Watton armed robbery surveillance video shown during trial

L’ANSE — The Watton armed robbery trial has now gone three days in Baraga County Circuit Court.

Bernard Fish is accused of robbing two men at gunpoint at their home last year while pretending to be a U.S. Marshal.  The house had a surveillance camera system.

Baraga County Prosecutor Joseph O’Leary played some of the video for the jury.

Michigan State Police troopers took the stand and said that Fish told them the situation with the armed robbery wasn’t what it seemed.

“What I got from him was that Jim Jackson, he more or less coordinated this whole armed robbery,” MSP Trooper Edward Zawada said. “He went on talking about while he was at the house, doing the robbery, that Jackson was more or less telling him what to do.”

Jim Jackson is one of the  alleged victims.  Fish told police that he and Jackson staged the incident to try to get money from the father of the other alleged victim.  Fish also apparently told police that the house had marijuana and a missing young Wisconsin woman in it.

The State Police say they were unable to verify either of those statements.

“Mr. Jackson, one of the residents there, showed me one of the rooms that had been set up prior to them arriving to grow marijuana,” MSP Sgt. Robert Carter said.

O’Leary asked, “Present time, was there anything growing?”

Sgt. Carter replied, “No, the rooms were all empty.”

“Did it look like they’d been used recently?”, O’Leary asked.

“No,” Carter answered.

A passenger in a car that Fish is alleged to have carjacked in Wisconsin also testified Wednesday morning.

Fish has a long criminal record, including a federal bank robbery conviction for holding up a bank in Green Bay with a pellet gun in 1992.