Small Town Murder - Serial Killer Motives - Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

This week, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a young woman disappears on her way to a retreat, for a new job. Her van is found very close to where she was last seen, but with hundreds of extra miles on it, and some strange, and telling clues. She is eventually found, horribly murdered & possibly tortured. This leads to a long & inept investigation, that focused on the wrong man. Thankfully, the victim's family did everything they could, leading to a completely new suspect, and the scary thought that this killer could've done this an untold number of times!!   Along the way, we find out that fondue goes in & out of fashion, that people are more loyal to their fast food of choice than you would imagine, and that when there's a possible serial killer on the loose, always look at all the truckers in the area, before moving on to other suspects!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay, and Choochoo! Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today, all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station.

Here you go. Another wild, crazy edition of Small Town Murder Express, and this is a whole lot of murder going to be packed into an hour here. This is a wild episode. Crazy stuff. We'll get to it in just a moment. Before we do that, definitely head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Get your tickets for live shows. You're going to want to come out.

They are so fun. It's a comedy show. It's, you know, obviously. And there's pictures and lots of jokes in the pictures, too. It's so much fun. Get your tickets. The next available date with tickets is May 2nd in Denver, Salt Lake City sold out. Sorry about that.

But thank you for doing that. Yeah. Then also Royal Oak, Michigan, May 30th, because Buffalo sold out too. Again. Right. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing that. Let's get the rest of those sold out. We are excited for that.

And also get your tickets, Milwaukee, September 18th, Minneapolis, September 19th. I say that because we're doing a Wisconsin episode. So, you know, maybe some people listen. And the Pabst is an amazing venue. Oh, what a theater. It's the best place. So we're real excited for that. Get in there.

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and where these people came from and how they got these names and why did people name them that. And then for small town murder, we're going to figure out Stockholm syndrome. All right. Which is when you start to identify with your captors if you're kidnapped or held hostage. but it came from an actual event that happened in Stockholm that is wild and one of the craziest things I've ever heard. So can't wait to talk about that. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of that. And you get everything we put out, crime in sports, your stupid opinions and both small-town murders all add-free with your portray.

Add-free. Add-free, damn it. And on top of that, you get a shout out at the end of the regular show. Jimmy will mispronounce your name all sorts of ways. But damn it, he'll try. the important part. That's said, I think it's time, everybody. Let's all sit back.

Got to clear the lungs here. Arms to the sky. And let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Let's go. Let's go on a trip, shall we? All right. Going to Wisconsin today.

We're going to Fondalak, Wisconsin. Yeah, everybody's heard of Fondalak. which is fond, due, du, lack. LAC. And for some reason, the do is not capitalized. Don't know what. No. It's capital left fond, lowercase, DU, LAC with a capital L. So that's French, yes?

I would assume so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely not German. Yeah, I think the do means of, right? Probably, yeah. It's all from. Lakey shit. Yeah, we'll find out all about it.

Oh, cheese from the lake. Lake cheese is what it's called. What's fondue? Cairds from the depth. This is in southeastern Wisconsin. It's about an hour 10 to Milwaukee where we will be performing on September 18th at the Papps. You can get your tickets for that while there's still some left. Can't wait.

Let's do it. An hour 20 to Madison, where we were last year. Very nice year. Yeah. It was a theater that had no security and people were wandering into our green room off the street. That was fun. Hey, they should get some goddamn security. Sorry.

I look over. That was so funny. It was the craziest thing I ever saw. Thank God it wasn't like some crazy giant bearded guy. I think it was just some lady who was nice, but she could have stabbed us and killed us both in there. I mean, she had the same interest as what generally a murder, and that's to be close to us. Yes. Mission achieved.

Luckily, she wasn't physically imposing, so we were less scared than we might have been. And I think she was as surprised that she made thin as we did. I think so, too. She was like, well, shouldn't they have? You're here. She was like, shouldn't they have some security? And I was like, yes, they should. It's a matter of fact.

There you are. There we are. Why are you here? I don't know, but I did it. Well, that makes fucking three of us then. Don't know why you're here. Maybe you should go back. Unbelievable.

This is two hours from our last Wisconsin episode. I almost called it Mill Conson, like Milwaukee. Wilkinson. here is a monominy two hours from there. That was the singing serial killer, which you got to hear that one if you have in episode 647. This is in Fondalak County, area code 920, population 44,412. So good size place.

And there's a lot around it too, where people are that kind of work around. Very farm country. Outside of this, yeah, for sure. Median household income here, 56,000, 561, which is about 12,000 below the national average. But the median home cost is also low. So it's all relative. 176,200 bucks. You got a love winner.

Like half the national average. It's not bad. Yeah, I think it shoots up in the summer for like, what, the four days of summer that Wisconsin has. The four days of that wet fucking sun. It's crazy. You walk outside and your clothes are soaked. I've never experienced that before. Yeah, it's humidity and rain and everything else.

Wow. history here. Fondelac is French for bottom of the lake. Bottom of the lake. Bottom of the lake, where the cheese comes from. That's not a positive thing, right? I guess not. Bottom of the lake.

That's where you put corpses. You know what I mean? There's mud. There's nothing good at the bottom of the lake. Things with claws on them. Giant catfish. Eating corpses. It's not good.

Carp. Yeah. It was named because of its location at the bottom of the south end of Lake Winnebago. Oh. Now, in 1836, a guy tried to make Fondalac the capital of Wisconsin, which didn't work. Why? And they picked Madison instead. So, I'm not sure.

From June to August, 1944, the Fondelac County Fairgrounds where people are eating, you know, like fried dough and shooting water into a clown's mouth. Housed a prisoner of war camp that held 300 German POWs. So there was that. At the fairgrounds. The workers worked on pea farms and canneries that summer. Enjoy the zipper. There you go. There's a crazy person from here.

Don Gorski is from here, who is the Guinness record holder for the most Big Macs eaten. You've seen that guy. He was on the Super Size Me documentary. That's him? That's him. He eats like three Big Macs a day or some shit for 50s. It's that guy? He's fucking dead.

He's dead now? The supersized me guy? Yeah, he's dead. Well, Christ, it was how long ago. Not Morgan's Furlock. if that's the super what is it not Morgan Spurlock the guy who made a duck the guy that they show that has the record for most

Big Mac's eaten on the documentary Super Sky yeah not Morgan Spurlock sadly and somehow I think the Big Mac guy outlived Morgan Spurlock which is if he's still alive he did because Morgan Spurlock's dead because you know when he was filming and he was like Jesus this guy's going to be dead any minute and he

outlived you that's crazy reviews of this town we've ever been here let's find out what people think here's five stars Fondalac is a very good town. All right. People know everyone. You know 44,000 people?

This is not a town of 700 people. 44,000 people's a decent size town. You don't know everyone. That's a lot of people. A lot of people. People know everyone. You're most likely to go somewhere and will know someone. That sounds more feasible.

Maybe in your neighborhood, too. You might know two, three people at the mall. Yeah. There's not a lot of crime that goes on compared to other places. Okay, it's all relative here. Three stars. I've lived in Fondalac my whole life and I've always had a love-hate relationship with it. I live right in the middle, so it's great to go everywhere within 10 minutes, such as my high school.

This is a high school kid. The community isn't the greatest, though, with lots of violence and crime. Violence. Okay, so we've heard two completely conflicting stories so far. The high school children are exposed to lots of violence and crime. So one person said not a lot of crime. and they said chock full of violence and crime. Two stars here.

