As pieces of a larger puzzle fell into place, Hinterthuer and other investigators came to believe that they knew who blew up Larry Anstett and why.
They came to believe that their years of police work were discarded by Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher,
and as a result, the prime suspect in the Anstett murder was never brought to justice.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Ralph Anstett Jr. visits his brother Larry’s grave every year with his sisters, brothers and father.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Larry was still alive,” he says.
“We still hope that this case will be solved, every day we hope. It’s been bad for us. We lost part of our family. And we feel somebody should pay for the loss.”Victims and survivors, cops and culprits. In the long aftermath, the line that separates grows immaterial. Michael Vermilyea, the target of the 1974 bombing, lives somewhere in Waukesha County, popping up now and then in a biker bar. Willy Cresca, the car thief turned accomplice, floats in and out of jail on one charge of theft after the next, estranged from his family and friends.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Larry was still alive,” he says.
“We still hope that this case will be solved, every day we hope. It’s been bad for us. We lost part of our family. And we feel somebody should pay for the loss.”Victims and survivors, cops and culprits. In the long aftermath, the line that separates grows immaterial. Michael Vermilyea, the target of the 1974 bombing, lives somewhere in Waukesha County, popping up now and then in a biker bar. Willy Cresca, the car thief turned accomplice, floats in and out of jail on one charge of theft after the next, estranged from his family and friends.
Bucher discounts the claims that he was intimidated or that his judgment was impaired by political ambition.
He commends Hinterthuer and Simet for their “persistence” but says the difficulty in identifying the skeletal remains was not the only stumbling block.“All the other proof that you build your case on just isn’t there,” he says.
“I’m not afraid of sticking my neck out.… [But] ethically, we have standards that you have to go on. It’s just not there. It’s close, but it’s just not there.”
He commends Hinterthuer and Simet for their “persistence” but says the difficulty in identifying the skeletal remains was not the only stumbling block.“All the other proof that you build your case on just isn’t there,” he says.
“I’m not afraid of sticking my neck out.… [But] ethically, we have standards that you have to go on. It’s just not there. It’s close, but it’s just not there.”
"To have it die because of one demigod out in Waukesha?
‘What more can we do?’ ” says Hinterthuer. “Our hands were tied. We had done virtually everything we could. There was nobody else out there we could talk to, there was no additional evidence that existed.
”Hinterthuer had had enough. In May 1997, after 30 years of duty, he retired from the Milwaukee Police Department.
He still harbors resentment toward Bucher for not pushing harder on the Machan case.
Possibly Bucher was intimidated by the Outlaws, Hinterthuer speculates. Or possibly his aspirations to one day run for political office – specifically, the job of state attorney general – got in the way of pursuing a case that was risky.
“To have it die because of one demigod out in Waukesha? That’s obscene,” says Hinterthuer.
”Hinterthuer had had enough. In May 1997, after 30 years of duty, he retired from the Milwaukee Police Department.
He still harbors resentment toward Bucher for not pushing harder on the Machan case.
Possibly Bucher was intimidated by the Outlaws, Hinterthuer speculates. Or possibly his aspirations to one day run for political office – specifically, the job of state attorney general – got in the way of pursuing a case that was risky.
“To have it die because of one demigod out in Waukesha? That’s obscene,” says Hinterthuer.
Bucher wouldn't budge
In May 1995, “Billy the Kid” Wadsworth surfaced again in Milwaukee.
His girlfriend was facing a jail sentence in Waukesha for passing bad checks and Wadsworth was willing to make a deal with the district attorney to get her freed. He was ready to speak out about the Outlaw slayings, this time publicly. He even agreed to several interviews with local newspaper and TV reporters, claiming he could set the record straight on the murders of Cliff Machan, the Drobac family and Larry Anstett.
It was a risky move, Wadsworth says, looking back. According to Wadsworth, the DA offered to place him in a witness protection program.
But the deal fell through.“Talk was cheap,” says Bucher. “When I wanted more than talk, the price was too high.” Wadsworth, he says, wouldn’t agree to his ground rules.
Wadsworth, though, says it was Bucher who poisoned the deal, upping the ante by adding more charges against his girlfriend.“I wanted him to let my girlfriend out of jail, let her out on bond,” says Wadsworth.
“I didn’t ask for him to do any political favors. Just let her out.”
The ball remained in Bucher’s court. He had the grand jury testimony, including the transcript of Wadsworth’s testimony. He had all the evidence the investigators could muster.
But Bucher wouldn’t budge.
His girlfriend was facing a jail sentence in Waukesha for passing bad checks and Wadsworth was willing to make a deal with the district attorney to get her freed. He was ready to speak out about the Outlaw slayings, this time publicly. He even agreed to several interviews with local newspaper and TV reporters, claiming he could set the record straight on the murders of Cliff Machan, the Drobac family and Larry Anstett.
It was a risky move, Wadsworth says, looking back. According to Wadsworth, the DA offered to place him in a witness protection program.
But the deal fell through.“Talk was cheap,” says Bucher. “When I wanted more than talk, the price was too high.” Wadsworth, he says, wouldn’t agree to his ground rules.
Wadsworth, though, says it was Bucher who poisoned the deal, upping the ante by adding more charges against his girlfriend.“I wanted him to let my girlfriend out of jail, let her out on bond,” says Wadsworth.
“I didn’t ask for him to do any political favors. Just let her out.”
The ball remained in Bucher’s court. He had the grand jury testimony, including the transcript of Wadsworth’s testimony. He had all the evidence the investigators could muster.
But Bucher wouldn’t budge.
Bucher was unconvinced
Bucher was unconvinced.
More evidence, he told the investigators, bring me more evidence.
And they did.With the help of state and Waukesha County investigators, they tracked down medical X-rays of Cliff Machan and confirmed through a local chiropractor that Machan had suffered a shoulder injury, which was consistent with the X-rays and skeletal evidence.
They confirmed that Buschman was renting the storage garage at the Letko farm when Machan disappeared and that a load of pea gravel was delivered to the garage around the time Machan’s grave presumably had been dug.They confirmed that the engine to Machan’s cut-up Chevy pickup had been sold by Willy Cresca to a Waukesha County farmer.
They confirmed that the explosive used in the Anstett bombing was in fact TNT and that the shrapnel was made up of spent welding rods. A cake of defused TNT was later traced to informant Billy Wadsworth in northern Illinois, lending credibility to Wadsworth’s claim that he and Buschman stole the TNT and that Wadsworth had seen the bomb being assembled.But it still wasn’t enough.
“We would get the evidence Bucher asked for,” says one former detective, “then he’d backstep and say, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’
And without a reason. He just kept moving the yardstick.”
More evidence, he told the investigators, bring me more evidence.
And they did.With the help of state and Waukesha County investigators, they tracked down medical X-rays of Cliff Machan and confirmed through a local chiropractor that Machan had suffered a shoulder injury, which was consistent with the X-rays and skeletal evidence.
They confirmed that Buschman was renting the storage garage at the Letko farm when Machan disappeared and that a load of pea gravel was delivered to the garage around the time Machan’s grave presumably had been dug.They confirmed that the engine to Machan’s cut-up Chevy pickup had been sold by Willy Cresca to a Waukesha County farmer.
They confirmed that the explosive used in the Anstett bombing was in fact TNT and that the shrapnel was made up of spent welding rods. A cake of defused TNT was later traced to informant Billy Wadsworth in northern Illinois, lending credibility to Wadsworth’s claim that he and Buschman stole the TNT and that Wadsworth had seen the bomb being assembled.But it still wasn’t enough.
“We would get the evidence Bucher asked for,” says one former detective, “then he’d backstep and say, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’
And without a reason. He just kept moving the yardstick.”
“Finally, we had everybody on the same page,” says Hinterthuer.
The remains were discovered in the jurisdiction of Waukesha County.
But Waukesha County refused to open a homicide case.
And in a blow to the investigators, Biedrzycki resigned as medical examiner to take a fellowship at Harvard University. To the new medical examiner and
to District Attorney Paul Bucher, the evidence still was not strong enough.
The remains were discovered in the jurisdiction of Waukesha County.
But Waukesha County refused to open a homicide case.
And in a blow to the investigators, Biedrzycki resigned as medical examiner to take a fellowship at Harvard University. To the new medical examiner and
to District Attorney Paul Bucher, the evidence still was not strong enough.
She calls Kane a chicken?
he case, however, didn’t meet federal requirements under RICO, and with the approval of U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller, the sworn grand jury testimony was handed back to Milwaukee and Waukesha counties.
A meeting was called at the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department with state and local investigators. At the meeting, Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams offered to act as a special prosecutor in the case against Buschman.
But Bucher turned down the offer.
Bucher was reluctant to talk with Milwaukee Magazine about details of the case and declined to say specifically what evidence he believed was lacking.“I did not have evidence that was sufficient for us to issue charges,” says Bucher. “It was not there.”
A meeting was called at the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department with state and local investigators. At the meeting, Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams offered to act as a special prosecutor in the case against Buschman.
But Bucher turned down the offer.
Bucher was reluctant to talk with Milwaukee Magazine about details of the case and declined to say specifically what evidence he believed was lacking.“I did not have evidence that was sufficient for us to issue charges,” says Bucher. “It was not there.”
So a prosecutor prosecutes and a defense lawyer defends? What a concept
Butler had not seen the ad late Friday, but said providing quality representation for a defendant is a critical component of the justice system. He said the judicial system is based on the premise that everyone is entitled to a lawyer and a fair trial.
"You have a candidate who is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court who thinks that's not the way it's supposed to be," Butler said. "I think that says something."
"You have a candidate who is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court who thinks that's not the way it's supposed to be," Butler said. "I think that says something."
Friday, March 14, 2008
Ask Paul Bucher
Justice Denied
It began with an Outlaws hit gone bad and the killing of an innocent paperboy. Seven murders followed.
Why, when police say they know the killer, has no one been prosecuted?
Ask Waukesha County DA Paul Bucher.
by Kurt Chandler
Thursday 3/1/2001
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On a chilly November morning 26 years ago, Larry Anstett pulled himself out of bed before the sun rose; bundled up in corduroy pants, long johns, sweatshirt and nylon jacket; hoisted a bulging Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper bag over his shoulder and went to work. A ninth-grader at Wilbur Wright Junior High School on the city’s Northwest Side, Larry had taken over the paper route from his older brother. Though he dreaded the early-morning hours, he liked having a little spending money in his pocket.
Larry was tromping down the sidewalk of North 83rd Street at 6 a.m., hurling newspapers into the front yards of his customers, when something caught his eye. Resting on the roof of an unoccupied Oldsmobile was a box decorated in colorful gift wrap like a Christmas present.
Larry stepped to the driver’s side of the car to inspect the curious gift box. When he lifted it from the roof, the box exploded.
The force of the blast killed Larry instantly. His face was burned beyond recognition, his right eye ripped from its socket. Both of his hands were blown away and the bones in his arms shattered. Dozens of metal fragments were shot into his neck and chest, tearing into his windpipe and lungs, fracturing his collarbone and ribs and mangling his carotid arteries.
Seconds after the explosion, a pickup truck sped away along 83rd Street. Two men were inside, according to a witness, who supplied police with another telltale detail: Extending from the corners of the truck’s bed were a shovel and a broom.
Michael Vermilyea heard the bomb go off from inside his home and raced outside half-dressed. At the curb, his ’71 Oldsmobile was a smoking wreck, its roof caved in and its windshield in pieces. Lying face down on the pavement was the paperboy, his yellow Sentinel bag still slung over his shoulder, 27 undelivered newspapers inside.
A shakened Vermilyea said he was sure he knew what had happened. He was sure the murderous blast was an act of retaliation by the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, and he was sure he had been the intended target. But somehow, horribly, the bomb had claimed the life of 15-year-old Larry Anstett instead.
Vermilyea was president of Heaven’s Devils, a rival motorcycle club of about 30 members. The Devils were entangled in a violent feud with the Outlaws. Four months before the bombing, Vermilyea had testified against two Outlaws charged with stealing jacket patches from Heaven’s Devils at gunpoint. Known as “patching over,” the thefts were an intimidating tactic to force other bikers to join ranks with the Outlaws.
Vermilyea’s testimony helped send the two Outlaws to prison. Shortly afterward, several Heaven’s Devils’ homes were firebombed or shot up. The picture window of Vermilyea’s own home was blown out one night by a shotgun blast.
“They knew where I lived,” Vermilyea told a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter. “And an innocent kid got killed.”
The Sentinel offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the paperboy’s killer. Vermilyea’s father put up another $1,000. And for a solid year, two police detectives worked the case full time, following thousands of leads, traveling thousands of miles, compiling thousands of pages of interviews and reports.
But the case was never closed, the rewards never collected. Leads went cold. Witnesses refused to cooperate, fearing reprisal by the Outlaws.
“It was a very frustrating case,” says retired police detective Bill Wolf, one of the two primary detectives assigned to the homicide. “People just wouldn’t open up.”
Larry Anstett’s murder on November 5, 1974, is remembered as one of the most heinous crimes in the city’s history. Milwau-kee District Attorney E. Michael McCann counts the case as one of the toughest ever investigated by his office. And one federal prosecutor from Milwaukee who now works in Atlanta says he would gladly return home and work the case as a volunteer if any additional evidence should turn up.
“I’ve seen the [crime scene] pictures of that kid,” he says, “and you never forget that.”
But for former Milwaukee police detective Roger Hinterthuer, it’s a crime that is unofficially solved.
Hinterthuer was working as a plain-clothes officer in 1974, chasing down burglars from out of the District Five stationhouse at 4th and Locust streets. Like dozens of cops working that November day, he was dispatched to the Northwest Side to canvass Anstett’s neighborhood for witnesses.
Hinterthuer moved on to other cases. But years later, a surprising link to the bombing would surface, drawing him into the investigation of a series of unsolved Outlaws murders that would become his obsession until the day he retired – and for years afterward.
As pieces of a larger puzzle fell into place, Hinterthuer and other investigators came to believe that they knew who blew up Larry Anstett and why. They came to believe that their years of police work were discarded by Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, and as a result, the prime suspect in the Anstett murder was never brought to justice.
he Milwaukee Chapter of the Outlaws gained notoriety during the late 1960s, growing out of the Chicago chapter and establishing a criminal presence as drug traffickers and car thieves.
Roger Hinterthuer was enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at the time. He had plans to be a professional musician, working toward a degree in music while playing tenor sax, touring for a while with the likes of Woody Herman. But after realizing how hard it would be to make a living as a performer, he switched his major to music education and found a job as a school band teacher when he graduated.
After just six months, he hated the job.
The year was 1967. Like the rest of the nation, Milwaukee was steeped in political and social unrest. The streets literally burned with dissent as protesters marched for fair-housing laws. The Milwaukee Police Department was recruiting new officers. So Hinterthuer took a job as a cop.
Moving through the ranks, he was promoted in 1976 to the detective bureau, where he worked auto thefts. It was there he became familiar with the criminal activities of the Milwaukee Outlaws.
As with many police investigations, Hinterthuer and other detectives based their theories and allegations on the testimony of informants. One of those informants was William “Billy the Kid” Wadsworth, a convicted thief with the mannerisms of Joe Pesci and a knack for hot-wiring cars. Over the years, Wadsworth would rip off hundreds of vehicles, gaining a reputation in the Midwest for the speed with which he could steal a car. He fancies himself as the subject of the recent Hollywood film Gone in Sixty Seconds.
In the early ’70s, a string of burglaries was reported at the Morley Murphy Co., a distribution warehouse on Milwaukee’s West Side. In one burglary, hundreds of firearms were stolen. Billy Wadsworth was involved in fencing the firearms, and among his customers was an Outlaw named John Wayne Buschman.
“Buschman was one of the Outlaws who made money,” Wadsworth said in an interview with Milwaukee Magazine. “He was always somebody you could call for bail.”
Buschman and Wadsworth eventually teamed up with a handful of Outlaws and “hangers-on” to run a car theft ring out of a farm on Town Line Road near Sussex. The Waukesha County farm was owned by Clifford Machan, a young ex-convict who had done prison time for burglary. As his day job, Machan ran a roofing company from his Sussex farmhouse.
Machan had converted a barn on his property into a six-stall garage that was used as a “chop shop.” According to police, the auto thieves would steal cars from Milwaukee and Chicago, often from airport parking lots. Vehicle identification numbers of the cars would be replaced with VIN tags of wrecks purchased from salvage yards or auto auctions. The car theft ring would paint the cars and exchange parts to conceal the appearance of the original vehicles, then sell them to unsuspecting buyers.
Wadsworth supplied the chop shop with stolen cars, mostly luxury models, Volkswagens and pickup trucks. Buschman and Machan rebuilt the cars, and a young Outlaw wannabe named Joe Stoll helped with mechanical work.
“Buschman was really the guy running the chop shop,” says Hinterthuer. “He was the catalyst behind it.”
Buschman was known by his Outlaws nickname of “Flapper” or “Flap,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to his less-than-garrulous nature. Born in September 1945, he has a rap sheet in Wisconsin that dates back to 1970, when he was charged in Racine County with operating an automobile without the owner’s consent. In 1974, he was arrested for the interstate transportation of stolen motorcycle parts, smuggled out of the Harley-Davidson plant in Milwaukee. Buschman did time in federal prison in Minnesota and then was transferred to Leavenworth to serve out the rest of his sentence.
In 1980, Buschman was convicted, with another Outlaw, of raping and beating a young woman at the Outlaws’ clubhouse in Milwaukee. He was sentenced to five years in state prison.
Those who have met Buschman describe him as cold and dangerous.
“He has no conscience,” says one former cop. “He’s a hard case.”
Hinterthuer is convinced that Buschman was at one time an “enforcer” for the Milwaukee Outlaws, that he used violence to exact revenge and silence witnesses who might incriminate him or other members.
“He became so good at intimidating people,” says Hinterthuer. “He’s always been of the opinion that he was not going to get caught.”
Wadsworth says Buschman was a nationally known figure within the organization. “He carried a lot of weight,” he says. “He was real influential.”
In September 1974, six weeks before the Anstett bombing, Buschman and Stoll were indicted by a federal grand jury for dealing stolen firearms, the same firearms that were fenced by Wadsworth. Buschman was arrested and released after posting bail. But police could not find Stoll.
Just days before the indictment was issued, Stoll and his girlfriend, Lou Ann Irby, a blond, blue-eyed go-go dancer from Minne-sota, were reported missing by their families.
Informant Billy Wadsworth says he has a good idea what happened to Joe Stoll and Lou Ann Irby – and young Larry Anstett.
Months before the bombing, Wadsworth and Buschman had met a woman whose grandfather ran a stone quarry in the town of Lannon. The woman mentioned to them that her grandfather stored explosives in an outbuilding near the quarry. Wadsworth says he and Buschman burglarized the outbuilding one night and stole a box of TNT and blasting caps. They took the explosives back to Machan’s chop shop and hid them in the garage.
A week or two later, Wadsworth delivered a stolen car to the Sussex farm. In the garage he found Buschman and Stoll, who had been hiding from the law at the farm with his girlfriend. On the workbench was a cardboard box. Packed inside were fragments of spent welding rods collected from the garage floor – and the stolen TNT.
“This,” Buschman said, gesturing to the homemade bomb, “is a present for the Heaven’s Devils.”
On the morning of November 5, 1974, Wadsworth drove to the farm to deliver another car. “When I got there, they [Buschman and Stoll] were already there,” Wadsworth says. “And I got there at the crack of dawn.”
As he pulled off of Town Line Road, he saw Buschman and Stoll sitting in a pickup truck parked in the dirt driveway. In the back of the truck, stuck in the corners of the bed, were a shovel and a broom.
