Sex, Money and Meth Addiction

Part 6: Crime and Punishment

Kim Neise is already in jail for procuring underage girls for Dick Dasen, and a number of other ‘Dasen Girls’ now have prostitution convictions on their records. Yet for all his sordid behavior, it’s not clear whether Dasen himself will land in prison. (This is the finale of a six-part series. Click here to read from the beginning.)

By Hal Herring, 3-21-05

For the past ten months, Kim Neise has been an inmate at the Flathead County Jail, waiting for a slot in a meth treatment program. She is serving ten years, with five suspended, for forgery and aggravated promotion of prostitution. Without the meth, she’s a lot heavier now, a bit pale and jail-worn. The tattoo on her forearm that says “Legalize Freedom" echoes from a different life. She says she’s glad to be in jail, that sometimes you have to wreck everything in order to start over.

	Kim Neise testifies. Photo by the Daily Inter Lake

Back in the spring of 2003 she was living in her car, after having been arrested and jailed for forging checks she’d stolen from her grandmother. Kim grew up in Columbia Falls, a mill town just up the road from Kalispell. Her father had worked most of his life in the aluminum plant there, but he was retired and could not offer her much help. She was twenty-three years old, had been using methamphetamine since she was thirteen. For the past three years she’d been an intravenous user and considered herself an addict. She was down to about 95 pounds.

Kim had, according to a Flathead County prosecutor, been in some “pretty awful places" in her life, but she had never been a prostitute. “In fact," she said, “I’d never even heard about prostitutes in Kalispell before. I never considered myself one, either."

Kim was introduced to Dick Dasen by her friend Leah Marshall, and for the first time in her life, she found herself flush with cash. Leah had set up an appointment for her to meet Dasen at Kalispell’s Aero Inn, the first of six sexual meetings she would have with him. The money was simply too good to turn down. Within a month, Kim had moved out of her car and rented a three-bedroom townhouse for $775 dollars a month, just down the road from the offices of Peak Development. Over the course of that month, she said, Dasen would give her $35,000 in checks, and about $15,000 in cash. Much of the money was for referring other girls, among them a young mother named Holli Rose, who was just getting into the Kalispell meth scene, and who became a favorite of Dasen’s, and who would eventually set him up in a sting operation. The usual deal was that the new girl would take $2,000, and split it down the middle with Kim. It was the same deal Kim had followed with Leah.

Kim and her friends moved in a slightly different constellation than many of the other girls and young women who received money from Dick Dasen, though in a small town most of them they knew each other through the common bond of meth and the many drugs associated with trying to come down from it -- the downers and opiates, the Oxycontin and the Lortabs, Klonopin, Xanax, the marijuana. Kim would see Angela Guzman only once, in Dasen’s office at Peak Development Corporation, just before the logging truck killed her. Angela was sick with meth addiction, and out of control, threatening Dasen, telling him she was going to tell the cops about him. In more ways than one, Angela was on her way out, and Kim was on her way in. Kim never thought about it much, she says. It was certainly nothing out of the ordinary to meet other girls at Dasen’s office. “Sometimes you’d go in there and they’d be lined up waiting to see him."

	Richard A. Dasen (right) with his attorney, George Best. Photo by the Daily Inter Lake

The new townhouse saw a lot of traffic, too. For awhile, according to Neise’s testimony, Misty Gibbs Yeates, who was also seeing Dasen, lived there. Kim’s boyfriend made meth, dry-cooking the cut-rate variety they call “lith dope," using the strips of lithium torn from the batteries that power high end flashlights. (“That dope tastes funny," Kim said, “and it messes with your head really bad.") Everybody liked to get really high and drive out to Tally Lake late at night and unload on the woods with 9mms and SKS rifles. People in the meth and party world came and went from the house at all hours during the summer of 2003. Among them were two high school girls, identified in police documents only by the initials T.F. and M.M., who, Kim says, acted as if they were in a lesbian relationship. Knowing pure gold when she saw it, Kim urged them to set up an appointment with Dick Dasen.

Kim would testify that the deal she agreed on with M.M. and T.F. was simply that they would make out with each other, and have no physical contact with Dasen, and for this they would receive $1,000. In late July, the two girls came to the townhouse to close that deal. M.M. was fifteen years old that summer, T.F. sixteen.

