Carolyn Hudson Murder

Carolyn Hudson Murdered James Stomner, the middle man Joseph Hecht (Texas hired killer) and an accomplice, Andrew Slickman, were seen parked in the Hudson’s East Side neighborhood the day before the murder. Slickman was arrested an hour after the slaying at the Dane County Regional Airport, where he went toreturn a rented car. Hecht and a woman companion, Melany Brandt, 25, were taken into custody later that day at the Badger Bus station in Milwaukee. A man bitter over child support payments he was making hired a contract killer to do away with his ex wife. Early on the morning of Oct. 14 1983, a man broke into the woman’s Vondron Road home and shot her to death in front of her three children. Her 14-year-old daughter chased the man out the door and wrote down the license number. Later that day a Texas man was arrested at the Milwaukee airport. He admitted to being a contract killer but refused to tell police who had hired him Madison police officers suspected the ex husband but could find no link between him and the killer. How could he have known about a hired killer in Texas, and hired him? Painstaking detective work, mainly combing telephone records, revealed a web of phone calls back and forth from the killer to another man, who owned a beauty salon in Wisconsin Dells, and from him to the ex husband. The middle man turned down a deal by prosecutors that would have dropped all charges against him but he declined. In the end he received the same life sentence the ex husband got. The ex husband had telephoned her four months earlier after receiving legal papers asking about his ability to pay more child support. “You're going to be shot,” he told his ex-wife, then hung up the phone. The hired killer told police he was paid $9,300 to kill but refused to say who hired him. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 15 years after pleading guilty to first-degree murder. His accomplice received a two-year sentence. The ex husband and the middle man were brought to trial and sentenced to life in prison. The hired killer used a small handgun to escape two guards at University Hospital, where he had been brought from prison for treatment of a neurological condition. He was recaptured after commandeering the pickup truck of a man and his infant son, pointing a gun at gasoline station workers and running through a back yard on Gregory Street. I was considering writing a book on the case and one of the attorneys had provided me with transcripts and tapes, including the emergency call Jacqueline made immediately after her mother was shot. It was chilling. Butfrom that point on, through it all, prosecutors and reporters -- everyoneclose to the case -- marveled at the courage and composure of the teenage girl, who was the first witness called at trial. Today Jacqueline Wheeler is 31, an attorney in Milwaukee with Beck, Chaet,Molony & Bamberger, a law firm that also has a small Madison office on theSquare. She traces her decision to go to law school to her admiration forSteve Bablitch, then a Dane County assistant district attorney and the lead prosecutor in the case. ``He was my hero,'' Wheeler said. ``He was such anadvocate for our family.'' Bablitch today is general counsel for Blue Cross &Blue Shield United of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. After the murder of her mother and conviction of her father, Jacqueline went to live with an uncle in Baraboo, where she finished high school. She attended undergrad at UW-Madison and went to law school at Marquette. In law school, she had interned with the idea she would get into criminallaw, most likely as a prosecutor, but after graduating from Marquette in 1996Wheeler found work with a firm focusing on creditors' rights. She liked it andlearned a lot, and now is working the flip side of that equation -- helpingdebtors and businesses through the maze of bankruptcy. ``I really like it,''she said. Wheeler just bought a home in the Milwaukee area. ``And I have a puppy,'' she said. She has moved beyond the tragedy, but it hasn't been easy. She losther younger brother, Rob, in a motorcycle accident. Her older sister is closeto their still-imprisoned father, something Jacqueline has a hard timeunderstanding. And she was upset to learn Stomner has been paroled. ``It's a life,'' Wheeler said, referring to her slain mother. ``Hisinvolvement . . .'' Her voice trailed off. ``I'd have been really upset if itwas Hecht who had gotten out. He scares me.'' I asked Jacqueline if the memories of that terrible day in 1983 had stayedwith her. ``Oh, yes,'' she said. She was quiet for a moment. ``I still remember that license plate number,'' Jacqueline Wheeler said.``G-U-2-5-6-2.''