Unsealed documents provide new details about arson, mass shooting at Anaconda’s Owl Bar

ANACONDA — Court records unsealed Friday confirmed a long-held rumor in Anaconda that one of the four victims of an Aug. 1 shooting at the Owl Bar was on fire when police arrived. She had apparently fallen on materials set aflame by the shooter when she was shot.

In addition, the records report that the alleged shooter, Michael Paul Brown, then 45, confessed to the shootings, arson and other crimes after his Aug. 8 capture. He said he knew and liked the victims and believed he owned the Owl Bar and was being brainwashed by its jukebox.

Records show Brown, who lived next door, had entered the bar around 10:30 a.m. carrying a pizza box and a bucket. Surveillance video showed Brown pouring a liquid, believed to be lighter fluid, into the bucket and then lighting the pizza box on fire, which he set on top of the bucket before exiting out the bar’s back door.

Bartender Nancy Kelley attempted to extinguish the fire by stomping on the pizza box. Brown was seen on surveillance video apparently running to his house. He returned a minute or so later with a rifle and entered the bar’s front door, the documents allege.

Subsequent investigation identified the rifle as an SKS 7.62 x 39, which was recovered in a search of Brown’s home, documents show, and matched a bullet removed from a victim’s abdomen.

The moment he reentered the bar after going back to his house is when the carnage began, according to court documents.

He first shot Kelley, who fell on top of the burning materials; he then shot Tony Palm, followed by Daniele Baillie and David Leach, records show, before escaping.

Police responded to a report of shots fired at the Owl Bar.

“Officers then entered the building and located a total of four individuals on the floor of the bar in various positions,” according to an affidavit filed Aug. 5. “Det. Sgt. Eamon also observed that one of the individuals appeared to be on fire. Officer Arment extinguished the fire with a fire extinguisher located behind the bar.”

A review of surveillance cameras at the bar identified Brown as the person who had first entered the bar carrying a pizza box and a bucket who allegedly shot the victims and set the fire, records show. Officers knew Brown from previous encounters, the affidavit reports.

A paramedic who responded to the Owl Bar confirmed that all four shooting victims were dead.

Before the shooting, “there were four other individuals at the bar, two males seated at the south end of the bar, one male standing at the north end of the bar and a female bartender standing behind the bar,” records show.

A search of the bar following the shooting found four spent casings, two fired bullets and a rifle cleaning rod. Officers photographed a five-gallon bucket, apparent lighter fluid, matches, spray paint cans and the types of propane canisters used when camping.

Records show Brown later told police he had hoped to destroy the jukebox.

These details and others of the Aug. 1 mass shooting were revealed Friday, when Anaconda-Deer Lodge County District Court Judge Jeffrey Dahood released every document — except one mental health evaluation — that had been sealed since August in Brown’s murder case. Dahood’s decision to release the case documents followed a push by a coalition of media organizations, including Lee Enterprises, The Montana Standard’s parent company, to make the records public.

The state alleges Brown fled the scene of the shooting in a stolen Ford F-150 pickup and eluded dozens of police in pursuit on Stumptown Road, a gravel road west of Anaconda. He abandoned the pickup in the vicinity of an area locals know as “sled hill” and fled into the foothills of Mount Haggin.

Friends said Brown was familiar with the terrain — which includes rolling hills, aspen thickets, native shrubs, conifers, other vegetation and mountain lakes — from hiking and hunting in years past. He was believed to be hiding in the vicinity of the Garrity Mountain Wildlife Management Area.

At the time, Anaconda-area sportsman Chris Marchion described the terrain as offering many places to hide.

“He has the advantage over people looking for him,” Marchion said then.

Brown eluded capture for roughly a week despite a joint search effort by some 250 people from numerous local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, drones, dogs and helicopters.

Brown was captured Aug. 8 after an encounter the night before with a startled landowner along Montana 1 west of the Ranch Bar. Brown had apparently been pushed out of the woods and thickets and across Warm Springs Creek by a combination of a cold, strong thunderstorm and a big push by law enforcement.

Brown, now 46, is an Anaconda native, a graduate of Anaconda High School and a veteran of the U.S. Army.

On Dec. 16, Dahood signed an order seeking a psychiatric evaluation by staff at the Montana State Hospital of Brown’s fitness to proceed. Dahood’s order had followed a joint motion the previous day from prosecutor Morgan Smith and defense lawyers Walter Hennessey and Christopher White asking the court to make a finding regarding Brown’s competency.

The joint motion from the prosecution and defense also sought an opinion as to Brown’s capacity to appreciate the criminality of his alleged actions.

Psychologist: Psychosis might not have hamstrung alleged Anaconda shooter as fugitive

Under Montana law, a fitness to proceed evaluation examines whether “the defendant suffers from a mental disease or disorder or developmental disability, whether the defendant has the capacity to understand the proceedings against the defendant and to assist in the defendant's own defense.”

On Wednesday, Dahood ordered another 60-day stay of trial proceedings so that mental health evaluations of Brown can continue at the forensics campus of the Montana State Hospital at Warm Springs.

Smith, the county attorney for Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, said the efforts at the state hospital include “potential restoration of fitness” to stand trial.

In September, Brown pleaded not guilty to four counts of deliberate homicide, attempted arson, theft and fleeing or eluding a peace officer.

The shooting victims were Nancy Lauretta Kelley, 64, a bartender, and customers Tony Wayne Palm, 74, Daniel Edwin Baillie, 59, and David Alan Leach, 70.

Several people close to Brown in Anaconda told The Montana Standard during the fall that Brown has long presented numerous symptoms of mental illness, including delusions that he is the movie hitman John Wick, could time travel and was involved with actress Sandra Bullock. Some said that Brown, a veteran of the U.S. Army, failed to receive adequate treatment from the Veterans Administration. They believed he suffered from PTSD from his time in the Army. Brown served as an armor crewman from January 2001 to May 2005 and then in the Montana National Guard from April 2006 to March 2009. He deployed to Iraq for a year beginning in February 2004.

One woman predicted Brown would feel intense remorse once he was medicated again and realized what he’d done.

“Mikee loved those people,” she said.

The Montana Standard’s October article about Brown’s reported mental health struggles stirred a predictable split in social media comments. Some insisted the mental health system and VA had failed him and others called for his execution by hanging or firing squad.