Over thirty years ago, two women shared the affection of one man. Neither woman liked the scenario. In fact, one woman gave her lover an ultimatum: pick one woman.
On a wintery December morning, after his choice was clear by which woman he’d invited to his birthday party thrown by his father, someone murdered the woman he’d chosen. Shot three times as she exited her home to warm her car before leaving for work.
Her young daughter heard the gunshots and saw a suspicious person fleeing the scene—she could not say if the person was a man or a woman because it was winter, and they wore heavy clothing and a ski mask.
A woman called the victim’s home the day before the murder and asked to speak with her. The child who’d answered the phone told the caller her mother was at work. The caller asked what time she’d left, and the child told the woman.
The case remained a cold case for over thirty years until new investigators looked at the evidence collected at the time the crime had occurred. There wasn’t DNA, there weren’t eyewitnesses, there wasn’t gun-shot residue on clothing or a person, and there wasn’t a gun matched through ballistics tests. There was an ugly love-triangle, a shunned lover, and snow boot prints in the vicinity where the daughter saw the suspicious person go that matched the ex-girlfriend’s boots.
A jury heard all the circumstantial evidence against the (now) 81-year-old jilted lover over ten days. They found her guilty of first-degree murder. A judge sentenced her to twenty years in prison—at her age, essentially a life sentence.
The victim’s daughter regrets her truthfulness in answering the female caller’s question about what time her mother left for work.
The 81-year-old’s attorney will file an appeal.
Source: State of Wisconsin Circuit Court, Burnett County Sentinel, Independent, New York Post, WEAU 13 News, NBC Kare 11
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