[Photo/AP, Mark Was] Police officials (left) stand near police tape as a man believed to be Tyler Peterson lies on the ground to the right.
Posted on 10/07/2007 10:23:40 AM PDT by janetjanet998
Edited on 10/07/2007 10:34:41 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary Saturday night when Tyler Peterson met up with a bunch of friends in a parking lot behind a Crandon bank.
They talked about hunting, what to do later that night. Typical stuff. That was it. It was 8:30 p.m.
But before the sun would rise, Peterson, a 20-year-old, off-duty Forest County sheriff's deputy and part-time City of Crandon police officer, would be suspected of storming into his ex-girlfriend's house and killing her and five other young people at a party, including two of his best childhood buddies.
Another teen was critically wounded.
Peterson would later end up dead, shot by the Crandon SWAT team.
"He must have just snapped," said a close friend who had known Peterson since they were in kindergarten and talked to him in the parking lot Saturday night. "He seemed fine (at 8:30 p.m.)."
Authorities in Crandon, about 180 miles north of Milwaukee, did not release details of the killings or the names of the victims Sunday, but the Journal Sentinel learned from interviews with families and friends that the following were killed:
• Jordanne Murray, 18, Peterson's former longtime sweetheart, who graduated from Crandon High School in 2006.
• Katrina McCorkle, an 18-year-old senior at Crandon High.
• Leanna Thomas, also an 18-year-old senior at Crandon.
• Bradley Schultz, 20, a 2005 graduate of Crandon and a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee majoring in criminal justice.
• Aaron Smith, called "Chunk" by his friends, also a 2005 graduate of Crandon. His age was not available.
• Lindsey Stahl, 14, a freshman at Crandon.
Charlie Nietzel, 19, of the neighboring town of Pickerel was wounded. He was in critical condition late Sunday at St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield.
Because a local law enforcement officer was involved, the investigation is being handled by the state Department of Criminal Investigation. Officials would not disclose any information Sunday other than to say authorities responded to a report of shots fired at 2:47 a.m., and that six people and the killer were dead.
Three-term Crandon Mayor Gary Bradley expressed anger and frustration at the state's handling of the case, complaining about a lack of information for officials and families and the length of time being taken in removing the bodies from the home.
"Man, they paralyzed this town," he said.
Bradley confirmed that Peterson was shot and killed by the Crandon SWAT team Sunday afternoon, hours after the early morning shootings.
Although few in Crandon knew exactly what happened in Murray's home, in a town where the population barely pushes 2,000, seemingly everyone knew the victims or the shooter.
Fay Statezny has known the Petersons and the families of several of the other victims for 20 years or more. Statezny said Tyler Peterson was "a normal kid" who liked to hunt and fish and loved the outdoors.
He had grown up with Smith and Schultz, and they were all very close friends.
"We would all go mud-running and ice fishing," said Peterson's longtime friend from kindergarten, who didn't want his name published because of the sensitivity of the situation.
He said Peterson and Murray had been together for a long time and broke up earlier this year. He debunked rumors that Murray was dating someone else, sparking a jealous rage in Peterson.
Paul Pitts, a 17-year-old senior, said Peterson was the type of guy who was picked on by students when he was in high school.
Other friends and neighbors said Peterson, who was officially deputized in February, had recently completed special-forces-type training.
It made sense to Jenny Stahl that her 14-year-old daughter, Lindsey, should stay the night at Murray's house. After all, it was homecoming weekend; lots of kids were sleeping at friends' homes. It cut down on the late-night driving. It would be safer that way, they thought.
Lindsey Stahl and Murray both worked at an ice cream and hamburger stand called Eats and Treats in Crandon. They stopped at Stahl's home around 9 p.m. to pick up a change of clothes.
At 8 a.m. Sunday, Jenny Stahl got a knock on her door. Her neighbor told her of the slayings and took her to Praise Chapel Community Church, where she waited with the families of the other victims for word about their loved ones. Stahl hoped for the best.