It went badly for them. Not only did the sexual encounter with Dasen go much further than they had been told to expect, the pay was only $500 because either Kim or her roommate decided to keep the rest. Police documents say that the girls “did not talk much to each other about what had happened until some time after the incident." They eventually went together to Dasen’s office at Southfield Towers and asked for their money. Dasen, they said, immediately wrote them a check for $2,000. The girls declined his offer to meet again. In December, T.F. confided to her mother about what had happened with Dasen, and her grandmother called Kalispell Police Chief Frank Garner.

There is another dark element that enters the story that summer of 2003, another current of disequilibrium. In February of that year, a woman named Darlene Wilcock was found strangled to death on a bed at the local Motel 6. DNA from Dick Dasen was found on the bed beneath the victim, but Dasen was never, according to Chief Frank Garner, a suspect in the murder.

But the unsolved murder of Darlene Wilcock came to serve another purpose. Kim Neise would testify that Dasen and Leah Marshall both told her that what happened to Wilcock was “what happened to people who threaten to go to the cops." Neise told M.M. and T.F. the same story.

Kim Neise said that she and her friends were “a little scared of Dasen," now. “But I’ve been around a lot scarier people than Dick." She added that Dasen “thought he had it all under control. I know he never thought it would end up this way."

Dasen’s house, perched in the fir trees and juniper of a sunny bench on the outskirts of Kalispell, is for sale now. The life-sized bronze statue of a moose, painted in rich and surreal colors, gazes over a swimming pool drained for the winter, and an empty yard that has been well-used by grandchildren. Dasen is out on $150,000 bail, and he and his wife Susan have been living at their vacation home in southern Arizona. He has pled innocent to all charges, and the trial has been postponed twice.

Civil lawsuits are piling up as well. Rhonda “Nikki" Hawk, 26, is charged with prostitution in the case, and she’s filed suit against Dasen and Budget Finance, asserting that Dasen used the company to trap her in debt. She claims that she posed for nude photos in exchange for mortgage payments, but by December of 2003, the photos were no longer enough for him. She’s seeking compensation for negligence, emotional distress, conspiracy, sexual assault and battery.

Another lawsuit has been filed against Dasen and Kim Neise by one of the minors in the case, named by the initials T.E.F., and her mother, initials D.G., for damages resulting from an alleged assault and rape.

Southgate Mall Associates, LLP, a development company based in Missoula, is suing Dasen for more than $1 million, alleging unpaid debts and malicious misuse of funds in their business partnership with him.

Investigators at the Montana Department of Health and Human Services are still trying to determine what happened to about $500,000 that remained in a trust for Chad Emery, who was awarded a product liability settlement after choking on a marshmallow as a child and being rendered brain damaged. Dasen was the conservator of the trust, and in 2000 filed a one-sentence report saying that the money was all gone.

For all the mountains of evidence in the case, and the months of effort, Kalispell prosecutors are surprisingly nervous about the upcoming trial. Witnesses like Kim Neise -- pleading with a reporter not to write anything bad about her, since so many people already think so badly of her -- do not generally inspire sympathy from a jury. Poor young women, rendered sickly and angry and dangerous by addictions they can’t control, are much easier to despise than wealthy, seemingly genial men like Dick Dasen.

	Deana Dimler

Deana Dimler, finishing up a jail term for meth-related charges at a Butte pre-release center, offers one line of defense. She freely admits that, some years ago, she had a sexual relationship with him in return for his financial help. “You know, everybody’s talking about Dick, how he gave us all this money and made us victims, like we can’t take any responsibility for ourselves. I don’t buy that. I’m a grown woman and I’m responsible for what I do, and for what I did with the money. You ask if I’m pro-Dick Dasen, and yes, I am. Dick for Mayor! I notice nobody is asking if just maybe Dick is a victim of all of us. How come nobody’s asking that?"

The prosecution's case rests heavily on the allegations relating to underage girls; take those away, and what's left is series of felony promotion of prostitution charges (involving 16 women) that can carry up to 10 years, but could also result in little or no time. On the charges involving minors, Dasen is likely to claim that he didn't know the girls were underage, which under Montana law can be a defense on the rape charge (relating to 15-year-old M.M.), and on the charge of sexual abuse of children (relating to sexual photographs of two minors seized from Dasen's computer). Still, when it comes to the aggravated promotion of prositution charges, which involve five different minors, ignorance is not a defense - though it could elicit sympathy from a jury if they believed it. Dasen has also claimed that he has a "sex addiction" and that may play in the defense as well.

