passing, she said, ‘Mom, ‘I’m getting it. Slowly, but surely, I’m getting it.’ We found papers, and she had a list of goals and checkmarks of what she was doing,” Caspersen said. “I was really proud of her.”

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