BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — The man who provided crucial evidence leading to the arrest of Matthew Queen in the “Bakersfield 3” case was sentenced Monday to four years in prison.
Matthew Tyler Vandecasteele, 35, last year pleaded no contest to false imprisonment with violence, possession of a firearm by a felon and an accessory charge in connection with the death of a man who prosecutors say was tortured and killed in his garage.
Vandecasteele, while in custody in connection with another case involving Queen, agreed to cooperate with investigators and described how Queen, at the time his best friend, asked to use his garage on North Half Moon Drive one night in late March 2018 to question Micah Holsonbake about a missing gun.
He said Queen and Queen’s ex-girlfriend, Baylee Despot, arrived at his house but he never saw Holsonbake and didn’t look in the garage. At one point, Despot entered his house and took a paring knife.
The next day, Vandecasteele told police, he went in the garage and saw a large red stain on a wooden shelf.
Investigators analyzed the stain; it tested positive for blood matching Holsonbake’s DNA.
“I didn’t think he was killing anyone,” Vandecasteele told detectives of Queen.
He testified at Queen’s trial.
On May 5, Queen was found guilty of second-degree murder in Holsonbake’s death, kidnapping and assault with a gun in other incidents, and numerous gun-related offenses. He faces a life term in prison.
Despot, also charged in Holsonbake’s death, disappeared shortly after he was reported missing and has not been found.
She, Holsonbake and James Kulstad became known as the Bakersfield 3 because they knew each other and went missing or were killed within a two-month period.
