Chippewa County man gets Florida death penalty

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A Chippewa County man has been ordered to get the death penalty for shooting and stabbing two women in Florida 12 years ago.

Circuit Judge William Hallman, III handed down a sentence of death by lethal injection for 36-year-old Bill Marquardt. Investigators in Bushnell, Fla. spent years looking for the killer of 72-year-old Margaret Ruiz and her 42-year-old daughter Esperanza Wells. But they never got a break in the case until Chippewa County District Attorney Jon Thiesen did some Internet research.

Marquardt had just been found innocent of stabbing his mother to death 2006 – but Thiesen knew that the DNA of two related women was found on the murder weapon. So he combed the Web to find unsolved stabbings of related women, and that’s how he found out about the slayings of Ruiz and Wells.

The district attorney then contacted Florida authorities, and they took the case the rest of the way.

Tags: crime, courts, wisconsin