Between 1968 and 1984, the University of Wisconsin in Madison was the site of a series of brutal murders that left eight young women dead. The killer was never caught, and the crimes remain unsolved. Decades later, a few more murders that might not be the same killer, but rekindled the memories that had terrified the Wisconsin campus as well as much of the state in the late 1960s. Jeff Finup from  Badgerland Legends and I explore these unsolved mysteries in an episode of Wisconsin Legends Podcast and you can think of this article as a primer.

The First Victim

Christine Rothschild was a Chicago fashion model who entered the university in 1967 after graduating with honors in Chicago, Illinois. On a dreary May evening in 1968, a male student discovered her body hidden behind some shrubbery outside of Sterling Hall, a mathematics building located on North Charter Street. She had been stabbed 14 times with and a piece of cloth was knotted around her neck. Her leather gloves had been placed in her mouth, apparently to prevent her from crying out.

While this shocked the campus, there was a broader crime wave in the 1960s, and the Chicago Tribune quickly tried to link Rothschild's death to the brutal and unsolved home invasion murder of the daughter of Illinois Senate candidate Chuck Percy to Christine Rothschild. Terrifyingly, there was a string of murders of young women in Southeastern Wisconsin that happened all within the same few months. And like Christine Rothschild, they also were never solved.

The Next Victims

Over the years, the bodies started piling up and police were baffled. While the original Capital City Killings traditionally ended in 1985, there were two more brutal Madison murders in the mid-2000s that baffled police as well.

• Debra Bennett, 1976, 20. Her body had been set on fire and left in a ditch a few miles from Cross Plains. Unsolved.
• Julie Ann Hall, 18, 1978. After being bludgeoned to death, her body was found buried near Waunakee. Unsolved.
• Julie Speerschneider, 1979, 20. Missing for two years before her skeletal remains were discovered in the town of Dunn in 1981. Her case remains unsolved.
• Shirley Stewart, 1980, 17. Found in a wooded area in the town of Westport in 1980, a year after she went missing. Her case remains unsolved.
• Susan LeMahieu, 1980, 24. Found in the UW Arboretum in 1980. Her case remains unsolved.
• Donna Mraz, 1982, 19. Stabbed to death near Camp Randall Stadium In 1982 while on her way home from her waitress Job at a State Street restaurant. Unsolved.
• Janet Rasch, 1985, 20. Her body was found partially burnt in 1985 near a highway 100 miles north of Madison in a after being reported missing for over a month. In 2022, her death was ruled accidental.
• Brittany Zimmerman, 2008, 21. A student at UW Madison, Brittany was killed in her apartment while on the phone with 911, who failed to call her back after she was disconnected. Her case was finally resolved in 2023.
• Kelly Nolan, 2008, 22.: A student at UW Whitewater disappeared after a night out in Madison. Her body was found about a month later in a rural area of Dane County. Her murder remains unsolved.

Rothschild's Killer Escapes?

Before Christine Rothschild was murdered, she had confided in her best friend, Linda Tomaszewski Schulko, about feeling stalked by a man named Niels Bjorn Jorgensen, who often frequented the same Memorial reading room as Christine. Despite her efforts to avoid him, such as staying indoors and keeping her doors and windows locked, Christine was found dead within a week of expressing her fears.

Jorgensen, a medical researcher, was thought to have gained access to a scalpel, which could potentially be the murder weapon. He was seen cleaning a scalpel at the hospital where he worked, utilizing a method that would remove all blood and fingerprints. After Christine's murder, Jorgensen left town within 72 hours, abandoning all his possessions. Madison police even followed him to New York City to get him to take a polygraph test, but Jorgensen said wasn’t feeling well and would come into the station tomorrow. The Madison cops never saw him again and instead of pursuing, mysteriously decided to just go back.

Christine’s courageous friend, Linda, dedicated her life to unmasking the killer and alerted authorities to Jorgensen's whereabouts, particularly when he was close to universities. Despite her efforts, no one has been arrested for Christine's murder, and Jorgensen has since passed away. This is the focus of criminologist Michael Arntfield’s book, Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders That America Forgot

Connection to The Confession Killer

Infamous serial killer Henry Lee Lucas even had a connection to the murders of Julie Ann Hall, Susan LeMahieu, Julie Speerschneider, Debra Bennett, and Shirley Stewart. Lucas, who claimed responsibility for over 350 murders across the U.S., was interviewed by Dane County detectives in 1984. During these interviews, Lucas provided details about the crime scenes and victims that led investigators to believe he was involved in these cases.

Newspapers at the time noted that Lucas' accomplice, Ottis Toole, may have been traveling with Lucas at the time of these murders, and authorities planned to arrange an interview with him as well. Lucas was the inspiration for the 80s horror classic, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer , but Lucas later recanted his confessions to more than 600 murders including his involvement in any killings that took place in Madison. 

Christine Rothschild's murder was far enough away in time from the other killings, that often her case gets added in because it's unsolved and it was so sensational because it was picked up by the Chicago newspapers. If it really was Jorgensen, he didn't come back to Madison to murder the others. Authorities never had a reason to connect Rothschild's murder to the other killings and besides the officers trying to pin 4 of the murders on Henry Lee Lucas, there was no evidence this was the same person who was doing the killing. That's why the place-specific idea seems to be popular. With enough unrest, the city becomes attractive to predators to do bad things because the police have their hands full. And even when they didn't, it seems that the department in Madison at the time was ill-equipped to handle such a major crime.

A Problem With The Evidence

And one of the reasons for that could be sloppy evidence handling. In the 1980s, a catastrophic event occurred that would adversely affect these unsolved murder cases – a major purge of the evidence room at the Sheriff's Office. Due to overcrowding in the facility, there was a mass discard of evidence across a variety of cases, including these unsolved murders.

This evidence purge was not a minor event but one that led to the loss and destruction of key pieces of evidence integral to these unsolved cases. These pieces of evidence, which included items from crime scenes and potentially even DNA samples, could have been crucial in identifying the perpetrators of these horrific crimes.

The loss is particularly regrettable considering the advances in forensic science and technology that have occurred since the time these crimes were committed. Techniques such as DNA analysis, which were not as advanced or perhaps even non-existent at the time of the murders, could have been applied to this evidence to provide new leads or even solve these cases.

Find Your Next Paranormal Experience