I heard about crimes that went down, but never really experienced them too much. I heard of that. I heard tell. At one point, while I was taking my dog for a walk at night, some guy started following me in his car, and another time I saw a guy just sitting in his car with a knife.

Just sit, okay? What? Did he have an apple in the other hand? Yeah. Because that's a weird way to just sit in your car with a knife. No, you're not going to get to anybody. You're inside a clock. Was it Christopher Lloyd from...

What are we talking about? What was that movie? Dennis of Menace, right? There you go, yeah. The lighting at night was awful, and over the past few years, the crime has been rising, as well as drug use, such as heroin. Such as. Yes. And then the next one, I'll read just one, the first opening here.

One star, because it's a long one, and it's really, really with a lot of personal beefs. I have been all over the U.S. and Fondelac has to be by far. the worst place I've ever lived. The armpit of Wisconsin. It's the bottom of the lake. Bottom of the lake. I'm shocked by the good reviews and can only assume they are people who haven't had enough life experience to know any better.

This town is a dump. I'm shocked. Wow. Things to do, the fondue fest. And it's fondue like the cheese. Is it really? That's how they're spelling it. Fondu, yeah, with an e.

They say they get 25,000 people here. And it remains fondue. It remains Fondelac's largest one-day festival. Wow. With stages of all kinds of live music and kids zones and craft vendors and farmers markets and cheese and chocolate and fondue. And it's all happening. Fondue has really gotten a, it's got the best reputation of all things that are like. It dips and, like, it's popularity dips and ebbs and flows a lot.

Yeah. Real big in the 80s when everybody bought everybody a fondue pot. Nobody ever used them. And then in the 90s, you couldn't find a fondue anywhere in the world. And then in like 2012, there was fondue restaurants popping up. And now they're all out of business. So it really goes up and down. But it has, but anytime somebody mentions, they'll be fondue.

You're like, oh, wow, really? I'll take it. You need a strawberry in that chocolate. Yeah, sure. Or the cheese and meats. It's all fucking great. There's the fondue feast challenge, which is part of Faltober, Fest.

Fault over. Just call it October Fest. You can't... I don't know what's going on. There's four rounds of speed eating challenges with fondue. That sounds dangerous. Someone's going to be having problems later. Speed eating fondue?

Yes. And then there's music in the streets, baby. You bet. Also at the outdoor patio at some place. And okay, we got until dawn will be playing from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., which is pretty fun. Until dawn. Nowhere near dawn.

Nowhere near dawn. They start almost at dawn. They start at fucking noon. They start closer to dawn this way than they end up. Yeah. Then second ride will play. Yeah. Then Smartmouth, not to be confused with Smashmouth.

Who I think are dead? Are they dead? I don't know. I think the one guy had a health problem. I think the lead singer's dead. Then Kip Jones at the coveted 10 a.m. spot. Yeah. Smelling fondue cheese farts the whole time.

Jesus. Uh, 130. Come in hot. Okay. 5 p.m. free time. At 9 p.m. 6-pack 12 bar will be there. At 5 p.m. and then it's, they play 4 fucking hours? Or I think maybe they stop and then in the middle they have the eating contests

and then they have more fans or such a shit. 9 p.m. 9 p.m. is who? 6-pack 12 bar. Okay. From 3.30 at another place, Kate Voss and the hot sauce. Yep. Then from 8 to 11 p.m. Until dawn will be playing again.

So that's close, almost. And at 7.30 at some other location, D. Willie and the souvenirs. Not Willie D. Not Willie D. from the ghetto boys. D. Willie. Different guy. Awesome.

If you can't make that, make sure you go to the Sturgeon Spectacular. Fishing fucking tournament? It's in the winter. And it says, check out the premier winter festival in the Midwest, whether you join the always popular Wisconsin. in Snow Sculpting Championship. Oh, boy.

Or a bunch of other shit. It's there. So you can go to that and they have a bunch of music there that looks terrible, including. So they, because it's so fucking cold here, at some point you have to embrace the cold and just be like, we're doing something fun in the cold. It's either that or you're sitting inside for six, eight months. Six months. Yeah. That's it.

And when the Packers stink, then what do you do? That's what I mean, which is a lot. Then what happens. Yeah. That said, let's talk about some murder. Let's do it. Let's do this. Let's start in 1990. Different times. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's talk about a young lady in 1990. Her name is Barrett Lynn Beck. It's her first name, Barrett. B-E-R-I-T. Barrett, they call her. Oh. Yeah. Barrett. Fascinating. Lynn Beck. She is 18 years old. Born in 1972. She's got a dad named Dave and a mom named Diane and a brother named Ben. So she's 18. Two D's named their kids two B's.

Two B's. That's right. I grew up in Sturdivant, Wisconsin, which is in Racine County, which is at the bottom, down south by the Illinois border there. About an hour south. Yeah, of Milwaukee. Yeah, obviously, yeah, we know that. Raycine Peaches. Was it, were they?

No, no, Rockford. Racine was the yellow team. Were they the beans or something? Didn't they wear brown and yellow? They had terrible uniforms. Terrible. They didn't think they had a name. That's where Kit got traded.

Yeah. Yeah. That's who beat the peaches. Yeah, well, she threw it. You know, Gina Davis, I'm sorry. You know what? Kitt's never going to learn. You know what?

She was hungrier than her, James. She said it. You wanted it more than I did. It's it. If you have a little brother, you block his shot in basketball. You spike it to the ground and he's never going to get better. Ever.

I just had, this is probably the most observed thing in the history of that movie. At the beginning of the movie, she told the big brother, let him have a chance, and then told the little brother, kill him. That's what happened to her. I never noticed that until we told me. That's how it works.

Without foreshadowing, it obviously is. How many times have you seen that movie? What? 30 years late. Probably what, 50 times you've seen it if you count TBS doing the good 50 times. She basically just told us. him throw the game let him win for Christ. He did it. That's nice.

That's why. Wow. So yeah, she grows up in a little, you know, suburb here. Yeah. So it's the summer of 1990. She plays a bunch of instruments as well. She loves music. That's what she's into.

She's a real vibrant, you know, out there doing stuff. It's a Wisconsin young girl and she goes hard. She's got energy. got energy and she's got like, everything we don't have anymore she's got in spades. Just like everything that dies, that dies in like your late 20s. Yeah. When that sparkle just kind of goes out of your eye and they dull over. She's got all of that.

Her eyes are wide open. For having no babies, parents. Isn't that nice? Yeah. Just no divorces. No kids. No divorces. Just easy life so far.

Yeah. She got hired as a secretary at Bolt Construction Company in Appleton, Wisconsin. which is a brand new job. Now, the company was bringing her up to Appleton for a three-day orientation seminar. Nice. That's what she's doing. And this was the beginning of, you know, she's starting to do. I don't think she's going to college or maybe she's going college in the fall.

I'm not sure here. But she's ready to go on this trip to this, you know, this little, or whatever this is, an orientation seminar, three days. So she packs up. She's got a two-tone gray GMC converter. Van. Big old diddler van. Oh, wow. Convergence. So it's got a bed in the back. Yeah, it's a big boy. That's a big with the captain's chaise. Yeah. That's a good. It's just a big giant fat van. It's cozy.

So July 17th, 1990, she's leaving Stervis. I want to say Stuyvesant like Bedford, but it's not. It's sturdivant. She's heading north and her dad's seeing her off. Dave is out there. It's his van, right? It's her van. She owns that. I assume he gave it to her. I don't think an 18-year-old kid in 1990 said, give me the giant gray conversion van. That's what I'm looking for.

