SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa — Kyle Ricke was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Wednesday for murdering Algona police officer Kevin Cram.
Before the sentence was passed down, impact statements were given including one read on behalf of Kevin's son and another by his widow.
Ricke is not eligible for parole, and was ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to Ofc. Cram's widow, Lara Cram.
The below statement is from the couple's 7-year-old son, which was delivered in court by Victim Witness Counselor for Kossuth County, Cinnamon Mawdsley. Local 5 has removed his name from the transcript for the child's privacy.
...I am seven years old.
I feel sad about Kevin Cram's death, because people talk about it and mention it all the time. And he was my dad.
I think the person who did this should go to prison, because that's a big cause for me to have multiple funerals and people sad all the time. And this guy is the one who made all of this happen in my life.
I feel sad about my dad dying. I love him very much.
My dad was a big deal for my life. He showed me how to rodeo and he taught me how to fish and was going to show me how to hunt when I got older, I miss him every day, and I wish that he had taught me how to hunt before that guy took him from me.
The below statement is from Kevin Cram's widow, Lara Cram:
Because of your one well-thought-out choice, you took away everything from three boys who did nothing to you or anyone. You didn't even know the man that you killed.
He would have given you a ride. He would have given you any spare change that he had, and offered advice to you to mend your poor excuse for a relationship. The things that you take for granted now we never get for the rest of our lives, so don't ever use your kids or your family for a reason of mercy, because you took that away from us.
Why do you deserve to keep anything? Right now, I should be celebrating my wedding anniversary, but instead I'm here at his murder trial.
My children should have been able to give their father Father's Day gifts, but instead, we pretended that day didn't exist. And their teachers let my kids make gifts for me for Father's Day.
You not only destroyed a family and children's lives, but your own family and an entire community with your selfishness. This is no one else's fault but yours. And anyone who thinks you deserve something that you took away from my husband and my family is as delusional as you.
I want you to know the entire community of Algona thinks that you are trash and all the actions that you made, your whole family is trash too, because they live under the shadow of your pointless actions.
Your youngest son is the same age as ours. So every time he gets to talk to you and tells you he loves you, tell you Happy Father's Day, tell you Merry Christmas, I want you to think about our son who never gets to talk to his dad ever again.
What makes you think you deserve the right, or any right, to be around anyone? You furthermore have surrounded yourself around people who refuse to do anything but hold you accountable for your actions.
Yes, this is evident in public documents that your girlfriend wrote to the court.
Let me be clear to you: You do not deserve to be a father. You forfeit that right and the right to do anything when you murdered my husband.
All you get is the ability to live another day. That's it. I hope that you spend those days understanding that every day you wake up, he doesn't.
You should have just taken yourself out, like you said, but you're so pathetic you couldn't even do that.
Before you or anyone who supports you wants mercy from God or the court system, I want you to ask yourself: Who made you God when you took my husband away?
You want forgiveness now that you've crossed the line, but it's everyone else's fault that you got here, right? It's everyone else's fault that you grew up to be this sorry excuse for a human, right?
Because when you become an adult, it's still everyone else's fault for your own adult actions. If that's the case, then you should get the same judgment that you decided to give my husband. But the world is nicer than you.
You can commit this disgusting, unprovoked act, but you can't even be a man and take the accountability for your actions. You drag everyone, including your own children, through the trauma of this trial.
You're not any kind of a role model or a human being. You're pathetic. You can't even man up to your own actions.
I know you'll never see the outside world again, but I hope that every night you close your eyes you hear the screams of my son when he misses his dad at night, because this is what you have done to his sons and to me.
And because our son is too young to give his own impact statement, you can listen to 96 seconds of him crying when he misses his dad.
Following Lara Cram's statement, the aforementioned audio clip of Weston was played for the courtroom.