Wisconsin

A woman wearing high heels and a gold ring was found dead by hunters in Indiana 41 years ago. She’s now been identified.

Published

7 months ago

December 5, 2023

A woman wearing high heels and a gold ring was found dead by hunters in Indiana 41 years ago. She’s now been identified.

The remains of a woman wearing high heels and a gold ring who was found dead in rural Indiana in 1982 have been identified as those of a Wisconsin woman who was 20 when she vanished more than four decades ago, authorities said.

The remains are those of Connie Lorraine Christensen, who was from the Madison, Wisconsin-area community of Oregon, said Lauren Ogden, chief deputy coroner of the Wayne County Coroner’s Office.

Connie Lorraine Christensen

DNA Doe Project

Hunters discovered Christensen’s then-unidentified remains in December 1982 near Jacksonburg, a rural community about 60 miles east of Indianapolis, Ogden said. She had died from a gunshot wound and her homicide case remains unsolved.

According to the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that works to identify cold case victims, the woman’s clothing “did not indicate she was out for a walk.” The group said that when she was found, the woman wore high-heeled wooden soled clogs, a blue, long-sleeved button up blouse, gray slacks, long knit socks and a blue nylon jacket. She also wore a gold ring with an opal and two diamonds, according to the DNA Doe Project.

Christensen was last seen in Nashville, Tennessee, in April 1982, when she was believed to have been three to four months pregnant, Ogden said. She had left her 1-year-old daughter with relatives while she was away and they reported her missing after she failed to return as planned to Wisconsin.

Christensen’s remains were stored at the University of Indianapolis’ forensic anthropology department when the coroner’s office partnered with the DNA Doe Project to try to identify them.

After Indiana State Police’s forensic laboratory extracted DNA from them, forensic genetic genealogy determined that they closely match the DNA of two of Christensen’s relatives, Ogden said.

Coincidentally, at the same time that the identification efforts were underway, her family was working on creating an accurate family tree using ancestry and genealogy, Ogden said.

“Due to the fact that several of Connie’s living relatives had uploaded their DNA to an ancestry website, the genealogists at the DNA Doe Project were able to provide our office with the name of a candidate much more quickly than we expected,” she said.

Ogden said Christensen’s now adult daughter was taken last Tuesday to the location where her mother’s remains were found so she could leave flowers there. Authorities also gave her a gold ring set with an opal and two diamonds that was found with her mother’s remains.

“Our hearts go out to Connie’s family, and we were honored to bring them the answers they have sought for so long,” Missy Koski, a member of the DNA Doe Project, said in a news release. “I am proud of our dedicated and skilled volunteers who were able to assist law enforcement in returning Connie Christensen’s name after all this time.”

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Wisconsin

Wisconsin police chase stretches 41 miles; driver, passenger arrested

Published

16 mins ago

July 6, 2024

Press Room

Wisconsin police chase stretches 41 miles; driver, passenger arrested

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I-41 pursuit stretches from Fond du Lac County to County Line Road

GERMANTOWN, Wis. – A 41-mile pursuit that stretched from Fond du Lac County into Germantown ended with two people in custody on Friday night, July 5.

According to the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office, the driver was a 32-year-old man with a lengthy criminal history. The passenger, also a convicted felon, had a nationwide warrant out for his arrest.

The pursuit began on County Highway B near Interstate 41. When a deputy turned on his lights and sirens to stop the vehicle for speeding and running a stop sign, the driver instead sped off.

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Deputies chased the fleeing vehicle onto I-41 southbound and then called for help from neighboring law enforcement agencies.

Near Slinger, the sheriff’s office said the driver tried to get off the interstate in an attempt to avoid stop sticks. A deputy performed a PIT maneuver, but the driver was able to regain control and get back onto the interstate.

The pursuit continued southbound until Washington County sheriff’s deputies and Germantown police officers successfully used stop sticks. The fleeing vehicle tried to get off at County Line Road but lost control and went into a ditch. Some vehicles that were uninvolved in the chase also hit the stop sticks and got flat tires in the process.