That's probably the van's yours now. Looking through the auto trader going, Dad, this motherfucker doesn't know what he's got. Man, I'm telling you, me spinning in those captain's shares. That's worth six grand. He's asking three. It's possible, but unlikely. Although you could fit a lot of friends in there if you're a teenager.

And dad would be safe because it's happy because it's pretty safe. It's huge. It's going to plow through whatever you hit. So 3,500 OBO. We could get that for 28. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. 29 tops.

Take the 29 and just we'll call it that. So she said when he says, be safe. She says, don't worry, dad. All the people up north are good people. And she pulls out. Yeah. Heading up to northern Wisconsin where everybody's happy. So she drives north.

She drives north on U.S. Highway 41. And it's from Milwaukee kind of goes up through the state toward Green Bay. and it hugs the eastern part of the state. And it's just farmland. Sure is. I've driven this area. It is farmland with signs for places that sell cheese on every exit. Like seven like house of cheese places.

And every gas station has that bullshit. Bags of curds. And spotted cow. That garbage ass beer. Sack of curds? No, thank you. I don't want your oily curds in a bag. So anyway, that's what it is.

And Fondalac is about half. Halfway up the route to where she's going. So she stops, which makes sense. It's halfway to her destination. It's about 11 a.m. on July 17th, she pulls off the highway and heads to the Forest Mall, which is at the intersection of U.S. 41 and Wisconsin Highway 23. It's a big mall, and this is how 1990 it is. Kmart is one of the anchors still. In the mall?

In the mall. Kmart's an anchor. So that is, that's old school right there. I've, wow. I don't think I've ever seen that. The mall by me growing up, Kmart was the anchor on one side. Really? Yep.

And then they built a better mall because Kmart was the anchor of that mall. So they were like that mall sucks. It's right for the picket one. It was either Dillards or Robinsons. In Arizona. Yeah. And then I'd have J.C. Penny in the middle somewhere. Yeah.

Here it's Phileens on one side, which is East Coast Dillards, I think. I think of the same company. And then whatever on the other side. Doesn't matter. Walgreens is the other is inside the mall. This is a wild mall. They got a Walgreens in there? No, a Walgreens and a Camar?

No, Walgreens isn't the anchor. Walgreens isn't the mall. It's just came on. It's really, these are details. We don't need to be bogged down in it. It's fascinating. What other commerce is there, James? There's a chess king, Jimmy.

Have they got a Cinnivon? Do they have the pleaded acid washes? Because I'm really looking for a pair in 1990. Is there a Brookstone? I need a massager. There is a sharper image in here with a chair that you are just going to love. Let me take you there. It's going to blow my mind.

So in 1104 inside Walgreens, she makes a cosmetic purchase at Walgreens. The register receipt timestamps at 1104. Yeah. She buys a J-O-L-E-N hair bleaching kit. She's very blonde. She's got the super blonde Rick Flair 80s hair, you know. And she's going to blonde it again. She's going to bleach her hair before the seminar, so she looks fresh.

So she walked back to the van and that's it. It disappears. Never seen it again. Never seen again. We know she walks out. There's no outside security cameras. Nobody sees what happens to her. We just know that her van, she's just never gone.

Poof, like it never happened. So that is July 17th. Now, her parents expect her to be gone for a couple of days. So they're not expecting her. And back then, you don't have cell phones. calls are expensive. People aren't always calling, telling everybody where they are, texting, all that shit. They're just, I'll be back in a three days and they go, okay, bye. Sure.

So, July 19th, the gray conversion van is found locked in the Kmart parking lot across from the Forest Mall. Now, also, here, I'm sure that maybe her work people said she didn't show up, probably called her house. Her parents probably said, well, she left. She should be there, and that's probably why we're looking for her van at this. 48 hours is a long ride. It's a long time. Yeah. The keys are missing from the van, but the van is there.

Okay. And it's locked. So now there's witnesses around saying that the van's been there since probably the previous evening, which is the 18th. Right. But she's nowhere to be found around here, obviously. Okay. Now, inside the van, they find several very suspicious items and some items that just might have some evidence that could help them with this. Sure.

They find a ripped red t-shirt. the back has been cleanly cut out of it. Like someone took a razor and cut out a strip out of the back. They find the Jolin Hair Bleach kit purchased at 1104 AM still in the bag. They find a Burger King cup with two separate sets of fingerprints on it. Okay. Okay. They find a cellophane cigarette wrapper, which is discarded under the passenger seat.

That's the wraper on the outside. Exactly. On the bottom. That fell under the passenger seat. And those things have a static claim. to them and if you lose it and it clings to something it's gone forever. You're never going to find it. And that's what they find in there.

You can't get your box you pack back in that motherfucker. Oh God, no. Yeah, good luck. If you can, that's better than operation. That should have been a game for kids. You want to see if you got a steady hand? Get a cellophane on a pack of cools and we'll see how steady your fucking hand is, asshole.

I don't care if you get the wishbone out. Let's see what you do with this. Good luck. They also found large piles of cigarette ash on the floor behind the front passenger seat and to the left of the driver's seat of her van piles of ashes yeah she doesn't smoke by the way hmm they find a duffel bag yeah they find condoms oh they find a small piece of uh cut nylon from panty hose a strip of nylon um they find her employment manual from the construction company when she was taken to the seminar

and they find an empty McDonald's bag from Racine where that has a receipt that's time stamped earlier in the morning. So we got a Burger King Cup and a McDonald's bag. Yeah. And the McDonald's bag is after the Walgreens run. No, before. No. Oh, okay.

She got that down there and then drove up and got that. That's okay. So she doesn't smoke. So obviously the piles of ash are a concern. And her. And the Burger King Cup is odd because the only food stop that she has a receipt for is McDonald's, and that's earlier in the morning. So why would she stop at McDonald's then stop at Burger King over the course of... There's two sets of fingerprints on it.

Yeah, over the course of just a couple hours. And then the weirdest part of all is the odometer. Okay. She was heading to a business seminar, so she was tracking her mileage because she got paid for it. Oh, yeah. Or she could write it off or whatever, so you track your mileage. Talk about a responsible 18-year-old. No shit.

She's track, well, I need it for tax purposes. Like, Jesus, this kid's awesome. So anyway, she had noted her starting figures. So we know where the van started. Yeah. And how many miles it is from her house to where the van is now. Right. On top of that, in the two days since she has been seen, the van has accumulated 462 miles somehow.

That van's been moving. So somehow added to what it was is an extra 462 that shouldn't be there. From her house to this parking lot is so much and plus 460 something. Exactly. So that's crazy. So now they're like, holy shit. What happened? Yeah.

Somebody's been driving the shit out of this car. Yes. And they're immediately afraid that she was abducted and that somebody drove her around Wisconsin for two days, basically, holding her hostage maybe or something. Smoking like a chimney in this thing. Smoking their ass off and drinking Burger King. Hey, everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a better way to feed your kitty with Smalls. Smalls.com. Absolutely.

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Now back to the show. They said that they couldn't, they don't know where the van went, obviously, but, and where it stopped, because there's no other, like, receipts or anything that they can tie it to, but it definitely drove 462 fucking miles. That's irrefutable.

So it's a mystery. This is a crazy mystery. Not only is this girl gone, but her van is in the same place she left it, but it was driven 462 miles, then brought back to this exact spot, which is insane. And now it has a lot of pieces in it

that shouldn't be here. We got a real weird one here. So the sheriff described it as a bold stranger abduction probably. That's what they said. So she had her hotel reservation. She didn't make it. And there's a statewide, I mean, the media covers this thing like crazy statewide. I mean, it's a missing 18-year-old blonde girl.

