MARION - The narrow farm road leading to where Norman Limesand was shot and killed is rarely traveled these days, except by his son, who still must use it to tend cows and crops.

Steve Thomas' mother's farmhouse is now abandoned and boarded up. And ditches along a disputed culvert are overgrown with cattails and weeds in thick ice.

More than seven years later, Thomas is in prison. Norman Limesand is dead. What happened there remains a mystery.

Thomas and Limesand are the only ones who really know, Southeast District Judge James Bekken said in sentencing Thomas last week to 10 years in prison for killing Limesand.

Thomas pleaded guilty to manslaughter and agreed to help authorities find Limesand's body. But he said he could not remember where he dumped it - despite hypnosis and a lie detector test.

"We're willing to settle for a bone fragment or a tooth," said Wes Limesand, Norman's son. "It would be more than just a memory of what we have now."

Steve Thomas, 41, is a former Marine and ex-con with a drug problem, who said he hoped to return to the small southeastern North Dakota farming community where he grew up to start a new life.

The plan soon turned tragic.

Thomas killed his 82-year-old neighbor shortly after moving back to the state in 1999. Norman Limesand's family says it was a cold-blooded killing after a dispute about a drainage ditch. Thomas says it was an accident.

"I wish I could put into words how this crime affected me and my family," said Marjorie Limesand, Norman Limesand's wife of 52 years, and mother of their eight children.

Thomas, dressed in an ill-fitting suit jacket and hiking boots, said at his sentencing last week that the killing was the result of a hunting accident, and that he hid the body out of paranoia, in a place he can't remember.

Limesand, who had farmed in the area since 1947, also was a township officer for more than 30 years and took his job seriously, his family said. Part of his job was to manage culverts in the county, to make sure they were clear of obstructions so roads would not flood.

Thomas had lived with his mother, Bonnie Rosland, who owned a farm 2½ miles from Limesand's farm. The property had a problem with a clogged culvert.

Milton Limesand, who farms near his father's home, said he and his father visited Thomas the day before Norman Limesand disappeared on Nov. 12, 1999.

Milton Limesand said he and his father offered to help Thomas clean out the culvert but Thomas declined.

The next day Limesand was gone.

"The last thing he said to me was, 'I'm going to check the cattle,'" Marjorie Limesand said. She and her family also believe Limesand paid a visit to Thomas.

"He evidently went over to see how things were going there," Milton Limesand said.

The visit proved to be fatal, either intentionally or by accident.

Thomas told Bekken at his sentencing hearing that he was hunting rabbits on the property when his dog flushed a pheasant. He said he did not know Limesand was in the area and accidentally shot Limesand in the face.

"I should have been paying more attention to what was going on around me," Thomas told the judge.

Thomas said he put the body in a Limesand's pickup and drove around before dumping it in a dry slough.

The pickup was found four days later, parked along a street in Moorhead, Minn. Authorities found blood on the pickup and tests showed it was Limesand's. He was declared dead in 2002.

Marjorie Limesand told the judge at Thomas' sentencing that the killing was an "insane, senseless act on a defenseless 82-year-old man."

"It wasn't reckless discharge of a firearm," Marjorie Limesand said. "It was murder, pure and simple."

LaMoure County prosecutor Kim Rademacher said Limesand's blood and a lens from his eyeglasses were found near the culvert, across from Thomas' mother's farm house. Thomas had burned the area the day after Limesand disappeared, the family said.

Rademacher said Thomas' story about the accidental shooting was not plausible. But she said there was never enough evidence against him to charge him with Class AA murder, which could bring a life sentence.

"Our biggest hurdle is that we didn't have any direct evidence linking Mr. Thomas to the case," she said.

Assistant Attorney General Jon Byers, who helped prosecute Thomas, said the case was made even more difficult because no body was found.

"A lot of us had concerns and worries that it would end up in acquittal," Byers said. "I was always thinking it was 50-50 at best."

Authorities said Thomas was a suspect early on. He was convicted in California in January 1995 on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon "with great bodily injury," and served a year in prison, Byers said.

Thomas had been working as a taxi driver and "had a disagreement with a female coworker, and the coworker's boyfriend intervened and insisted he apologize to her," Byers said. "Apparently, the boyfriend started shoving Thomas and he pulled out a 6-inch knife and stabbed him in the shoulder and abdomen."

After his probation ended in California, Thomas moved back to North Dakota with his mother.

"I came up here for a new start," he told the judge last week.

"You got a start, but not the start you were looking for," Bekken said as he handed down Thomas' sentence.

Thomas' mother was sentenced to five months in jail in 2005 for lying to a federal grand jury about his whereabouts on the day Limesand disappeared.

Thomas, who moved to Fargo and worked as a truck driver, was arrested that year, after his mother was released from jail.

Rademacher and Byers said Thomas lived up to the terms of the plea agreement. The Limesands believe Thomas still is not being truthful about where he hid the body.

"There has been no closure," Marjorie Limesand said. "The only one who benefited from the plea agreement is the defendant."

Thomas' court-appointed lawyer, Don Krassin, said the closest his client could narrow the place where he dumped Limesand's body was in an 80-square-mile area that overlaps Stutsman and Barnes counties.

Krassin said he believes Thomas simply cannot remember where he dumped Limesand's body.

Bekken ordered Thomas to cooperate in any future searches for Limesand's body. But prosecutors and Krassin believe the chances of ever finding the remains are slim.

"I would be very shocked if he will have any more recall," Krassin said. "I think he has tried, and tried his best, and it has not led to the result that we had hoped."

For Limesand's family, it still is not enough. They've placed a grave marker at a Marion cemetery for Norman.

"We were hoping we'd be able to put him there," Milt Limesand said.