Town note
Originally known as Raymond Center; the name was shortened to Raymond and it became a ghost town for a long time before repopulating.
about 0:06:10The story
Raymond, Wisconsin, is a small farming community in Racine County, about twenty-five minutes from Milwaukee and Racine, and in the summer of 1990 it became the centre of a murder investigation that horrified even experienced detectives. The victim was James M. Madden, known as Jim, a twenty-four-year-old who worked as a canvasser for the environmental group Citizens for a Better Environment. Madden had drifted through much of his adult life. His girlfriend, Allie Winkler, whom he had met at a party in about 1985, said he had cleaned up and was proud of it. He was, by her account, a gentle man who left a birthday message for one of her cats.
On 27 June 1990 Madden spent the afternoon soliciting donations door to door. At 7.30 p.m. he was seen at the home of Maryland and Glen Meyer at Five Mile Road. Madden signed his petition, said he had no money, and the two men fell into a conversation about guns. He claimed that as he cleared the chamber the pistol discharged and struck Madden in the back of the head, killing him before he hit the ground.
He used the claw end of a hammer to break open Madden's skull, removed the brain, and put it down the garbage disposal so that the septic tank would swallow the hollow-point bullet. He then dismembered the body. Madden's torso, pelvis and legs were found on 29 June in a farm field in the town of Norway, wrapped in distinctive yellow commercial-grade plastic bags. A dairy farmer, John Doll, discovered them after his cow began nuzzling the bags; when he picked one up it split and a human leg fell out. On 11 July Dwayne Zay and his son found Madden's head in a ditch on the south side of Eight Mile Road, a block east of 108th Street. An arm was later brought home by a neighbour's dog, and a left hand was recovered nearby. The autopsy showed ligature marks on his wrists, ankles and neck, bullet fragments in the skull, stab wounds to the front and back, a defensive cut between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, and the removal of his brain, heart, liver, one kidney, bladder and genitalia. The head was taken off with a knife, not an axe.
For more than a month the case stalled. Detectives interviewed more than 350 people, searched homes and fields within three miles of Highway 45, and collected hundreds of yellow garbage bags from across the county without finding a match. The bags were traced to the Frontier Bag Company of Grandview, Missouri, whose salesman Craig Cummings said the only sale of that type of bag in Wisconsin had been to Burley Elementary School in Brookfield in October 1989. Bayer refused.
Deputies had already searched the property once and found pornography, photographs of dead people and a piece of paper bearing Madden's name inside a tanning booth in the garage. A further search with a SWAT team on 30 July recovered yellow bags, knives, handcuffs, ropes, guns, ammunition, bloodstained tools and about 300 items in all. The septic tank was pumped and its contents taken to the state crime laboratory. Prosecutors described the collection of gay pornography, torture videos, the Faces of Death tapes and literature about murder investigations and autopsies as a blueprint for murder and mutilation.
A firearms expert said the pistol could not have fired while the chamber was being cleared, and the state advanced a theory it called homosexual overkill: a killing far more violent than necessary, driven by panic or rage over hidden homosexuality.
Cathleen divorced him in 1992 and received custody of their children, the property and his pension. Madden's family and Allie Winkler were left without a funeral because he had not wanted one.