I mean, we're going. Yeah. Yeah, it's they're going here. She, I guess they were, they said she would never run away from home. She wasn't that kind of person. She had toured the country with the Continental Singers, which is a Christian music group. That's what she toured around with them. Her aunt said, someone must have caught her off guard.

And they said, this is past the second day, and we haven't heard boo, is what her dad says. So they're very scared, obviously. July 20, 1990, they're searching for her everywhere. They're trying to find her. The day after the van was found, there's over 100 volunteers that fan out across the area, distributing posters and asking people if they've seen her. If she's 510, 140 pounds, blonde hair, last seen in blue jeans and a red t-shirt. So, you know, pretty, you know, statuesque 18-year-old girl who's blonde.

If she's around, everyone on earth will notice her. Yeah. At least every guy will. Every guy on earth will at least go, oh, look at that giant striking tall blonde girl. There she is. Yeah, wow, that's pretty cool. So she'll be seen. So the red shirt that she was wearing is the one that's in the van with the back cut out.

Oh, no. Which is not good. Bad sign. They don't quite know that yet, but we'll find that out later. They keep searching. They find nothing. Weeks go by, one week, two weeks. Oh, my God.

Five weeks go by. No new leads. There's nobody comes forward saying, oh, I saw her over here. I saw her over there. No witnesses, no leads. No signs of her. No nothing. Just the van.

The fingerprint. Well, we'll get to that. The van and 462 unexplained bits of mileage here. So they can't find her, though, obviously. And they said, this is an FBI special investigator said a young, good-looking blonde girl by herself and she's walking into a mall would really stand out if someone is scoping it out. This is Ted Bundy's dream. I mean, that's what he tried to get that girl in the mall. Usually not tall blonde girls, but he didn't really have a.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. He would. Not the appearance, but certainly a pretty alone girl with dark hair down the middle. Of that age. There was blondes that he went after, too. Did he get some blondes too? Fuck, yeah. He was opportunistic.

I mean, they had to be pretty that he knew about. Yeah, the little girl in Florida was a blonde. Yeah, he didn't care, whatever he saw at some point. August 22nd, 1990. So this is, some time has gone by here. It's really going. She went and disappeared on the 17th of July. This is on Brown Road in the town of.

Wapun in Fondelac County. A man named Michael Plume, Plume, wow, P-L-U-I-M. Snoop. Plume? I guess Plume because fruit. You know what I mean? That's what I was, I was thinking that,

but then I've never seen that in a name before. It's very odd. Don't like it. I don't like it at all, Michael. Change it. Change it. Change a name, Michael. You can do it.

You're an adult. So he's near Brown Road, which is a rural Fondelac County. road here. It's about 18 miles from Forest Mall where she disappeared. There's a clump of tall weeds along a drainage ditch. And this guy's walking along and he sees something and sees some blonde hair. Yeah. And it turns out it is Barrett in a ditch. So badly decomposed after five weeks of summertime that they need dental records to identify her. Damn it. Which is horrifying. obviously. Terrible.

Just dumped in a fucking drainage ditch on the side of the road. Somebody's daughter. That's horrifying, man. Jesus Christ. And it means also she was taken from that spot. Right. It's just terrifying.

It's terrible. So cause of death is strangulation and suffocation as well. So terrible also. Again, with her is a red piece of cloth, which is the fabric cut from the back of her t-shirt. It was used as a blindfold. Oh, what the fuck.

And they find that that it was cut off while she was wearing it, which is also horrifying. Imagine how terrifying that would be. The psychological warfare of that is horrible. They also recover the length of nylon cut from panty hose that was used to bind her, and they have the shirt used for a blindfold.

So they process the scene. They already have the van, and they bag everything up. So in total, the problem is DNA technology is just barely coming right now. I mean, it's a lot. And you have to have a... pool of blood or, you know, like four hairs with the roots still attached.

You needed a lot of shit. It couldn't have just been, you know, a swipe on your finger. And then you need a pool of suspects to test that against because there's no database. Yeah, there's no database. Right. Now, fingerprint comparison in 1990 requires a known suspect to compare it against. You can't just put it into the database, let it run through the computer and see. So if you want to, in 1990, they still weren't, especially in Wisconsin, in rural Wisconsin.

Maybe, you know, if they, Los Angeles County or something. Yeah. So a wealthier place. But they're sliding sheets around looking at, nope, this one's close. No, this is. Yep. So that's tough. So neither of these things help you if you don't have anyone to compare them to.

So otherwise, they have this Burger King cup that they think was brought by the perpetrator because she stopped at McDonald's. And if you're a McDonald's girl, you're a McDonald's girl. You're not a Big Mac chick, you're not a Burger King girl. That's a good point. She's a Big Mac chick, not a Whopper gal. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So they have that and they have the mileage and they think that's all they really have to go on.

They have an initial press conference announcing no suspects. This is September 14th. And they said that the investigation proceeds without any outside agency assistance. So there's no state police coming in here. There's no, it's the sheriff, Jim Gilmore. And the investigators are thinking it's an auto burglary theory. Like they were. After the car?

which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard because they took the car and then gave it back. Yeah. So that's a bad auto thief. Plus condoms. Yeah. Terrible auto thief at that point. The worst. Really bad at it, I'll say.

So they have a suspect after a minute. They have a suspect and they think this is our guy. His name is Craig nicknamed Psycho. That's what he's known as. Craig Psycho-H-R-O-N. Why does everybody's last name suck? Dude, Wisconsin is just a mindfield of last names. It's all, there's Polish names and there's, yeah.

What's your last name? Ron. How do you spell that? H? Ron. R.O. So, nickname Psycho. Yeah, that's a good guess on, uh, let's question him.

They're pretty polite in Wisconsin. You got to be real crazy to be psycho in Wisconsin. You know what I mean? Like, before they were, psychically kind. Before they would bestow you with that. nickname, you'd have to like eat several toddlers or something before they'd be like, man, he's a, he's a real psycho, huh? Or he held the door for somebody and then bought their gas and then pumped it.

What a psycho. Although in the Midwest, I'm not sure that would be considered that crazy. They're so nice there. I feel like they would just do that for you. They really are so goddamn nice. So he's a career criminal, a car thief, a bank robber, and, you know, a psycho, generally, as we know. He robbed a bank in West Bend just days after the murder took place and ended up going to federal prison for it. So when they're looking at him, he's already in prison.

Now, they latch on to him because when he's found, he has a hairbrush that has several blonde hairs in it that don't belong to him. Okay. So they think those might be her hairbrush that he's stolen. It's a trophy at this point. How did we get on him, though, to look at his brush? Because he's in the area and his name is psycho. Okay. That's literally why it is.

There's nothing else to connect him to it. He's the craziest fuck in the area. And when they found him with the brush, with the blonde hair, they went, there's a, oh, and they connected it and said, there's our suspect because where the fuck else did this brush come from? So they're suspected he's active in auto thefts and robberies in the area in June and July of 1990. They theorized that he targeted her van for the electronics. because she had a radar detector and a CB in there. In 1990, that's big stuff.

At that's true. Yeah, so they said it wasn't for the actual van. It was for the stuff in the van. He was in Fondalak, the week of the abduction, and drove unusually high mileage all the time as well. A Washington County Farmer identified Sycos, or I'm sorry, identified Barrett's van near, whoa, Kiwiskewakam. Ooh, K-E-W-A-S-K-U-M. Q-A-S-K-U-S-K-U-S-K-U-S-K-M. Yeah.

