The state and the defense gave their closing arguments Thursday morning before putting the case into the hands of the jury, which returned with a guilty verdict on the charge of first-degree murder.

“This verdict has been a long time coming for Angela’s family and we’re hopeful that in time, it brings some form of closure and justice to their loss,” said First Assistant County Attorney Ryan Baldridge.

Russell, 31, was accused of beating 45-year-old McLeod to death with a golf club at 21 N. 14th St. on Jan. 20, 2020. After more than three years of delays, competency evaluations, one mistrial and a change of venue, Russell was finally brought to trial in Cerro Gordo County this week.

Russell claimed that the assault that killed McLeod was justified because he was acting in self-defense, a claim that Assistant Webster County Attorney Brad McIntyre refuted in his closing arguments to the jury by highlighting the legal elements of first-degree murder and how this case fits those elements.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Assistant Webster County Attorney Brad McIntyre points toward the end of the golf club where the head detached during Mark Russell's Jan. 20, 2020, attack on Angela McLeod, during closing arguments for Russell's first-degree murder trial in Mason City on Thursday.

The elements of first-degree murder include the defendant acting with malice aforethought, the defendant acting willfully, deliberately, premeditatedly and with a specific intent to kill the victim, and that the defendant’s actions were not justified.

McIntyre argued that Russell’s use of a golf club as a deadly weapon is proof of malice aforethought and the “brutality of the beating” is proof of acting willfully and with specific intent to kill McLeod.

“Nothing the defendant did to Angela McLeod was an accident,” McIntyre said.

McIntyre reminded the jury of the video of then-Fort Dodge Police Detective Evan Thompson interviewing the defendant after the murder, during which Russell told Thompson that he “didn’t snap” and was “super calm.”

“In his own words, he did not suddenly burst,” McIntyre said. “He remained calm, remained cool. He thought about it, he deliberated it, he premeditated it … and he came to the conclusion ‘I gotta kill this girl.'”

Russell told Thompson that he had “thought about it for five minutes” before acting, McIntyre said.

McLeod and Russell had been in a verbal altercation prior to the attack. FDPD officers were called to the domestic disturbance and on Tuesday, McLeod’s daughter, Melissa McKinley, testified that officers told them to separate, “figure it out” and that if officers had to return, “someone was going to jail.”

McKinley testified that she was trying to get her mother out of the apartment when the fight escalated again and McLeod picked up the golf club and held it up as if she was going to hit Russell. Russell then charged at McLeod and, according to what he told Thompson, had “the intention of choking her out,” McIntyre said.

“Then, and only then, did she swing the golf club, missing him, that he took it from her,” McIntyre said.

On Tuesday, Iowa State Medical Examiner Dennis Klein testified that McLeod’s cause of death was blunt force injuries to the head and that she had been hit seven times, McIntyre said. Investigators recovered a golf club shaft that had a missing head, as well as the detached golf club head, at the scene.

McKinley had also testified that after the attack, Russell came outside of the apartment to where McKinley was outside on the phone with 911. She said he was holding the golf club shaft and that he smiled at her before going back inside.

“Do these actions seem justified?” McIntyre asked. “Are these the actions of someone who used reasonable force to defend themselves from injury or death? Is that consistent with being fearful for your life? No it’s not — it’s consistent with murder.”

McIntyre emphasized that by the defendant’s own admission to Thompson, Russell had thought about assaulting McLeod for five minutes before acting and that it was a “calculated” and “brutal, grisly” act.

In the defense’s closing arguments, attorney Wendy Samuelson told the jury that the state has the burden to prove that Russell wasn’t acting in self-defense on Jan. 20, 2020.

Samuelson told the jury that the defendant’s actions were a “reasonable response” to being attacked by McLeod and that McLeod first swung the golf club at Russell.

“Mark doesn’t do anything until he’s attacked first,” she said.

Samuelson noted that by law, it isn’t necessary that there was actual danger, just that the defendant must have acted “in an honest and sincere belief that the danger actually existed.”

On Tuesday, while being cross-examined by the defense, McKinley testified that the morning before McLeod was killed, McLeod had made comments about having “her boys” come “take care of” Russell.

“Mark told you in his interview about the ways that Angela had been harassing him in the lead up to [the incident] — her taking the fluids from her surgical drain and putting it into his drinks, or coming to the Beacon where he was staying and causing a scene and lunging at him such that the pastor had to intervene,” Samuelson said. “All of these things that happened in the lead up to Jan. 20, 2020.”

In the end, Russell’s claim of self-defense was not enough for the jury.

“Our office is certainly satisfied with the verdict reached by the Cerro Gordo County jurors,” Baldridge said. “We were confident throughout the prosecution of this case that we would have a successful outcome, due in large part to the quality investigation conducted by our local law enforcement agencies.”

A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for March 20 at the Webster County Courthouse. First-degree murder is a Class A felony, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.