Utahn battling U.S. over brother's death

DENVER — Jesse Trentadue couldn't believe it when he was told his brother, Kenneth Michael Trentadue, had hanged himself with a bed sheet while being held in a federal detention center in Oklahoma City for a parole violation.

Sure, his brother had spent prison time for bank robbery, had battled heroin addiction and alcoholism, but he was a proud new father. A message was found in his cell scrawled on a piece of paper, "My mind no longer it's friend love ya. Familia!"

After spending nine days after the Aug. 21, 1995, death getting the body back, Trentadue's family was not prepared for what met them at the funeral home.

"It's just like burned into my brain. It's horrific. His head split open, throat slashed. He was bruised from head to toe," Trentadue said. Federal officials were quick to rule Kenneth Trentadue's death a suicide, but the bruised and bloody body lying before them told a different story.

An autopsy initially concluded the cause of death as "unknown" due to the extensive injuries. However, under reported pressure by federal officials that cause was later changed to "suicide."

The Deseret Morning News has obtained photos of Kenneth Trentadue's body but has deemed them too graphic for publication.

For 11 years Jesse Trentadue, an attorney in Salt Lake City, has battled the federal government to unravel the mystery behind his brother's death. Based on hundreds of pages of documents from the FBI and Federal Bureau of Prisons, Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by the FBI shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing in a case of mistaken identity. The government denies that.

Trentadue and his family filed a wrongful death suit against the U.S. government. During a monthlong bench trial in 2000 a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled there was not enough evidence to show that Kenneth Trentadue was murdered. However, the court did find there was enough evidence to show that the U.S. government intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the Trentadue family by withholding information about his death and shipping his body without explanation and by conducting an autopsy without the family's consent.

"They even tried to have him cremated, twice," Jesse Trentadue said, but Oklahoma state officials said that required family consent.

In the latest legal battle between Trentadue and the federal government, the government has appealed the district court's decision that found evidence of intentional infliction of emotional distress and the $1.1 million judgment for the family.