Good-natured pensioner: the story of the bloodthirsty killer 43 was looking for

The murder of a young American couple could not reveal dozens of years. Only after 43, thanks to the evidence left on the victim's things, were the criminologists on the trail of the criminal. It turned out to be the good-natured 82-year-old pensioner Raymond Vannivenhoven. This shocked the neighbors, who know him as a very nice old man who does not hurt a fly. Story told edition "Lenta.ru".

Photo: Marinette County Sheriff's Office

Beginning of the End

43 a year ago, 9 July 1976, David Shuldes and his bride, Ellen Mateis, went for the weekend to the McClintock, Wisconsin Nature Reserve. They found a secluded place away from tourists, camped and were going to go for a walk through the woods. Along the way, 24-year-old Mateis went to the toilet for a couple of minutes, Shuldes was waiting for her outside.

At that moment, an unknown person shot and killed an 25-year-old man with an 30-caliber rifle. The killer ordered the second victim to surrender and walk about 90 meters deep into the forest. According to another unofficial version, the woman tried to call for help and went on the run. The offender raped Mateis, after which he killed her and disappeared without a trace.

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Around 14: 30 local time, park worker Stanley Apanasyevich came to check if he had any firewood left. He dismantled a pile of wood dumped by the toilet and spotted the body of Shuldes. The man examined the corpse and saw a pool of blood near his head. Apanasyevich asked the driver, who had stopped in the forest, to stay near the dead man, while he himself went for help.

Photo: WFRV Local 5 video screenshot

The arrived policemen inspected the crime scene and stated a violent death. They found women's belongings in a broken camp and went in search. The dead Mateis was discovered only in the morning of the next day.
The autopsy revealed that Shuldes died as a result of a shot in the neck, and his lover received gunshot wounds in the chest and abdomen. In addition, experts seized the rapist's sperm from a woman’s shorts and sent her for examination.

Went under water

Investigators were confused: they could not understand who and why was so bloodthirsty with young people. The murderer did not take the money and personal belongings of those killed; in the Americans' car lay an intact purse of Mateis. After a bloody crime, tourists for a long time chose to bypass the ill-fated reserve.

For several years, detectives could not get on the trail of the killer, the case moved from one detective to another. In 1990, Craig Bates took up the investigation. Soon, DNA fingerprinting began to be widely used in forensic science. This method was resorted to when conducting forensic examinations to solve crimes, as well as to establish kinship and identify individuals.

Bates took advantage of this method and, thanks to laboratory staff, obtained a genetic portrait of the killer. The data was uploaded to the national US DNA database to compare with the samples available in the system. However, no person with a similar DNA profile was found in the database.

The face of the elusive ghost

In 2001, the murder investigation was assigned to detective Todd Baldwin. He identified the circle of suspects and took DNA samples from them. All of them also did not correspond to the genetic portrait of the criminal, developed on the basis of material evidence. After 17 years of unsuccessful attempts to close the case, at the end of March 2018, investigators contacted Tom Shaw, representing Parabon NanoLabs. He was engaged in DNA phenotyping - the restoration of the appearance of an unknown criminal on his genes.

In early April of the same year, Baldwin provided Parabon NanoLabs DNA samples of the killer. The results of the analysis came after two days: the man had fair skin, reddish-brown hair and freckles. Experts recreated the alleged appearance of the suspect at the age of 25 and 65 years, taking into account the time elapsed since the murder.

Photo: Marinette County Sheriff's Office

9 October 2018, Parabon NanoLabs representatives contacted the investigators. According to them, the genealogy, which worked for the company, studied the materials of the case and, through research, narrowed the circle of suspects to a specific family from Wisconsin - Gladys Brunette and Edward Vannivenhoven. Genealogical suggested that the killer could be one of four sons or four grandchildren of Americans. He gave the detectives the names of all the sons of Brunette and Vannivenhoven.

