On the evening of August 27, 2014, 31-year-old Robert Kaiser rushed into the emergency room of Albany Hospital, in Albany, Minnesota, cradling his infant son, William Polries-Kaiser, followed by William’s mother, Ginger Klein. The baby, who was 65 days old, had stopped breathing for a short time, then resumed breathing, but he was experiencing intermittent seizures.
Klein had come home from work at 5 p.m. to the farmhouse near Albany where she lived with Kaiser, William, and her 5-year--old son Brandt from a previous relationship. Klein had returned to work on August 25 after her maternity leave ended. Because she had been unable to arrange for daycare for William until the following week, Kaiser was taking care of the baby.
Klein said she picked up William and his eyes rolled back in his head. Klein phoned her mother, who was a nurse, who suggested she give William a bath. When the baby was non-responsive, pale, and not focusing his eyes, they decided to head to the hospital. Before they could get to the car, William turned blue and stopped breathing. In the car, the baby resumed breathing, but started seizing.
Albany Hospital did not have equipment to conduct a CT scan, so a decision was made to transfer the baby to Children’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, nearly 100 miles away. An ambulance was requested, but when none was available, the baby was transported by helicopter, arriving shortly after 9 p.m.
Dr. Jeffrey Peterson, a pediatric emergency physician, began administering anticonvulsant medications to try to stop the seizures. He started with Ativan, then Fosphenytoin, and then Propofol, which reduced the frequency and severity of the seizures.
Dr. Peterson noted a three millimeter bruise on the baby’s right jaw. A CT scan showed the presence of subdural hematomas, though there was no fracture or any other signs of acute injury to the head. After 90 minutes, the baby was transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit. Dr. Peterson noted that the baby had prolonged seizure activity and respiratory failure. He diagnosed a traumatic brain injury secondary to non-accidental trauma.
By that time, Klein and Kaiser had arrived by car and were able to provide some information about the baby’s history.
William was born on June 24, 2014. At about the time of his two-week checkup, Klein noticed some bruising on one of William’s forearms. When she pointed it out to Kaiser, he put his fingers on the bruises and noted that it couldn’t have been him because his fingers didn’t align with the bruises.
On July 31, 2014, Klein was in Fargo, North Dakota, visiting family, including two of her sisters and her mother, Michelle Polries. William was in a car seat attached to a stroller, though he was not strapped in. Brandt was pushing the stroller and tripped. As he fell, he grabbed the stroller, causing it to tip. Accounts varied on whether William hit his head on the sidewalk, the push bar on the stroller, or struck nothing at all but had been caught by Polries after he somersaulted out of the seat.
On August 18, Klein had noticed a bruise on William’s cheek near his chin. She attributed it to the way her sisters were handling the baby during a visit the day before. Over a few days, the bruise had spread to extend the length of his jaw. Klein would later testify that around this time, William began spitting up more and had fewer or no bowel movements. On August 21, 2014, she had taken him to the local clinic because of persistent vomiting. She had left when the appointment took longer than she expected. Tests were incomplete. When a nurse had called her to return because some labs needed to be repeated because the initial results had abnormal readings, Klein declined to return. Although William vomited less over the next several days, he remained fussy.
By the time Klein returned to work on August 25, William had not had a bowel movement for about six days. Kaiser cared for the baby during the day, and Klein cared for the baby when she came home from work until she went to bed at about 1 a.m. She would put William to bed in a bedroom with Kaiser. She slept in a separate bedroom to be able to get sleep.
Beginning at about 1 a.m. on August 27, William did not sleep well. He woke up about every 90 minutes. Klein had gone to work at 7:30 a.m. Later that morning, Kaiser took William to the Women, Infants, and Children Program office to get a different type of baby formula in the hope it would help his digestion and start bowel movements.
Kaiser brought William into the office where Klein worked. Kaiser had picked up lunch for them, and she was able to show William to several of her co-workers. Klein would later testify that William was not in a good mood and was pale and sweaty. Some of Klein’s coworkers would note that the baby appeared lethargic and unwell.
At about 2 p.m., Kaiser, who was back at the farm, texted Klein. “He hasn’t let me get any sleep.” The text was accompanied by a sad-face emoji.
Three hours later, she had arrived home, and not long after, they were on the way to the hospital.
Over the next six days at the hospital, William’s condition deteriorated. He developed necrotizing enterocolitis, which destroyed his small intestine. Doctors concluded that the subdural hemorrhages were the result of non-accidental trauma. Because Kaiser had been taking care of William during the afternoon prior to arriving at Albany Hospital, he became the focus of an investigation by the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office.