K-A-S-O-S-O-M, I hope, Jesus. On July 17th, with the man matching Psycho's description, 5-8-150 short-hair average build, and said the man was hiding his face. Oh. I bet it's Kawaskum. Maybe, Kow-Skum, probably. Yeah.

So he had robbed the store, and they found the hairbrush, or rob the bank, they found the hairbrush in his duffel bag along with a stolen revolver. So a clump of his head hairs was compared to some hairs that were in the van. They thought they matched initially, but later on, years later, when DNA becomes a thing, those hairs are ruled out, actually. Not his. Not his. And then also one of someone he knows named Tim Admondson initially said that Psycho admitted killing Beck

and showing him Barrett's body in the van, but then he later recanted passing a lie detector test. Why do you people do this? He said he got the details from the media and just blew it up. Now also, Psycho's girlfriend isn't helping his cause either. His living girlfriend, Jeanette Mickelson,

she and she said she and Psycho checked into a fondalak motel the same week as the abduction. Psycho. Mom, I'd like you to meet Psycho. Hey, Ma, how you doing? It's your friend. Just rips a handful of hairs out while he's standing there. There's a man named Psycho who has a live-in girlfriend.

Picks up the cat, licks it, puts it down. Nice to meet you. Yeah, Psycho can get a girlfriend. Wow. It's sad. Licks the cat and goes, tastes like paprika. tasty. So they stayed in a fond of lack motel the same week as the abduction.

He made statements to police. He made them weeks after the body was found here. He, or she did. I'm sorry, Jeanette, the girlfriend. She told investigators that Psycho was on a, quote, suicide run. Oh. Like fucking Bruce Springsteen or something. Yeah.

Born around, man. That's right. And was, quote, capable of anything. And had been... His name is Psycho. We got that already. We inferred it. We understand.

They said he'd been thinking of killing someone that week and that there was, quote, he said there was, quote, no turning back after July 20th. The day after the abduction, July 18th, he allegedly told her, it's all over with now, I did it. She also claimed he repeatedly beat and choked her as well, the girlfriend. So the detectives lean heavily on her because she seems to have a lot of information. her statements appear in search warrants and court documents, and she also shows investigators a locket that Psycho bought her on July 17th at Ufenbeck Jewelers in Fondelac, which supported part of his saying that he was in the area. He was there. He was in Fondalek. So in 1991, detectives obtain a search warrant against Psycho, declaring in court documents that he is, quote, more than likely involved with the case.

He's the He's the guy So the detective here Said quote We kept running into things That brought us back to him Psycho Everywhere we turned

It seemed like we shouldn't be looking At anybody else but him So anytime somebody else would come up The information would lead them back to Psycho Wow Over the next Let's see 19 years or so

20 years or so What? Go by no arrest. Barrett's family has no closure. Nothing. Nothing. They're sitting here wondering what the fuck happened to this poor girl. Oh my God. For over 20 years.

That is awful. Up until 2013. Stop this. Then they reopened the case in 2013. 23 years. 23 years of nothing. They never arrested Psycho. They don't have anything. So during this time,

And this is more specifically between 2004 and 2013, some of the physical evidence in the case started vanishing from the sheriff's evidence lockers here. As it does. The torn red shirt is gone. The nylon panty hose binding is gone. Those are very important pieces of evidence. And they're gone. Nobody has a complete explanation. The sheriff's office has no trail of, you know, chain of evidence.

It was destroyed or it was put. a storage facility. They have nothing. They say that staff either misplaced them or accidentally discarded them, but they're gone. How do you accidentally go in the evidence locker and start throwing shit away? I think you see 1990 and you go, that's never going to happen, you know, I think that's what they did.

That's so fucked up. Insane? Yeah. It's fucked. That's so fucked up. I would be livid if I was this fucking. The Beck family, I would be livid. It's bad enough you can't make an arrest.

But you can't even hold on to the shit that might someday get you a fucking arrest. You can't have a Ziploc bag on a shelf for this case. Not that much caring of it. Those two items came in contact with the skin of the person that did this to my daughter. And you threw it in the fucking trash. Through it in the trash. Would be very helpful in 2013. Son of a bitch.

So in 2013, guess who's still a suspect? Psycho? It's psycho. He hasn't cleared himself in 23 years. It's impossible. They say they keep going back to him. So they said they were making statements to journalists in 2013 still about Psycho. That one about the detective saying it always comes back to him. That was made in 2013, that statement. So they said that they were fixating on him for over 20 years, calling him very capable of murder and warrants, publicly naming him as the prime suspect for the last 20-something years. There's no direct physical evidence to him. The fingerprints are not linked to him. the ones from the, because they have his to compare him to, not on the Burger King Cup. So they said that later on, they said that the case is built mainly on guesswork, hunches, and speculation. So does the FBI agree that this is an electronics heist murder?

Well, Gary Plank, who's a profiler for the FBI here, said that the sheriff's investigators appeared to focus on the wrong motive the whole time. He said, stealing electronics? I would find that unusual. He said, I just can't imagine that in this case with a murder and all. This is too much for stealing electronics. He said that Plank said that an auto thief wouldn't even make much money from reselling stolen merchandise like a CB or a radar detector. Yeah, a radar detector makes you $20. That's what you get.

I mean, a real crackhead, maybe. But they're going to do it in a sneak way. They're not going to want to deal with having a corpse to deal with because then that's time not spent going and buying crack. Right. And I'm not dealing with them. I'm not dealing with murdering somebody over a $20 cobra radar detector. I'm getting two hits off of this shit. Right.

So I can find out when the sheriffs are hiding behind the cheese sign. Right. And a Midland CB? I'm not dealing with this. No. This guy said criminals are looking for low risk crimes and in broad daylight they risk being seen by other witnesses, especially at a mall in 1990. And those things are hardwired in.

You have to go behind the dash. You can't just take the wiring harness off and take a, out. You need the wiring. He said if it was a robbery, there's a little reason to up the ante with a kidnapping and a homicide. To steal electronics, they're not worth that much, even in 1990. They weren't. So they theorized that investigators had theorized that Psycho stole the van from the mall parking lock because he had already been linked to a long list of auto thefts and armed robbery.

So that was why they connected him. The guy here says, I remember Washington County called us about three cars that were stolen by psycho, he said Ron, but Psycho from West Bend that were found in Fondelac. We were told if Psycho was in your town, he murdered your girl. That's what the thing was, because he's the guy that would do it. So, I mean, that's what it is. The family wants answers. Mom, Diane, said, I spent a lot of time in the cemetery talking to Barry. I knew she wasn't there. I knew our Lord in heaven had her beside him, but talking to her there seemed comforting to me because I would watch all of the activity, watching and waiting and hoping that the guilty person would present himself

there. This poor woman, she's wandering around cemetery, he's looking for an answer to why her fucking daughter is dead. This is, her doesn't even know. She probably not there. Probably not. But I mean, and that's the fucked up part is, yeah, it's the worst. Because that's where the resting place is.

So you wander around. Yeah, you just wander around the cemetery. Yeah. It's like wandering around looking for your car keys in the same spots in your house. And it's just tea leaves, basically, at this point. You know, she wants something and no, nothing else is giving her answers, so why not? She's no one. Maybe she'll see her a vision in the pond at this point.

