Dateline: The Feud - What happened to Tim Newman? Details of Montana resident's death, explored 

Dateline: Secrets Uncovered Season 11 Episode 9, titled The Fued, saw correspondent Keith Morrison investigate the murder of Timothy Newman, a Montana resident.

The official synopsis for the Dateline episode reads as follows:

Fences make good neighbours, but this one triggered a deadly fight. Only two men were there and the man who shot first told investigators his story. However, the crime scene was telling another story.

In October 2013, Tim Newman was shot two times by his neighbor Joseph Cambell, who claimed he was trespassing on his property and also had a gun, because of which he felt threatened.

More on Tim Newman's death as shown in Dateline.

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What was the Montana Wilderness conflict that led to Dateline victim Tim Newman's death?

Residents of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in Montana lived and enjoyed the area for years, away from the city's stressful life. Many families had set up small cabins in the area where they would come up to unwind on weekends.

However, this harmony was disrupted when Joe Campbell bought hundreds of acres of land near their cabins and refused to allow anyone to use his trails to get to the public area.

This infuriated people; some families got court permission to pass the trails, but Newman was not one of them. But Newman did not bother much and used the trails anyway, and often documented his journey on video:

“This is the gate to annoy us, is the way I think, because it’s annoying,”

In October 2013, Campbell claimed that Newman started chasing him and his wife on his ATV one day and then proceeded to cut Newman's locks with his bolt cutters.

When Campbell saw that Newman was carrying a gun, he feared for his life and shot him in self-defense. As shown on Dateline, he told the police:

“I shot and he spun around. I thought I’d hit him, but I wasn’t sure. And he spun around, and he still had the gun in his hands, and he was going down. I shot him again in the back.”

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Dateline victim Tim's autopsy reports suggested it was not a self-defense murder

As told by Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton on Dateline, they initially did not arrest Campbell because Montana allows its residents to use force if they fear for their lives:

“We didn’t arrest him because he asserted it was self-defense,”

But everything changed when the autopsy report came in, and Campbell's story did not add up.

Deputy Attorney General Mary Cochenour revealed that the autopsy report confirmed that it was a murder:

“From that autopsy we learned that there were two shots to Tim Newman. One shot was to the back, severed his spine and it would have paralyzed him instantly from mid-chest down...The other shot hit his hand first and then skimmed his chest and whizzed past his head.”

Campbell was arrested in February 2016, but he still pleaded that he shot Newman because he feared for his life. Eventually, he entered a “no contest” plea to negligent homicide.

He was sentenced to 20 years of jail time, which was later suspended by the court. In the end, Campbell managed to escape jail time but was not allowed to return to his property in Montana.

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