A father last week surrendered himself to police after claiming he used a moose antler and shovel to beat a man to death.
Levi William Axtel said he believed the victim was abusing children, according to NBC. Axtell was later charged with second-degree murder.
The victim was identified by the U.K. Daily Mail as Lawrence Scully, who was convicted in 1979 of molesting a 6-year-old girl.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Axtell arrived at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office covered in blood.
According to court documents, Axtell entered the lobby, fell to his knees, “put his hands on his head and said that he had murdered [Scully] with a shovel.”
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Minnesota dad uses moose antler to slaughter 77-year-old sex offender he claims was stalking daughter – before turning himself in to police station ‘covered in blood’
Levi Axtell charged with murdering convicted sex offender Lawrence Scully.https://t.co/xmDGzZ2gYv
— Dalton (@DaltonReport) March 12, 2023
He said he wanted to be handcuffed to ensure no one else was hurt.
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Axtell said he found a shovel on the deck of the house where Scully lived, hit him 15 to 20 times with it and then “finished him off” by hitting Scully with a large moose antler.
He said he had known Scully for several years “and believed him to have sexually offended against children in the past,” a complaint against Axtell said. “[Axtell] said he had observed [Scully] parked in the vehicle at locations where children were present and believed he would reoffend.”
A sheriff’s deputy went to Scully’s Grand Marais home and found the man “obviously dead from the serious nature of his head wounds,” the complaint said.
According to the Daily Mail, Scully was 33 in 1979 when he was jailed for molesting a 6-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty and was released from prison in 1981. In 2018, he faced allegations of sexual misconduct involving minors.
Also in 2018, Axtell tried to secure an order of protection against Scully on behalf of his daughter.
“The respondent waits for victim to go on walks from daycare and tries to talk to her. … He has been there many times stalking children in his van. I have seen him parked right next to the school. … He is a convicted pedophile and him stalking and attempting to groom my daughter is completely inappropriate and needs to stop,” Axtell wrote then. He won a temporary order, but a judge dismissed the case for a permanent order.
In July 2020, Scully was sent to a mental asylum but was released in 2021.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, in 2020, Axtell posted on Facebook a photo of a gun with the words “Only cure for pedophiles. A bullet.”
“People always ask me why I hate pedophiles. They assume I’ve been abused. But really I think being protective is just an Axtell trait,” he wrote at the time, the outlet reported.
Cook County Sheriff Pat Eliasen said there had been allegations against Scully, “but an investigation didn’t reveal anything.”