"I thought maybe she wasn't there, maybe she got out," Stahl said in an interview in her driveway, where she stood with friends and neighbors hugging and drinking Pepsi.
She waited eight hours. At 4 p.m., authorities announced the names of the dead. Lindsey was on the list.
The 14-year-old's half brother, Ryan Coulter, 12, said his sister was smart and interested in issues ranging from global warming to animal rights.
"She probably would have changed the world, you know," he said.
Jenny Stahl grew up in Kenosha and moved her family to Crandon because she thought the small community would be a safer place for her children to grow up.
Elsie Murray, Jordanne's grandmother, said the family was not able Sunday to talk about what happened.
Friends said Jordanne lived in the lower level of the house and her father, Paul Murray, lived in the upper level.
Kelly Flanery, 15, a sophomore at Crandon High, knew all of the victims and said that in addition to working at the ice cream shop, Jordanne Murray worked at Subway in Crandon.
She "was like the nicest person. She was friends with everyone," said Flanery. "I didn't believe it at first. It didn't like sink in, it really hasn't."
Schultz grew up in Crandon but moved to Cudahy two years ago to attend UW-Milwaukee, where he was a junior, said his uncle Steve Bocek, who lives in Oak Creek. Schultz worked part-time at a Racine electrical supply company to pay for school.
The middle of three boys, Schultz often drove to Crandon on weekends to visit his mother, who is blind with retinitis pigmentosa, and younger brother.
"He was just always a nice kid, always polite. He just wanted to come down here to go to school so he could further his education," said Bocek, who last saw his nephew three weeks ago when Schultz visited to swim in Bocek's backyard pool.
Schultz, who had a girlfriend in the Milwaukee area, had played basketball and baseball at Crandon High School.
"He was such a good kid; who would ever expect this?" his uncle said.
McCorkle and Jordanne Murray had been "friends forever," said a former boyfriend of McCorkle's. McCorkle loved to play softball and was thinking about where to attend college, he said. And she was very tight with her family.
"Her family meant everything to her," he said.
Friends said Smith, or "Chunk," as friends called him, was into football and loved to fish.
"He was one of them guys that everybody gets along with," said a childhood friend who also grew up with Peterson and Schultz.
Smith's sister said her family was grieving and couldn't talk.
Thomas' grandfather, Roy Thomas, said his granddaughter has a twin sister, Lindsay. "She was a sweet little girl," he said tearfully before hanging up the phone.
As streets were barricaded near the shooting scene, the soul of Crandon seemed to shake with grief.
"This is affecting everybody in this small community," said Tom Vollmar, a Forest County supervisor who has lived in Crandon for 57 years. "There's no family that hasn't been touched in one way or another."
Schools Superintendent Richard Peters said the victims and Peterson were all "people who we have known or patted on the back or encouraged at one point in time."
Crandon High School's crisis team gathered twice Sunday. Counselors fanned out to area churches to help families and friends of the victims who had gathered there.
School is canceled today.
Praise Chapel Community Church Pastor Bill Farr was called by the Forest County Sheriff's Department at 6:30 a.m. Sunday and asked to open the church for victims' families and other members of the community. About 200 people showed up during the day. He said it took so long for authorities to release the names because state investigators were handling the case.
More than a dozen hours later, Farr was still at the church.
"This is going to take a long time for a community like this to get over," said Farr, who has lived in Crandon for many years.
Standing next to his pickup truck in the church parking lot Sunday night, Farr began to cry as he held hands and prayed with three other church members.
"We just really need everyone's prayers right now," he said.
And that’s just one of a lot of stories across the country the past six years or so. I’m wondering of some of this could be related to having very young police officers out there who are not very well trained and having too hot of heads (no control over their anger) due to the age factor?
Something that did catch my attention from the article is that he ran to his friend's dad and called his mom and grandmother. What about his dad? He might have been a strong influence in his life and I just didn't see him mentioned. I don't know. I do know that a lot of young men that get in to trouble don't have a male role model in the home. If I had to look at changing things because of youthful violence, that is where I would look if I was a law maker. It may not have any significance in this case though.
