SUPERIOR, Wis. — The Superior man convicted of murdering Ricky Balsimo Jr., 34, of St. Paul, on Father’s Day 2021 was sentenced in Douglas County Circuit Court on Tuesday to an additional 7½ years imprisonment for dismembering Balsimo’s body.

Jacob Colt Johnson, 38, is serving a 40-year prison sentence in Minnesota for the shooting death of Balsimo, a friend he’d known since they were young. He pleaded no contest in Douglas County Circuit Court on Jan. 3 to one count of being a party to mutilating a corpse.

After the killing, Johnson drove the body to a camper in rural Douglas County, where the dismemberment took place. Balsimo’s body was placed in buckets and totes with cement and dumped off a boat into Lake Superior in Grand Portage.

“It is like a script from a horror film,” Judge George Glonek said. “I have to ask myself over and over what type of person is capable of doing something as inhumane as this.”

Balsimo was a son, a brother, an uncle and a father. Pictures of the victim were laid out on benches outside the courtroom by his family, who wore T-shirts seeking justice for Ricky.

“Jake took everything from me. Ricky was my only son. He was my heart, my world, my love,” said Balsimo’s mother, Kim.

“I miss my boy hugging me.”

The murder was a traumatic crime, District Attorney Mark Fruehauf told the court, but Johnson’s actions after the murder made the family suffer a whole different level of anguish and despair for weeks while they were looking for Ricky.

“This defendant meticulously and coldly tore this victim’s body apart, treated it like garbage, dumped it in cement, dumped it in cement-filled buckets, and arranged to have it dumped in the lake where he hoped it would never be found,” Fruehauf wrote in his sentencing memorandum.

Ricky’s sister Raquel Turner said Johnson has shown zero remorse every step of the way.

“You destroyed us,” Kim Balsimo said to Johnson in the courtroom. “And once again, he can’t even look at us or say ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s all I want to hear from Jake.”

Family members asked that Johnson be given the maximum sentence and that it run consecutively to the Minnesota murder sentence. He poses a danger to the public, they said.

“This man does not deserve to see another day as a free man, for society, for us, for my brother, for his children, for your children, for people that live in this area,” Turner said.

Johnson’s attorney, Fredric Anderson, argued that the dismemberment was taken into account as an aggravating factor in the Minnesota homicide case. He asked that the dismemberment sentence run concurrent to the Minnesota sentence, which Johnson is appealing.

Fruehauf argued that the murder and dismemberment took place on different days, in different states, and warranted consecutive sentences.

Glonek gave Johnson the maximum sentence — seven and a half years of initial confinement, five years of extended supervision — and ordered him to serve it consecutively.

“This is a separate and calculated crime with separate elements from that which the defendant was sentenced for in Minnesota,” Glonek said. “This crime was deliberately planned and carried out on a separate date in a secluded location here in Douglas County … It is a distinct crime that deserves a distinct sentence.”

The family stood outside the courtroom following the sentence.

“Honestly, throughout this whole situation, there’s nothing, no amount of time that could make this right,” Turner said. “It could never bring my brother back and it can never give us back the time we lost in trying to find him.”

They plan to return to the courthouse next month when Johnson’s accomplice, Robert Thomas West, 43, of South Range, has his next hearing. West faces felony counts of party to mutilating a corpse, harboring or aiding a felon, and possession of a firearm by a felon in Douglas County. He was sentenced in August to 15 years imprisonment in Minnesota for being an accomplice to second-degree murder and interference with a dead body in connection with Balsimo’s death.

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