Dasen’s attorney, George Best, has twice asked for a change of venue for the trial, and complains that prosecutors are trying the case in the press. He even commissioned a survey that showed that a majority of registered voters in the area already believed Dasen was guilty. Best has declined to comment on the case or make Dasen available for interviews.

Assuming the case does go to trial, the jury will have some complicated judgments to make. The legal penalties for sex crimes with underage girls are fairly clear, and severe. But what should be the sanction, legal or otherwise, for enabling addiction, for feeding the meth economy, for taking advantage of weak, desperate people for your own gratification, for abusing a position of trust? And what's the lesson of a case in which a long series of “victimless" crimes somehow resulted in a lot of victims? In another age -- not so long ago in a place like the Flathead Valley -- Dasen’s involvement with so many young women would have brought forth a storm of infuriated brothers, cousins, fathers or grandfathers. But now it's up to the mothers and grandmothers and the inelegant mechanics of the legal system to bring about some kind of justice.

The wreckage left behind in Kalispell is the aftermath of a collision between two universes of perverse desire, one feeding the other to produce a variety of unsustainable and destructive energies. It asks questions about the hungers that at some level are common to us all, the impacts they have on others, the deals we make to satisfy them and the beliefs we cultivate to blunt their power. Like a spectacular car crash, the story holds the fascination of the familiar -- there are people, caught inside, people who are mostly just like us. It offers no simple truths.

Dick Dasen’s trial is set to begin on April 25. Jury selection is set for March 30.

This is the finale of a six-part series. Click below to read the other installments:

Part 1: Sex, Money and Meth Addiction: Inside the World of the 'Dasen Girls'

Part 2: A Mother's Worst Nightmare

Part 3: A Pillar of the Community

Part 4: 'Our Give-a-Shitters Were Broken'

Part 5: The Scourge of Rural America

[End of article]

Excellent piece. Completely changes my outsider's perception of an idyllic Flathead Valley. Can't wait to see more of this from New West...

Wow, i was very impressed by this series, great journalism and a situation we all need to be aware of wherever we live. I found NewWest through Missoulian and am very impressed. I hope your paper thrives.

terrific series. Will you be covering the trial? I find the possibility that he'll escape jail incredible...

Pulitzer stuff?

Perhaps.

One hellova fine job. Better than what I used to read in 'The Reporter' (when it was around, way back when), and better than current stuff in 'The Atlantic' and 'Harpers'.

Stay with it.

Sordid story by a great writer. New West has done well by giving room to Hal Herring's evocative and visceral journalism. I'll keep coming back.

Thanks very much everyone for your kind comments. We've posted an Epilogue today which includes some ideas on how to help, and Hal Herring will be online to discuss the piece. To join that conversation please go to the "comment" section on the Epilogue, which is now on the New West front page. Thanks again.

Your writing reminds me of Jon Krakauer. I love it.

You've got a book here. Terrific reporting, poignant atories, great writing.

This series was great not only for the reporting, but for the fact that the writer chose to really explore the meth subculture. Speed freakism is the big American story of the '00's. But it seems like few people are writing intelligently about it.

nice fiction, you should check your facts

This is a comment to Dick Dasen Jr. This is not fiction. Maybe you should check your father for the facts.

Hey Dick Jr.: I guess if my dad were a corrupt scumbag, I'd be bitter too.

I am familiar with this story and a key person in it. This story is very well written and captures the essence, the truth.
The truth of this story needs to be told.
Thank you.

Bibby, sorry if I came across as bitter, wasn't my intent, at least I don't hide behind a fake name, also, Vicki, I agree with you that the truth needs to surface, it won't be long now, thanks for your support.

your story sucks..the truth is never told...you were never there, how do you know the facts except thru meth freaks..get a clue...get a life,,you are listening to a bunch of freaks on a wanna be victim story...is this true reporting of facts...Ha corruption within and without ,,,and you all believe Hal's story...idiots...

Mary, what is the truth that has not been told?

Wow. If there is a Pulitzer Prize for online stories, this needs to be in the running. Even more interesting that Mr. Dasen chose to respond. I know a lot of work went into this story, but it is reporting sorely needed here in Montana.

To the author. Great job on putting the truth out there. Dick Dasen, you should probabally not worry about what people are writing about you. Instead You should worry about what is going to happen to you. It is in GODS hands and you will pay one way or another. These girls are not freaks. What an ignorant BITCH to say that. Do you personally know these girls? I do and I grew up with many of them. They are girls who need help, love, Friends just like you girl. You should feel so lucky you have not had to hit rock bottom. Get off your high horse and open your mind to the possability that Dick Dasen is a sick @#$%.