Wadsworth rolled down his car window.
“Did you hear what happened?” said Buschman, sitting in the truck’s driver’s seat.
“No, what’s going on?” said Wadsworth.
“It went south,” Buschman said. “A newspaper kid got killed. The kid shouldn’t have messed with the package.”
Wadsworth parked the car and followed Buschman and Stoll into the garage. There, a panicked Stoll began spilling out grim details of the bungled bombing.
Buschman interrupted. “Shut up if you know what’s good for you,” he snapped at Stoll.
The Anstett case was page-one news. Homicide detectives were inundated with tips – some good, most not. Police began rounding up dozens of bikers, questioning them about the Outlaws and Heaven’s Devils feud. The heat was on.
The next day, Wadsworth returned to the farm.
“Hey, where’s Joe?” he asked Buschman.
“Joe’s gone and he ain’t comin’ back.” Stoll had been talking about leaving town, so Wadsworth assumed he and his girlfriend had hit the road.
Wadsworth was back at the farm a few days later. Again, he asked about Stoll.
This time, the answer was more succinct.
“Joe and the broad are buried in the chicken coop.”
The Anstett case eventually fell off the front page. The investigation stalled and detectives moved on to other crimes. But in the minds of many investigators, the murder was indelible.
In 1978, Hinterthuer was assigned to a multi-agency auto theft task force. A case had been put together against the Sussex car theft ring, which had grown into one of the largest in the state. Armed with search warrants, the detectives drove to Cliff Machan’s farm on a day in April to take a look around.
Inside the garage, along with a half-dozen stolen luxury cars and pickup trucks, investigators made a startling discovery. Hidden high in the rafters was a box of TNT and blasting caps.
“The minute we saw that TNT, we thought, aha!” says Hinterthuer.
It was the first break in the Anstett case in years. Undisclosed by police and unknown by the public, experts had narrowed the substance used in the Anstett bombing to that of a high-order explosive, either C-4 or TNT.
Detectives pulled Machan into the Milwaukee Police Department for questioning. In their interrogation, they leaned on him to cooperate. They wanted names.
“You don’t know what you’re asking me to do,” he told them, fearing for his life.
A secret John Doe investigation was under way, and the task force was preparing an eight-count charge of auto theft against Machan. They wanted to use his testimony to go after others.
“Eight convictions could send you to prison for a long, long time,” investigators reminded him.
Machan, 34 at the time, thought it over.
“I’m not going to prison,” he told police, finally giving in. “I’ve got something much bigger to trade.”
But he never got the chance to talk.
“All of a sudden, Cliff Machan just disappeared, gone,” says Don Werra, a former detective on the auto theft task force and now chief of Milwaukee’s housing police.
Police suspected that Machan knew too much for his own good – about his chop shop associates, the Anstett murder and the disappearance of Stoll and Irby.
According to a missing-person report and police interviews conducted years later, Machan’s live-in girlfriend took a call on June 28, 1978. She recognized the caller as John Buschman.
The girlfriend told police that Machan had arranged a meeting with Buschman. The next morning, Machan drove off in his brand-new four-wheel-drive Chevy pickup.
She never saw him again.
Years later, she told Hinterthuer that she held Buschman responsible for Machan’s disappearance.
Without Machan’s testimony, the Anstett case went cold – for almost 10 years.
On December 10, 1987, Washington County sheriff’s deputies were sent to a farmhouse on Western Avenue in the unincorporated town of Kirchhayn. Inside was a gruesome sight. In an upstairs bedroom, the body of 34-year-old Sandy Drobac lay facedown in a bed, a bullet in her back. In a second bedroom was her 10-year-old son, Brock, shot in the head. And dead on the kitchen floor with a bullet wound to his head was Michael Drobac, 35.
Known as “Rerun,” Michael Drobac was dressed only in a pair of black jeans. On his left biceps was a blue tattoo of a skull and the name of his longtime affiliation: “Outlaws Milwaukee.”
In the three years he lived in the small town, Drobac had drawn a lot of attention. The wild parties he and his wife hosted at their three-acre property attracted hundreds of bikers from around the state. The Milwaukee Outlaws held their annual “Honda Drop” at his home. As an act of homage to their beloved Harleys, the bikers hoisted foreign-made cycles into the air with a crane, then dropped them, smashing them to pieces.
Drobac had a long police record and did time in Waupun Correctional Institution for car theft. His criminal career started when he was in his teens. He had worked for a while with the car theft ring at the Sussex chop shop but was replaced by the more experienced Billy Wadsworth.
The bodies of Drobac and his family were discovered by his parents. Evidence showed that more than one person had been in on the killings, says Drobac’s mother, and it appeared that whoever fired the fatal shots knew the victims. There were no signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle. All around the living room and kitchen, says Donna Drobac, were beer bottles and liquor glasses, drug paraphernalia and cocaine.
“The Outlaws did the killing,” she claims.
At the time of his murder, Rerun was awaiting sentencing on a federal drug conviction. Strewn on the kitchen floor near his body were court records on his case.
Police believe that Michael Drobac was considering cutting a deal with the feds.
“The police came to me,” says his mother, “and said, ‘Did you know that your son was going to turn evidence and go into protective custody?’ ”
Donna Drobac doesn’t buy the theory. But she agrees her son was trying to distance himself from the club. In a letter found in his lawyer’s office, Drobac said he feared for his life. Just months before his death, he had a tattoo artist add his birthday, May 23, to his Outlaws tattoo, “signing himself out” from the Outlaws, effectively quitting the club.
“They were worried about Drobac giving it up,” says Wadsworth. “I didn’t think he would, but they killed him anyway. But then they killed the kid and his wife, too. Is that signal enough that they’re serious?
“It was a pretty close-knit group,” he says of the Outlaws. “They didn’t take any chances and they didn’t give anybody a second chance.”
Donna Drobac says she believes she knew the people who were in her son’s home when he was killed. One of them, she says, was John Buschman.
Buschman was also seen as a suspect by police. Following the killings, Washington County investigators traveled to Florida, where he was living at the time. According to a top investigator, they were able to place Buschman in Wisconsin on the day the Drobacs were murdered.
“Flap probably was worried Rerun would trade information on the Machan murder to get his charges reduced,” theorizes Hinterthuer.
Drobac’s mother believes it was another Outlaw who pulled the trigger, one who used crutches when he walked. On the living room carpet leading from her son’s body was a curious set of marks that appeared to be made by someone dragging his feet.
Three weeks after the Drobac murders, police reported a suspicious death in Racine County. Terry Haegele, a 35-year-old Outlaw known by police as a drug addict, died of an apparent intravenous overdose in the town of Raymond. Two separate autopsies were performed and two toxicology reports showed that Haegele’s body contained amphetamines, cocaine, codeine, methadone, opiates and the muscle relaxant benzodiazepine – a lethal witches’ brew of illicit drugs.
Haegele, who lived in Sussex, was better known by his Outlaws nickname, “Four Foot.” When he walked, he used crutches.
On a wintry night in December 1988, a year after the Drobac murders, Milwaukee police detectives arrested William Cresca for auto theft. Cresca was yet another Outlaw who had worked years ago with the Sussex car theft ring.
He also had been a close friend of murder victim Michael Drobac.
The arresting detectives, Peter Simet and Richard Weibel, grilled the car thief about his latest haul.
But Cresca had something else on his mind.
“If I had some information about a murder,” he said, “and I showed you where the body’s buried, would you guys make a deal on the car?”
The detectives were reluctant, but they listened to Cresca as he described a grave in a storage garage somewhere on a Town of Waukesha farm – in a garage that belonged to an uncle of John Buschman.
“Okay,” said Simet. “Take us to the body.”
As snow drifted across the highway, they drove to Waukesha, with Cresca directing the detectives to a dead-end road and a small farm owned by the Letko family. Sitting in the squad car, he took a piece of paper and sketched the floor plan of the sheet-metal storage garage that stood adjacent to a barn.
“If you dig right here,” he said, marking a spot on the drawing, “you’ll find the body.”
Three days later, on the morning of December 8, with consent of the farm’s owner, a team of police returned to the farm. They hauled out a few junk cars, old tires and engine blocks from the garage. They set up a portable heater to cut the icy cold and fired up a leased backhoe. Checking Cresca’s diagram, they began to scrape away at a layer of pea gravel in a corner of the garage.
They dug for hours, pulling out boulders, shoveling out buckets and buckets of dirt until, suddenly, a shovel uncovered the ghoulish form of a human skull.
Willy Cresca was a career criminal, known by law enforcement throughout the area as a disreputable source. But this time, he was telling the truth. A body had been buried in the garage.
All day and into the night, investigators dug, working on their hands and knees, scraping at the ground with trowels and paint brushes, sifting through the dirt for anything that might be evidence.
“Got the teeth,” announced a detective.
Minutes later: “This is the right arm.”
And the form of a human began to appear, an arm flung above its head, the legs unnaturally bent sideways. Sprinkled over the form was a white powder, determined by police to be lime.
More than a dozen investigators from Waukesha and Milwaukee converged on the site – police and prosecutors and medical examiners, all of them well-versed on the history of the unsolved Outlaws cases. The sheet-metal garage once used by John Buschman to store old cars was transformed into an archaeological dig.
Just before midnight, investigators had unearthed a full human skeleton.
Weeks later, in several interviews with detective Hinterthuer, Willy Cresca went further with his story. In one discussion, held at the Waukesha County Jail, Cresca got to talking about the death of his friend Drobac.
Suddenly, he burst into tears.
“That kid that they killed was my kid,” he said, explaining that he and Drobac’s wife had had an affair. (Police records confirm that Michael Drobac admitted he was not the biological father of Brock Drobac.)
“I know who killed them,” Cresca told Hinterthuer. “I can’t prove it, but I can tell you about another murder, that murder at the Letko farm.”
According to Hinterthuer and a report with the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department, Cresca admitted he was at the farm when a body was buried. He knew the identify of the victim – and the killers.
In the summer of 1978, Cresca and Drobac were operating a chop shop together at 35th and Vliet streets in Milwaukee. One day, Drobac told Cresca to meet him at the Letko farm in Waukesha.
Police speculated that Buschman and Drobac had lured Cliff Machan to the Waukesha farm by telling Machan they’d bought him a Harley and would sponsor him into the Outlaws as a new member.
They also instructed Cresca to meet them at the farm, and when he arrived, gave him a key to Machan’s new Chevy pickup. Cresca’s orders were to take it to his shop in Milwaukee and cut it up.
Cresca drove the pickup to his shop and returned to the farm in another vehicle. Drobac met him outside the storage garage.
“The shit already hit the fan,” he said to Cresca.
Inside, Cliff Machan lay on the ground, shot in the stomach with a 12-gauge shotgun, his faced crushed by the butt of the gun. Beside the body, a grave had been dug.
Cresca threw up. Drobac and Buschman laughed at him as they stripped the body, rolled it into the grave and dusted it with lime to speed its decomposition.
Drobac handed Cresca a paper bag stuffed with Machan’s clothes. The two of them drove to Cresca’s family’s junkyard in the Town of Eagle, where they burned the clothes in a 55-gallon metal drum.
The two then went back to their chop shop at 35th and Vliet and cut up Machan’s pickup. But greed got the better of them. When the job was done, instead of junking all of the parts, they stored the transmission and engine – a 454-cubic-inch Chevy engine in mint condition – at the junkyard.
Just days after the killing, Buschman moved his family to Florida, says Hinter-thuer. With a stack of cash, he set up an auto body shop in the Keys.
An autopsy by the Waukesha County medical examiner found the skeletal remains to be that of an adult male, 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-9 inches tall, roughly the same height as Machan. The autopsy also showed that the jaw and nose had been broken and three ribs had been cracked before death.
A forensic dentist examined the teeth and skull, but dental records and medical X-rays of Machan could not be located for comparison. The State Crime Laboratory did a comparison of photographs taken of the skull and Machan’s head – known as an “in-camera superimposition.” But the photos did not match.
Hinterthuer suggested DNA testing, and a year after the discovery of the skeleton, the medical examiner sent one left rib to an East Coast laboratory for examination. But in 1991, DNA testing was still a young science and researchers were unable to come up with enough DNA material in the decomposed rib bone to complete a valid test.
Shortly after the remains were unearthed, police interviewed John Buschman in a Detroit jail. He had been arrested for bringing in large amounts of cash from Canada through Port Huron, Michigan, apparently as part of a money-laundering scheme. On his finger, he wore a huge diamond ring, suspiciously resembling one worn by Cliff Machan. But the ring was not confiscated as evidence, and by the time Milwaukee detectives heard about it from the feds, it had been released by the jail to an unknown party at Buschman’s request.
Investigators were frustrated. Without a positive identification of the skeleton, Case No. 88-1790 remained one without a name, labeled an “unknown skeleton.” No homicide report was filed and no arrests made.
Some time after the dig at the Letko farm, Hinterthuer transferred to the criminal intelligence division, where he was responsible for tracking down white supremacists and Satanists and digging into the department’s unsolved homicide files. A plum assignment, he was given wide latitude to chart his own investigations and set his own timetable.
His priority became the Outlaws murders. As he and Simet and other detectives pressed forward, the case became a forensic science mystery fraught with obstacles.
In August 1991, Hinterthuer, Simet and an agent with the state Division of Criminal Investigation persuaded Waukesha County DA Paul Bucher to authorize another excavation, this time at Machan’s former farm. Based on the testimony that had been collected, police believed the bodies of Joe Stoll and Lou Ann Irby were buried there.
Police used cadaver dogs to explore an open area where a chicken coop once stood, and several “hits” were made by the dogs. Again, a backhoe was brought in, but no remains were found.
The unidentified skeleton, meanwhile, had been packaged in Ziploc plastic bags and sent to an FBI lab in Washington, D.C., for examination. From there, it was forwarded to the curator of the anthropology department at the Smithsonian Institution.
It was here that investigators landed a break, thanks to the Smithsonian. Douglas Ubelaker, a top expert in his field, reported to the Waukesha County medical examiner that he believed the initial photographic superimposition was inaccurate.
“In my opinion, it is very probable that the bones and [Machan’s] photograph originate from the same individual,” he wrote.
Hinterthuer convinced Dr. Lynda Biedrzycki, Waukesha County medical examiner, to submit the bones to another DNA lab for testing. Biedrzycki had inherited the case when she was hired in 1990 and had taken a special interest in the skeleton. She personally lobbied the county board for additional funding and shipped the teeth and bones to a California lab.
Unknown to investigators, the former medical examiner had hired a forensics lab to make a clay reconstruction of the murder victim’s head, based on the unearthed skull. When Biedrzycki took her new job, she informed Hinterthuer of the clay model.
The resemblance to Cliff Machan was striking.
“She showed me a picture of the reconstruction,” says Hinterthuer, “and I hauled out a picture of Cliff, and she said, ‘Wow, it looks just like him.’ ”
In the course of the examinations, an assistant district attorney from Milwaukee County contacted relatives of Machan’s in Colorado, asking if they would submit blood samples in the event any DNA was identified. But the second DNA test also turned up inconclusive. Again, there was not enough usable DNA material available to do genetic typing.
But investigators would not be deterred.
In December 1993, Detective Werra traveled to Washington with Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist on city business. Werra, who had become Norquist’s personal driver, and the mayor met with the FBI’s deputy director and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for any federal assistance in the Outlaws cases.
Months later, Hinterthuer scored a victory when a forensic anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison concurred with the Smithsonian, concluding that there was “a reasonable degree of scientific certainty” that the remains were Machan’s. Hinterthuer then pressed the State Crime Lab to take a second look at the skull, based on the Smithsonian’s procedures, and in early 1994, it reversed its initial finding, agreeing that the skeletal remains were compatible with Machan.
“Finally, we had everybody on the same page,” says Hinterthuer.
The remains were discovered in the jurisdiction of Waukesha County. But Waukesha County refused to open a homicide case. And in a blow to the investigators, Biedrzycki resigned as medical examiner to take a fellowship at Harvard University. To the new medical examiner and to District Attorney Paul Bucher, the evidence still was not strong enough.
In July 1994, a task force made up of federal, state and local agents was formed to investigate the criminal activities of the Wisconsin Outlaws. Hinterthuer was one of five Milwaukee Police officers appointed to the unit.
Hinterthuer had become obsessed with the unsolved Outlaws murders. He was sure the skeletal remains from Waukesha were Machan’s and sure a case could be built that would finger John Buschman as Machan’s murderer. Silencing witnesses to hide the truth about the Anstett bombing, Hinterthuer reasoned, was the motive for the killing of Machan, the shootings of the Drobacs and the disappearance of Joe Stoll and Lou Ann Irby.
Bucher was unconvinced. More evidence, he told the investigators, bring me more evidence.
And they did.
With the help of state and Waukesha County investigators, they tracked down medical X-rays of Cliff Machan and confirmed through a local chiropractor that Machan had suffered a shoulder injury, which was consistent with the X-rays and skeletal evidence.
They confirmed that Buschman was renting the storage garage at the Letko farm when Machan disappeared and that a load of pea gravel was delivered to the garage around the time Machan’s grave presumably had been dug.
They confirmed that the engine to Machan’s cut-up Chevy pickup had been sold by Willy Cresca to a Waukesha County farmer.
They confirmed that the explosive used in the Anstett bombing was in fact TNT and that the shrapnel was made up of spent welding rods. A cake of defused TNT was later traced to informant Billy Wadsworth in northern Illinois, lending credibility to Wadsworth’s claim that he and Buschman stole the TNT and that Wadsworth had seen the bomb being assembled.
But it still wasn’t enough.
“We would get the evidence Bucher asked for,” says one former detective, “then he’d backstep and say, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’ And without a reason. He just kept moving the yardstick.”
Investigators decided to try the federal system. Federal prosecutors suggested bringing charges against Buschman under the RICO act, the organized-crime statute used last fall to convict members of the Wisconsin/Stateline chapter of the Outlaws. Under RICO, an individual associated with an organized group could be prosecuted for a series of criminal activities. Conceivably, prosecutors could reach back in time to the 1974 bombing.
A federal grand jury was convened. Although grand jury testimony is always made in secret, several sources say testimony was taken of Willy Cresca, Billy Wadsworth and Cliff Machan’s girlfriend, among others, based on the interviews Hinterthuer and other detectives had already done.
The case, however, didn’t meet federal requirements under RICO, and with the approval of U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller, the sworn grand jury testimony was handed back to Milwaukee and Waukesha counties.
A meeting was called at the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department with state and local investigators. At the meeting, Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams offered to act as a special prosecutor in the case against Buschman.
But Bucher turned down the offer.
Bucher was reluctant to talk with Milwaukee Magazine about details of the case and declined to say specifically what evidence he believed was lacking.
“I did not have evidence that was sufficient for us to issue charges,” says Bucher. “It was not there.”
In May 1995, “Billy the Kid” Wadsworth surfaced again in Milwaukee. His girlfriend was facing a jail sentence in Waukesha for passing bad checks and Wadsworth was willing to make a deal with the district attorney to get her freed. He was ready to speak out about the Outlaw slayings, this time publicly. He even agreed to several interviews with local newspaper and TV reporters, claiming he could set the record straight on the murders of Cliff Machan, the Drobac family and Larry Anstett.
It was a risky move, Wadsworth says, looking back. According to Wadsworth, the DA offered to place him in a witness protection program.
But the deal fell through.
“Talk was cheap,” says Bucher. “When I wanted more than talk, the price was too high.” Wadsworth, he says, wouldn’t agree to his ground rules.