At Klein’s urging, Kaiser volunteered that he had tripped and fell while carrying William, though the baby had not hit the ground. He re-enacted the fall for deputies which was videotaped.
On September 3, 2014, following one surgery to remove dead tissue from his abdomen and a second surgery that showed even more dead tissue, doctors recommended that William be removed from life support. Less than 30 minutes later, William died in Klein’s arms.
Two days later, Kaiser was arrested and taken into custody. In October 2014, a Stearns County grand jury indicted him on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder. He was accused of shaking William, causing a traumatic brain injury.
In October 2016, Kaiser went to trial in Stearns County District Court. The trial lasted nearly a month. The prosecution’s case followed two evidentiary tracks: the testimony of doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel and the testimony of Klein’s family members and co-workers. The prosecution contended that William was a victim of Abusive Head Trauma (AHT), a term that has largely replaced its earlier iteration: Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS).
A medical diagnosis based on AHT is one that generally includes the presence of a triad of conditions: retinal hemorrhaging, subdural bleeding in the head, and brain swelling.
Dr. Steven Haun, a pediatric critical care physician, who was William’s treating physician in the pediatric intensive care unit, testified that William’s subdural hemorrhages were recent. He said that William had two healing fractures of ribs. “I was very concerned about trauma because of the presence of rib fractures, bruising on the face, and then bleeding around the brain,” he testified.
Prosecutor Joshua Kannegieter asked, “Did you have an opinion as to when that trauma would have occurred in conjunction with the injuries you were seeing.”
“It was my opinion that this injury occurred in the very recent time before the seizures started,” Dr. Haun testified.
“Why is that?” Kannegieter asked.
“Because of the devastating nature of this injury to the brain,” Dr. Haun replied. “It’s not something you’d live with for hours and days.”
Dr. Haun said William was then placed on a feeding tube, which he said improved outcomes and prevented infection.
Dr. Haun said he requested consultations from an ophthalmologist to look for evidence of retinal hemorrhages, from a neurologist to deal with the seizures, and from a neurosurgeon about possible surgical intervention to deal with the subdural hemorrhages. Lab work showed no evidence of any infection. He also requested a consultation from Midwest Children’s Resource Center, (MCRC) which evaluates children when there is a suspicion of abuse or neglect.
On August 28, 2014, Dr. Richard Patterson, a pediatric radiologist, reviewed William’s initial CT scan, and noted what he described as recent hemorrhages on both sides of the brain.
He saw no sign of scalp trauma, which would indicate blunt trauma, or a neck injury. Dr. Patterson testified that he believed William’s injuries were indicative of AHT, caused by tearing bridging veins due to “relative motion of the brain inside the skull.”
Dr. Patterson said he called Dr. Haun to note that he had reviewed the medical reports to that point. “But what I didn’t see mentioned…and needed to be indicated was the findings strongly suggest the possibility of Abusive Head Trauma.”
“When you say abusive trauma, what do you mean?” Kannegieter asked.
“That can take a number of forms and I can’t tell you precisely what happened,” Dr. Patterson said. “We do know from the accumulated literature, from videotaped confessions, demonstrations of various kinds, different reports, that one of the things that can cause it is vigorously shaking a baby. I guess I would say considerable force. I have no way of measuring that, but, you know, this does not happen from playful jostling, for example.”
Kannegieter asked, “Would it happen from falling two or three feet?”
“That would be extraordinary, so, no, it would be very uncommon for that,” Dr. Patterson said. He said the medical evidence “would suggest a substantial brain injury shortly before” he was brought to the hospital. “And shortly, probably on the order of hours to, perhaps, at the outside, a day or two.”
On August 28, 2014, Dr. Mark Hudson, a pediatric child abuse physician from MCRC, reviewed the baby’s records. He made a report to Stearns County Child Protective Services that he was taking a “hard stand” that William was the subject of abuse. He said he was not concerned about the stroller incident. He noted the stroller height, less than a couple of feet, that William was reported to have been caught before hitting the ground. He concluded that even if William’s head did bump the ground, he did not have significant impact and had no neurologic changes or abnormalities after the incident.
Dr. Hudson said that nonmobile babies should not be getting bruises such as those seen on William unless they are dropped, fall, or are abused. He said there was “no doubt” in his mind that William had been abused.
He noted that “rib fractures are very specific for child abuse when we talk about infants. They often come from infants being squeezed violently around the chest….This would not be expected when a child's being burped; not to be expected when a child gets dropped. It's going to be expected when a child gets squeezed violently around the chest.”