Fatal envelope

In early January, 2019, Detective Baldwin and his partner examined the house of one of the sons, Cornelius. The detectives found a trash can near the site and seized three things allegedly belonging to the suspect: a pair of socks, a bandage and an inhaler. An examination revealed that Cornelius was not involved in the murder, but his DNA samples had a related relationship with the DNA profile of the criminal.

After removing Cornelius from the list of suspects, Baldwin continued the investigation. Next up was his brother Edward. It turned out that the man lived next door to a retired detective Tom Shellow and often called on him for a cup of coffee. Baldwin asked a colleague to save Edward's used cup for him to take his DNA samples. Shellow agreed. It soon became known that the second brother was also related to the alleged murderer, but was not related to the case.

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With brother Raymond Baldwin went for another trick. He incited his partner Darren Laskowski to address the third suspect on the pretext of undergoing a brief survey on the work of the police. At Laskovski’s request, Raymond put the completed application in an envelope and sealed it with saliva.

Experts examined the materials obtained in the laboratory and concluded that the sperm from the deceased's belongings belonged to Raymond Vannivenhoven. 14 March 2019, the police found a rifle in his garage. In addition, on a shelf above the washing machine and dryer was a tin with sleeves.

Perfect neighbor

A week later, Raymond Vannivenhoven appeared before the court. His pledge was one million dollars. “Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty,” the suspect desperately repeated when the judge asked if he confessed to the crime. The next hearing is scheduled for June 19.

“Unfortunately, he remained unpunished for too long,” said a relative of the deceased, 68-year-old Kurt Shuldes. “Yes, a lot of time has passed,” added Cynthia Chisek, 53-year-old niece Mateis. “The realization that someone has committed such a terrible crime and goes free is hanging all the time like a stone around his neck.”

The brother of the dead wife of the suspect, Rita, is convinced that confusion has occurred and that his relative is innocent. According to him, Raymond always lovingly treated his spouse and children. Rita passed away in 2008, literally several months after the 50 of their wedding anniversary. A close friend of the criminal Wayne Sankey noted that after the death of his wife, Raymond was actively engaged in fishing, hunting and camping.

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“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sankey recalls reacting when told the killer’s name. “I told my wife and she couldn’t believe it. She said: “It can’t be like that. Our neighbor Ray?

According to him, 82-year-old Raymond, with a coarse voice and a loud, expressive laugh, was a jack of all trades. He was the neighbor who always waved his hand out of the car and got into a casual conversation.

The Dark Past

For decades, a widower and father of five adult children lived quietly in the small town of Lakewood in northern Wisconsin. Literally 40 kilometers from the very place where he shot two innocent people in cold blood. Locals are wondering: who really was this quiet man, old Raymond?

It turned out that few people knew about the dark side of his personality. In 1957, at the age of 20, being married, Raymond, under the name of Lawrence Vannivenhoven, was jailed for six months for attacking an 17-year-old girl. The victim walked with three friends when a man hit her on the back, face and shoulder. According to police, shortly before that, Raymond was trying to attack another 16-year-old victim.

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Then in court the offender concluded that he "just wanted to scare the girls." In 1960, he received a year of imprisonment for not giving financial support to his wife and one-year-old daughter. Only recently, the neighbors briefly thought that Raymond was hostile to them - but for the first time in a long time, he got drunk, so no one gave it any significance. A few years ago, he quit drinking alcohol for health reasons.

***

Fred Mason, a landfill worker, often saw Raymond in piles of scrap metal.

“I know that when he got drunk, he became that scum. You would not want to be with him at this moment. I think many would not want to, ”said 66-year-old Mason.

86-year-old Robert Ganzell recalls that he sometimes dined with the Vannivenhoven family. According to him, it was indeed rumored that Raymond “flew off the coils” under the influence of alcohol. However, he himself was not a witness to this. “I never thought that he could have been the killer. Who would have imagined that he was capable of such a thing, ”the man assured.

“He came across as a very decent person, an ordinary retiree,” Sankey says. “No matter where you were, if you mentioned Ray, everyone would say, 'Oh, old Ray.' And so every time. I still can’t wrap my head around it.”

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