Wadsworth, though, says it was Bucher who poisoned the deal, upping the ante by adding more charges against his girlfriend.
“I wanted him to let my girlfriend out of jail, let her out on bond,” says Wadsworth. “I didn’t ask for him to do any political favors. Just let her out.”
The ball remained in Bucher’s court. He had the grand jury testimony, including the transcript of Wadsworth’s testimony. He had all the evidence the investigators could muster.
But Bucher wouldn’t budge.
“We thought, ‘What more can we do?’ ” says Hinterthuer. “Our hands were tied. We had done virtually everything we could. There was nobody else out there we could talk to, there was no additional evidence that existed.”
Hinterthuer had had enough. In May 1997, after 30 years of duty, he retired from the Milwaukee Police Department. When he left, he tried to get detectives in Waukesha and Milwaukee to pick up the ball on the cases. But no one would.
“I was of the opinion that unless someone came forward to testify or one of the Outlaws traded information, the case would die,” says Hinterthuer.
He still harbors resentment toward Bucher for not pushing harder on the Machan case. Possibly Bucher was intimidated by the Outlaws, Hinterthuer speculates. Or possibly his aspirations to one day run for political office – specifically, the job of state attorney general – got in the way of pursuing a case that was risky.
“To have it die because of one demigod out in Waukesha? That’s obscene,” says Hinterthuer.
Bucher discounts the claims that he was intimidated or that his judgment was impaired by political ambition. He commends Hinterthuer and Simet for their “persistence” but says the difficulty in identifying the skeletal remains was not the only stumbling block.
“All the other proof that you build your case on just isn’t there,” he says. “I’m not afraid of sticking my neck out.… [But] ethically, we have standards that you have to go on. It’s just not there. It’s close, but it’s just not there.”
Bucher leaves the door open for more DNA testing or even the issuance of criminal charges in the future. “It’s an unsolved homicide,” he says. “There may be, someday, sufficient corroborating evidence that will come forward so that we may proceed.”
Today, with witnesses long scattered, the homicide cases are cold – but not dead. After scoring a huge win last year with 16 convictions in federal court, the Outlaws task force continues its probe. Next in line is the Milwaukee chapter. According to a key investigator, at least one Outlaw death is being examined – the mysterious drug overdose of Terry “Four Foot” Haegele. Suspected in the murder of the Drobac family, Haegele was found dead in the home of Tom Sienkowski, the current Milwaukee Outlaws boss.
To this day, investigators have not concluded whether the intravenous overdose was accidental or not.
Ralph Anstett Jr. visits his brother Larry’s grave every year with his sisters, brothers and father.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Larry was still alive,” he says. “We still hope that this case will be solved, every day we hope. It’s been bad for us. We lost part of our family. And we feel somebody should pay for the loss.”
Victims and survivors, cops and culprits. In the long aftermath, the line that separates grows immaterial.
Michael Vermilyea, the target of the 1974 bombing, lives somewhere in Waukesha County, popping up now and then in a biker bar. Willy Cresca, the car thief turned accomplice, floats in and out of jail on one charge of theft after the next, estranged from his family and friends.
Informant Billy Wadsworth, meanwhile, drifts aimlessly through the southern states, looking for a foothold since his release from jail last June. Wadsworth was convicted in Mississippi for using a bogus name and Social Security number on a job application.
From time to time, he makes it up to Milwaukee. “But I tiptoe,” he says through a nervous laugh in a telephone interview. “I just get so apprehensive. I see people that know me and they know other people, too. And all they have to do is just say, hey, guess where what’s-his-name is? And boom. They’d shoot me as quick as they’d shoot anybody else.”
Milwaukee Police detective Peter Simet resigned last summer and now works for Harley-Davidson. Former detective Don Werra serves as police chief of Milwaukee’s housing authority and is a member of the Milwaukee Public School board. Dr. Lynda Biedrzycki returned to Wisconsin and her former job as Waukesha County medical examiner in 1998. Down the hall from her office, on a shelf in the morgue’s refrigerated cooler, an “unknown skeleton” is packed in a cardboard box marked “Case No. 88-1790.”
And somewhere in Florida, John Wayne Buschman remains a free man.
Roger Hinterthuer resides in a suburb south of Tucson. At 56, he enjoys his retirement, golfing nearly every morning and taking time to play the piano that occupies his spacious living room.
For Hinterthuer, though, the challenge is to focus on the present instead of the past.
Seldom is he entirely successful.
In a closet in Hinterthuer’s desert home, 10 storage boxes are stacked against a wall. Each is filled with files – arrest records, interview transcripts, crime scene photos, autopsy reports – the product of years and years of homicide investigations.
Hinterthuer doesn’t need the files to jog his memory. He knows each name, each date, each episode by heart.
He admits that the unsolved murders have left him with a jaundiced view of the world.
“I’m disappointed that they haven’t been charged,” he says. “You sit on your hands and witnesses die and people disappear, and then you have no case. It’s justice denied.”
Senior Editor Kurt Chandler’s last feature was November’s The Sinking of the Linda-E
It began with an Outlaws hit gone bad and the killing of an innocent paperboy. Seven murders followed.
Why, when police say they know the killer, has no one been prosecuted?
Ask Waukesha County DA Paul Bucher.
by Kurt Chandler
Thursday 3/1/2001
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On a chilly November morning 26 years ago, Larry Anstett pulled himself out of bed before the sun rose; bundled up in corduroy pants, long johns, sweatshirt and nylon jacket; hoisted a bulging Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper bag over his shoulder and went to work. A ninth-grader at Wilbur Wright Junior High School on the city’s Northwest Side, Larry had taken over the paper route from his older brother. Though he dreaded the early-morning hours, he liked having a little spending money in his pocket.
Larry was tromping down the sidewalk of North 83rd Street at 6 a.m., hurling newspapers into the front yards of his customers, when something caught his eye. Resting on the roof of an unoccupied Oldsmobile was a box decorated in colorful gift wrap like a Christmas present.
Larry stepped to the driver’s side of the car to inspect the curious gift box. When he lifted it from the roof, the box exploded.
The force of the blast killed Larry instantly. His face was burned beyond recognition, his right eye ripped from its socket. Both of his hands were blown away and the bones in his arms shattered. Dozens of metal fragments were shot into his neck and chest, tearing into his windpipe and lungs, fracturing his collarbone and ribs and mangling his carotid arteries.
Seconds after the explosion, a pickup truck sped away along 83rd Street. Two men were inside, according to a witness, who supplied police with another telltale detail: Extending from the corners of the truck’s bed were a shovel and a broom.
Michael Vermilyea heard the bomb go off from inside his home and raced outside half-dressed. At the curb, his ’71 Oldsmobile was a smoking wreck, its roof caved in and its windshield in pieces. Lying face down on the pavement was the paperboy, his yellow Sentinel bag still slung over his shoulder, 27 undelivered newspapers inside.
A shakened Vermilyea said he was sure he knew what had happened. He was sure the murderous blast was an act of retaliation by the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, and he was sure he had been the intended target. But somehow, horribly, the bomb had claimed the life of 15-year-old Larry Anstett instead.
Vermilyea was president of Heaven’s Devils, a rival motorcycle club of about 30 members. The Devils were entangled in a violent feud with the Outlaws. Four months before the bombing, Vermilyea had testified against two Outlaws charged with stealing jacket patches from Heaven’s Devils at gunpoint. Known as “patching over,” the thefts were an intimidating tactic to force other bikers to join ranks with the Outlaws.
Vermilyea’s testimony helped send the two Outlaws to prison. Shortly afterward, several Heaven’s Devils’ homes were firebombed or shot up. The picture window of Vermilyea’s own home was blown out one night by a shotgun blast.
“They knew where I lived,” Vermilyea told a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter. “And an innocent kid got killed.”
The Sentinel offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the paperboy’s killer. Vermilyea’s father put up another $1,000. And for a solid year, two police detectives worked the case full time, following thousands of leads, traveling thousands of miles, compiling thousands of pages of interviews and reports.
But the case was never closed, the rewards never collected. Leads went cold. Witnesses refused to cooperate, fearing reprisal by the Outlaws.
“It was a very frustrating case,” says retired police detective Bill Wolf, one of the two primary detectives assigned to the homicide. “People just wouldn’t open up.”
Larry Anstett’s murder on November 5, 1974, is remembered as one of the most heinous crimes in the city’s history. Milwau-kee District Attorney E. Michael McCann counts the case as one of the toughest ever investigated by his office. And one federal prosecutor from Milwaukee who now works in Atlanta says he would gladly return home and work the case as a volunteer if any additional evidence should turn up.
“I’ve seen the [crime scene] pictures of that kid,” he says, “and you never forget that.”
But for former Milwaukee police detective Roger Hinterthuer, it’s a crime that is unofficially solved.
Hinterthuer was working as a plain-clothes officer in 1974, chasing down burglars from out of the District Five stationhouse at 4th and Locust streets. Like dozens of cops working that November day, he was dispatched to the Northwest Side to canvass Anstett’s neighborhood for witnesses.
Hinterthuer moved on to other cases. But years later, a surprising link to the bombing would surface, drawing him into the investigation of a series of unsolved Outlaws murders that would become his obsession until the day he retired – and for years afterward.
As pieces of a larger puzzle fell into place, Hinterthuer and other investigators came to believe that they knew who blew up Larry Anstett and why. They came to believe that their years of police work were discarded by Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, and as a result, the prime suspect in the Anstett murder was never brought to justice.
he Milwaukee Chapter of the Outlaws gained notoriety during the late 1960s, growing out of the Chicago chapter and establishing a criminal presence as drug traffickers and car thieves.
Roger Hinterthuer was enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at the time. He had plans to be a professional musician, working toward a degree in music while playing tenor sax, touring for a while with the likes of Woody Herman. But after realizing how hard it would be to make a living as a performer, he switched his major to music education and found a job as a school band teacher when he graduated.
After just six months, he hated the job.
The year was 1967. Like the rest of the nation, Milwaukee was steeped in political and social unrest. The streets literally burned with dissent as protesters marched for fair-housing laws. The Milwaukee Police Department was recruiting new officers. So Hinterthuer took a job as a cop.
Moving through the ranks, he was promoted in 1976 to the detective bureau, where he worked auto thefts. It was there he became familiar with the criminal activities of the Milwaukee Outlaws.
As with many police investigations, Hinterthuer and other detectives based their theories and allegations on the testimony of informants. One of those informants was William “Billy the Kid” Wadsworth, a convicted thief with the mannerisms of Joe Pesci and a knack for hot-wiring cars. Over the years, Wadsworth would rip off hundreds of vehicles, gaining a reputation in the Midwest for the speed with which he could steal a car. He fancies himself as the subject of the recent Hollywood film Gone in Sixty Seconds.
In the early ’70s, a string of burglaries was reported at the Morley Murphy Co., a distribution warehouse on Milwaukee’s West Side. In one burglary, hundreds of firearms were stolen. Billy Wadsworth was involved in fencing the firearms, and among his customers was an Outlaw named John Wayne Buschman.
“Buschman was one of the Outlaws who made money,” Wadsworth said in an interview with Milwaukee Magazine. “He was always somebody you could call for bail.”
Buschman and Wadsworth eventually teamed up with a handful of Outlaws and “hangers-on” to run a car theft ring out of a farm on Town Line Road near Sussex. The Waukesha County farm was owned by Clifford Machan, a young ex-convict who had done prison time for burglary. As his day job, Machan ran a roofing company from his Sussex farmhouse.
Machan had converted a barn on his property into a six-stall garage that was used as a “chop shop.” According to police, the auto thieves would steal cars from Milwaukee and Chicago, often from airport parking lots. Vehicle identification numbers of the cars would be replaced with VIN tags of wrecks purchased from salvage yards or auto auctions. The car theft ring would paint the cars and exchange parts to conceal the appearance of the original vehicles, then sell them to unsuspecting buyers.
Wadsworth supplied the chop shop with stolen cars, mostly luxury models, Volkswagens and pickup trucks. Buschman and Machan rebuilt the cars, and a young Outlaw wannabe named Joe Stoll helped with mechanical work.
“Buschman was really the guy running the chop shop,” says Hinterthuer. “He was the catalyst behind it.”
Buschman was known by his Outlaws nickname of “Flapper” or “Flap,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to his less-than-garrulous nature. Born in September 1945, he has a rap sheet in Wisconsin that dates back to 1970, when he was charged in Racine County with operating an automobile without the owner’s consent. In 1974, he was arrested for the interstate transportation of stolen motorcycle parts, smuggled out of the Harley-Davidson plant in Milwaukee. Buschman did time in federal prison in Minnesota and then was transferred to Leavenworth to serve out the rest of his sentence.
In 1980, Buschman was convicted, with another Outlaw, of raping and beating a young woman at the Outlaws’ clubhouse in Milwaukee. He was sentenced to five years in state prison.
Those who have met Buschman describe him as cold and dangerous.
“He has no conscience,” says one former cop. “He’s a hard case.”
Hinterthuer is convinced that Buschman was at one time an “enforcer” for the Milwaukee Outlaws, that he used violence to exact revenge and silence witnesses who might incriminate him or other members.
“He became so good at intimidating people,” says Hinterthuer. “He’s always been of the opinion that he was not going to get caught.”
Wadsworth says Buschman was a nationally known figure within the organization. “He carried a lot of weight,” he says. “He was real influential.”
In September 1974, six weeks before the Anstett bombing, Buschman and Stoll were indicted by a federal grand jury for dealing stolen firearms, the same firearms that were fenced by Wadsworth. Buschman was arrested and released after posting bail. But police could not find Stoll.
Just days before the indictment was issued, Stoll and his girlfriend, Lou Ann Irby, a blond, blue-eyed go-go dancer from Minne-sota, were reported missing by their families.
Informant Billy Wadsworth says he has a good idea what happened to Joe Stoll and Lou Ann Irby – and young Larry Anstett.
Months before the bombing, Wadsworth and Buschman had met a woman whose grandfather ran a stone quarry in the town of Lannon. The woman mentioned to them that her grandfather stored explosives in an outbuilding near the quarry. Wadsworth says he and Buschman burglarized the outbuilding one night and stole a box of TNT and blasting caps. They took the explosives back to Machan’s chop shop and hid them in the garage.
A week or two later, Wadsworth delivered a stolen car to the Sussex farm. In the garage he found Buschman and Stoll, who had been hiding from the law at the farm with his girlfriend. On the workbench was a cardboard box. Packed inside were fragments of spent welding rods collected from the garage floor – and the stolen TNT.
“This,” Buschman said, gesturing to the homemade bomb, “is a present for the Heaven’s Devils.”
On the morning of November 5, 1974, Wadsworth drove to the farm to deliver another car. “When I got there, they [Buschman and Stoll] were already there,” Wadsworth says. “And I got there at the crack of dawn.”
As he pulled off of Town Line Road, he saw Buschman and Stoll sitting in a pickup truck parked in the dirt driveway. In the back of the truck, stuck in the corners of the bed, were a shovel and a broom.
Wadsworth rolled down his car window.
“Did you hear what happened?” said Buschman, sitting in the truck’s driver’s seat.
“No, what’s going on?” said Wadsworth.
“It went south,” Buschman said. “A newspaper kid got killed. The kid shouldn’t have messed with the package.”
Wadsworth parked the car and followed Buschman and Stoll into the garage. There, a panicked Stoll began spilling out grim details of the bungled bombing.
Buschman interrupted. “Shut up if you know what’s good for you,” he snapped at Stoll.
The Anstett case was page-one news. Homicide detectives were inundated with tips – some good, most not. Police began rounding up dozens of bikers, questioning them about the Outlaws and Heaven’s Devils feud. The heat was on.
The next day, Wadsworth returned to the farm.
“Hey, where’s Joe?” he asked Buschman.
“Joe’s gone and he ain’t comin’ back.” Stoll had been talking about leaving town, so Wadsworth assumed he and his girlfriend had hit the road.
Wadsworth was back at the farm a few days later. Again, he asked about Stoll.
This time, the answer was more succinct.
“Joe and the broad are buried in the chicken coop.”
The Anstett case eventually fell off the front page. The investigation stalled and detectives moved on to other crimes. But in the minds of many investigators, the murder was indelible.
In 1978, Hinterthuer was assigned to a multi-agency auto theft task force. A case had been put together against the Sussex car theft ring, which had grown into one of the largest in the state. Armed with search warrants, the detectives drove to Cliff Machan’s farm on a day in April to take a look around.
Inside the garage, along with a half-dozen stolen luxury cars and pickup trucks, investigators made a startling discovery. Hidden high in the rafters was a box of TNT and blasting caps.
“The minute we saw that TNT, we thought, aha!” says Hinterthuer.
It was the first break in the Anstett case in years. Undisclosed by police and unknown by the public, experts had narrowed the substance used in the Anstett bombing to that of a high-order explosive, either C-4 or TNT.
Detectives pulled Machan into the Milwaukee Police Department for questioning. In their interrogation, they leaned on him to cooperate. They wanted names.
“You don’t know what you’re asking me to do,” he told them, fearing for his life.
A secret John Doe investigation was under way, and the task force was preparing an eight-count charge of auto theft against Machan. They wanted to use his testimony to go after others.
“Eight convictions could send you to prison for a long, long time,” investigators reminded him.
Machan, 34 at the time, thought it over.
“I’m not going to prison,” he told police, finally giving in. “I’ve got something much bigger to trade.”
But he never got the chance to talk.
“All of a sudden, Cliff Machan just disappeared, gone,” says Don Werra, a former detective on the auto theft task force and now chief of Milwaukee’s housing police.
Police suspected that Machan knew too much for his own good – about his chop shop associates, the Anstett murder and the disappearance of Stoll and Irby.
According to a missing-person report and police interviews conducted years later, Machan’s live-in girlfriend took a call on June 28, 1978. She recognized the caller as John Buschman.
The girlfriend told police that Machan had arranged a meeting with Buschman. The next morning, Machan drove off in his brand-new four-wheel-drive Chevy pickup.
She never saw him again.
Years later, she told Hinterthuer that she held Buschman responsible for Machan’s disappearance.
Without Machan’s testimony, the Anstett case went cold – for almost 10 years.
On December 10, 1987, Washington County sheriff’s deputies were sent to a farmhouse on Western Avenue in the unincorporated town of Kirchhayn. Inside was a gruesome sight. In an upstairs bedroom, the body of 34-year-old Sandy Drobac lay facedown in a bed, a bullet in her back. In a second bedroom was her 10-year-old son, Brock, shot in the head. And dead on the kitchen floor with a bullet wound to his head was Michael Drobac, 35.
Known as “Rerun,” Michael Drobac was dressed only in a pair of black jeans. On his left biceps was a blue tattoo of a skull and the name of his longtime affiliation: “Outlaws Milwaukee.”
In the three years he lived in the small town, Drobac had drawn a lot of attention. The wild parties he and his wife hosted at their three-acre property attracted hundreds of bikers from around the state. The Milwaukee Outlaws held their annual “Honda Drop” at his home. As an act of homage to their beloved Harleys, the bikers hoisted foreign-made cycles into the air with a crane, then dropped them, smashing them to pieces.
Drobac had a long police record and did time in Waupun Correctional Institution for car theft. His criminal career started when he was in his teens. He had worked for a while with the car theft ring at the Sussex chop shop but was replaced by the more experienced Billy Wadsworth.
The bodies of Drobac and his family were discovered by his parents. Evidence showed that more than one person had been in on the killings, says Drobac’s mother, and it appeared that whoever fired the fatal shots knew the victims. There were no signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle. All around the living room and kitchen, says Donna Drobac, were beer bottles and liquor glasses, drug paraphernalia and cocaine.
