Executive News Svc.

APn  08/09 1136  Witch Tales

Copyright, 1990. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

   BEULAH, N.D. (AP) -- Two men were charged with conspiring to murder a
neighbor they thought was a witch, authorities say.
   Karina Singer, 61, said she had no idea some of her neighbors wrongly
suspected she was a witch until two armed men were rrested on her farm last
week.
   "I'm stunned my neighbors could believe these things when we've lived here 21
years," Mrs. Singer said. "And that instead of calling me to find out if they
were true, circulating them around until they became like an atomic blast
mushrooming out of the prairie."
   Jim Reppen, who works for a tire service company, and farmer Dean Unterseher
were charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The charge carries a possible
life term. Both were freed on $5,000 bond after their arrests by police officers
acting on a tip.
   Mercer County State's Attorney Alan Duppler said rumors about Mrs. Singer
have circulated in the county for years. This summer, they also included two
visiting friends, he said.
   "There have been rumors flying around Mercer County that these three ladies
are witches and they're sacrificing animals and doing general cult-type of
things," Duppler said.
   The two arrested men, he said, apparently "decided they were going to go down
and eliminate the problem."
   A search of the Singer farm uncovered nothing witch-like, Duppler said.
   Mrs. Singer said she did not know the two men, who authorities said hatched
the alleged murder plot at a bar in nearby Hazen.
   Since the arrests, neighbors have told Mrs. Singer of hearing stories of
firelight rites at the farm.
   What really has been going on, Mrs. Singer said, was a plan she developed
with her late husband, John, to turn the farm into "a place of beauty and peace"
that friends could visit for extended vacations. Her husband died of cancer in
April.
   Last fall, the couple laid down two Indian "medicine wheels," or rock
configurations "for the healing of the land." During the spring and summer,
several old frame buildings were torn down, a pit was burned in the yard and a
guest house was erected.
   But rumors circulated that the guest house was a church and that visitors
were seen dancing around a pit fire.
   The "dancers," Mrs. Singer said, actually were workers from a Hazen
construction company that tore down the buildings and put out grass fires
started by sparks from the pit.
   All in all, she said, "it was probably too fast a change" for the neighbors.