Farmington man receives 28-year prison sentence for murdering his grandmother in 2015

A Farmington man has learned his fate after being found guilty of a 2015 homicide.

Friday, a judge sentenced 42-year-old Timothy Steele to more than 28 years (366 months) in prison. The maximum sentence for the charge is 40 years.

Court records show Steele was convicted of intentional second-degree murder in November 2021 and had gone through multiple competency evaluations. A judge ruled Steele didn’t meet the burden in proving his defense of mental illness in April.

Steele has been ordered to stay at a secure facility in St. Peter under current civil commitment as mentally ill and dangerous, and will be treated until he can be placed with the commissioner of corrections.

According to a criminal complaint, police were called to a Farmington home shortly before midnight the night of Oct. 15, 2015, after a woman said she found her 84-year-old mother, Agnes Wagner-Steele, was unconscious and appeared to be dead due to the caller’s son hitting Agnes with a hammer.

Officers were let in the home and saw Steele sitting in the living room. Steele then told an officer, “I killed my grandmother” and then told officers it happened “two, maybe three hours ago,” according to the complaint.

The complaint states Wagner-Steele was found in an upstairs bedroom and her head had been injured.

Documents say Steele became upset with Wagner-Steele who he thought caused a hole in one of his jackets, and was also annoyed by the blowing of the victim’s nose at dinner. The complaint goes on to say he eventually went to his dinner and could smell mucus because of Wagner-Steele’s nose blowing at dinner, adding he heard voices in his head.

According to the complaint, he then went to another room to get a hammer and thought if he killer Wagner-Steele, the mucus smell and feeling of it would go away. Documents say he hit the victim seven to eight times in the head with a hammer.

Afterward, he said the voices he heard in his head were telling him he, “was a terrible criminal,” and he then thought about hiding somewhere and returned home.

Steele then told his mother that he had killed Wagner-Steele.

After driving Steele around for a while to calm him down so he wouldn’t harm himself, the woman then called 911.