Left: Alexis Elling. Right: Bradley Allen Weyaus Jr. (Mille Lacs County Jail).
A Minnesota woman will not serve additional jail time for helping her boyfriend move a dismembered murder victim in a tote bag, authorities say.
Alexis Marion Elling, 24, pleaded guilty to aiding an offender, accessory after the fact in the 2023 death of Rodney Pendegayosh Jr., per court records. Elling spent nearly a year in jail for helping her boyfriend, 23-year-old Bradley Allen Weyaus Jr., move Pendegayosh”s body from a home in Isle, some 100 miles north of Minneapolis. She also helped him dispose of a shotgun case.
Elling admitted that she knew her boyfriend had murdered Pendegayosh and that the body was in the tote bag they were moving. She kept track of the bag for two days, according to prosecutors. Authorities later recovered Pendegayosh’s body along a snowy road. As part of the plea agreement a judge stayed the 57-month jail sentence as long as Elling honors the terms of her probation which include not using alcohol or drugs. She was given credit for the 324 days she already served in jail.
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Weyaus was sentenced last month to 306 months in prison — 25 years and six months — for the death of Pendegayosh, according to court records. Weyaus pleaded guilty in May to second-degree murder.
In a sentencing memorandum, Weyaus’ attorney blamed his behavior in part on his Native American heritage.
“Bradley Allen Weyaus, Jr., was born into a life and legacy not of his own choosing. His legacy is shaped by historical and generational trauma, systemic neglect, and the lasting harms of colonization and forced displacement suffered by Native American communities, including his own,” his lawyer wrote.
A psychiatrist noted like many American Indians, he suffered from depression, PTSD and trauma-related distress.
He suffered instability throughout his life and witnessed his mother being abused by his stepfather, according to the memo. Weyaus, at age 10, also saw his grandmother stab his mom and later was raised in foster homes where he also suffered abuse, the memo stated. As a result, he turned to drugs and alcohol, his attorneys wrote.
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“Sleeping inside Bradley Weyaus are fragments of traumas too great to be resolved in one generation,” his attorney wrote. “This is the story of Bradley Weyaus, a young Native American man who after a childhood and adolescence marked by repeated abuse, individual trauma, and generational trauma fell into the iron grip of meth and turned to drug dealing to support his addiction and ease his trauma.”
Authorities have said that the defendants believed that the 25-year-old Pendegayosh dealt Elling’s brother a fatal mixture of fentanyl and meth. Officials said that the couple’s crime was anything but typical.
“This whole thing is truly bizarre,” Mille Lacs County Sheriff Kyle Burton in a news conference at the time authorities brought charges. “This body was moved multiple places for a period of possibly up to a week before the discovery was made.”
A public works maintenance crew that was collecting garbage discovered Pendegayosh’s remains stuffed into a tote bag bound by bungee cords and tape along a snowy highway in March 2023.
“They see what they believe to be a severed human foot,” the sheriff said. They closed the tote and called the police.
An officer on the way to the scene spotted a white Saturn believed to be driven by Weyaus. Weyaus fled, and for a time, eluded capture. The officer eventually found the vehicle empty but stuck in a driveway. The homeowners pointed out the suspect hiding in a camper trailer on the property. The arrest ensued. In Weyaus’ duffel bag, authorities discovered a hacksaw, hammer, and black tape similar to the tape found on the tote.
Other evidence pointed toward the couple. There was a spent shotgun shell in the suspect vehicle, although apparently no gun. Investigators found a bloody carpet, gloves, and a hardware store receipt in the dumpster at the apartment where the suspect lived — as well as Pendegayosh’s ID and credit card.
The sheriff said surveillance video shows the suspects carrying the tote bag out of the apartment and loading it into a black Chevrolet Impala a few days before police discovered the body.
Alberto Luperon contributed to this report