“The Outlaws did the killing,” she claims.
At the time of his murder, Rerun was awaiting sentencing on a federal drug conviction. Strewn on the kitchen floor near his body were court records on his case.
Police believe that Michael Drobac was considering cutting a deal with the feds.
“The police came to me,” says his mother, “and said, ‘Did you know that your son was going to turn evidence and go into protective custody?’ ”
Donna Drobac doesn’t buy the theory. But she agrees her son was trying to distance himself from the club. In a letter found in his lawyer’s office, Drobac said he feared for his life. Just months before his death, he had a tattoo artist add his birthday, May 23, to his Outlaws tattoo, “signing himself out” from the Outlaws, effectively quitting the club.
“They were worried about Drobac giving it up,” says Wadsworth. “I didn’t think he would, but they killed him anyway. But then they killed the kid and his wife, too. Is that signal enough that they’re serious?
“It was a pretty close-knit group,” he says of the Outlaws. “They didn’t take any chances and they didn’t give anybody a second chance.”
Donna Drobac says she believes she knew the people who were in her son’s home when he was killed. One of them, she says, was John Buschman.
Buschman was also seen as a suspect by police. Following the killings, Washington County investigators traveled to Florida, where he was living at the time. According to a top investigator, they were able to place Buschman in Wisconsin on the day the Drobacs were murdered.
“Flap probably was worried Rerun would trade information on the Machan murder to get his charges reduced,” theorizes Hinterthuer.
Drobac’s mother believes it was another Outlaw who pulled the trigger, one who used crutches when he walked. On the living room carpet leading from her son’s body was a curious set of marks that appeared to be made by someone dragging his feet.
Three weeks after the Drobac murders, police reported a suspicious death in Racine County. Terry Haegele, a 35-year-old Outlaw known by police as a drug addict, died of an apparent intravenous overdose in the town of Raymond. Two separate autopsies were performed and two toxicology reports showed that Haegele’s body contained amphetamines, cocaine, codeine, methadone, opiates and the muscle relaxant benzodiazepine – a lethal witches’ brew of illicit drugs.
Haegele, who lived in Sussex, was better known by his Outlaws nickname, “Four Foot.” When he walked, he used crutches.
On a wintry night in December 1988, a year after the Drobac murders, Milwaukee police detectives arrested William Cresca for auto theft. Cresca was yet another Outlaw who had worked years ago with the Sussex car theft ring.
He also had been a close friend of murder victim Michael Drobac.
The arresting detectives, Peter Simet and Richard Weibel, grilled the car thief about his latest haul.
But Cresca had something else on his mind.
“If I had some information about a murder,” he said, “and I showed you where the body’s buried, would you guys make a deal on the car?”
The detectives were reluctant, but they listened to Cresca as he described a grave in a storage garage somewhere on a Town of Waukesha farm – in a garage that belonged to an uncle of John Buschman.
“Okay,” said Simet. “Take us to the body.”
As snow drifted across the highway, they drove to Waukesha, with Cresca directing the detectives to a dead-end road and a small farm owned by the Letko family. Sitting in the squad car, he took a piece of paper and sketched the floor plan of the sheet-metal storage garage that stood adjacent to a barn.
“If you dig right here,” he said, marking a spot on the drawing, “you’ll find the body.”
Three days later, on the morning of December 8, with consent of the farm’s owner, a team of police returned to the farm. They hauled out a few junk cars, old tires and engine blocks from the garage. They set up a portable heater to cut the icy cold and fired up a leased backhoe. Checking Cresca’s diagram, they began to scrape away at a layer of pea gravel in a corner of the garage.
They dug for hours, pulling out boulders, shoveling out buckets and buckets of dirt until, suddenly, a shovel uncovered the ghoulish form of a human skull.
Willy Cresca was a career criminal, known by law enforcement throughout the area as a disreputable source. But this time, he was telling the truth. A body had been buried in the garage.
All day and into the night, investigators dug, working on their hands and knees, scraping at the ground with trowels and paint brushes, sifting through the dirt for anything that might be evidence.
“Got the teeth,” announced a detective.
Minutes later: “This is the right arm.”
And the form of a human began to appear, an arm flung above its head, the legs unnaturally bent sideways. Sprinkled over the form was a white powder, determined by police to be lime.
More than a dozen investigators from Waukesha and Milwaukee converged on the site – police and prosecutors and medical examiners, all of them well-versed on the history of the unsolved Outlaws cases. The sheet-metal garage once used by John Buschman to store old cars was transformed into an archaeological dig.
Just before midnight, investigators had unearthed a full human skeleton.
Weeks later, in several interviews with detective Hinterthuer, Willy Cresca went further with his story. In one discussion, held at the Waukesha County Jail, Cresca got to talking about the death of his friend Drobac.
Suddenly, he burst into tears.
“That kid that they killed was my kid,” he said, explaining that he and Drobac’s wife had had an affair. (Police records confirm that Michael Drobac admitted he was not the biological father of Brock Drobac.)
“I know who killed them,” Cresca told Hinterthuer. “I can’t prove it, but I can tell you about another murder, that murder at the Letko farm.”
According to Hinterthuer and a report with the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department, Cresca admitted he was at the farm when a body was buried. He knew the identify of the victim – and the killers.
In the summer of 1978, Cresca and Drobac were operating a chop shop together at 35th and Vliet streets in Milwaukee. One day, Drobac told Cresca to meet him at the Letko farm in Waukesha.
Police speculated that Buschman and Drobac had lured Cliff Machan to the Waukesha farm by telling Machan they’d bought him a Harley and would sponsor him into the Outlaws as a new member.
They also instructed Cresca to meet them at the farm, and when he arrived, gave him a key to Machan’s new Chevy pickup. Cresca’s orders were to take it to his shop in Milwaukee and cut it up.
Cresca drove the pickup to his shop and returned to the farm in another vehicle. Drobac met him outside the storage garage.
“The shit already hit the fan,” he said to Cresca.
Inside, Cliff Machan lay on the ground, shot in the stomach with a 12-gauge shotgun, his faced crushed by the butt of the gun. Beside the body, a grave had been dug.
Cresca threw up. Drobac and Buschman laughed at him as they stripped the body, rolled it into the grave and dusted it with lime to speed its decomposition.
Drobac handed Cresca a paper bag stuffed with Machan’s clothes. The two of them drove to Cresca’s family’s junkyard in the Town of Eagle, where they burned the clothes in a 55-gallon metal drum.
The two then went back to their chop shop at 35th and Vliet and cut up Machan’s pickup. But greed got the better of them. When the job was done, instead of junking all of the parts, they stored the transmission and engine – a 454-cubic-inch Chevy engine in mint condition – at the junkyard.
Just days after the killing, Buschman moved his family to Florida, says Hinter-thuer. With a stack of cash, he set up an auto body shop in the Keys.
An autopsy by the Waukesha County medical examiner found the skeletal remains to be that of an adult male, 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-9 inches tall, roughly the same height as Machan. The autopsy also showed that the jaw and nose had been broken and three ribs had been cracked before death.
A forensic dentist examined the teeth and skull, but dental records and medical X-rays of Machan could not be located for comparison. The State Crime Laboratory did a comparison of photographs taken of the skull and Machan’s head – known as an “in-camera superimposition.” But the photos did not match.
Hinterthuer suggested DNA testing, and a year after the discovery of the skeleton, the medical examiner sent one left rib to an East Coast laboratory for examination. But in 1991, DNA testing was still a young science and researchers were unable to come up with enough DNA material in the decomposed rib bone to complete a valid test.
Shortly after the remains were unearthed, police interviewed John Buschman in a Detroit jail. He had been arrested for bringing in large amounts of cash from Canada through Port Huron, Michigan, apparently as part of a money-laundering scheme. On his finger, he wore a huge diamond ring, suspiciously resembling one worn by Cliff Machan. But the ring was not confiscated as evidence, and by the time Milwaukee detectives heard about it from the feds, it had been released by the jail to an unknown party at Buschman’s request.
Investigators were frustrated. Without a positive identification of the skeleton, Case No. 88-1790 remained one without a name, labeled an “unknown skeleton.” No homicide report was filed and no arrests made.
Some time after the dig at the Letko farm, Hinterthuer transferred to the criminal intelligence division, where he was responsible for tracking down white supremacists and Satanists and digging into the department’s unsolved homicide files. A plum assignment, he was given wide latitude to chart his own investigations and set his own timetable.
His priority became the Outlaws murders. As he and Simet and other detectives pressed forward, the case became a forensic science mystery fraught with obstacles.
In August 1991, Hinterthuer, Simet and an agent with the state Division of Criminal Investigation persuaded Waukesha County DA Paul Bucher to authorize another excavation, this time at Machan’s former farm. Based on the testimony that had been collected, police believed the bodies of Joe Stoll and Lou Ann Irby were buried there.
Police used cadaver dogs to explore an open area where a chicken coop once stood, and several “hits” were made by the dogs. Again, a backhoe was brought in, but no remains were found.
The unidentified skeleton, meanwhile, had been packaged in Ziploc plastic bags and sent to an FBI lab in Washington, D.C., for examination. From there, it was forwarded to the curator of the anthropology department at the Smithsonian Institution.
It was here that investigators landed a break, thanks to the Smithsonian. Douglas Ubelaker, a top expert in his field, reported to the Waukesha County medical examiner that he believed the initial photographic superimposition was inaccurate.
“In my opinion, it is very probable that the bones and [Machan’s] photograph originate from the same individual,” he wrote.
Hinterthuer convinced Dr. Lynda Biedrzycki, Waukesha County medical examiner, to submit the bones to another DNA lab for testing. Biedrzycki had inherited the case when she was hired in 1990 and had taken a special interest in the skeleton. She personally lobbied the county board for additional funding and shipped the teeth and bones to a California lab.
Unknown to investigators, the former medical examiner had hired a forensics lab to make a clay reconstruction of the murder victim’s head, based on the unearthed skull. When Biedrzycki took her new job, she informed Hinterthuer of the clay model.
The resemblance to Cliff Machan was striking.
“She showed me a picture of the reconstruction,” says Hinterthuer, “and I hauled out a picture of Cliff, and she said, ‘Wow, it looks just like him.’ ”
In the course of the examinations, an assistant district attorney from Milwaukee County contacted relatives of Machan’s in Colorado, asking if they would submit blood samples in the event any DNA was identified. But the second DNA test also turned up inconclusive. Again, there was not enough usable DNA material available to do genetic typing.
But investigators would not be deterred.
In December 1993, Detective Werra traveled to Washington with Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist on city business. Werra, who had become Norquist’s personal driver, and the mayor met with the FBI’s deputy director and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for any federal assistance in the Outlaws cases.
Months later, Hinterthuer scored a victory when a forensic anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison concurred with the Smithsonian, concluding that there was “a reasonable degree of scientific certainty” that the remains were Machan’s. Hinterthuer then pressed the State Crime Lab to take a second look at the skull, based on the Smithsonian’s procedures, and in early 1994, it reversed its initial finding, agreeing that the skeletal remains were compatible with Machan.
“Finally, we had everybody on the same page,” says Hinterthuer.
The remains were discovered in the jurisdiction of Waukesha County. But Waukesha County refused to open a homicide case. And in a blow to the investigators, Biedrzycki resigned as medical examiner to take a fellowship at Harvard University. To the new medical examiner and to District Attorney Paul Bucher, the evidence still was not strong enough.
In July 1994, a task force made up of federal, state and local agents was formed to investigate the criminal activities of the Wisconsin Outlaws. Hinterthuer was one of five Milwaukee Police officers appointed to the unit.
Hinterthuer had become obsessed with the unsolved Outlaws murders. He was sure the skeletal remains from Waukesha were Machan’s and sure a case could be built that would finger John Buschman as Machan’s murderer. Silencing witnesses to hide the truth about the Anstett bombing, Hinterthuer reasoned, was the motive for the killing of Machan, the shootings of the Drobacs and the disappearance of Joe Stoll and Lou Ann Irby.
Bucher was unconvinced. More evidence, he told the investigators, bring me more evidence.
And they did.
With the help of state and Waukesha County investigators, they tracked down medical X-rays of Cliff Machan and confirmed through a local chiropractor that Machan had suffered a shoulder injury, which was consistent with the X-rays and skeletal evidence.
They confirmed that Buschman was renting the storage garage at the Letko farm when Machan disappeared and that a load of pea gravel was delivered to the garage around the time Machan’s grave presumably had been dug.
They confirmed that the engine to Machan’s cut-up Chevy pickup had been sold by Willy Cresca to a Waukesha County farmer.
They confirmed that the explosive used in the Anstett bombing was in fact TNT and that the shrapnel was made up of spent welding rods. A cake of defused TNT was later traced to informant Billy Wadsworth in northern Illinois, lending credibility to Wadsworth’s claim that he and Buschman stole the TNT and that Wadsworth had seen the bomb being assembled.
But it still wasn’t enough.
“We would get the evidence Bucher asked for,” says one former detective, “then he’d backstep and say, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’ And without a reason. He just kept moving the yardstick.”
Investigators decided to try the federal system. Federal prosecutors suggested bringing charges against Buschman under the RICO act, the organized-crime statute used last fall to convict members of the Wisconsin/Stateline chapter of the Outlaws. Under RICO, an individual associated with an organized group could be prosecuted for a series of criminal activities. Conceivably, prosecutors could reach back in time to the 1974 bombing.
A federal grand jury was convened. Although grand jury testimony is always made in secret, several sources say testimony was taken of Willy Cresca, Billy Wadsworth and Cliff Machan’s girlfriend, among others, based on the interviews Hinterthuer and other detectives had already done.
The case, however, didn’t meet federal requirements under RICO, and with the approval of U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller, the sworn grand jury testimony was handed back to Milwaukee and Waukesha counties.
A meeting was called at the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department with state and local investigators. At the meeting, Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams offered to act as a special prosecutor in the case against Buschman.
But Bucher turned down the offer.
Bucher was reluctant to talk with Milwaukee Magazine about details of the case and declined to say specifically what evidence he believed was lacking.
“I did not have evidence that was sufficient for us to issue charges,” says Bucher. “It was not there.”
In May 1995, “Billy the Kid” Wadsworth surfaced again in Milwaukee. His girlfriend was facing a jail sentence in Waukesha for passing bad checks and Wadsworth was willing to make a deal with the district attorney to get her freed. He was ready to speak out about the Outlaw slayings, this time publicly. He even agreed to several interviews with local newspaper and TV reporters, claiming he could set the record straight on the murders of Cliff Machan, the Drobac family and Larry Anstett.
It was a risky move, Wadsworth says, looking back. According to Wadsworth, the DA offered to place him in a witness protection program.
But the deal fell through.
“Talk was cheap,” says Bucher. “When I wanted more than talk, the price was too high.” Wadsworth, he says, wouldn’t agree to his ground rules.
Wadsworth, though, says it was Bucher who poisoned the deal, upping the ante by adding more charges against his girlfriend.
“I wanted him to let my girlfriend out of jail, let her out on bond,” says Wadsworth. “I didn’t ask for him to do any political favors. Just let her out.”
The ball remained in Bucher’s court. He had the grand jury testimony, including the transcript of Wadsworth’s testimony. He had all the evidence the investigators could muster.
But Bucher wouldn’t budge.
“We thought, ‘What more can we do?’ ” says Hinterthuer. “Our hands were tied. We had done virtually everything we could. There was nobody else out there we could talk to, there was no additional evidence that existed.”
Hinterthuer had had enough. In May 1997, after 30 years of duty, he retired from the Milwaukee Police Department. When he left, he tried to get detectives in Waukesha and Milwaukee to pick up the ball on the cases. But no one would.
“I was of the opinion that unless someone came forward to testify or one of the Outlaws traded information, the case would die,” says Hinterthuer.
He still harbors resentment toward Bucher for not pushing harder on the Machan case. Possibly Bucher was intimidated by the Outlaws, Hinterthuer speculates. Or possibly his aspirations to one day run for political office – specifically, the job of state attorney general – got in the way of pursuing a case that was risky.
“To have it die because of one demigod out in Waukesha? That’s obscene,” says Hinterthuer.
Bucher discounts the claims that he was intimidated or that his judgment was impaired by political ambition. He commends Hinterthuer and Simet for their “persistence” but says the difficulty in identifying the skeletal remains was not the only stumbling block.
“All the other proof that you build your case on just isn’t there,” he says. “I’m not afraid of sticking my neck out.… [But] ethically, we have standards that you have to go on. It’s just not there. It’s close, but it’s just not there.”
Bucher leaves the door open for more DNA testing or even the issuance of criminal charges in the future. “It’s an unsolved homicide,” he says. “There may be, someday, sufficient corroborating evidence that will come forward so that we may proceed.”
Today, with witnesses long scattered, the homicide cases are cold – but not dead. After scoring a huge win last year with 16 convictions in federal court, the Outlaws task force continues its probe. Next in line is the Milwaukee chapter. According to a key investigator, at least one Outlaw death is being examined – the mysterious drug overdose of Terry “Four Foot” Haegele. Suspected in the murder of the Drobac family, Haegele was found dead in the home of Tom Sienkowski, the current Milwaukee Outlaws boss.
To this day, investigators have not concluded whether the intravenous overdose was accidental or not.
Ralph Anstett Jr. visits his brother Larry’s grave every year with his sisters, brothers and father.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Larry was still alive,” he says. “We still hope that this case will be solved, every day we hope. It’s been bad for us. We lost part of our family. And we feel somebody should pay for the loss.”
Victims and survivors, cops and culprits. In the long aftermath, the line that separates grows immaterial.
Michael Vermilyea, the target of the 1974 bombing, lives somewhere in Waukesha County, popping up now and then in a biker bar. Willy Cresca, the car thief turned accomplice, floats in and out of jail on one charge of theft after the next, estranged from his family and friends.
Informant Billy Wadsworth, meanwhile, drifts aimlessly through the southern states, looking for a foothold since his release from jail last June. Wadsworth was convicted in Mississippi for using a bogus name and Social Security number on a job application.
From time to time, he makes it up to Milwaukee. “But I tiptoe,” he says through a nervous laugh in a telephone interview. “I just get so apprehensive. I see people that know me and they know other people, too. And all they have to do is just say, hey, guess where what’s-his-name is? And boom. They’d shoot me as quick as they’d shoot anybody else.”
Milwaukee Police detective Peter Simet resigned last summer and now works for Harley-Davidson. Former detective Don Werra serves as police chief of Milwaukee’s housing authority and is a member of the Milwaukee Public School board. Dr. Lynda Biedrzycki returned to Wisconsin and her former job as Waukesha County medical examiner in 1998. Down the hall from her office, on a shelf in the morgue’s refrigerated cooler, an “unknown skeleton” is packed in a cardboard box marked “Case No. 88-1790.”
And somewhere in Florida, John Wayne Buschman remains a free man.
Roger Hinterthuer resides in a suburb south of Tucson. At 56, he enjoys his retirement, golfing nearly every morning and taking time to play the piano that occupies his spacious living room.
For Hinterthuer, though, the challenge is to focus on the present instead of the past.
Seldom is he entirely successful.
In a closet in Hinterthuer’s desert home, 10 storage boxes are stacked against a wall. Each is filled with files – arrest records, interview transcripts, crime scene photos, autopsy reports – the product of years and years of homicide investigations.
Hinterthuer doesn’t need the files to jog his memory. He knows each name, each date, each episode by heart.
He admits that the unsolved murders have left him with a jaundiced view of the world.
“I’m disappointed that they haven’t been charged,” he says. “You sit on your hands and witnesses die and people disappear, and then you have no case. It’s justice denied.”
