By Staff Reports. Email the author. They name names, recall places, tell stories of how it was almost a seasonal epidemic in Austin. Jenea Larae-Nichol Weinand, 18, of St. Paul, had neither a heart of gold nor gold itself, when she allegedly agreed to have sex for money with Juan Vincente Ramirez, 41, in the early morning hours of June 30 at the Downtown Motel in Austin.
Weinand and Janet Elizabeth Hall, also 18, of South Minneapolis, and other unidentified women were brought to Austin by men described as their boyfriends to go into business as prostitutes. When Ramirez inadvertently showed Weinand a cache of money he kept rolled up in a red bandana handkerchief, the heart of gold became cold and a robbery plan was hatched.
But even as the sex act is not always perfectly executed, neither was the heinous crime of robbery. Ramirez and Raul Pedro Guiterrez, 26, of St. Paul, were shot to death. Benjamin Moreno Hernandez, 21, of St. Paul was wounded. Another man and a year-old boy escaped injury.
Today, Vernon N. Powers, 27, Scott P. Christian, 29, and his brother, David K. Christian, 28, all of St. Paul, are in the Mower County Jail on serious felony charges of aiding and abetting murder in the second degree and robbery in the first degree. Powers and Scott P. Christian are believed to have been the men who burst into Room 28 at the Downtown Motel to rob a room full of roofers and then shot two of them while wounding a third.
David K. Christian is believed to have been the getaway driver. Not quite the picture is painted in official documents of a prostitute with a heart of gold is Weinand. Paul M. Philipp has walked a beat as a patrolman for the Austin Police Department. Like other officers assigned the duty, he patrolled the downtown bar area when Austin had many more bars than it does today. Paul native and third-generation law enforcement officer, Philipp was promoted to sergeant and then chief.
