Background: Justice Department trial exhibit shows interior of Mark Isham home in Minnesota. Inset: Mark Isham booking photo via court records (images via DOJ).
For the assault of the amputee mother of his children — which prosecutors said included poking her in the face with a stick that had a knife attached to the end of it and beating her for hours while trapping her inside the squalor of his home by leaving her wheelchair outside — a jury in Minnesota has convicted Mark Allen Isham, 61.
The verdict was announced by the U.S. Justice Department on June 7 after a nearly weeklong trial before U.S. District Court Judge Kate Menendez. Though facing three charges, a jury only convicted him on two counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury and acquitted him of an assault with a dangerous weapon charge.
According to a publicly available trial brief from federal prosecutors reviewed by Law&Crime on Monday, Isham is a serial domestic abuser with a decadeslong track record of victimizing the same woman. She is identified in court records only as C.K.R. and is described as his girlfriend with whom he shares two children, ages 20 and 22.
Prosecutors said he was convicted of domestic assault five times against C.K.R. in Minnesota state court before this case and prior to that, he was convicted of domestic abuse by the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa Tribal Court 20 years ago. In 2013, he also pleaded guilty to domestic assault as a habitual offender in federal court.
Currently, Isham is detained at the Sherburne County Jail and awaits sentencing. A sentencing date does not yet appear on the federal docket.
The road to Isham’s conviction began in mid-March 2023 when, according to court records, the “on-again, off-again” couple reconnected following C.R.K.’s near completion of an addiction treatment program in Virginia. Due to housing issues, she was transferred from Virginia to a shelter in Duluth, Minnesota. She called Isham for a ride there, prosecutors said, and Isham obliged, using his son’s car to pick her up.
C.R.K. said she only intended to stay a “couple days,” but on the ride back to Isham’s home, the woman said he picked up a bottle of vodka, drove her to his house, picked her up and carried her out of her wheelchair — she is a single-leg amputee — and then set her down on a bed in the living room. He left her wheelchair outside so she could not escape.
On the first night, they drank and fought and prosecutors said when Isham grew angry, he started “punching her in the head and face with a closed fist.”
“Then, Mr. Isham grabbed a wooden cane that he made for C.R.K. and struck her with it repeatedly. He struck her head, arms, and legs. Mr. Isham also used a stick with a knife taped onto it to prod at C.R.K.’s face,” prosecutors wrote.
The woman told them it felt like the beating lasted “all night along” and at the end of it, “Mr. Isham force fed C.R.K. her feces.”
Trial exhibits included a number of disturbing photos for jurors to review. Beyond photos of C.R.K. documenting her badly bruised face, split lip and blackened eye, prosecutors also showed jurors the bed and room she was forcibly confined in. One piece of evidence included a photo of an open trash can with human feces sitting on the top near the bed.
“C.R.K. recalls crying and asking Mr. Isham repeatedly to stop. Mr. Isham threatened C.R.K. throughout the abuse. He screamed, ‘I should just f—–‘ kill you’ and ‘I should just f—–‘ tie you up,”” court records state, noting that he also broke her glasses at one point.
The morning after that attack, C.R.K. said she “felt terrible and sore” but Isham laid next to her on the bed she was crumpled and “cried to her and apologized.”
“He also told C.R.K. that she could not leave his house,” prosecutors said.
For roughly a week, she was trapped, but C.R.K. said once she finally caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, she realized she had to escape. Finally, early one morning while “Isham was outside chopping wood,” she called 911 and spoke to dispatch for 45 minutes.
“Sometimes C.R.K. is difficult to understand in the call — she does not know her jaw is broken,” a federal trial brief states.
She would eventually need to have her jaw wired shut.
Bois Forte Police finally arrived at Isham’s house around 1 a.m. Officers said they worked their way up a snow-lined and icy driveway and knocked on the door only to be greeted by Isham who “repeatedly lied” when questioned about C.R.K.’s whereabouts, telling them she was still at the treatment facility in Virginia.
But when the woman screamed out, “I’m in here!” the officers heard her.
Isham was interviewed, arrested and, according to police, “admitted” beating his longtime girlfriend. C.R.K. told police she believed Isham was beating her as a sort of payback for his previous federal habitual domestic abuse conviction.
Notably, this May before the criminal trial got underway, prosecutors filed another complaint against Isham and charged him with witness tampering.
An FBI special agent working Isham’s case said that in January 2024, nearly a year after his arrest and indictment, C.R.K. told investigators he had begun contacting her again by telephone. Court records show he was ordered to live at a halfway house at the time.
The calls didn’t stop until April and he was already under a no-contact order.
Prosecutors said Isham, undeterred, told his girlfriend “he had ‘served enough [prison] time for bulls— like this,’” and demanded she not testify.
“‘Maybe you shouldn’t go to court,’” he allegedly told her, but if she did, the special agent said Isham directed C.R.K. about what she should say. Isham also told her to concoct a fake story so he could argue self-defense and asked her not to talk about the weapons.
An attorney for Isham did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
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