Senior Editor Kurt Chandler’s last feature was November’s The Sinking of the Linda-E
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Hey Jessica
Shouting madVoter ID, voter fraud have tempers flaring in Madison
By JESSICA McBRIDE
March 8, 2008
You think it's just the Dem's. Hang onto your socks. Waiting for the DOJ to get their papers and then we'll post the Repubs here
In my media writing class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I assign a simulated news reporting assignment involving a fake school board meeting.
This semester, the fake school board members got into a fistfight to create "conflict" news value. After creating the assignment, I briefly wondered whether or not the fistfight was too unrealistic.
Journalism students, meet the state Legislature.
The headline this week: Democrats, Republicans get in shouting match at news conference. The picture with the story shows two lawmakers confronting one another and a frazzled looking Rep. Jeff Stone in between, like a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
According to the story, the Republicans called the news conference because they wanted Senate Democrats to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to require photo IDs when voting.
The Democrats, who showed up at a news conference they didn’t call, alleged that they just didn’t agree with Republicans on the issue. No kidding. They were shouting at Republicans at a news conference.
The Republicans weren’t angry because the Democrats oppose photo ID (although I am sure that hacks them off too). They called the news conference to highlight the fact that Democrats were bottling up the proposal so no one would have to put their name to a vote on whether to allow the public to ultimately decide the matter. That’s exactly what then happened.
Democrats don’t trust the public to make up its own mind. Nor do they want the public to know which Democrats don’t want to let them make up their own mind. And they’re really upset that Republicans want the public to get to make up its own mind. Period.
The voter fraud/photo ID issue took on new currency recently when someone in the Milwaukee Police Department leaked a fairly old report to the media on the 2004 presidential election. It found that campaign workers from other states were voting here possibly contrary to our laws; record keeping was so shoddy it invited fraud; thousands more ballots were counted than people listed as voting; on-site registration forms were not filled out properly; felons voted illegally; and other problems.
Democrats argue that Republicans haven’t proven fraud. Yes, they have. The police proved that. There was fraud. The scope of it is largely unknown due to the wide-open, poorly documented system. So, Democrats can’t prove fraud didn’t occur. They can just argue Republicans haven’t documented how much of it happened.
Why don’t Democrats spend their energy implementing reasonable safeguards to make sure it’s not easy for a lot of fraud to happen? (Like photo ID). The answer is fairly obvious if you look at which party benefits from the documented problems.
The police report advocated policy changes: An elimination to same-day registration and photo ID at the polls. Wisconsin’s loose laws on both create an invitation to fraud or, at least, no strong safeguard against it.
Gov. Jim Doyle then told the media he didn’t think the police should be suggesting policy and the police chief, who didn’t know about the report’s release, had a fit about it, saying he hadn’t authorized it and didn’t know who put it out.
The real question the media didn’t focus on: Why did the police sit on this information for so long without releasing it? The nonrelease could be seen as political.
If Milwaukee police find systematic illegalities - or a messed up situation that makes it impossible to tell - why shouldn’t they propose fixes? After all, they’re the ones who have to clean up the mess, wasting their resources on a problem with a partial solution. Law enforcement types propose policy all the time - tougher drunken driving laws, opposing (or supporting) concealed carry.
I can appreciate, though, why the police chief wouldn’t want his underlings to do so without his signing off on it. So why did Nan Hegerty, the former police chief once named by a Democratic president to a top federal position, sit on the report?
There’s some truth in the middle on the photo ID debate, of course. It’s true, as Democrats say, that photo ID won’t prevent all fraud. It’s true that widespread, organized fraud hasn’t been proven.
It’s also true that there’s enough evidence of a problem to put into place additional safeguards to ensure it’s tougher to commit fraud at the polls. Furthermore, the Democratic arguments against the measure are not sound.
Their key argument that photo ID will disenfranchise poor blacks is patronizing and racist, especially since Republican proposals ensure that poor people can get IDs. It implies that poor blacks are somehow less capable of figuring out how to get a free photo ID. Pretty insulting.
Furthermore, if getting a photo ID is a greater problem for some groups, then spurring an educational outreach campaign is the better answer.
Let’s just revisit the past few years. Felons voting illegally, smokes for votes, tire slashings, double voting, illegalities in voter registration drives, and so on.
If nothing else, photo ID will deter some fraud by making it clear that people are watching the system more closely.
Yes, the Milwaukee police officers who wrote that report were right. Whoever they are.
By JESSICA McBRIDE
March 8, 2008
You think it's just the Dem's. Hang onto your socks. Waiting for the DOJ to get their papers and then we'll post the Repubs here
In my media writing class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I assign a simulated news reporting assignment involving a fake school board meeting.
This semester, the fake school board members got into a fistfight to create "conflict" news value. After creating the assignment, I briefly wondered whether or not the fistfight was too unrealistic.
Journalism students, meet the state Legislature.
The headline this week: Democrats, Republicans get in shouting match at news conference. The picture with the story shows two lawmakers confronting one another and a frazzled looking Rep. Jeff Stone in between, like a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
According to the story, the Republicans called the news conference because they wanted Senate Democrats to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to require photo IDs when voting.
The Democrats, who showed up at a news conference they didn’t call, alleged that they just didn’t agree with Republicans on the issue. No kidding. They were shouting at Republicans at a news conference.
The Republicans weren’t angry because the Democrats oppose photo ID (although I am sure that hacks them off too). They called the news conference to highlight the fact that Democrats were bottling up the proposal so no one would have to put their name to a vote on whether to allow the public to ultimately decide the matter. That’s exactly what then happened.
Democrats don’t trust the public to make up its own mind. Nor do they want the public to know which Democrats don’t want to let them make up their own mind. And they’re really upset that Republicans want the public to get to make up its own mind. Period.
The voter fraud/photo ID issue took on new currency recently when someone in the Milwaukee Police Department leaked a fairly old report to the media on the 2004 presidential election. It found that campaign workers from other states were voting here possibly contrary to our laws; record keeping was so shoddy it invited fraud; thousands more ballots were counted than people listed as voting; on-site registration forms were not filled out properly; felons voted illegally; and other problems.
Democrats argue that Republicans haven’t proven fraud. Yes, they have. The police proved that. There was fraud. The scope of it is largely unknown due to the wide-open, poorly documented system. So, Democrats can’t prove fraud didn’t occur. They can just argue Republicans haven’t documented how much of it happened.
Why don’t Democrats spend their energy implementing reasonable safeguards to make sure it’s not easy for a lot of fraud to happen? (Like photo ID). The answer is fairly obvious if you look at which party benefits from the documented problems.
The police report advocated policy changes: An elimination to same-day registration and photo ID at the polls. Wisconsin’s loose laws on both create an invitation to fraud or, at least, no strong safeguard against it.
Gov. Jim Doyle then told the media he didn’t think the police should be suggesting policy and the police chief, who didn’t know about the report’s release, had a fit about it, saying he hadn’t authorized it and didn’t know who put it out.
The real question the media didn’t focus on: Why did the police sit on this information for so long without releasing it? The nonrelease could be seen as political.
If Milwaukee police find systematic illegalities - or a messed up situation that makes it impossible to tell - why shouldn’t they propose fixes? After all, they’re the ones who have to clean up the mess, wasting their resources on a problem with a partial solution. Law enforcement types propose policy all the time - tougher drunken driving laws, opposing (or supporting) concealed carry.
I can appreciate, though, why the police chief wouldn’t want his underlings to do so without his signing off on it. So why did Nan Hegerty, the former police chief once named by a Democratic president to a top federal position, sit on the report?
There’s some truth in the middle on the photo ID debate, of course. It’s true, as Democrats say, that photo ID won’t prevent all fraud. It’s true that widespread, organized fraud hasn’t been proven.
It’s also true that there’s enough evidence of a problem to put into place additional safeguards to ensure it’s tougher to commit fraud at the polls. Furthermore, the Democratic arguments against the measure are not sound.
Their key argument that photo ID will disenfranchise poor blacks is patronizing and racist, especially since Republican proposals ensure that poor people can get IDs. It implies that poor blacks are somehow less capable of figuring out how to get a free photo ID. Pretty insulting.
Furthermore, if getting a photo ID is a greater problem for some groups, then spurring an educational outreach campaign is the better answer.
Let’s just revisit the past few years. Felons voting illegally, smokes for votes, tire slashings, double voting, illegalities in voter registration drives, and so on.
If nothing else, photo ID will deter some fraud by making it clear that people are watching the system more closely.
Yes, the Milwaukee police officers who wrote that report were right. Whoever they are.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Bucher wants paper to do his job
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Bucher wants paper to do his job
Republicans are chortling over an exchange between Waukesha DA Paul Bucher and AG Peg Lautenschlager, whose job he's seeking. They think Bucher scored some real points. I think he comes off looking like someone asking the newspaper to do his job.The tit-for-tat exchanges are about political telephone calls at state expense, made by a former staffer to State Sen. Alberta Darling. The staffer, Chris Slinker, resigned instead of being fired, and is now running for the Assembly. The calls went to a political consultant working on local races, not on Darling's campaign.Lautenschlager thinks someone should look into the 226 calls, and offered to help Bucher, who didn't seem to be doing it himself.Bucher fired off a sharp reply telling the AG to “rest assured I will take care of him if the facts justify a criminal investigation.â€So far, Bucher's investigation has been to write a letter to the Journal Sentinel, asking for any information they have, since they wrote the stories about Slinker's phone calls.To no one's surprise, except possibly Bucher's, the newspaper did not tell its reporter to give Bucher the information. (Surely his wife, a former Journal Sentinel reporter, didn't expect the paper would hand it over -- or did she?)The newspaper's story was based on information obtained in an open records request from the State Senate chief clerk. All Bucher needs to do is to make a request for the same information and he will have everything the newspaper has.If you want to read some of the cute lines in the back and forth between Lautenschlager, Bucher, and others, www.wispolitics.com has them all posted.
Bucher wants paper to do his job
Republicans are chortling over an exchange between Waukesha DA Paul Bucher and AG Peg Lautenschlager, whose job he's seeking. They think Bucher scored some real points. I think he comes off looking like someone asking the newspaper to do his job.The tit-for-tat exchanges are about political telephone calls at state expense, made by a former staffer to State Sen. Alberta Darling. The staffer, Chris Slinker, resigned instead of being fired, and is now running for the Assembly. The calls went to a political consultant working on local races, not on Darling's campaign.Lautenschlager thinks someone should look into the 226 calls, and offered to help Bucher, who didn't seem to be doing it himself.Bucher fired off a sharp reply telling the AG to “rest assured I will take care of him if the facts justify a criminal investigation.â€So far, Bucher's investigation has been to write a letter to the Journal Sentinel, asking for any information they have, since they wrote the stories about Slinker's phone calls.To no one's surprise, except possibly Bucher's, the newspaper did not tell its reporter to give Bucher the information. (Surely his wife, a former Journal Sentinel reporter, didn't expect the paper would hand it over -- or did she?)The newspaper's story was based on information obtained in an open records request from the State Senate chief clerk. All Bucher needs to do is to make a request for the same information and he will have everything the newspaper has.If you want to read some of the cute lines in the back and forth between Lautenschlager, Bucher, and others, www.wispolitics.com has them all posted.
Hold that thought
A: Paul Bucher - My record as DA really speaks to this issue. I am probably one of the only DA's in the state that has actually prosecuted open record/meetings cases. Recently I filed an open records complaint against the Mayor of Muskego. I also recently prosecuted the Waukesha School Board for open meetings violations. I have also recently taken to task the Village of Butler for an open meetings violation. I sponsor an educational seminar every year for local elected officials on compliance with open records/meetings law. I don't see that changing.
Bucher is wrong
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Bucher is wrong on open records issue
Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher is blasting Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager for suing Bucher's co-Republican, State Rep. Jeff Stone, for not complying with the Open Records law.Open Records enforcement is a key part of the job of Attorney General and should remain that way. It's really disturbing -- downright scary, actually -- that Bucher does not think preserving public access to government records is a priority.Stone was a major player in secret negotiations to hand county-owned Mitchell International Airport over to private interests, and to strip any ability of Milwaukee or Milwaukee County to oversee a major facility within their borders.County Supervisor Richard Nyklewicz, whose district includes the airport, filed an open records request with Stone for documents related to the proprosed airport grab.The sequence of events, according to the Journal Sentinel: Stone announced on Dec. 29 that he would introduce the airport takeover bill, and Nyklewicz that same day filed his open records request. Stone replied that he would not give Nyklewicz the information until after the bill was introduced. Despite a second request from Nyklewicz, Stone did not turn over the information until March 7 -- the day a public hearing was held on the bill, and four days after the legislation was introduced.Bucher issued a press release yesterday that said: “This Attorney General has made the decision to file lawsuits that further her own political agenda, regardless of the costs to the taxpayers. When will this end? The taxpayers are the real victims here and will have to once again pay the bill for legal counsel and the waste of limited resources,” Bucher said.What garbage. Residents of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County were the first victims here -- they were mugged by sleazy political maneuvering by Stone and his legislative co-conspirators State Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) and Mark Honadel State Rep. (R-South Milwaukee) and their cronies at the MMAC.Nyklewicz, who was doing his job when he filed the records request, was a victim as well, of a politician so arrogant he thinks he is above the law. The law is clear -- records have to be turned over in a timely fashion, not when the person holding the records finds it convenient to do so.Lautenschlager is doing the right thing here. The courts should come down hard on Stone.
Bucher is wrong on open records issue
Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher is blasting Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager for suing Bucher's co-Republican, State Rep. Jeff Stone, for not complying with the Open Records law.Open Records enforcement is a key part of the job of Attorney General and should remain that way. It's really disturbing -- downright scary, actually -- that Bucher does not think preserving public access to government records is a priority.Stone was a major player in secret negotiations to hand county-owned Mitchell International Airport over to private interests, and to strip any ability of Milwaukee or Milwaukee County to oversee a major facility within their borders.County Supervisor Richard Nyklewicz, whose district includes the airport, filed an open records request with Stone for documents related to the proprosed airport grab.The sequence of events, according to the Journal Sentinel: Stone announced on Dec. 29 that he would introduce the airport takeover bill, and Nyklewicz that same day filed his open records request. Stone replied that he would not give Nyklewicz the information until after the bill was introduced. Despite a second request from Nyklewicz, Stone did not turn over the information until March 7 -- the day a public hearing was held on the bill, and four days after the legislation was introduced.Bucher issued a press release yesterday that said: “This Attorney General has made the decision to file lawsuits that further her own political agenda, regardless of the costs to the taxpayers. When will this end? The taxpayers are the real victims here and will have to once again pay the bill for legal counsel and the waste of limited resources,” Bucher said.What garbage. Residents of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County were the first victims here -- they were mugged by sleazy political maneuvering by Stone and his legislative co-conspirators State Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) and Mark Honadel State Rep. (R-South Milwaukee) and their cronies at the MMAC.Nyklewicz, who was doing his job when he filed the records request, was a victim as well, of a politician so arrogant he thinks he is above the law. The law is clear -- records have to be turned over in a timely fashion, not when the person holding the records finds it convenient to do so.Lautenschlager is doing the right thing here. The courts should come down hard on Stone.
What's a constitution anyway?
In Waukesha County, Wisconsin, police suspected that some teenagers were serving alcohol at a party. But the cops have a warrant, and the teens wouldn't let them in to confirm their suspicions. Now District Attorney Paul Bucher has told the police to forget such legal niceties: If they suspect underage drinking, they should go right in.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Isn't abusing Federal CIvil Rights for personal reasons a felony?
Civil rights cases at issue for FBI
By LARA JAKES JORDAN Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI is investigating 26 unsolved civil rights era cases out of nearly 100 referred to the bureau over the last year, Director Robert Mueller says in calling the protection of civil liberties one of his top priorities.
Mueller was set to testify Wednesday at an FBI oversight hearing before the Senate. Lawmakers were expected to press him about whether his agents violated the civil rights of U.S. citizens whose personal information was obtained secretly in terror and spy investigations.
In a prepared statement sent Tuesday to the Senate, Mueller vows "to protect the security of our nation while upholding the civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution to every United States citizen."
"It is not enough to prevent foreign countries from stealing our secrets - we must prevent that from happening while still upholding the rule of law," Mueller says. "It is not enough to stop the terrorist - we must stop him while maintaining civil liberties. It is not enough to catch the criminal - we must catch him while respecting his civil rights.
"The rule of law, civil liberties and civil rights - these are not our burdens; they are what make us better," Mueller says in his written remarks, which were obtained by The Associated Press.
Mueller's remarks offer the first details about the FBI's efforts to reopen decades-old civil rights cases since the successful prosecution last summer of a reputed Ku Klux Klansman for his role in the 1964 abduction and killing of two black teenagers.
Early last year, more than 100 unsolved cases were referred to the FBI. Mueller said 95 of them were sent to investigators in 17 field offices around the country. Ultimately, 52 cases were opened and 26 of those were being reviewed by the Justice Department "to determine if additional investigation is necessary," he said.
"For those cases in which we can move forward, we will," he said.
Democrats who control the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, were expected to focus on whether FBI missteps over the last year - in civil rights and other areas - have been corrected.
Senate aides for several Democrats said Mueller will probably be asked about the FBI's use of national security letters, which are used under the USA Patriot Act to pursue suspected terrorists and spies.
An audit last year by the Justice Department's inspector general found that FBI agents and lawyers, from 2003 to 2005, demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers, credit bureaus and other businesses without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances.
The inspector general is expected to issue a follow-up audit at any time that will focus on the FBI's use of national security letters in 2006. Several Justice Department and FBI officials familiar with the upcoming report say it will conclude that the letters were wrongly used at a similar rate as during the previous three years.
But the officials noted that the new audit only examines national security letters that were issued before the FBI was notified of the problems in March 2007 and changed its system. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the audit publicly.
Senate aides said Mueller also probably will be asked about the FBI's failure to pay phone bills on time, prompting telephone companies to cut off wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals. In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," according to a January internal Justice audit.
FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our
By LARA JAKES JORDAN Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI is investigating 26 unsolved civil rights era cases out of nearly 100 referred to the bureau over the last year, Director Robert Mueller says in calling the protection of civil liberties one of his top priorities.
Mueller was set to testify Wednesday at an FBI oversight hearing before the Senate. Lawmakers were expected to press him about whether his agents violated the civil rights of U.S. citizens whose personal information was obtained secretly in terror and spy investigations.
In a prepared statement sent Tuesday to the Senate, Mueller vows "to protect the security of our nation while upholding the civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution to every United States citizen."
"It is not enough to prevent foreign countries from stealing our secrets - we must prevent that from happening while still upholding the rule of law," Mueller says. "It is not enough to stop the terrorist - we must stop him while maintaining civil liberties. It is not enough to catch the criminal - we must catch him while respecting his civil rights.
"The rule of law, civil liberties and civil rights - these are not our burdens; they are what make us better," Mueller says in his written remarks, which were obtained by The Associated Press.
Mueller's remarks offer the first details about the FBI's efforts to reopen decades-old civil rights cases since the successful prosecution last summer of a reputed Ku Klux Klansman for his role in the 1964 abduction and killing of two black teenagers.
Early last year, more than 100 unsolved cases were referred to the FBI. Mueller said 95 of them were sent to investigators in 17 field offices around the country. Ultimately, 52 cases were opened and 26 of those were being reviewed by the Justice Department "to determine if additional investigation is necessary," he said.
"For those cases in which we can move forward, we will," he said.
Democrats who control the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, were expected to focus on whether FBI missteps over the last year - in civil rights and other areas - have been corrected.
