(Sibley)– Jury selection is scheduled to start Tuesday in the first degree murder trial of a Spirit Lake man accused in the death of his infant son.
Kory Klaasen is already serving jail time after being convicted for child endangerment in the death of his son, Kyler Klaasen. Kyler was hospitalized in a coma at the time of that trial. He passed away a couple months later. The charge against Kory Klaasen was then upgraded to first degree murder.
In the child endangerment trial, Klaasen’s defense was that Kyler had rolled off a couch and that on another occasion the child had slipped out of his hands while he was giving him a bath. Expert witnesses for the state testified the nature of the injuries Kyler sustained were consistent with those caused by shaken baby syndrome.
Kory Klaasen was living with the child’s mother, Bonnie Everetts…who has seen two of her children die as the result of abuse. Her three year-old daughter, Ciara Dawn Everetts, died in 1996. Everetts’ live-in boyfriend at the time, Matthew Earl Bourgoyne, was convicted of first-degree murder.
The state will be represented in the Klaasen case by Dickinson County Attorney Ned Bjornstad and Assistant Attorney General Charles Thoman. Klaasen is being represented by Spirit Lake attorney James Clarity.
The trial was moved to Osceola county on a change of venue due, in part, to the highly publicized Shelby Duis case.