Who knows? So, 2013, when they reopened the case here, the case is subject of a USA Today Network Wisconsin investigative report. Oh. So the press gets involved. They realize that they're sure shit missing, the panty hose, the red shirt, but they do have the fingerprints lifted from the van. Yeah. So the blatant prints are refotographed, re-digitized, and submitted to the Wisconsin State Crime Lab for analysis, which, by the way, they could have done that any time after they put that automated system in. The day that fucking computer system went online, they should have said, thank fuck, been waiting years to test this.

We've got so many cases to try. Let's run it. You know, that's insane, because that's the automated fingerprint identification system. And that's crazy. So they end up figuring out that, so now they can run it against anyone in the system, prints from the same person are on the following objects. A Burger King cup with two separate prints from the same person. Okay.

The hair bleach kit from Walgreens. Oh. Her employment manual from bulk construction. The inside middle door window of the van. The front passenger seat undercarriage, like moving it up or down, back and forth. and the cellophane cigarette wrapper discarded under the passenger seat. There's nine prints and all that they have. Wow.

All the same guy, all matching all these. That's a lot of prints. That's a lot. So they run it finally on February 27, 2014. If I'm their parents, I would love to go to that police station, find out how many years they've had that system and kick them in the fucking balls, one for every year. One for every week. Assholes. Yeah.

So they run it on a comparison and they end up getting a hit. They get a match. Who do we come? It is a man. It's not psycho, by the way. No? It is Dennis J. Brantner. Dennis.

B-R-A-N-T-N-E-R. Never trust anyone named Dennis. They're either a menace or the BTK killer or something. Or the three-point shooter from the Orlando match. No good. Yeah, Dennis Scott. So he's born in 1954, grew up in Mandovi or Mondevi, Wisconsin, which is in the western part of the state. He's moved around a lot, lived in Green Lake, lived in Fondalak, lived in Rippin.

He's a trucker. Oh, you son of a bitch. Guess what truckers do? They get all over the place, and they know all the back roads and they know all that shit in the same place. If he did this? That's what I'm saying. How many? Trove 400 miles with this girl in the car.

not worried about it. Let's find out what the evidence is here. He's a long-haul truck driver since 79, also worked as a welder, another, with some shady characters in it. Not an untrustworthy job, but I know some welders and they're shady. Welders are shady people for some reason.

I don't know why. It's a cash business. I don't know what it is. Something about melting metal. It's just, it's, it's... Well, it's a job that you can do anywhere. You can drift. and there's not a lot of people that can do it.

If you're really good at it, you can work anywhere. Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. But I don't know why that would make them some shady characters, though, too. I guess you can blow in like a drifter, yeah. It's not that all welders are shady. It's just that a lot of shady guys are pretty good at welding. They get into welding, yeah. I think welding is also something, especially back in the day you'd learn in prison as well.

That was a skill you could learn in prison. I think that's where they got the reputation probably there. You used to learn it in high school, too. Yeah, yeah, I did. Well, I didn't learn it, but they tried to teach me. They showed you. They sure gave it their best shot. I just wasn't really accepting it at the time.

So he works at Numitech, which is a manufacturing plant in Kenosha as a welder as well. So he's got two jobs. His trucking route across multiple companies in the Fondelac County in Rippin areas gave him intimate knowledge of all the rural Wisconsin highways, like the one that she was found dumped off of. they established that his delivery routes for a ripan area trucking company regularly brought him through the intersection of State Highway 26 and U.S. Highway 151 directly adjacent to Brown Road where she was found in the ditch. He passes it all the time. He's been through there all the time. All the time. He works that road all the time.

He knows it. So the investigators, after the hit, they look into him. Yeah. They monitor his Facebook account, which you couldn't monitor a murderer's every movement like that. back in the day. That is fascinating. Imagine if they were like, pull up Ted Bundy's Facebook.

Let's see what he's up to. Oh, he's at a bar tonight watching the Washington game. Okay. Have you seen the TikTok murderer documentary? They caught him because he, in his live chat,

he was telling where exactly he was and what time it was. And the cops just showed up there. It's fucking great. Hey, how are you? Hey, stupid. How you doing? He should be stupid instead of psycho.

You know, he's more stupid than crazy. So they were monitoring his Facebook account after it became a suspect, and they discovered that he had shared a post about a different young blonde woman who was reported missing from Columbus, Ohio. He was actively following and sharing things about the disappearances of young blonde women all over the place. Oh, my God. He's got a thing. So they get search warrants, and they search his house, and they seize a computer, internet, like a hard drive, a memory card, a photo album, and some discs. none of what's in there is publicly reported. We also find out he was a heavy smoker in 1990,

which makes a lot of sense for the ashes and the cellophane wrapper with his fingerprints on it. Apparently in 1989, the year before Barrett was murdered, Dennis had taken a Cadillac in Green Lake without the owner's consent and put more than 900 miles on it before returning it with large piles of ashes everywhere. What is that? He just ashes in a pile.

I don't know what the deal is. Guy just likes to drive and smoke, man. He loves to drive and smoke. He's a blues brother, this guy. That's all he is. He missed his calling. Hundreds of miles. Hundreds of miles.

1994, he's earned, I'm sorry, 1990. Oh, yeah, this is his arrest in 1994. He was arrested with charges of unlawful restraint and battery. He was separated from his second wife, concealed himself in her car while she was at work and waited for her. when she came out and drove away, he revealed himself, threatened her with a knife, forced her to drive to another location, and held her against her will for hours. That sounds familiar. That all sounds familiar. The DA at this point says what we think the evidence shows is that Mr. Brantner's intent and motive is to isolate, watch, control, and possess women.

This is not the only time he did this. No way! No fucking way. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. This is a practiced thing that he's doing. Dangerous human being. But the driving around is very specific.

The extra miles. That's his kink, yeah. But I don't know if anybody else you'd be able to know if there was extra miles because I doubt anybody else wrote down their mileage and had it with them when they left the house the day they got murdered. Nobody does that. How many people have done that in their lives, too, and he found them. How many, exactly how many miles are on your car? You know what I mean?

You got a ballpark, but you're not going to say, oh, that's an extra 18 miles on my car. Yeah. You're not running drugs for the, you know, bark stales in the wire or anything. So, March 28, 2014, the police interview Dennis. They sit them down. They drive to Kenosha and they sit them down and they confront him with all this evidence that they have, which is a lot. Yeah.

He tells them, I've never eaten at Burger King. I hate Burger King. So that's not me. Never. How do you know if you hate it if you haven't had it? One of his ex-wives who was interviewed separately. said he ate at Burger King all the time it was his favorite.

It's the opposite. So his greasy onion ring fingerprints are going to be on the outside of everything he touches. So he also claimed that he was unfamiliar with the Wappen area where the body was found. And they said, well, your trucking route, you go by there 20 times a week. That's funny.

That's your spot. Then he says, he starts crying at multiple times, and he says, I swear I did not kill her. Which I want a contraction there. Give me a don't or didn't. Then he says, I didn't kill her because I'm not that way. That's why I didn't do it. The way of killing people.

I'm not a murderer? Then he says, quote, because they said, they kept going, you were in the van. Your prints are all over the goddamn van. There's no way scientifically you weren't in the van. And he said, quote, I don't remember how I got in the van. Well, you're done. That's over. It's over.

And then he says, yeah, I wasn't in the van, nothing. But that's what he says. And then at one point, when asked directly about Barrett's body where he dumped her, he said he couldn't remember and that if he had done so, he's, quote, so fucking sorry. I don't remember. I don't think I did it. But if I did murder an 18-year-old and callously dump her on the side of the road, I'm so fucking sorry. My bad. Thank you.