Dr. Hudson discounted Kaiser’s account of falling with William. He had viewed the video re-enactment. What was demonstrated was what would amount to a short fall. “His father demonstrated that his hand remained underneath William during the fall. This would be a fall that I would not expect to result in serious brain injury, subdural hematoma, or retinal hemorrhages,” Dr. Hudson said.
Dr. Jeffrey Lynch, a pediatric ophthalmologist, testified that he examined William’s eyes between 5 and 6 p.m. on August 28.
He found substantial evidence of retinal hemorrhaging, which said he said was a sign of child abuse. He said that the retinal hemorrhages had been present for less than 72 hours, though he conceded they could have been there for as long as five days. He said he saw 250 hemorrhages in William’s right eye and many more in his left eye: “probably the most extensive I’ve seen in my career.”
Dr. Lynch said he saw macular schisis in the left eye, which is a blood blister in the retinal layer. Asked whether macular schisis was associated with Abusive Head Trauma, Dr. Lynch said, “When I see something like a macular schisis cavity, it’s — in seeing a lot of kids’ eyes, there really isn’t any other type of cause of that, that I’ve seen in my career.”
On August 29, William remained on Propofol although he was still having seizures and Propofol was not recommended to be used for more than 24 hours. Eventually, William remained on Propofol for nearly 40 hours. William experienced bouts of low blood pressure during this time.
On August 30, 2014, William remained critically ill and was on life support. His anti-seizure medicine had been shifted to phenobarbital, but he was still having seizures. His brain was taken to a nearly flat state to get control of the seizures. A procedure was performed to drain blood from head to relieve pressure on his brain. An MRI was obtained.
During the evening of August 31, 2014, William’s abdomen began to swell. It continued on September 1. His blood pressure and heart rate were unstable. An x-ray revealed air in the portal system of his liver, which was suspicious for bowel perforation.
Dr. Brad Feltis testified that he conducted exploratory surgery of William’s abdomen. He discovered that a feeding tube had perforated William’s duodenum and that he had necrotizing enterocolitis requiring removal of a large portion of the small bowel.
He discounted any effect from the extended administration of Propofol. “If this child doesn't get this head injury and need all the kind of support for the head injury…it’s magical thinking to think that he would have developed enterocolitis at home sitting…in his high chair or crib.”
Dr. Feltis testified that on September 3, 2014, he went back into the operating room with William and discovered that half of the remaining small intestine was dead and the other half was marginal. He concluded there was no point in further surgery and recommended that William be removed from life support.
Dr. Jason Doescher, a pediatric radiologist, testified that he first saw William on September 2. He said William was continuing to have seizures, which were a symptom of subdural hemorrhage or brain injury.
Although William’s blood pressure was improving slightly, he became coagulopathic, meaning that because of sepsis, his blood was not clotting normally. He said he viewed a CT scan of William’s head on September 3 and that William’s neurological condition had deteriorated; William was moving toward brain death.
Klein agreed to take William off life support shortly after 4 p.m. on September 3, 2014. He was pronounced dead at 4:41 p.m.
Ramsey County Medical Examiner Michael McGee testified that he conducted an autopsy on September 4, 2014. He said that the two healing rib fractures were consistent with “squeezing of the chest during an assault.” He conceded that childbirth can cause rib fractures.
He said that there were retinal hemorrhages, and that William had both old and new subdural hemorrhages on both sides of his brain. He said that “it makes you concerned that the trauma that’s present may not be accidental in nature…And the second, this is the amount of force that’s present. It’s on both sides.”
McGee said he could infer that William had suffered non-accidental, abusive trauma and that was the cause of death. The cascade of medical problems that followed were “an extension of his head trauma. That is to say, if but for the head trauma, this child would never have been in the hospital in the first place and probably would not have gone through these things.”
He concluded, “I think the child was assaulted and received these injuries as part of an assault.” He said that shaking or shaking plus impact could have caused the injuries.
Klein testified that during the initial consultation with Dr. Haun, he informed them that he suspected abuse and that because Kaiser was the last caregiver, he was likely the cause. Kaiser said that “was not possible.” But after Dr. Haun left, Klein yelled at Kaiser, asking him what happened, and ordered him out of the baby’s room. Kaiser went to a family sleeping room while Klein stayed with William.