The driver was taken into custody without further incident after a high-risk traffic stop, the sheriff’s office said.

A state trooper arrested the passenger, who ran from the scene. The passenger was hurt due to running through thick vegetation in an attempt to get away, the sheriff’s office said, and was placed into custody again after receiving medical treatment.

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Wisconsin

Residents in Wisconsin community return home after dam breach leads to evacuations

Published

7 hours ago

July 6, 2024

Press Room

Residents in Wisconsin community return home after dam breach leads to evacuations

MANAWA, Wis. — People living downriver of a Wisconsin dam that was breached by floodwaters have been allowed back into their homes following an evacuation order and many of them now face the mess of cleaning up flooded basements, police said Saturday.

The dam in Manawa along the Little Wolf River was breached Friday afternoon by rain-driven floodwaters that eroded an estimated 50-foot-wide (15.2-meter-wide) portion of the dam, said Manawa Police Chief Jason Severson.

The dam breach happened after the National Weather Service said a deluge of about 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) of rain fell on that area of eastern Wisconsin in a few hours Friday.

Homes south of Manawa’s dam were ordered evacuated Friday, but that order was lifted at 5 p.m. in the city about 55 miles (88 kilometers) west of Green Bay after the flooding subsided and a highway along which most of the affected homes are located reopened, Severson said Saturday.

Dozens of homes in the community of about 1,200 residents were temporarily evacuated, but it was not immediately clear how many residences were affected by that order, he said. There were no reports of injuries following Friday’s dam breach, Severson said.

While officials will need to repair two local roads damaged by the floodwaters, the main cleanup work in Manawa will involve residents whose basements got flooded, he said.

“There’s a lot of homes that did take on water in their basements. The water was so high it was just running through the streets and some people took on property damage,” Severson told The Associated Press.

He said a high school and a Masonic lodge that had served as emergency shelters were shut down Friday night after people returned to their homes. But Manawa’s wastewater treatment plant, which was swamped by the flooding, remained offline Saturday and a boil-water order was in effect for the city.

Christine Boissonnault spent most of Friday in the local high school’s shelter after she was evacuated from her mobile home. She said it was shocking to see the flood damage in Manawa.

“I cried when I came down and saw it. My daughter works at the store and she said she saw and heard the water going down the road,” Boissonnault told WFRV-TV.

Severson said a staffer with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation inspected the area Friday and found that the dam appears to be intact aside from erosion on one side of it.

The weather service warns that rain and possibly thunderstorms are possible through the weekend and into early next week.

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Wisconsin

Music festival brings attention to local Wisconsin businesses

Published

14 hours ago

July 6, 2024

Press Room

Music festival brings attention to local Wisconsin businesses

HAYWARD, Wis. (Northern News Now) — Small businesses in one Wisconsin town saw some big crowds thanks to a new music festival.

Friday, hundreds of people made their way to Downtown Hayward to visit the first-ever Summer Music Jam Festival.

“We thought you know what, let’s do some music, open up the street, and have a Summer Jam,” said James Netz, the owner of James Netz Photography.

Also serving as the President of Hayward’s Business Improvement District, Netz dreamt up the idea of the festival in hopes of getting more people to visit Downtown.

Netz said his team saw a good opening for the event over the 4th of July weekend, as there were no events planned on Friday.

“Our mission statement is to market out all our small businesses that we have in the district,” Netz said.

The most recent winter tourism season in Hayward was particularly slow due to the lack of snow cancelling big events like the American Birkebeiner.

Netz said the Summer Jam Music Festival offered local businesses, like Tremblay, the opportunity to see more foot traffic during the summer tourism season.

“We’re busier than we normally would be,” said Chelsea Erickson, the manager of Tremblays.

Although Tremblays, a candy shop in Hayward, had steady business over the winter season, Erickson said getting more customers inside never hurts.

“We hope people come to Hayward,” Erikson said. “They enjoy the music fest and all the great shops and they come to get some candy.”

The Summer Jam Music Festival was free to the public.

The event was sponsored by local businesses and organizations in the area like Lynns Custom Meats and Catering and Haywards Lions Club.

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