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.
I didn’t express what I was trying to state very well. I meant like a cross road.
Those same incidences can be seen in most people. If you never hurt anyone, no one thinks much about though. Why do most people live normal lives but occasionally one will cross the line?
‘Those same incidences can be seen in most people. If you never hurt anyone, no one thinks much about though. Why do most people live normal lives but occasionally one will cross the line?’
There is always a clear pattern of escalation in these instances. Some might recall the initial reports about both of the Columbine killers were ‘they were such nice boys’....or ‘they never seemed to bother anybody’.
Of course later we learned that simply wasn’t the case at all.
Check the descriptions of Jeffrey Dahlmer, his neighbors said he was ‘quiet, never bothered anybody’.
This stuff never changes, including how the media and locals initially react. Its only upon closer examination we find that the ‘quiet young man’ did have a problem with small animals (Dahlmer) or had problems with other kids and made death threats (Columbine punks).
This happens over and over and over again...yet somebody will always say ‘they just snapped’. Its the single biggest ‘urban myth’ in US history from what I can tell.
There are always ‘precursors’. Always.
Oh, state law will be overhauled after this fiasco....I expect all current LEOs will be background checked as well.
btw, a great book that covers this topic is called ‘The Gift of Fear’ by Gavin De Becker. I highly recommend it for reading, especially women.
I have to disagree. In the early going it seamed like the mayor was answering more questions than the police.
If he is a three term Mayor, he is largely to blame in the flawed hiring process....
Seriously though if John Doe went nuts, people that knew him might say:
1. He tended to be a loner. (There are lots of loners that don't kill people.
2. He used to get in fights at school. (Don't all little boys at one time or another?)
You see what I mean?
It makes me a bit uncomfortable that the kid was hired at age 19 to be an officer in the small town that he grew up in. I just don’t see people respecting him as a LEO when he was just walking the halls of the local high school. It had to make his job tougher.
No, its not a psy book. Its a book written by one of the best providers of executive protection in the world. He wrote it specifically for women, btw, but its a great read and will get you to rethink what you believe about events like the one we are discussing, as well as how ‘fear’ is natures way (the brains way) of trying to protect you.
We as a society ‘learn’ to ignore our natural instincts. Which is how so many become unwitting victims.
I can’t stress strongly enough about reading this book. And its not ‘boring’.
Yes, what 'little info' came out early might have come from the mayor.
But Milwaukee_Guy from his first posts on this thread continually blames the mayor for lack of instant info, the "lockdown" & "gag" orders.
I simply questioned why he insists this mayor was in charge of these 'orders'.
Agreed....& I haven't posted as to my opinion of their 'hiring process'.
This decision left better to the local voters, & as you can see I'm in TX.
sorry I forgot to ping you to post 571....
If he had not been a cop...Let's say he was a Fireman...would that have prevented him from getting a gun and doing this? As someone mentioned, youth in that area hunt. I expect that LE all over the country arelooking at their policies which is good but blaming this on everyone and everything but the shooter is just going to give the gun grabbers another inch, IMO.
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.
I've seen the same thing happen in TX......Small communities faced with a major crime, call in the "state authorities" .......then the 'small authorities' have very little input into the 'on-going investigation.
I have to say they played it pretty well. All I’m hearing on the local news is about moving on and having memorials and the like. The story seems to be all but off of the national radar. The authorities have totally dodged the questions of whether it was a police issued weapon, why it took them so long to respond to repeated 911 calls, and why they choose to execute him in the field rather than bring him to justice.
“So why did you bother to jump in at all? Your lack of interest, and compassion sticks out like a sore thumb.”
I bothered to jump in because someone pinged me. That’s not too hard to understand. My lack of interest came after I entered a news thread wearing my conservative values hat, and my intention of exploring conservatism through discussion seemed oddly out of place. What was I thinking? As far as compassion goes, sure I have compassion, it just isn’t of the new-found ‘compassionate conservative’ type. Have you bothered asking if any of the new sign-ups are staunch liberals? Is that a silly thing to know? I sure hope not.
“How about that Jedward, we agree on something.”
I’m a Conservative and Patriot. I would hope we’d find something in agreement.
I have to admit, I’m very surprised there’s still states out there that don’t require a psych eval. When I was involved with this area in a former life, it was application, background, written, oral, psych, then drug test...in that order. Sadly enough, you’d be surprised how many actually make it through to the end and then fail the drug test (shaking head).
What I'm saying is often local authority is 'gagged' once they call the state in.......believe me no 'local authority' wants to withhold info (like death notification) for hours all the while knowing that the 'local grapevine' has already spread word.
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