Senate aides for several Democrats said Mueller will probably be asked about the FBI's use of national security letters, which are used under the USA Patriot Act to pursue suspected terrorists and spies.
An audit last year by the Justice Department's inspector general found that FBI agents and lawyers, from 2003 to 2005, demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers, credit bureaus and other businesses without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances.
The inspector general is expected to issue a follow-up audit at any time that will focus on the FBI's use of national security letters in 2006. Several Justice Department and FBI officials familiar with the upcoming report say it will conclude that the letters were wrongly used at a similar rate as during the previous three years.
But the officials noted that the new audit only examines national security letters that were issued before the FBI was notified of the problems in March 2007 and changed its system. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the audit publicly.
Senate aides said Mueller also probably will be asked about the FBI's failure to pay phone bills on time, prompting telephone companies to cut off wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals. In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," according to a January internal Justice audit.
FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our
Sunday, March 2, 2008
WAUKESHA DA CHALLENGES CHMURA
BOTH SAY THEY'RE EAGER FOR TRIAL
By
The war of words between Waukesha County district attorney and aformer Green Bay Packer accused of sexual assault intensified Sunday, as theprosecutor called on the alleged felon, Mark Chmura, to go to trial as soon aspossible.
The district attorney's challenge followed Chmura's first extended publicinterview since he was charged with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl ata post-prom party on April 9. In the interview Saturday, Chmura claimed hewanted to go to trial as soon as possible.``All we ever wanted was a trial date,'' District Attorney Paul Bucher saidSunday. ``If this is what you want, I call your bluff. Let's go to trial.Let's go to trial tomorrow.''
A trial date has not been set. The case has been mired for months inpre-trial motions, many filed by Chmura's attorney. The former Packer haspleaded not guilty to felony charges of third-degree sexual assault and childenticement, which could land him in prison for a maximum of 40 years.
Also in response to Chmura's interview, the family of the young woman whohas accused him of sexual assault criticized the interview, through aspokesman Sunday, as a public relations ploy.
``Mr. Chmura's interview was an obvious attempt to claim his innocence and,in a not too subtle way, influence future jurors,'' family attorney RobertHabush said Sunday.
Chmura's accuser, who is now 18, has not made any public statements anddeclined to respond personally to his interview.
Chmura granted a 90-minute interview to the Milwaukee Journal-SentinelSaturday, in which he talked about the pain these allegations have caused hisfamily, their unwavering support for him and his ultimate desire to return tofootball.
He said people are wrong to make assumptions about why he was at thepost-prom party. Chmura said he had planned to play golf with the party'shost, Robert Gessert, in Chicago early the next morning. The trial forGessert, who has been charged with second-degree sexual assault andmisdemeanor fourth-degree sexual assault involving another young woman, hasbeen separated from Chmura's.
He said as a teenager, he would have been delighted to see a football starat a party.
``My friend Bob and his daughter thought it would be nice if I showed up.Some of those kids were football players,'' he said.
``It was a celebration. I was excited that I had just gotten done withmini-camp, my neck was feeling great, I was going to return to something Iloved doing -- that is, playing football for the Green Bay Packers.''
In the interview, Chmura said he was eager to tell his story in court. ``Iknow what happened. I know everything,'' he said. ``Let's go to courttomorrow. Let's go. Set the trial for tomorrow, nine o'clock, and I'll bethere. OK? Let's go.''
Neither the district attorney nor Chmura's attorney, Gerald Boyle, hasasked Waukesha County Circuit Judge Mark Gempeler to set a trial date.
Chmura's attorney has filed numerous motions since the charges wereleveled. One under consideration requests dismissal of the charges. Anothermotion from Boyle asks the judge for separate trials on the two charges.
Chmura's attorney also has asked that any trial be held outside WaukeshaCounty, citing unfair publicity in the Milwaukee area.
BOTH SAY THEY'RE EAGER FOR TRIAL
By
The war of words between Waukesha County district attorney and aformer Green Bay Packer accused of sexual assault intensified Sunday, as theprosecutor called on the alleged felon, Mark Chmura, to go to trial as soon aspossible.
The district attorney's challenge followed Chmura's first extended publicinterview since he was charged with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl ata post-prom party on April 9. In the interview Saturday, Chmura claimed hewanted to go to trial as soon as possible.``All we ever wanted was a trial date,'' District Attorney Paul Bucher saidSunday. ``If this is what you want, I call your bluff. Let's go to trial.Let's go to trial tomorrow.''
A trial date has not been set. The case has been mired for months inpre-trial motions, many filed by Chmura's attorney. The former Packer haspleaded not guilty to felony charges of third-degree sexual assault and childenticement, which could land him in prison for a maximum of 40 years.
Also in response to Chmura's interview, the family of the young woman whohas accused him of sexual assault criticized the interview, through aspokesman Sunday, as a public relations ploy.
``Mr. Chmura's interview was an obvious attempt to claim his innocence and,in a not too subtle way, influence future jurors,'' family attorney RobertHabush said Sunday.
Chmura's accuser, who is now 18, has not made any public statements anddeclined to respond personally to his interview.
Chmura granted a 90-minute interview to the Milwaukee Journal-SentinelSaturday, in which he talked about the pain these allegations have caused hisfamily, their unwavering support for him and his ultimate desire to return tofootball.
He said people are wrong to make assumptions about why he was at thepost-prom party. Chmura said he had planned to play golf with the party'shost, Robert Gessert, in Chicago early the next morning. The trial forGessert, who has been charged with second-degree sexual assault andmisdemeanor fourth-degree sexual assault involving another young woman, hasbeen separated from Chmura's.
He said as a teenager, he would have been delighted to see a football starat a party.
``My friend Bob and his daughter thought it would be nice if I showed up.Some of those kids were football players,'' he said.
``It was a celebration. I was excited that I had just gotten done withmini-camp, my neck was feeling great, I was going to return to something Iloved doing -- that is, playing football for the Green Bay Packers.''
In the interview, Chmura said he was eager to tell his story in court. ``Iknow what happened. I know everything,'' he said. ``Let's go to courttomorrow. Let's go. Set the trial for tomorrow, nine o'clock, and I'll bethere. OK? Let's go.''
Neither the district attorney nor Chmura's attorney, Gerald Boyle, hasasked Waukesha County Circuit Judge Mark Gempeler to set a trial date.
Chmura's attorney has filed numerous motions since the charges wereleveled. One under consideration requests dismissal of the charges. Anothermotion from Boyle asks the judge for separate trials on the two charges.
Chmura's attorney also has asked that any trial be held outside WaukeshaCounty, citing unfair publicity in the Milwaukee area.
WATCHDOG SQUAD MAKES FEW FRIENDS
By By Todd Richmond Associated Press
The state Justice Department's new government watchdog squad has declined to formally investigate three-fourths of the complaints it has taken since it was created a year and a half ago, an Associated Press review found.
Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager set up the Public Integrity Unit to combat misconduct in government. But as the unit's reputation has grown, its seven-person staff has been swamped with quarrels over everything from local zoning ordinances to a stolen guitar.
It all translates to rejected requests and griping that Lautenschlager cares only about cases that might help her get votes.
Robert Chyba, 69, of the town of Osceola, said he sent a letter to Lautenschlager asking her to look into Town Board members. He claimed they kept changing the zoning for the size of commercial farms so Chyba's neighbors could raise horses and sheep on their land. The unit refused a formal probe, saying local officials enjoy broad discretion on enforcing local ordinances and Chyba might want a private attorney.
"Nothing happened," Chyba said. "Apparently they ... only care about bigger cases that help them politically. The town of Osceola isn't going to bring them too many votes."
Monica Burkert-Brist, the assistant attorney general who heads the unit, said few people understand the unit was built to go after cases that can set statewide precedents, not local political battles. She stressed that nearly 100 complaints that didn't warrant a formal probe still got some form of preliminary review.
"We're not a roving commission to do good," Burkert-Brist said. "We're not the way people can solve every grievance about how government operates in their area."
A review of case data the Justice Department provided to the Associated Press showed the unit has received 385 complaints from its inception in 2003 through the first week in February.
According to the review, the unit has formally investigated 88 complaints. The unit has declined or referred to local authorities 167 complaints. Another 95 were reviewed with phone calls or follow-up letters from the unit, but weren't investigated by agents in the field. Thirty-five cases were still open.
"About 50 percent of the complaints we receive we do some sort of investigation or make recommendations," Lautenschlager said. The rest fall into "a Hatfield and McCoy situation."
Burkert-Brist said a letter or phone call from the unit often resolves situations, saving the expense of field investigations and going to court.
The Justice Department always has taken complaints about wrongdoing in government. Lautenschlager went a step further by creating the Public Integrity Unit in August 2003 to crack down on misconduct in government and uphold Wisconsin's open meetings and records laws.
She said she was "dumbfounded" when she took office in early 2003 and discovered 70 percent of the Division of Criminal Investigation's cases dealt with complaints about government. People were losing faith in public officials after five state lawmakers were charged with illegal campaigning in 2002, she said.
She reassigned Burkert-Brist, another attorney and five investigators to form the unit. No new positions were created.
The group, Burkert-Brist said, wants to set statewide precedents by tackling cases that involve recurring problems and issues drawing multiple complaints from around the state, such as whether government officials' e-mails are open records (they are).
The squad has scored some big successes: Two months after the unit was formed, it found the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents violated the state's open meetings law when it approved new salary ranges for top administrators in a secret teleconference. The regents agreed to rescind the new ranges. Last year, the unit forced the city of Rhinelander to release a secret settlement with an insurance company over a landfill cleanup to The Rhinelander Daily News newspaper and WXPR Radio.
Now complaints about government have been pouring into the unit, said Mike Bauer, administrator of the Justice Department's Legal Services Division. Complaints have ranged from town board members skipping their oaths of office to inmates who insist they were railroaded. One person wrote to complain about a UW-Fond du Lac faculty member who allegedly hired himself to star in two plays.
Carol Jennings, 64, of Maiden Rock in northwestern Wisconsin, asked the unit to investigate whether village president Doug Lansing actually lived in St. Paul, Minn., with his fiancee. According to state law, a person must be a resident of the area he or she would represent at the time of the election to legally run. If an elected official moves out of the area, the position becomes vacant.
After Lansing sent the unit utility and property tax bills for his house in Maiden Rock, Justice Department criminal litigation director Steve Tinker sent Jennings a letter saying he couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lansing didn't live in town. Her recourse was to vote against him at election time, Tinker said.
"The injustice multiplies," Jennings said. "How would they respond if they were given a complaint that the mayor of the city of Madison lived in Chicago? They wouldn't stand for it. My conclusion is size matters."
Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, a Republican who is challenging Lautenschlager in the 2006 election, said the unit takes too long to respond to complaints. Lautenschlager is trolling for the big case that will give her the most political mileage, he said.
"She's waiting for that huge matter," Bucher said. "Then she'll handle it."
Lautenschlager denied the unit is politically motivated.
"Quite frankly, the work of this unit seldom makes you political friends," she said. "Instead, it alienates politically involved people statewide, and from both parties."
By By Todd Richmond Associated Press
The state Justice Department's new government watchdog squad has declined to formally investigate three-fourths of the complaints it has taken since it was created a year and a half ago, an Associated Press review found.
Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager set up the Public Integrity Unit to combat misconduct in government. But as the unit's reputation has grown, its seven-person staff has been swamped with quarrels over everything from local zoning ordinances to a stolen guitar.
It all translates to rejected requests and griping that Lautenschlager cares only about cases that might help her get votes.
Robert Chyba, 69, of the town of Osceola, said he sent a letter to Lautenschlager asking her to look into Town Board members. He claimed they kept changing the zoning for the size of commercial farms so Chyba's neighbors could raise horses and sheep on their land. The unit refused a formal probe, saying local officials enjoy broad discretion on enforcing local ordinances and Chyba might want a private attorney.
"Nothing happened," Chyba said. "Apparently they ... only care about bigger cases that help them politically. The town of Osceola isn't going to bring them too many votes."
Monica Burkert-Brist, the assistant attorney general who heads the unit, said few people understand the unit was built to go after cases that can set statewide precedents, not local political battles. She stressed that nearly 100 complaints that didn't warrant a formal probe still got some form of preliminary review.
"We're not a roving commission to do good," Burkert-Brist said. "We're not the way people can solve every grievance about how government operates in their area."
A review of case data the Justice Department provided to the Associated Press showed the unit has received 385 complaints from its inception in 2003 through the first week in February.
According to the review, the unit has formally investigated 88 complaints. The unit has declined or referred to local authorities 167 complaints. Another 95 were reviewed with phone calls or follow-up letters from the unit, but weren't investigated by agents in the field. Thirty-five cases were still open.
"About 50 percent of the complaints we receive we do some sort of investigation or make recommendations," Lautenschlager said. The rest fall into "a Hatfield and McCoy situation."
Burkert-Brist said a letter or phone call from the unit often resolves situations, saving the expense of field investigations and going to court.
The Justice Department always has taken complaints about wrongdoing in government. Lautenschlager went a step further by creating the Public Integrity Unit in August 2003 to crack down on misconduct in government and uphold Wisconsin's open meetings and records laws.
She said she was "dumbfounded" when she took office in early 2003 and discovered 70 percent of the Division of Criminal Investigation's cases dealt with complaints about government. People were losing faith in public officials after five state lawmakers were charged with illegal campaigning in 2002, she said.
She reassigned Burkert-Brist, another attorney and five investigators to form the unit. No new positions were created.
The group, Burkert-Brist said, wants to set statewide precedents by tackling cases that involve recurring problems and issues drawing multiple complaints from around the state, such as whether government officials' e-mails are open records (they are).
The squad has scored some big successes: Two months after the unit was formed, it found the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents violated the state's open meetings law when it approved new salary ranges for top administrators in a secret teleconference. The regents agreed to rescind the new ranges. Last year, the unit forced the city of Rhinelander to release a secret settlement with an insurance company over a landfill cleanup to The Rhinelander Daily News newspaper and WXPR Radio.
Now complaints about government have been pouring into the unit, said Mike Bauer, administrator of the Justice Department's Legal Services Division. Complaints have ranged from town board members skipping their oaths of office to inmates who insist they were railroaded. One person wrote to complain about a UW-Fond du Lac faculty member who allegedly hired himself to star in two plays.
Carol Jennings, 64, of Maiden Rock in northwestern Wisconsin, asked the unit to investigate whether village president Doug Lansing actually lived in St. Paul, Minn., with his fiancee. According to state law, a person must be a resident of the area he or she would represent at the time of the election to legally run. If an elected official moves out of the area, the position becomes vacant.
After Lansing sent the unit utility and property tax bills for his house in Maiden Rock, Justice Department criminal litigation director Steve Tinker sent Jennings a letter saying he couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lansing didn't live in town. Her recourse was to vote against him at election time, Tinker said.
"The injustice multiplies," Jennings said. "How would they respond if they were given a complaint that the mayor of the city of Madison lived in Chicago? They wouldn't stand for it. My conclusion is size matters."
Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, a Republican who is challenging Lautenschlager in the 2006 election, said the unit takes too long to respond to complaints. Lautenschlager is trolling for the big case that will give her the most political mileage, he said.
"She's waiting for that huge matter," Bucher said. "Then she'll handle it."
Lautenschlager denied the unit is politically motivated.
"Quite frankly, the work of this unit seldom makes you political friends," she said. "Instead, it alienates politically involved people statewide, and from both parties."
U.S. ATTORNEY EYES RUN FOR AG
VAN HOLLEN TO RESIGN JAN. 31
By By Kevin Murphy Correspondent for The Capital Times\ The writer retains the copyright for this article
After announcing his resignation as United States attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, J.B. Van Hollen said Tuesday he is mulling a run for state attorney general.
Van Hollen, 38, said he will enter private legal practice until he is ready to announce any political plans.
"I'm definitely considering running for attorney general, but now I'm a U.S. attorney until Jan. 31, and federal law prohibits me from running for office until then." he said.
Van Hollen is looking to follow in the footsteps of Democratic Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, who was also a U.S. attorney in Madison. The U.S. attorney's post is a political appointment; Lautenschlager left the office in 2001 after President Bush was elected, then ran for the attorney general position a year later.
Van Hollen said increasing gun crime prosecutions, working closer with law enforcement agencies within the district and increasing his office's efficiency were his goals when he took office. He said he has largely accomplished those objectives.
"Instead of just adding to those accomplishments, I feel it's now time to move on and try something else," he said.
Van Hollen, a former assistant U.S. attorney, also served as district attorney in Bayfield and Ashland counties in northern Wisconsin.
"His name has been floated out there as a potential attorney general candidate, but I don't know if he has formed a campaign committee," said Chris Lato, spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher also is reportedly considering challenging Lautenschlager, as is state Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin. There are also rumors that at least one Democrat -- possibly Corrections Secretary Matt Frank -- is considering a primary challenge to Lautenschlager, who was convicted of drunken driving in a high-profile case last year.
During Van Hollen's time as U.S. attorney, the number of criminal cases filed has increased significantly -- from 186 in 2003 to 211 in 2004. The office has added a few prosecutors to handle the increased caseload.
Van Hollen ranks the prosecution last year of James Perry, dubbed by media as "the mall rapist," among the notable prosecutions conducted during his term in office. Perry, formerly of Stoughton, pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and was sentenced to 180 years in prison before being convicted in Dane County Circuit Court on sexual assault charges involving 19 victims.
"Perry committed heinous crimes," Van Hollen said in a prepared statement. "He's the type of criminal who should be off our streets for as long as possible, and as a result of our prosecutions he will be serving the rest of his life in prison."
Van Hollen said he and his staff have visited agencies in all of the district's 44 counties.
"Working together, we prosecuted the district's worst offenders," he said in the statement. "And as a result of our joint efforts the number of crimes successfully prosecuted in federal court increased in each year of my term."
VAN HOLLEN TO RESIGN JAN. 31
By By Kevin Murphy Correspondent for The Capital Times\ The writer retains the copyright for this article
After announcing his resignation as United States attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, J.B. Van Hollen said Tuesday he is mulling a run for state attorney general.
Van Hollen, 38, said he will enter private legal practice until he is ready to announce any political plans.
"I'm definitely considering running for attorney general, but now I'm a U.S. attorney until Jan. 31, and federal law prohibits me from running for office until then." he said.
Van Hollen is looking to follow in the footsteps of Democratic Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, who was also a U.S. attorney in Madison. The U.S. attorney's post is a political appointment; Lautenschlager left the office in 2001 after President Bush was elected, then ran for the attorney general position a year later.
Van Hollen said increasing gun crime prosecutions, working closer with law enforcement agencies within the district and increasing his office's efficiency were his goals when he took office. He said he has largely accomplished those objectives.
"Instead of just adding to those accomplishments, I feel it's now time to move on and try something else," he said.
Van Hollen, a former assistant U.S. attorney, also served as district attorney in Bayfield and Ashland counties in northern Wisconsin.
"His name has been floated out there as a potential attorney general candidate, but I don't know if he has formed a campaign committee," said Chris Lato, spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher also is reportedly considering challenging Lautenschlager, as is state Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin. There are also rumors that at least one Democrat -- possibly Corrections Secretary Matt Frank -- is considering a primary challenge to Lautenschlager, who was convicted of drunken driving in a high-profile case last year.
During Van Hollen's time as U.S. attorney, the number of criminal cases filed has increased significantly -- from 186 in 2003 to 211 in 2004. The office has added a few prosecutors to handle the increased caseload.
