FOND du LAC, Wis (WSAU-Wheeler News) There’s a report that Fond du Lac County sheriff’s investigators made a number of missteps in probing the 1990 murder of Berit Beck. Gannett Wisconsin Media said it found a belief that Beck’s van was long the target of the crime — and not the 18-year-old Beck herself.
Authorities said she was driving from her Racine County home to a computer class in Appleton — but she never made it there, and her van was found abandoned in Fond du Lac. Her decomposed body was found a few weeks later in a roadside ditch near Waupun.
61-year-old Dennis Brantner was arrested in late March. He has a preliminary hearing scheduled nine days from now on a first-degree murder charge.
The Gannett report said investigators were driven off-track for years by a theory that Craig Hron of West Bend killed Beck. Circumstantial evidence was cited, along with the fact that Hron was found to have Beck’s hair brush. He was never charged. Gannett called him a “convenient suspect” that might make Brantner’s prosecution complicated. Brantner’s lawyer said his client did not kill Beck.
Hron is serving a 25-year prison term for wounding Tammie Jollie in a stabbing incident almost two years ago in a Walmart parking lot in West Bend.