Hey Nicole, sorry to hear you believe lies and fall into deception...so sad for you../I do Know God personally...and truth is not stated in this story...it has not been at all reported as of yet...you are probably some chick who is jealous of properity in a person's life...student of idiotic ideas, a people pleaser, follower of the wrong kind of people..I too feel sad for these girls to have so little self esteem as to use Mr. Dasen for his money to get high..and they are your friends? sounds like you need to go to jail too, get off whatever self rightous drug you are on and get a real life...and you don't know anything about my past, you need to shut your little mouth until you know what is true and stop believing lies.

Mary, once again I'd like to ask: what is the truth that is not told? I've now heard repeatedly from you, and from Dick Dasen Jr., that Hal's story is "lies" and that there is some other "truth" that has not been reported. What is that truth? There has now been a full-scale trial, still that "truth" has not been reported? What is it? We take our journalism seriously here and I do not appreciate it being referred to repeatedly as "lies" without a shred of evidence supporting that allegation.

And, to both Mary and Nichole, please refrain from personal attacks and name-calling. Thanks.

Name calling and accusations of you-don't-know-the-whole-truth-but-I-can't-tell-you are tactics used by a lot of people when they only know to attack. Mr. Dasen has admitted he got sex but said ah shucks he had no clue it was because of the money he was handing out. Just had to be he was so irresistible, kind of like a rock star. I think the idea that money can buy anything and that people with a lot of it get insulated from considering consequences to their actions is part of the tragedy of this story. So think of your own personal moral standards and recognize actions have consequences, and the tragedy will have some long term benefits. The girls weren't right to sell sex but the man had more accountability given who he was and the court recognized that. He was given the benefit of the doubt as much as possible and it seems to me a fair verdict in court to a tragic series of events for all connected.

truth...was spoken thru out the trial, by the defense, no one seemed to listen...truth, could be in your face and your "journalistic mind" would not see it, why? doesn't make the bad guys feel good about their lies...and the bad guys are lying in this story, you want truth, dig deep, it's there, and the victim is not the girls...they chose to use a man, use his money, with only a care for their next high...then when they get caught , they say what they are told to say, to get out of jail, man, it pays to be bad, to use people and trash their name, of course the media never cares who is hurt in the process, as long as they get pats on their back, and shouts of acclamation, great reporting? not..and what about the innocent lesbians performing their sex acts at every party they go to? playing their game of harlot, to get what they need, these young girls are no innocents to what they do, I know they have been performing for people for a long long time....sad life for them...time for these little girls to get jail time for lying on the stand in court...oh...forgot....they don't lie or do drugs anymore....right....seems like they were out wasted a couple weeks ago in bigfork....hmmmmm they seem soooo innocent...

Jonathan, you or hal should email me, I have not repeatedly said you are not telling the truth, but the whole truth has not yet surfaced, you have many facts that should be checked out.

gee whiz jr. dick, yr dad was convicted on five felony counts. too bad the whoooooooooole truuuuuuuuth didn't come out, though, huh?

Mary,

If there is a truth, or a collection of facts, that has been missed, overlooked or ignored, I ask that you contact me directly and tell me what it is.
Thanks,
Hal Herring

Hal,
Your story is embellished here and there ~~ not sure where you get your facts. Such as the "life-sized bronze statue of a moose, painted in rich and surreal colors" in Dick's yard is actually a fiberglass & polyurethane moose. BIG DIFFERENCE... There were 15 moose auctioned off in Whitefish in 2000 to benefit 3 local non-profit organizations. Check this website for the accuracy of the moose. http://www.montanamagazine.com/0004/eastwest1.htm#01 This tells me that your interview candidates or other sources are not reliable with their facts. It's also another example of an attempt to demean the positive things Dick Dasen has done for the community. Yes, the situation is a tragedy for everyone involved.

Again, I don't care much about these girls. Sure, he took advantage, but they let it happen.

What about what he did to my little brother, Chad Emery? I would like some answers on that. Did he spend my HELPLESS little brother's money on whores and drugs? If anyone can tell me, email me at .

Dick Dasen may have done positive things in his community, but it would appear he only did those things to cover up a disgusting way of life.