Van Hollen ranks the prosecution last year of James Perry, dubbed by media as "the mall rapist," among the notable prosecutions conducted during his term in office. Perry, formerly of Stoughton, pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and was sentenced to 180 years in prison before being convicted in Dane County Circuit Court on sexual assault charges involving 19 victims.
"Perry committed heinous crimes," Van Hollen said in a prepared statement. "He's the type of criminal who should be off our streets for as long as possible, and as a result of our prosecutions he will be serving the rest of his life in prison."
Van Hollen said he and his staff have visited agencies in all of the district's 44 counties.
"Working together, we prosecuted the district's worst offenders," he said in the statement. "And as a result of our joint efforts the number of crimes successfully prosecuted in federal court increased in each year of my term."
EX-COP REFUSED TO FLINCH FROM TOUGH PAROLE DUTY
By Joel McNally
In an age when lily-livered politicians prefer to avoid controversy at any cost, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle's appointment of Lenard Wells as chairman of the state's parole commission back in 2003 was a gutsy move.
Heading the parole commission is a lightning rod position, no matter who holds the job.
Parole has become such a dirty word in today's mean-spirited, tough-on-crime political climate that the entire process was eliminated when the state passed its so-called truth-in-sentencing law. Parole has been replaced by a period of extended supervision after an offender returns to the community upon serving every day of a sentence.
Unlike parole, which takes into account the behavior and rehabilitation of an offender in prison, extended supervision is set at the time of trial by the judge without any knowledge at all about what sort of person the offender will be when he returns to the community.
But for all those prisoners sentenced before 2000, someone still has to decide whether they are ready to be paroled. In Wisconsin, that decision is in the hands of one person, the chairman of the parole commission.
For one of the most controversial positions in state government, Doyle chose a retired law enforcement officer who has always seemed to thrive on controversy.
Lenard Wells' 27-year career with the Milwaukee Police Department was a passionate crusade for social justice.
Wells was one of the founders of the League of Martin, an organization of minority police officers that battled in courtrooms and on the job against openly racist police practices in the department and in the community under Police Chief Harold Breier.
One of Wells' fellow insurgents, Arthur Jones, later became Milwaukee's first black police chief. Wells gave Jones fits just as he had the police chiefs before him.
Wells always recognized the limitations and unintended consequences of relying on the police alone to solve community problems rooted in poverty and racial inequality.
After retiring from the department, Wells became director of the community justice program at the Benedict Center, a Milwaukee nonprofit agency that operates drug treatment and education programs as an alternative to incarceration and advocates for criminal justice reform. (Where his boss was my wife, Kit Murphy McNally.)
Wells took his passion for justice to the parole commission. That meant not ducking tough decisions, even when it meant paroling offenders who had been involved in the shooting of police officers.
For Wells, it was a matter of integrity. If an offender who had spent decades in prison met all the requirements for parole by completing required programs, accepting responsibility for past behavior and becoming well-adjusted to return to the community, Wells would grant parole.
State law did not permit Wells to recuse himself even if he had a personal conflict of interest. It didn't matter whether he'd worked with a police officer fatally shot by the offender. It wouldn't even have mattered if the offender had been a relative. The parole decision was his alone.
That's why when a reporter called Wells in early May to ask about his decision to parole one of the participants in a 1975 barroom shooting that killed a Milwaukee police officer, he didn't hesitate to tell the reporter he'd already paroled another offender in the same shooting.
After the resulting controversy, Wells abruptly resigned from the parole commission. Many speculated publicly that Doyle might have pushed Wells into resigning because of re-election concerns.
The truth is very different, and typical of Wells. Wells told me he voluntarily resigned so Mark Green and the Republicans wouldn't be able to use the controversy surrounding his parole decisions, for which he takes full responsibility, to smear Doyle in the election.
He said there were at least three more offenders coming up for parole before the election who had been involved in police shootings. The press would have gone crazy, but he would have felt honor-bound to use the same standards in determining whether to grant those paroles.
Republicans clearly were gearing up to make Wells an issue. Jessica McBride, a former reporter who now has a right-wing radio show, filed an open records request to examine every parole decision Wells ever made. McBride is married to Waukesha District Attorney Paul Bucher, a Republican candidate for state attorney general.
One of the reasons parole is controversial is that the hard-line incarceration policies advocated by conservative politicians are such a failure. Many offenders come out of prison worse than they went in.
Even a conscientious parole commissioner such as Wells who attempts to release offenders with the best chance to succeed knows that some will fail.
* Wells would never be one to run away from a fight. He says he just didn't want to become the ammunition for a dirty political campaign against the man he wants to see re-elected governor
By Joel McNally
In an age when lily-livered politicians prefer to avoid controversy at any cost, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle's appointment of Lenard Wells as chairman of the state's parole commission back in 2003 was a gutsy move.
Heading the parole commission is a lightning rod position, no matter who holds the job.
Parole has become such a dirty word in today's mean-spirited, tough-on-crime political climate that the entire process was eliminated when the state passed its so-called truth-in-sentencing law. Parole has been replaced by a period of extended supervision after an offender returns to the community upon serving every day of a sentence.
Unlike parole, which takes into account the behavior and rehabilitation of an offender in prison, extended supervision is set at the time of trial by the judge without any knowledge at all about what sort of person the offender will be when he returns to the community.
But for all those prisoners sentenced before 2000, someone still has to decide whether they are ready to be paroled. In Wisconsin, that decision is in the hands of one person, the chairman of the parole commission.
For one of the most controversial positions in state government, Doyle chose a retired law enforcement officer who has always seemed to thrive on controversy.
Lenard Wells' 27-year career with the Milwaukee Police Department was a passionate crusade for social justice.
Wells was one of the founders of the League of Martin, an organization of minority police officers that battled in courtrooms and on the job against openly racist police practices in the department and in the community under Police Chief Harold Breier.
One of Wells' fellow insurgents, Arthur Jones, later became Milwaukee's first black police chief. Wells gave Jones fits just as he had the police chiefs before him.
Wells always recognized the limitations and unintended consequences of relying on the police alone to solve community problems rooted in poverty and racial inequality.
After retiring from the department, Wells became director of the community justice program at the Benedict Center, a Milwaukee nonprofit agency that operates drug treatment and education programs as an alternative to incarceration and advocates for criminal justice reform. (Where his boss was my wife, Kit Murphy McNally.)
Wells took his passion for justice to the parole commission. That meant not ducking tough decisions, even when it meant paroling offenders who had been involved in the shooting of police officers.
For Wells, it was a matter of integrity. If an offender who had spent decades in prison met all the requirements for parole by completing required programs, accepting responsibility for past behavior and becoming well-adjusted to return to the community, Wells would grant parole.
State law did not permit Wells to recuse himself even if he had a personal conflict of interest. It didn't matter whether he'd worked with a police officer fatally shot by the offender. It wouldn't even have mattered if the offender had been a relative. The parole decision was his alone.
That's why when a reporter called Wells in early May to ask about his decision to parole one of the participants in a 1975 barroom shooting that killed a Milwaukee police officer, he didn't hesitate to tell the reporter he'd already paroled another offender in the same shooting.
After the resulting controversy, Wells abruptly resigned from the parole commission. Many speculated publicly that Doyle might have pushed Wells into resigning because of re-election concerns.
The truth is very different, and typical of Wells. Wells told me he voluntarily resigned so Mark Green and the Republicans wouldn't be able to use the controversy surrounding his parole decisions, for which he takes full responsibility, to smear Doyle in the election.
He said there were at least three more offenders coming up for parole before the election who had been involved in police shootings. The press would have gone crazy, but he would have felt honor-bound to use the same standards in determining whether to grant those paroles.
Republicans clearly were gearing up to make Wells an issue. Jessica McBride, a former reporter who now has a right-wing radio show, filed an open records request to examine every parole decision Wells ever made. McBride is married to Waukesha District Attorney Paul Bucher, a Republican candidate for state attorney general.
One of the reasons parole is controversial is that the hard-line incarceration policies advocated by conservative politicians are such a failure. Many offenders come out of prison worse than they went in.
Even a conscientious parole commissioner such as Wells who attempts to release offenders with the best chance to succeed knows that some will fail.
* Wells would never be one to run away from a fight. He says he just didn't want to become the ammunition for a dirty political campaign against the man he wants to see re-elected governor
ELECTIONS BOARD PROBE SET; GOP ALSO MADE CONTACT
By By Scott Bauer Associated Press
On the same day a district attorney announced he will investigate alleged improper lobbying of Elections Board members by an attorney for Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, the head of the state Republican Party said he too had conversations with a board member the day before a key vote.
At issue is the appropriateness and legality of conversations and e-mails that took place prior to the board voting 5-2 on Aug. 30 to require Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green to return nearly $468,000 in campaign donations.
Three Democrats who voted for Green to return the money had been contacted in the days leading up to the vote by Doyle attorney Michael S. Maistelman.
Elections Board attorney George Dunst has said there was nothing illegal about the contact, and Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard said Friday he will not be launching an investigation.
But Paul Bucher, the Waukesha County district attorney who lost in the Sept. 12 Republican primary for attorney general, said Friday he believes he has jurisdiction to look into the allegations surrounding the meeting in Brookfield, which is in his county.
Bucher said he plans to look for violations of the state's open meeting laws, ethics code and lobbying statutes.
As it turns out, Maistelman wasn't the only party operative talking with board members before the vote.
Republican Party Executive Director Rick Wiley said Friday that he spoke with board member John Savage, a Republican who was selected to serve by the party, on the day before the vote. Wiley said he called Savage to consult with him after being told that Savage was telling people at a GOP fundraiser he did not believe the vote was going to go in favor of Green.
Wiley said Savage told him that given the partisan makeup of the board -- which has four Democrats, three Republicans, one Libertarian and one nonpartisan appointee -- it was unlikely Green's position would win out. Wiley said he told Savage he had to agree, but they didn't discuss any other strategy about the vote.
A call to Savage's home late Friday night rang unanswered.
Wiley said he talked to no other board members and he knows of no one else with the party or Green's campaign who spoke to the board.
Doyle's campaign seized on the news.
"For days Republicans have been pointing fingers at everyone but themselves to distract voters from the simple fact that Congressman Green violated state and federal laws with his illegal transfer," said Doyle spokeswoman Melanie Fonder. "What's wrong here is the Republican hypocrisy has been exposed."
Wiley said he figured that would be the Democratic response, but his brief conversation with Savage was different from the e-mails Maistelman sent which outlined in detail specific action board members should take and how they should vote.
"He was bound and determined to write the language for this transfer and how they were going to deem that Mark Green did this illegally," Wiley said.
The three Democrats who were lobbied by Maistelman, along with another Democrat and a Libertarian board member, voted in favor of the order against Green. Savage and another Republican member voted against it.
State Sen. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, the chairman of the Senate Ethics and Campaign Finance Committee and a longtime advocate for ethics reforms, said it appeared to him that Doyle was trying to influence a state entity for political gain.
"Everything about this incident smells bad," Ellis said. "Clearly, it raises many questions with regard to ethical and even criminal conduct. These questions need to be investigated seriously by the proper officials."
The state attorney general's office also is looking into possible open meetings law violations related to Maistelman's lobbying, said Deputy Attorney General Dan Bach on Friday before Wiley's phone call came to light.
The number of contacts and the matters discussed in the e-mails necessitate a review into whether there were violations of the state's open meetings law, Bach said.
In the e-mails, Maistelman advises board members Carl Holborn, Robert Kasieta and Kerry Dwyer on how they should vote, saying even if it ends up in court it would be a PR victory for Doyle's campaign and force Green to spend money defending it.
Two of the three contacted by Maistelman -- Holborn and Dwyer -- said the lobbying had no impact on how they voted. Kasieta did not return a message left Thursday and was out of the office Friday.
The state Republican Party called for the three board members to resign.
Assembly Majority Leader Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, said Friday that he expects reforms of the ethics and elections processes to be among the top priorities of the Legislature next year.
But Huebsch was leading the Assembly earlier this year when it killed a bill that would have merged the state Elections and Ethics boards into one regulatory body to enforce laws governing elections, lobbying and ethics and investigate and prosecute corruption.
Huebsch said the latest questions over how the Elections Board handled the Green issue will spur lawmakers to act next year.
"Clearly the Elections Board's reputation has probably been tarnished forever as to whether they can make an unbiased decision," he said.
By By Scott Bauer Associated Press
On the same day a district attorney announced he will investigate alleged improper lobbying of Elections Board members by an attorney for Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, the head of the state Republican Party said he too had conversations with a board member the day before a key vote.
At issue is the appropriateness and legality of conversations and e-mails that took place prior to the board voting 5-2 on Aug. 30 to require Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green to return nearly $468,000 in campaign donations.
Three Democrats who voted for Green to return the money had been contacted in the days leading up to the vote by Doyle attorney Michael S. Maistelman.
Elections Board attorney George Dunst has said there was nothing illegal about the contact, and Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard said Friday he will not be launching an investigation.
But Paul Bucher, the Waukesha County district attorney who lost in the Sept. 12 Republican primary for attorney general, said Friday he believes he has jurisdiction to look into the allegations surrounding the meeting in Brookfield, which is in his county.
Bucher said he plans to look for violations of the state's open meeting laws, ethics code and lobbying statutes.
As it turns out, Maistelman wasn't the only party operative talking with board members before the vote.
Republican Party Executive Director Rick Wiley said Friday that he spoke with board member John Savage, a Republican who was selected to serve by the party, on the day before the vote. Wiley said he called Savage to consult with him after being told that Savage was telling people at a GOP fundraiser he did not believe the vote was going to go in favor of Green.
Wiley said Savage told him that given the partisan makeup of the board -- which has four Democrats, three Republicans, one Libertarian and one nonpartisan appointee -- it was unlikely Green's position would win out. Wiley said he told Savage he had to agree, but they didn't discuss any other strategy about the vote.
A call to Savage's home late Friday night rang unanswered.
Wiley said he talked to no other board members and he knows of no one else with the party or Green's campaign who spoke to the board.
Doyle's campaign seized on the news.
"For days Republicans have been pointing fingers at everyone but themselves to distract voters from the simple fact that Congressman Green violated state and federal laws with his illegal transfer," said Doyle spokeswoman Melanie Fonder. "What's wrong here is the Republican hypocrisy has been exposed."
Wiley said he figured that would be the Democratic response, but his brief conversation with Savage was different from the e-mails Maistelman sent which outlined in detail specific action board members should take and how they should vote.
"He was bound and determined to write the language for this transfer and how they were going to deem that Mark Green did this illegally," Wiley said.
The three Democrats who were lobbied by Maistelman, along with another Democrat and a Libertarian board member, voted in favor of the order against Green. Savage and another Republican member voted against it.
State Sen. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, the chairman of the Senate Ethics and Campaign Finance Committee and a longtime advocate for ethics reforms, said it appeared to him that Doyle was trying to influence a state entity for political gain.
"Everything about this incident smells bad," Ellis said. "Clearly, it raises many questions with regard to ethical and even criminal conduct. These questions need to be investigated seriously by the proper officials."
The state attorney general's office also is looking into possible open meetings law violations related to Maistelman's lobbying, said Deputy Attorney General Dan Bach on Friday before Wiley's phone call came to light.
The number of contacts and the matters discussed in the e-mails necessitate a review into whether there were violations of the state's open meetings law, Bach said.
In the e-mails, Maistelman advises board members Carl Holborn, Robert Kasieta and Kerry Dwyer on how they should vote, saying even if it ends up in court it would be a PR victory for Doyle's campaign and force Green to spend money defending it.
Two of the three contacted by Maistelman -- Holborn and Dwyer -- said the lobbying had no impact on how they voted. Kasieta did not return a message left Thursday and was out of the office Friday.
The state Republican Party called for the three board members to resign.
Assembly Majority Leader Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, said Friday that he expects reforms of the ethics and elections processes to be among the top priorities of the Legislature next year.
But Huebsch was leading the Assembly earlier this year when it killed a bill that would have merged the state Elections and Ethics boards into one regulatory body to enforce laws governing elections, lobbying and ethics and investigate and prosecute corruption.
Huebsch said the latest questions over how the Elections Board handled the Green issue will spur lawmakers to act next year.
"Clearly the Elections Board's reputation has probably been tarnished forever as to whether they can make an unbiased decision," he said.
DA SAYS BOOK WITH NUDE CHILDREN ISN'T PORN
By
Barnes & Noble Booksellers will not be prosecuted for selling a bookshowing nude and partially nude children and adults in nonsexual poses,officials said.
The 96-page book of Jock Sturges photos sold at the Barnes & Noble inBrookfield shows many of the subjects with their arms around each other orhugging.Others are standing naked on a beach or next to a tree. One photographdepicted five boys and girls lying nude on a beach in various poses.
``What we have here is a book of photographs of definitely prepubescentchildren naked but not engaged in sexually explicit conduct,'' DistrictAttorney Paul Bucher said about ``The Last Day of Summer.'' ``It's not childpornography.''
``It's open to interpretation,'' said Brookfield Cpl. Pat Kemp, whoinvestigated the child pornography allegations. ``Some people feel morestrongly against it than others. I don't think there's anything lewd in thereor sexually explicit.''
The case started when Maureen Lugo of New Berlin heard a broadcast of thenationwide Christian radio show ``Crosstalk,'' police said. The show featureddiscussion of Barnes & Noble stores and the books they sell.
Lugo told police she went to a Brookfield store and was ``in shock'' atwhat she saw in ``The Last Day of Summer.'' She filed a complaint soon after.
Complaints and incidents of pages being ripped out of Sturges photographybooks have been made in several cities nationwide, including Rockford, Ill.,and Ann Arbor, Mich., the First Amendment organization The Media Coalitionreported.
``We don't believe it is our place as a retailer to censor the readingtastes of the public,'' said Lisa Herling, Barnes & Noble vice president ofcorporate communications, Tuesday.
Another Sturges book showing graphic pictures of lesbians has also comeunder fire from Christian talk shows recently, officials said.
Both books are the target of a separate complaint from a Glendale man whoalso said he heard the talk radio show.
The Milwaukee County district attorney will be asked to review that case,which also involves a Barnes & Noble store, officials said.
By
Barnes & Noble Booksellers will not be prosecuted for selling a bookshowing nude and partially nude children and adults in nonsexual poses,officials said.
The 96-page book of Jock Sturges photos sold at the Barnes & Noble inBrookfield shows many of the subjects with their arms around each other orhugging.Others are standing naked on a beach or next to a tree. One photographdepicted five boys and girls lying nude on a beach in various poses.
``What we have here is a book of photographs of definitely prepubescentchildren naked but not engaged in sexually explicit conduct,'' DistrictAttorney Paul Bucher said about ``The Last Day of Summer.'' ``It's not childpornography.''
``It's open to interpretation,'' said Brookfield Cpl. Pat Kemp, whoinvestigated the child pornography allegations. ``Some people feel morestrongly against it than others. I don't think there's anything lewd in thereor sexually explicit.''
The case started when Maureen Lugo of New Berlin heard a broadcast of thenationwide Christian radio show ``Crosstalk,'' police said. The show featureddiscussion of Barnes & Noble stores and the books they sell.
Lugo told police she went to a Brookfield store and was ``in shock'' atwhat she saw in ``The Last Day of Summer.'' She filed a complaint soon after.
Complaints and incidents of pages being ripped out of Sturges photographybooks have been made in several cities nationwide, including Rockford, Ill.,and Ann Arbor, Mich., the First Amendment organization The Media Coalitionreported.
``We don't believe it is our place as a retailer to censor the readingtastes of the public,'' said Lisa Herling, Barnes & Noble vice president ofcorporate communications, Tuesday.
