ELLSWORTH, Wis. (AP) - Authorities in Pierce County of western Wisconsin are investigating a homicide and have arrested the victim’s wife.
A statement from the sheriff’s department on Saturday says deputies were sent to an address east of Ellsworth on Wisconsin Highway 72 for a welfare check Friday. It says they found a 60-year-old man dead. An autopsy determined he suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
The man’s 66-year-old wife was arrested in his death.
The news release gave no details about a motive.
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BELMONT, Wis. (AP) - Authorities say an 18-year-old Milwaukee man has drowned at a campground on Lake Joy in southwestern Wisconsin.
Lafayette County Sheriff Reg Gill says deputies were dispatched to the Lake Joy Campground around 9:30 a.m. Saturday. He says rescue crews recovered the body of Sidney L. Yera Jr. just before 11 a.m. in the swimming area where he was last seen.
The sheriff’s office says there doesn’t appear to have been any criminal activity involved in Yera’s death as the drowning was witnessed by family and friends.
An autopsy is planned.
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This story has been corrected to show that it happened in southwestern, not southeastern Wisconsin
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MILWAUKEE (AP) - Gov. Scott Walker has blamed Republican lawmakers for an unsuccessful proposal to roll back Wisconsin’s open records law.
“I think the whole thing was a huge mistake,” the Republican governor said in a radio interview. He told conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes on WTMJ-AM on Friday that the idea didn’t come from him, and that the plan should not have been inserted into the budget.
“That was brought to us by the Legislature, and they said they wanted to look at it and wanted our input,” he said. “We brought up some things that we still think are legitimate in terms of records that involve things like having our staff giving you options on briefings and things like that. Not anything that’s external in that regard.”
The changes would have shielded nearly everything government officials create from the state open records law, including drafts of legislation and staff communications. GOP lawmakers slipped the plan into the budget unannounced in a late-night session heading into the Independence Day holiday weekend. It was stripped from the budget Tuesday after a fierce backlash from outraged lawmakers from both parties and open government advocates.
“In the end, I think it was a mistake to even think about it in the budget, even though it didn’t come from us,” Walker said.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said Tuesday that Walker’s office collaborated with Senate and Assembly leaders to draft the changes. Walker spokeswoman Laurel Patrick then acknowledged the governor’s office had a role in shaping the language. She said Walker had intended to “encourage a deliberative process” to develop policy and legislation that would allow for robust debate.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and the co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, Rep. John Nygren and Sen. Alberta Darling, have said the proposed changes stemmed from a desire to protect the privacy of constituents who contact their lawmakers.
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KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) - A judge says jurors in the Wisconsin case of a former police officer accused of killing an Oregon woman whose body was found in a suitcase should not be told about a Minnesota woman he’s also suspected of killing.
Steven Zelich, 53, of West Allis, is charged in Kenosha County with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse in the August 2012 killing of Jenny Gamez, a 19-year-old college student from Cottage Grove, Oregon. He’s also suspected of killing Laura Simonson, 37, of Farmington, Minnesota, at a Rochester, Minnesota, hotel in November 2013, but hasn’t been charged in her death so far.
Court records say he told investigators he accidentally choked both women to death during consensual sex and hid their bodies until they began to smell. Then he dumped them on the roadside, where they were found by highway workers mowing grass in June 2014.
Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder ruled in April that prosecutors couldn’t use Simonson’s death as evidence in Zelich’s trial for Gamez’ death. He said that since Simonson died long after Gamez, it would be prejudge his guilt to use that information.
On Friday the judge denied a prosecutor’s motion to reconsider his ruling, the Kenosha News reported (https://bit.ly/1NWR0CUhttps://bit.ly/1NWR0CU ). But he said he may revisit the issue during the trial, which is expected to begin in November, if the evidence warrants it.
District Attorney Robert Zapf said it would be difficult to separate the deaths at trial.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen in my career as a prosecutor a case that was more intertwined,” he said, saying Zelich used online contact to lure the women “into his web.”
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