Stearns County Detective Jason Okerstrom spoke with Kaiser and Klein on August 28 following Dr. Hudson’s report. He made it clear that he believed William’s injuries were the result of a crime. Kaiser said he never shook William, even when he was a little irritated about getting up at night. He said he had not dropped William, and that William had not rolled or fallen off of anything.
Klein testified that she had met Kaiser in September 2013. At the time, she was separated from her husband, and was seeking to file for divorce, but he had not been served with the divorce papers because he could not be located. A month later, she and Kaiser learned she was pregnant. They decided to keep the pregnancy, and she and Brandt had moved into the farmhouse with Kaiser.
After Okerstrom left, Klein told Kaiser that she feared that Brandt’s father would get custody of Brandt. She told Kaiser that he had to “say something. If they start looking into my history, we’re going to lose him.”
Klein’s aunt, Jamie Richter, testified that she drove Kaiser to the farm that night. During the trip, he said “he was going to have to confess to something he didn’t do to keep his family together.”
On August 29, Klein told Kaiser that if he was the reason she lost custody of Brandt, she would never forgive him.
Klein’s sisters as well as several others, including nurses and other caregivers, testified that Kaiser was subdued, did not seem concerned or failed to express an emotional response during the days of William’s treatment and ultimate death. The prosecution presented the text message from Kaiser about William letting him get any sleep, but without the sad-faced emoji, suggesting that Kaiser was frustrated and angry.
Some of Klein’s co-workers testified that on the day Kaiser brought William to Klein’s workplace, the baby seemed lethargic and not very responsive.
Kaiser testified and denied harming William. “I didn't do it,” he told the jury. “I mean, if I had done it, I would be the first one to say hang me, I'm done, you know? I didn't do this. I didn't cause my son's death.”
He said he concocted the story about falling with William under pressure from Klein.
The defense presented testimony from Dr. Corrine Leach, a neonatologist, who said that William should not have been on a continuous infusion of Propofol because prolonged use had been linked to necrotizing enterocolitis. She also said that putting a feeding tube in was inappropriate. “When babies are sick, when they have low blood pressure, even if they don't have low blood pressure, if they have other illness that we're afraid can be affecting their blood flow or just making them very ill, we feed them intravenously. We purposely do not put formula into their intestine because we know that they are at risk for developing
[necrotizing enterocolitis]… if we put formula in their intestines. The [Food and Drug Administration] warned us that propofol can have very bad effects, particularly in pediatric babies, pediatric patients in the ICU setting,” Dr. Leach testified.
Dr. Karen Chancellor, a forensic pathologist and neuropathologist, testified for the defense that she had performed a neuropathology report for Dr. McGee in October 2014, after McGee conducted the autopsy. She said she found evidence of “fibroblasts.” “The significance of that being that this really means that there has been an old subdural hemorrhage in the past; several weeks ago, a few to several weeks before death. The presence of newer blood was the result of a rebleed, she said.
The defense also presented testimony about the day that Klein had taken William to the clinic, but left when she thought she was waiting too long and refused to come back when the nurse called.
Kristi May, a medical assistant at the clinic said that on August 21, Klein brought William because he was vomiting. She said Klein left before they were able to tell her that some lab tests had come back with abnormal results and they wanted to do more tests.
May said she called Klein to tell her that they wanted to watch her feed the baby “and see if there was any vomiting and do some further observations. She told me – asked if it was emergent. And I said it could very well be, that’s why we wanted you…to come back. And she told me that she will take care of it on her own and hung up on me.”
Another clinic worker, Kaitlyn Thell, testified that she then called Klein and left a message on Klein’s phone. When Klein returned the call, “I had explained to her that…the baby had an abnormal lab result and could be very sick and needed to be seen either back at Albany Clinic or in St. Cloud. And she had proceeded to tell me that she did not want me to call her any more, and she hung up the phone.”
In rebuttal, the prosecution called Dr. Carl Schmidt, Wayne County, Michigan medical examiner. He testified that William’s death was the result of Abusive Head Trauma, which resulted in the complications, including the necrotizing enterocolitis, which caused Williams’ death.
Prosecutor Merial Lester asked what the presence of macular schisis meant.
“Well, it’s the kind of thing you see with Abusive Head Trauma,” Dr. Schmidt said. “I don’t think it’s been described outside of Abusive Head Trauma.”
On October 28, 2016, the jury acquitted Kaiser of first-degree murder and convicted him of two counts of second-degree murder. Judge Frederick Grunke sentenced Kaiser to 20 years in prison.
In May 2018, the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the conviction and sentence.