Another Sturges book showing graphic pictures of lesbians has also comeunder fire from Christian talk shows recently, officials said.
Both books are the target of a separate complaint from a Glendale man whoalso said he heard the talk radio show.
The Milwaukee County district attorney will be asked to review that case,which also involves a Barnes & Noble store, officials said.
EX-U.S. ATTORNEY RUNNING FOR AG
By By David Callender The Capital Times
Pledging to "restore integrity" to the office of state attorney general, former U.S. Attorney J.B. Van Hollen became the latest Republican to announce plans to challenge incumbent Democrat Peg Lautenschlager.
At a Capitol news conference today, Van Hollen said Lautenschlager "undermines the significance of the office" by not cooperating more closely with local law enforcement officials on such issues as combating methamphetamine and defending Wisconsin against terrorism.
He said he would not make an issue out of Lautenschlager's drunken driving arrest last year, but added that "that is part of why integrity needs to be restored" to the office.
Van Hollen is the latest Republican to announce plans to challenge Lautenschlager. He joins Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, who announced his plans earlier this year, and state Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin, who has not officially entered the race yet.
Van Hollen said Lautenschlager has not reached out to local law enforcement. He cited homeland security as an instance where the attorney general should coordinate the state's response to potential terrorist threats.
He said that as U.S. attorney, he determined there are a number of "glaring gaps" in the state's defenses, but declined to give specifics.
Asked how the public could evaluate the seriousness of those gaps -- and the appropriateness of the government's response -- Van Hollen responded, "You have to trust the government."
Van Hollen is a graduate of the UW Law School. Gov. Tommy Thompson appointed him district attorney of Ashland County in 1993; in 2002, President Bush chose him as Lautenschlager's successor in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Madison, where he was responsible for criminal prosecutions for a 44-county region.
Lautenschlager's campaign manager Mike Murphy declined to respond specifically to Van Hollen's comments this morning. He said Lautenschlager "has an outstanding record of keeping our streets and our children and the elderly protected in Wisconsin. She's standing up to anyone who threatens the economic and personal security of the people of Wisconsin."
By By David Callender The Capital Times
Pledging to "restore integrity" to the office of state attorney general, former U.S. Attorney J.B. Van Hollen became the latest Republican to announce plans to challenge incumbent Democrat Peg Lautenschlager.
At a Capitol news conference today, Van Hollen said Lautenschlager "undermines the significance of the office" by not cooperating more closely with local law enforcement officials on such issues as combating methamphetamine and defending Wisconsin against terrorism.
He said he would not make an issue out of Lautenschlager's drunken driving arrest last year, but added that "that is part of why integrity needs to be restored" to the office.
Van Hollen is the latest Republican to announce plans to challenge Lautenschlager. He joins Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, who announced his plans earlier this year, and state Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin, who has not officially entered the race yet.
Van Hollen said Lautenschlager has not reached out to local law enforcement. He cited homeland security as an instance where the attorney general should coordinate the state's response to potential terrorist threats.
He said that as U.S. attorney, he determined there are a number of "glaring gaps" in the state's defenses, but declined to give specifics.
Asked how the public could evaluate the seriousness of those gaps -- and the appropriateness of the government's response -- Van Hollen responded, "You have to trust the government."
Van Hollen is a graduate of the UW Law School. Gov. Tommy Thompson appointed him district attorney of Ashland County in 1993; in 2002, President Bush chose him as Lautenschlager's successor in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Madison, where he was responsible for criminal prosecutions for a 44-county region.
Lautenschlager's campaign manager Mike Murphy declined to respond specifically to Van Hollen's comments this morning. He said Lautenschlager "has an outstanding record of keeping our streets and our children and the elderly protected in Wisconsin. She's standing up to anyone who threatens the economic and personal security of the people of Wisconsin."
ETHICS BOARD: NO VIOLATION BY DOYLE AIDE
By By David Callender The Capital Times
An attorney for Gov. Jim Doyle did not violate ethics laws by urging members of the Elections Board to act against Doyle's Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Mark Green, the state Ethics Board ruled Friday.
In a carefully worded decision, the ethics board said that Doyle's attorney, Michael Maistelman, did not violate a longstanding legal ban on secret communications between parties in a dispute and official decision-makers.
In phone calls and e-mails to three Democratic Elections Board appointees, Maistelman urged them to vote to bar Green from transferring nearly $468,000 from his congressional campaign fund into his gubernatorial war chest.
Maistelman wrote one elections board member, "Even if this ends up in court, it is a P.R. victory for us since it makes Green spend money and have to defend the use of his Washington, D.C., dirty money."
The Ethics Board said it undertook a review of the issue "because the making of secret, off the record (ex parte) communications in a contested manner appears to improper and inimical to good government."
The Ethics Board concluded, however, that Maistelman's contacts with Elections Board members were not improper because the Elections Board does not have the power to enforce its own decisions.
The Ethics Board initially questioned the Elections Board's contention, noting that the board "ordered" Green to get rid of the money.
"When something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it usually is a duck," the Ethics Board wrote in its decision.
But the Ethics Board deferred to the explanations of Elections Board director Kevin Kennedy and the Elections Board's chief legal counsel George Dunst, who argued that the Elections Board does not have the power to enforce its own decisions.
Kennedy and Dunst argued that the Elections Board's "order" relied on voluntary compliance by Green; to enforce the order, the Elections Board would have to file suit in circuit court and the final decision would be up to a judge.
Green challenged the Elections Board's ruling in Dane County Circuit Court last month and lost. He is now appealing the court's decision to the state Supreme Court.
Citing the Elections Board's interpretation of its role, the Ethics Board ruled that Maistelman's contacts with Elections Board members did not violate the law.
But the Ethics Board's decision left the door open for further review if a court decides that the Elections Board's action constituted a legal order to give up the money.
The Ethics Board noted that Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for attorney general this fall, is also investigating the matter.
Doyle's campaign called the Ethics Board decision a victory. Green's campaign had no immediate response.
By By David Callender The Capital Times
An attorney for Gov. Jim Doyle did not violate ethics laws by urging members of the Elections Board to act against Doyle's Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Mark Green, the state Ethics Board ruled Friday.
In a carefully worded decision, the ethics board said that Doyle's attorney, Michael Maistelman, did not violate a longstanding legal ban on secret communications between parties in a dispute and official decision-makers.
In phone calls and e-mails to three Democratic Elections Board appointees, Maistelman urged them to vote to bar Green from transferring nearly $468,000 from his congressional campaign fund into his gubernatorial war chest.
Maistelman wrote one elections board member, "Even if this ends up in court, it is a P.R. victory for us since it makes Green spend money and have to defend the use of his Washington, D.C., dirty money."
The Ethics Board said it undertook a review of the issue "because the making of secret, off the record (ex parte) communications in a contested manner appears to improper and inimical to good government."
The Ethics Board concluded, however, that Maistelman's contacts with Elections Board members were not improper because the Elections Board does not have the power to enforce its own decisions.
The Ethics Board initially questioned the Elections Board's contention, noting that the board "ordered" Green to get rid of the money.
"When something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it usually is a duck," the Ethics Board wrote in its decision.
But the Ethics Board deferred to the explanations of Elections Board director Kevin Kennedy and the Elections Board's chief legal counsel George Dunst, who argued that the Elections Board does not have the power to enforce its own decisions.
Kennedy and Dunst argued that the Elections Board's "order" relied on voluntary compliance by Green; to enforce the order, the Elections Board would have to file suit in circuit court and the final decision would be up to a judge.
Green challenged the Elections Board's ruling in Dane County Circuit Court last month and lost. He is now appealing the court's decision to the state Supreme Court.
Citing the Elections Board's interpretation of its role, the Ethics Board ruled that Maistelman's contacts with Elections Board members did not violate the law.
But the Ethics Board's decision left the door open for further review if a court decides that the Elections Board's action constituted a legal order to give up the money.
The Ethics Board noted that Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for attorney general this fall, is also investigating the matter.
Doyle's campaign called the Ethics Board decision a victory. Green's campaign had no immediate response.
DA CHALLENGES CHMURA'S LAWYER
By
A prosecutor is challenging Mark Chmura's lawyer to back up claimsthat he has information that would change the public's view on the sexualassault case against the Green Bay Packers player.
``If they have relevant and material information, bring it on and I'll takea look at it,'' Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher said Tuesday.Chmura's lawyer, Gerald Boyle, had said when charges were filed in the caseMonday that he ``would kill for the opportunity to tell'' the public aboutthings he said Bucher left out of the criminal complaint.
``I have no idea what he's referring to. All I know is he's in damagecontrol mode,'' Bucher said.
Boyle retorted Tuesday night that any damage control problem ``was causedby an overly verbose criminal complaint that has poisoned public opinion.''
While his client is presumed innocent unless proven guilty, Boyle said atleast one radio talk show poll had a majority of callers declaring Chmuraguilty. Getting a fair trial will be very difficult with that atmosphere, headded.
Chmura, 31, is charged with third-degree sexual assault for allegedlyhaving sex with a 17-year-old girl in a bathroom at the Hartland home ofneighbor and friend Robert Gessert during a post-prom party the morning ofApril 9. The girl had baby-sat for Chmura's two children.
Gessert, 43, is charged with third-degree sexual assault and fourth-degreesexual assault for allegedly groping an 18-year-old woman in a hot tub at thesame party.
Chmura also was cited for failing to prevent minors from consuming alcohol.Gessert was cited for supplying alcohol to minors.
Boyle has said he planned to file motions this week to dismiss the chargesor separate Chmura's case from that of Gessert.
Gessert's lawyer, Martin Kohler, said his client denies all theallegations.
The party at Gessert's home was for his daughter and other students who hadattended the Waukesha Catholic Memorial High School prom.
School officials said they have disciplined some of the students whoattended the party.
Catholic Memorial President Bryan Van Deun said there were 19 students atthe party, and some of them were drinking alcohol. The penalty for drinking issuspension from extracurricular activities, according to the school's conductcode.
Van Deun declined to say how many students were disciplined.
``Not everyone was drinking,'' he said Tuesday. ``The appropriate sanctionshave been levied.''
Chmura was excused from a four-day Packers minicamp that began Tuesday. Hisfuture with the team was uncertain even before the incident because of a neckinjury that caused him to miss all but two games last season.
Coach Mike Sherman declined comment Tuesday on the charges, saying, ``I'mnot going to make any comment on Mark until I have all the facts available tome.''
In other developments:
*The registered nurse mother of one of the girls at the party spoke of howshe drove the 17-year-old and 18-year-old to the hospital, then helped themtell their parents.
``I think they are doing as well as can be expected,'' Jeanne Flannery toldthe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Flannery, a nurse who does not currently practice, said she drove them toSinai Samaritan Medical Center in Milwaukee, where sexual assault treatmentexams were done on both.
She said her reaction when the teens told her they had been assaulted ``wasone of shock and compassion for what they were experiencing and what Ianticipated they would have to experience in the future.''
*Bucher said he would do everything in his power to protect the victims andwitnesses from being hurt by the court process and media crush.
``I will not allow the victims of this case to be put on trial,'' Buchersaid. ``That bothers me the most. I won't let that happen. All of these aregood kids, including the victims. They were trying to have a good time. Thesekids did nothing wrong. They have no reason to hang their heads.''
By
A prosecutor is challenging Mark Chmura's lawyer to back up claimsthat he has information that would change the public's view on the sexualassault case against the Green Bay Packers player.
``If they have relevant and material information, bring it on and I'll takea look at it,'' Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher said Tuesday.Chmura's lawyer, Gerald Boyle, had said when charges were filed in the caseMonday that he ``would kill for the opportunity to tell'' the public aboutthings he said Bucher left out of the criminal complaint.
``I have no idea what he's referring to. All I know is he's in damagecontrol mode,'' Bucher said.
Boyle retorted Tuesday night that any damage control problem ``was causedby an overly verbose criminal complaint that has poisoned public opinion.''
While his client is presumed innocent unless proven guilty, Boyle said atleast one radio talk show poll had a majority of callers declaring Chmuraguilty. Getting a fair trial will be very difficult with that atmosphere, headded.
Chmura, 31, is charged with third-degree sexual assault for allegedlyhaving sex with a 17-year-old girl in a bathroom at the Hartland home ofneighbor and friend Robert Gessert during a post-prom party the morning ofApril 9. The girl had baby-sat for Chmura's two children.
Gessert, 43, is charged with third-degree sexual assault and fourth-degreesexual assault for allegedly groping an 18-year-old woman in a hot tub at thesame party.
Chmura also was cited for failing to prevent minors from consuming alcohol.Gessert was cited for supplying alcohol to minors.
Boyle has said he planned to file motions this week to dismiss the chargesor separate Chmura's case from that of Gessert.
Gessert's lawyer, Martin Kohler, said his client denies all theallegations.
The party at Gessert's home was for his daughter and other students who hadattended the Waukesha Catholic Memorial High School prom.
School officials said they have disciplined some of the students whoattended the party.
Catholic Memorial President Bryan Van Deun said there were 19 students atthe party, and some of them were drinking alcohol. The penalty for drinking issuspension from extracurricular activities, according to the school's conductcode.
Van Deun declined to say how many students were disciplined.
``Not everyone was drinking,'' he said Tuesday. ``The appropriate sanctionshave been levied.''
Chmura was excused from a four-day Packers minicamp that began Tuesday. Hisfuture with the team was uncertain even before the incident because of a neckinjury that caused him to miss all but two games last season.
Coach Mike Sherman declined comment Tuesday on the charges, saying, ``I'mnot going to make any comment on Mark until I have all the facts available tome.''
In other developments:
*The registered nurse mother of one of the girls at the party spoke of howshe drove the 17-year-old and 18-year-old to the hospital, then helped themtell their parents.
``I think they are doing as well as can be expected,'' Jeanne Flannery toldthe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Flannery, a nurse who does not currently practice, said she drove them toSinai Samaritan Medical Center in Milwaukee, where sexual assault treatmentexams were done on both.
She said her reaction when the teens told her they had been assaulted ``wasone of shock and compassion for what they were experiencing and what Ianticipated they would have to experience in the future.''
*Bucher said he would do everything in his power to protect the victims andwitnesses from being hurt by the court process and media crush.
``I will not allow the victims of this case to be put on trial,'' Buchersaid. ``That bothers me the most. I won't let that happen. All of these aregood kids, including the victims. They were trying to have a good time. Thesekids did nothing wrong. They have no reason to hang their heads.''
AG ON HER OWN ON OPEN RECORDS CASE
CAN'T SUE ON STATE'S BEHALF
By By Mike Miller The Capital Times
Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager is free to pursue an open records request against state lawmakers, a Dane County circuit judge has ruled, but cannot proceed in the lawsuit on behalf of the state.
Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan said state law does not give the attorney general the power to file suit against two legislators for refusing to allow her or her office to look at drafts of so-called concealed carry legislation, but Flanagan refused to dismiss the suit entirely, saying Lautenschlager has the same right to seek enforcement of the open records law as any other citizen and her request for a mandamus action can proceed. Flanagan dismissed the state as a party to the suit but allowed Lautenschlager and Deputy Attorney General Dan Bach to continue as individual plaintiffs.
But Mike Bauer, administrator of legal services in the state Justice Department, said Lautenschlager could still act as attorney general. "She cannot bring the lawsuit on behalf of the state because the statutes do not allow that unless the Legislature or governor makes the request, but she can act individually as attorney general," Bauer said.
Lautenschlager sought to force disclosure of bill drafts of the proposals to allow Wisconsin citizens to carry concealed weapons after those drafts had been shown to lobbyists who supported the bill but not to the public. When the authors of the bills, state Sen. Dave Zien, R-Eau Claire, and state Rep. Scott Gunderson, R-Waterford, refused to disclose the bills, she filed suit against them.
She said Tuesday she was pleased with the judge's ruling.
"In refusing to dismiss the action ... Flanagan ruled that I could proceed with the enforcement action under the public records law brought against two legislators who refused to provide the Wisconsin Department of Justice with access to bill drafts," Lautenschlager said in a release.
"The public policy issue presented in this case is a very important one: Can a member of the Wisconsin Legislature selectively choose to share the contents of a bill draft with certain special interest lobbyists but deny the same access to other members of the public? The court's ruling on this motion is a positive development in the advocacy of open and accountable government," she said.
In most states, attorneys general would have the authority to file such lawsuits, but in Wisconsin the attorney general is limited by statute as to what legal actions can be filed. Flanagan said that no law specifically authorizes the attorney general to file a lawsuit on behalf of the state against the lawmakers, even though the law would allow her to file an action if a citizen requested the records.
But he also noted, "The attorney general holds no greater nor any lesser ability than any other person in Wisconsin to tender to a public authority a request for access to a public record."
Although Flanagan allowed the lawsuit to continue, Republican attorney general candidate Paul Bucher, Waukesha County district attorney, accused Lautenschlager of using her office to "pursue her personal political agenda," and said she should withdraw the suit and tell the public how much money has been spent on the case.
Bucher did not weigh in on the underlying issue of the propriety of lawmakers showing bill drafts to lobbyists but not to the public.
CAN'T SUE ON STATE'S BEHALF
By By Mike Miller The Capital Times
Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager is free to pursue an open records request against state lawmakers, a Dane County circuit judge has ruled, but cannot proceed in the lawsuit on behalf of the state.
Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan said state law does not give the attorney general the power to file suit against two legislators for refusing to allow her or her office to look at drafts of so-called concealed carry legislation, but Flanagan refused to dismiss the suit entirely, saying Lautenschlager has the same right to seek enforcement of the open records law as any other citizen and her request for a mandamus action can proceed. Flanagan dismissed the state as a party to the suit but allowed Lautenschlager and Deputy Attorney General Dan Bach to continue as individual plaintiffs.
But Mike Bauer, administrator of legal services in the state Justice Department, said Lautenschlager could still act as attorney general. "She cannot bring the lawsuit on behalf of the state because the statutes do not allow that unless the Legislature or governor makes the request, but she can act individually as attorney general," Bauer said.
Lautenschlager sought to force disclosure of bill drafts of the proposals to allow Wisconsin citizens to carry concealed weapons after those drafts had been shown to lobbyists who supported the bill but not to the public. When the authors of the bills, state Sen. Dave Zien, R-Eau Claire, and state Rep. Scott Gunderson, R-Waterford, refused to disclose the bills, she filed suit against them.
She said Tuesday she was pleased with the judge's ruling.
"In refusing to dismiss the action ... Flanagan ruled that I could proceed with the enforcement action under the public records law brought against two legislators who refused to provide the Wisconsin Department of Justice with access to bill drafts," Lautenschlager said in a release.
"The public policy issue presented in this case is a very important one: Can a member of the Wisconsin Legislature selectively choose to share the contents of a bill draft with certain special interest lobbyists but deny the same access to other members of the public? The court's ruling on this motion is a positive development in the advocacy of open and accountable government," she said.
In most states, attorneys general would have the authority to file such lawsuits, but in Wisconsin the attorney general is limited by statute as to what legal actions can be filed. Flanagan said that no law specifically authorizes the attorney general to file a lawsuit on behalf of the state against the lawmakers, even though the law would allow her to file an action if a citizen requested the records.
But he also noted, "The attorney general holds no greater nor any lesser ability than any other person in Wisconsin to tender to a public authority a request for access to a public record."
Although Flanagan allowed the lawsuit to continue, Republican attorney general candidate Paul Bucher, Waukesha County district attorney, accused Lautenschlager of using her office to "pursue her personal political agenda," and said she should withdraw the suit and tell the public how much money has been spent on the case.
Bucher did not weigh in on the underlying issue of the propriety of lawmakers showing bill drafts to lobbyists but not to the public.
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