God. Case closed. I'm an animal. Anyway, I'll be going to Burger King. I mean, no, I don't like Burger King. I'm going to. Yeah, B.K. Broiler. I'm going to get out, no, no, I mean, a quarter pounder with cheese.

So he's held on first degree intentional homicide charges with a $1 million bond. While being booked into the county jail, they discover 37 oxycodone pills and additional prescription drugs concealed in his left cowboy boot. 37, he's got an addiction. Oh, yeah, yeah. He didn't tell them he had him. So that's now it's sneaking contraband in. It's in charge. That's so weird. Last week's expressed a guy when they busted him.

What happened? Jammed it up his ass. Yeah, you had a balloon full of powder. He didn't disclose the pills when asked because before jail, they say, whatever he got now, let me know because otherwise you're getting charged. Otherwise, it's a charge in there. Yep. He handed his boot to the booking agent.

The pills were found. And he gets multiple counts of controlled substance possession and felony bail jumping because he was on bail somewhere else. What did he think was going to happen? They were just not going to see it. He was just going to have oxycodone in prison. He's going to turn a blind eye. So they have a press conference where they name him as the prime suspect.

It's the first time any physical evidence has linked anybody and all of this. Beck's family said, we're encouraged and relieved for this day to have arrived for Barrett and our family. Now, fingerprints, that's fine. But what about murder evidence? Like, it's a good connection and it's enough. But it's also, it can be fucked with a little bit. You can say the police, they can't even keep evidence in store. How can you trust them with fingerprints?

They can't even keep a piece of nylon. There's a way to, certainly a way to cast doubt. Then, so the way to cast doubt goes away. Multiple former coworkers at the Kenosha welding plant confirmed to investigators that after his photo appeared in the news in 2014, they came forward. forward and said, that's the weirdo who works here. He kept photographs of young women inside a toolbox at his welding station. Oh, boy. Yep.

That one specific photo was a small image of a blonde teenage girl clipped to the side of his toolbox. He had it outside the toolbox. Stuck to his toolbox. Brantner told different coworkers different things about who she was. She told one, this used to be my girlfriend. She told another that it was his daughter. He doesn't have any daughters, by the way, in case you're wondering.

Thank fuck he has no daughters because I would feel terrible for them if that was their father. So after the name circulated, these co-workers said with high certainty that the girl on the toolbox is Barrett Beck. Is Barrett, yeah. Yeah. One said I'm 90% sure of it. Yeah. So the photographs in the toolbox were not just that, though, too. They found multiple coworker accounts describing lots of photos of girls who look to be teenagers and is working.

workspace. They don't have the photos. They've been gone now, but the phone, they all remember them. So these are, this is probably his treasure chest. Yeah. Those are the people that he knows. Yeah, those are the people that he took. The images reportedly showed girls, quote, appearing to be posing in campsite style backgrounds, you know, like he drove them somewhere in the woods. And how to pose? Describe some as looking stiff or mannequin type, you know, dead. Oh my God. And they also said, they also said, they all. all looked expressionless. You know.

What if? Either he's making them pose that way or he's killing them and posing and taking pictures on it. That's fucked up. Yeah. This guy, dude, this is horrifying. How many more? There's nothing they can do?

I mean, I guess you could run his DNA, but who knows if they've kept anything samples from back then? They probably got destroyed too. You got to find the bodies first. That's the thing. They don't even know who he killed. They don't even use these pictures. But Jesus, run him.

his database, run his DNA through every goddamn database there is. Every one on the planet. If he killed that many girls, you're bound to get a hit now and then, you know. So should we feel bad for Craig Kron? Because he's been harassed and called a murder publicly for 20 years. Should we feel bad for psycho? He's lived a life with the nickname Psycho. Tell me more.

Tell me why I shouldn't. You shouldn't feel bad for him. He was never charged with the murder, but there was never any evidence, obviously. Anyway, in 2013, he goes back to prison for attempted murder of his ex-girlfriend when he stabbed her in a Walmart parking lot. Psycho is all class. He's all class, if nothing else, isn't he? How trash can you be stabbing your ex-girlfriend in a Walmart parking lot? Do we know where?

What state? Was it in Wisconsin? West Bend, Wisconsin. He didn't leave. He never laughed. Nope. Her name was Tammy Jolly, I guess. She suffered non-life-threatening stab wounds to her right shoulder, chest, and forearm.

He was hacking at her. He stabbed the shit out of her. Yeah. She lived with him for more than four years in Fondalak and West Bend. She left him around July 23rd, 2013 to move into another apartment with a different man. Uh-huh. And he's out of it. Yeah, no, God.

You can't. A guy like psycho. You don't leave psycho. You know what she told psycho? I was tired of being punched and tossed around, you know, because you're a psycho. So they said that he attacked the woman on August 4th, moments after she finished her overnight shift at the Walmart. Oof, that's depressing. Oh, she works there.

And she gets beat up too. She worked a shift, came outside and got her asking. What a fucking jerk. And she said somehow that wasn't the worst part of my day. I just did eight hours at Walmart. So it was way worse. I've had a hell of the day. She was returning to her Chevy Blazer in the parking lot about 7 a.m.

When he suddenly attacked her, he quickly pulled out a black. black handled folding knife with a three inch long blade. The cop said, the complaint says, she believed it was his intent to kill her, take her vehicle and her teenage son. Oh my God. He tried to yank her out of the vehicle as he stabbed her multiple times.

He accused her of making false reports to the police in the hopes of sending him back to prison because he had been in prison several times. What do you think this is going to do? As I cold and stab you. How dare you, tell the cops bad things about me. In order to put me in prison

as I attempt to murder you. Bitch? What the fuck? Wow. So, she tried to kick him and draw attention from others, screaming, call 911, I have a restraining order. A couple of men ran over, grabbed Psycho, and pinned him down to the parking lot

until police arrived. Nice. Walmart surveillance cameras captured the entire incident. He had parked his 95 Ford Ranger truck across from the Walmart. a 20-year-old truck across from the wall. In 2013, he's driving a knife. He parked around the side of the building and stalked her.

Police found a duffel bag in his truck with a ski mask, leather gloves, a crowbar, a second BB gun, lighter fluid, binoculars, and a man's tie. Why does he have all of that? He's going to be super formal while he does crazy shit. That's my-O-7, but okay, gloves, got my ski mask. Here's my crowbar, my BB gun, going to set something on fire. The name's Brian. Wait a minute. There we go. Got it all adjusted.

Do I have a nice Windsor on there? That says it's straight. Double. Double. He's sentenced to 25 years in prison for that. Bye-bye, Psycho. We're rid of Psycho for this story. 2016 is Dennis's trial. It's an 11-day trial. The judge ruled that the defense could not bring Psycho in as an alternative suspect. Right. been proven not to be. So his name was kind of kept from the jury there. The judge also said if there's ever a retrial, if this trial isn't go right, and there's

a retrial, I might reconsider that. Who knows? The prosecution presents all the fingerprints, his familiarity with the body dump location, the Burger King paradox there, the toolbox photographs and testimony from all of his co-workers talking about that. In opening statements, the DA said, draw the conclusion from the evidence, what the facts proved beyond a reasonable doubt, he killed Barrett Beck.

Yeah. There you go. The defense says, what are we talking about here? What are we talking about? The chain of custody is a disaster here. Who fucking knows what happened? Missing physical evidence.