In December 2020, the Great North Innocence Project began representing Kaiser and filed an amended petition for post-conviction relief. The petition, filed by attorney James Mayer, cited several medical experts who said that when William arrived at the hospital on August 27, there was clotting in his brain’s venous system, a condition known as cerebral venous thrombosis.
Over 10 days in October 2021, a hearing was held before Judge Laura Moehrle. Five medical experts testified on behalf of Kaiser. The prosecution called several of its witnesses from the trial.
At the hearing, cerebral venous thrombosis was described as the formation of blood clots in the veins surrounding the brain, which can lead to seizures and brain injuries. Kaiser’s experts presented medical literature finding that the condition can “mimic” the symptoms of AHT, whether or not any trauma occurred.
Dr. Lynch recanted his trial testimony at the hearing. He was asked, “Do you recall telling the jury in Mr. Kaiser’s trial that [AHT] is the only cause of macular schisis?”
“I don’t recall,” Dr. Lynch said.
“If you did, would that be incorrect?” one of Kaiser’s attorneys asked.
“Yeah, that would be incorrect,” Dr. Lynch replied.
He was asked again: “Is a macular schisis on [its] own diagnostic of Abusive Head Trauma?”
“No,” Dr. Lynch said.
In his petition for postconviction relief, Kaiser also argued that his trial defense attorneys had failed to retain experts qualified to interpret the CT and MRI scans, and thus failed to do the proper investigation that would have revealed the presence of cerebral thrombosis, which could have refuted allegations of abuse.
In his petition for postconviction relief, Kaiser also argued that his trial defense attorneys had failed to investigate how the presence of this condition could have served as a defense to allegations of abuse.
On April 28, 2022, Judge Moehrle granted the petition in a 90-page ruling. She vacated Kaiser’s convictions and ordered a new trial. Judge Moerle ruled that the testimony of Dr. Lynch and Dr. Schmidt went beyond mere opinion and stated a false medical fact that macular schisis was not caused by anything other than AHT. The judge also ruled that Kaiser’s trial defense attorneys had failed to perform the proper investigation that would have revealed evidence of William’s cerebral venous thrombosis which could have contradicted the prosecution.
The judge noted; “There has been a well-recognized and fierce debate in the scientific community regarding the validity of shaking-only injury cases for over twenty years, and in particular the contention that findings of subdural hemorrhage, retinal hemorrhage, and cerebral edema were strong evidence of an abusive mechanism of injury,” the judge said. “The jury in Petitioner Kaiser’s case only heard one side of this debate.”
On May 16, 2022, Kaiser was released from prison pending a retrial.
The prosecution appealed. On February 13, 2023, the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. The prosecution appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which, on March 13, 2024, upheld the granting of a new trial.
“We recognize the tragedy that comes with the death of a child and the pain a surviving family and community endure in experiencing such an unthinkable loss,” the Supreme Court said. “We do not affirm the reversal of a murder conviction lightly, and we make our decision realizing a new trial will cause renewed pain for William’s family. On this record, however, we agree with the district court and the court of appeals that the right of a defendant to receive a fair trial requires postconviction relief in this difficult case.”
The retrial began in April 2025. The prosecution’s case again was based on the presence of the triad of symptoms, Kaiser being the one caring for William when the seizures began, as well as testimony from Klein, William’s grandmother, and multiple doctors and nurses about Kaiser's "demeanor" at the hospital. The prosecution called many of the treating doctors from Children's Hospital, as well as two child abuse pediatricians.
Kaiser’s defense team of Mayer, Baylea Kannmacher, and Anna McGinn from the Great North Innocence Project as well as pro bono attorneys Mark Bradford and Kevin Riach, presented testimony that the shaking and soft-surface impact hypotheses were unvalidated scientifically, that there was no evidence of any trauma, and that a large chronic subdural hemorrhage as well as cerebral venous thrombosis explained the child's seizures. The defense presented evidence that a series of mistakes, including puncturing William’s duodenum with a feeding tube, giving a 40-hour continuous infusion of Propofol, and failing to treat the resulting hypotension, were what led to his death. The defense contended that taking 13 hours before performing the surgery, which was required by clear signs of a worsening abdomen, had led to peritonitis, necrotizing enterocolitis, and septic shock, which ultimately killed William.
The jury began deliberating at 4:30 p.m. on May 2, 2025. They recessed at 9:30 p.m. On May 3 at 5 p.m., the jury acquitted Kaiser on both counts of second-degree murder.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 05-30-2025
Last Update Date: 05-30-2025
