MORRIS -- A 17-year-old Alberta teenager has been certified to stand trial as an adult in the December 2010 death of his mother.
Jacob Seth Cobb is charged with two counts of murder in the second degree in the death of 50-year-old Tamara Lee Mason. Both counts carry a maximum sentence of 40 years in jail.
Cobb made his first appearance as an adult Wednesday in Stevens County District Court.
Cobb's brothers, Dylan Clemens, 25, and Andrew Cobb, 18, have pleaded guilty to charges of being an accessory after the fact to murder. Neither has yet been sentenced.
Mason was reported missing on Dec. 27, 2010, by Clemens. At that time, Clemens told authorities that his mother had wanted to play Yahtzee after they all returned home from Christmas dinner at a friend's. When the boys wouldn't, she got mad, grabbed a few things and stormed out of the house. Authorities initially treated Mason's disappearance as a missing-person case.
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Mason's body was found in July buried in the backyard of the Alberta home where she lived. An autopsy performed in Ramsey County determined that Mason's death was a homicide and was probably caused by "asphyxiation due to neck compression resulting in a fractured larynx."
The criminal complaint said Jacob Cobb strangled his mother on the living room floor. Then his brother Andrew allegedly put a plastic bag over her head and tightened a belt around her neck. After that, Clemens allegedly drove her body to South Dakota, then to Glenwood, before storing the corpse in a garbage can in a shed for months until the ground thawed enough for the two elder brothers to bury it.
During Wednesday's court appearance, Judge Gerald Seibel continued bail for Jacob Cobb at $500,000 and ordered that he have no contact with his brothers. Cobb had been in custody at the Juvenile Detention Center in Moorhead since his arrest. Following Wednesday's court appearance, he was transferred to the Kandiyohi County Jail in Willmar.
Reporting by the Morris Sun Tribune staff