I have a good friend down here who grew up in Rheinlander and always has a story to tell about “Up Nort Der, Hey?”.
My wife has an aunt in Eagle River that still lives by Catfish Lake. The uncle was a bear hunter and ran his pack of beagles after rabbits. Great folk, salt of the earth.
Sorry to hear about the events in Crandon, I’m sure it has a great impact on all the communities up there.
Decoding FR,
“This is Hugh!” Something big is going on.
“Shower Time!” Something really big is going on and you may or may not have time to take a shower.
“Bush Did It!” Appears on every thread. You do well if you can remember to be the first. Then you will get trashed by everybody for doing it, but everybody does it anyway.
“Immigration” Always injected into any thread regardless of it’s relevancy.
“Ron Paul” Guaranteed way to crash a thread. Do this at your own risk!
“Godzilla Photos” Posted by me and others for no discernible reason other that it looks cool.
I don’t know. Do you have data? We hear about the bad stuff but I don’t know what the % is overall. Yes, as I’ve been reminded, everyone has an opinion and mine is that legislators need to stay out of it. Let these local people decide if stricter guidelines are needed in their community. Let other local LE hear about this and decide if they need to review policies.
[Photo/AP, Mark Was] Police officials (left) stand near police tape as a man believed to be Tyler Peterson lies on the ground to the right.
Has anyone been able to confirm whether Peterson was a member of the SWAT team?
Why not just confirm or deny?
No, we want to make standards universal, you cannot get a CDL until you are 21, you cannot drink until 21, you cannot legally own a machine gun until 21, etc. So why in the world would giving a punk a gun and a badge make him more mature than anyone else. As to his parents, it would not surprise me if his father wasn't a cop.
Praise Church Chapel Community Church Pastor, Bill Farr, says, “Tyler- he’d come over and we’d have birthday parties together, he was friends with my son.”
http://www.wjfw.com/stories.html?sku=20071008165019
I don’t think age has anything to do with being a
“nut-case”,,,
SOME HAD THEIR 19th AND 20th B-DAY IN IRAQ !!! 
MAYBE THEIR "TOO YOUNG"!!
That is to easy of a stone to throw. Maybe they are to young, the point of standardizing age minimums and mental health evaluations is still valid.
That overhead pic gave me the chills. Yeesh.
About that other article involving Brian Marvin and his wife, I would be GREATLY surprised if any part of it was true. In HS he drank a lot and was NOT a good kid he was a bully and extremely manipulative. After graduating he was not any better. I do not know his wife, but the whole “you are who you hang with” idea comes to mind.
Farr is also the coroner for crandon. I am guessing never in a million years did he think he would have to walk into that massacre. :(
I don’t believe it does either. After going thru the academy, if a police force sets a 21 year requirement, thats fine. I don’t see much difference between 20 and 21 though. The 20 I think happens because some go to a 2 year criminal justice program at a JR. College when they get out of high school.
All of this is so sad and such a waste. Praying for yall.
I’m wondering if this young man was into steroids. Being in law enforcement and possibly the SWAT team he certainly had to stay in shape. If he bought into the steroid thing to help him do so, maybe a “roid rage” would explain his going so over the edge over being ridiculed, especially if this was very atypical behaviour for him. Just a thought.
I will not have LEOs or Military disparaged because of their age !!!...PERIOD...
A nut-case is a nut-case at any age,,,
Maybe the “EVIL GUN” did it ??
No,,,Not that either,,,
Maybe,,,Just Cause He Was A NUT ??...
I know what a hodag is! As a matter of fact my sister is in possession of a letter written in Gene Shepard's own hand to my great-grandfather.
It was reported today that the local PD there does not require psychological screening, which if done right is a reliable and tested way to weed out undesirable characters. For a few hudred dollars a candidate, this could very likely have been avoided. It's not a new idea either. I did police candidate screenings for quite awhile back in the 80's and 90's and caught some real psychopaths who would otherwise have been hired and issued a badge and a gun.
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