And they said fingerprints proved presence, not murder. He said, you'll hear no evidence of any connection between the two, him and her. They never crossed paths, never in the same area, total strangers.

Don't do that. Appravan. Explain why he felt upper van. That's all you can do. Fingerprints prove present. He's never been there. Don't. So they bring in the crime lab analyst here.

They say that the talk about the 1990 collection process. Former coworkers testify about the toolbox. They talk about the matching fingerprints. The defense points out facts the prosecution could not explain, including an unidentified fingerprint on the steering. wheel column. They never found out who that was. Male DNA on a toothpick found

in the van, which could have been one of her friends six months ago. Who knows? It could have been anybody. Which never matched anyone, including Brantner. I assume they would test all the family for that. And the absence of Brantner's prints on the driver's side of the van, which means he might have wiped him

down with a McDonald's napkin. They said, if he drove 462 miles, why are none of his prints on the wheel? I don't care. Why are his prints everywhere else. That's what I'd like to know. That's my main thing. They're on the seat. Under it. That's it. Adjusting the seat. If you're adjusting that seat, you're in that car. In the fucking car.

The prosecution in their closing said, follow the evidence. Follow that evidence. And what I'm asking you to do is find Dennis Brandner guilty of first degree intentional homicide. The defense said, quote, these are just items in the van. Yeah, just items in a van. I mean, it was a, you know, kind of a crime scene that he showed So it's a good. It's not driving. It's traveling. It's fine.

It's a sovereign vehicle. So they said they don't say anything about whether Mr. Brantner intentionally killed Ms. Beck. Nothing. Uh-huh. The jury deliberates for a day. And then there's a mistrial. Hung jury.

Really? One juror. One guy wouldn't do it. Everybody else was guilty from moment one. One person held out. And they couldn't fucking. the whole thing. They could do it.

They said they are, and they will never stay that he's guilty. Wow. They had to call it a mistrial. Fingerprints in the car. Defense motions for an acquittal. The prosecution says, let's calm down a little bit here. It's one guy. The defense says there was no direct evidence linking Brantner to Beck's death.

The state's entire case rested on fingerprints. No witness implicated Brantner in the killing. No physical evidence tied Brantner to the killing. The only portion are potential evidence that could have done so. the remnants of the red shirt and the pantyhose were lost or destroyed by the state. Yeah. But the prosecution says, oh, we're going to retry him. Don't worry about that.

Good. They do that because a former girlfriend of his, Terry Kaczynski, who had initially denied dating Brantner when she was first interviewed, came forward with the correction. She said she lived with him for a year in the late 90s. During that time, during a breakup in 1998, he choked her. And she said she was afraid that he would harm her. for talking to the police. That's why she didn't say it at first, and that she was still afraid of him,

even though he was in jail. 2016, there's the separate drug charges case. He's convicted on drug charges, and they sentence him to, you, sir, may fuck off, six years and seven months in prison. For bringing the boot full of oxies in. For his boot full of fucking opiate here.

Early February 2018, they reach a plea agreement. What? The plea agreement. He will enter an out. Alford plea, which means he does not have to admit guilt, an Alford plea to second-degree reckless homicide, which is not murder, by the way. Acknowledging that there's sufficient evidence existing, but also claiming his innocence. This avoids a second murder trial.

Now, you figure the family is pissed, but they were consulted throughout the process. They say, I would like to, I'd like to know from them how closely and whether they were happy about this or not. But in sentencing, everyone in the court, all of the Barrett's friends and family wear red, because they're, that's her favorite color. So they all have red on. Because also they bloods, bitch. Yeah, bitch. Piru.

You didn't know Shug Knight was related to her, but he is. So the dad and brother... Better watch her back in there. Yeah, better watch her back, motherfucker. We deepen that motherfucker, you know what I'm saying? Dave Beck said, as she was leaving, she said with a smile, don't worry, dad. All the people up north are good people.

I waved as she drove off, not ever thinking that would be the last time I would see her or hear from her again. after 27 years, there's no preparation you can make for this day. Diane, mom says, everyone in this courtroom, including Dennis Brantner, knows what a guilty cowardy is. Ah, I like you. He did it. He knows he did it. It's time he stepped up and admitted it.

Lots of thought, lots of anger. We don't have to worry about Dennis Brantner being out on the streets any longer, harming anyone else. I wish someone would have realized long ago this man's mentality. Maybe this would have never happened to Barry. Yeah. And her brother Ben said, I think it's a huge win. This is a very evil, evil person that's going to be behind bars. No amount of time could ever repay the pain and anguish he's put the family through.

Right. The judge says the public needs to be protected from you. Yeah? You, sir, may fuck off a maximum of 10 years in prison. Nowhere near enough. No. Now where near enough. How old is he?

At the time, was he born in 50s like, it's 50s at this point, 55 or something. He was born in 56, I think I said, or 54. The sentence will run consecutive to his drug sentence. So he's got 11, 16 years. The prosecutor said, in almost every respect, 10 years feels like too little. Yeah, you think. It's crazy. Yeah.

A decade? The reason why they did it, they said rather than proceed with a second murder trial, which might now include the alternate suspect defense of Psycho. They said that might come in. And the choking testimony and all the other stuff, they said, fuck it. Let's just everybody said it was better to just get a plea deal. Plus, it's been almost 30 years at this point. August of 2020, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upholds the conviction.

But the Wisconsin Supreme Court rules in his favor on the drug charges agreeing that two of the counts of his drug counts were duplicative. So we're the same. Cancels him out. So his sentence is adjusted to seven years. years and 60 days. The homicide conviction stands. Yeah. So February 2021, Supreme Court declines to hear his appeal, the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

February 2020, Brantner is scheduled finally his drug charges of when he's being scheduled to begin serving the 10-year sentence for homicide finally. Just two years ago. Just two years ago. But, I mean, he could be out in a few years. He could be out by 2030. He got maximum of 10. if he gets all 10 years served.

They better not. Who the fuck is going to parole him? Yeah. You would look at that and go, you're staying every fucking second of those 10 years, every goddamn minute. And then when we release you, we're going to make you go to the bathroom.

We're going to drag our feet. He'll be released, though. Yeah, they'll be released, though. Yeah, they'll get out that day. We're going to say, we can't find your socks that you came in with. We'll look for them. You know what I mean?

We don't have them right now. We're going to turn this jail upside. down looking. Who has the key to the front door? Who's got the key to the front? Hold on it. We can't find the key. Wait a minute. You might want to sit down for a while. Some outdated pager or something. Some shit. We'll find it. You just sit still. Calm down. Your Motorola razor, oh, man. Barrett Beck's family established a memorial scholarship in her name for music students. Every year, a student pursuing music in college receives free assistance from a fun built from this whole thing. So that's nice. The family seems like great people.

They seem like nice people. And it's a fucking shame anyway. Even if they seem like assholes, it would still be a shame. It's horrible. But it also seemed like a nice group of people that kind of got tortured for years. A group of kind Midwesterners sat for 30 years with no closure. That's fucked up. So anyway, there you go.

There is Fondelac, Wisconsin. That is some wild shit. He's got so many more bodies, I think. In my opinion, he's got a ton more bodies on him. Got to be three to five more, right? At least. At least. Yeah.

Who knows when he slowed down or stopped or whatever. but this is bad stuff. So if you enjoy this show or any of the shows we put out, go to whatever app you listen on and give us five stars. It helps a lot. Tell your friends, everybody on Netflix, please help out. It does help out the show a ton. Follow on social media at Smalltown Murder on Instagram,

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