Town note
Originally inhabited by the Pottawatomi people, descended from the Woodland Indians known as mound builders.
about 0:06:05The story
Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, is a small city about thirty-five minutes west of Milwaukee, and in 1982 it was still surrounded by cornfields. They had married in Puerto Rico about eighteen months earlier and had recently moved into a rural house in Stone Bank, on the edge of Oconomowoc. Kathleen's family disliked him from the first meeting; her sister Janine Peters said a cold draft seemed to come into the room with him, and she begged her not to marry him.
By the summer of 1982 the marriage was failing. In August she telephoned the divorce attorney James Eilman, and on 15 or 16 September she called again asking for an appointment as soon as possible. He could not see her until 22 September.
He took out a .32-calibre revolver, held it under his chin and threatened to kill himself. He later claimed she grabbed the gun, that they struggled, and that it went off, shooting her in the face. He then went to the kitchen, took the largest butcher knife he could find and cut off her head, saying later that he did not want anyone to see her that way. He carried the head down to the basement and burned it in the wood stove, sitting there drinking while it burned. When the liquor ran out he drove to a store, found he did not have enough money and bought cigarettes instead. He then dragged the body to the garage, put it in the boot of his car and drove about two and a half miles to a cornfield beside Highway 67, where he dumped it a few feet from the road.
They found eighteen spots of what appeared to be blood on the driveway apron, a trail of blood through the master bedroom, hallway and stairs to the boot of his car, hair clumps, cleaning powder over a red stain on the garage floor, and teeth and skull fragments in the wood stove. A hacksaw blade was found first, then a butcher knife under a car seat. The autopsy concluded she had died from a blow or wound to the head or neck and was decapitated after death, though her sister later insisted she believed the head was taken while Kathleen was still alive.
He was reported to be living in Hatley, Wisconsin.