The decease sound from newest week's earthquake in south-west China has risen to 40,075, officials be suffering with said.
Chinese aid workers are struggling to happen housing for millions who unchaste their homes. peculiar medical teams be suffering with started arriving in the area.
Tens of thousands more are that time missing, and hopes are fading of bargaining innumerable people stationary aware.
in any case, Chinese media say a chain was pulled from the rubble 195 hours - or eight days - after the disaster.
It was the ly let go free on Tuesday. Earlier, a man was pulled animated from the remains of a power herb after being buried for 179 hours, villagesman media said. Rescuers fed him sweetened be inconsistent wholly a tube.
The let go free try has now focused on providing edibles, seek and drinking incredible for the millions of people hurt by the 7.9 extent earthquake in Sichuan province.
Rescuers be suffering with launched a concluding try to search all hurt area.
On Monday Chinese chief executive Wen Jiabao ordered troops to reach every set aside village and village in the earthquake section within 24 hours.

Hi everyone;

I am writing from thousands of miles away from a different country than where most of you are. After just seeing the "Ice Storm" on CNN today, I couldn't help to stay idle on a comment that Connie G made towards the end of the broadcast.

Connie as you asked people to speak out, here it is - "ICE is taking America by Storm, wake up all of you !!! Stop complaining about who's at fault and get out in the streets of your communities and get involved please !!! Help the "Rock Lady" help others !!!

Here where I am, there's very little addiction but I will say that there are huge and I mean really huge industrial Meth labs and all of it the - processed product - going to the USA. Guess who the big guys are ? Nope not the Mexican mafia, The Chinese !!

Trailer loads of Chemicals coming to the seaports here from India going to Labs financed and run by the Chinese. Just last year there was a half a billion dollars in raw materials seized at a factory here and last month another one almost as large, same route, same ports of origin and same triad's.

They are weakening the American dream, turning the heartland youth into beggars, weakening the Moral fiber of America. Same as in the 60's when heroin was used as a tool to weaken the "black power" youth. It's all part of the "great game" that's behind the scenes.

As I said, "Wake up" !! please. You are all victims and you have no idea where the evil is coming from, you quarrel amongst yourselves, attacking the reporter (messenger) attacking the girls (users) attacking the admitted Sex Addict (financier)

You are all "obtuse" if you think inside the box. The only way to stop this is to get "Morality" back into your lives, take all the negativity and frustration and do something positive with it. Take it to the streets instead of sweeping it under the rug by looking for the scape goat.

Rock lady - You are right about turning to God for help but you missed an important point. It does not matter how many thousands of dollars one spends on re-hab. Rich, poor, strong of weak, if one does not fix the problems that led to the addiction in the first place nothing will help. If one does not love themselves then they will fall into some type of addiction. It's all about self worth and there's very little of that left in the heartland.

Hal/Jonathan - Great writing ! congratulations to you and all that helped in writing the series, truth, fact or fiction it was great, well done.

Mr. Dasen Jr - I commend you for having the courage and internal fortitude to speak your mind here, I suggest a little humility in your approach, the Moose was a Moose, was a Moose !! just kidding but I think you understand my point.

Mary - Resorting to verbal abuse or shouting is a sign of internal weakness and a control nature, the next step is physical abuse. I would check your anger management skills, a tune up might be in order.

Your points are well taken by me and you could of gotten your message across without the anger, it would of made your comments more convincing.

Lastly, thank you all for an interesting read. All your points were valid and I appreciate the opportunity that I have been offered, a peek into the destruction occurring all over the US, May God have mercy on us all.

In all fairness and retrospect...my comment to Mary is meant for Nichole more so. Sorry Mary, and thanks.

Typical American story - USA invents drug prohinbition, has worst drug problems in the world, exports facist laws to rest of world, cause people to take up prostitution when teh drugs should be available from teh doctor, then makes a big deal and sends both Dick and teh girls to jail. What a great country! Such a Christian country!

I have seen both sides of this story. Mr. Dasen did help a lot of people including my best friend who went blind later in life. Mr. Dasen helped him keep his finances in order at no charge and I went with him to Mr. Dasen's office many times. I was stunned when this information came out and was somewhat skeptical. I met a couple of the 'Dasen girls' later who repeated all the sordid details. Both were die hard druggies and basically traded sex for money to fund their meth and oxy habits so it was difficult to accept everything they said as truth. I hope when Mr. Dasen gets out of prison he can recover from the experience and not repeat past mistakes. As for me I will never forget the kindness he showed my friend.

Great Post. I add this Blog to my bookmarks.