Tony Haase acquitted of 1992 Waupaca County double murder

The "Holy Trinity" of evidence claimed against Tony Haase: DNA, a bloody palm print, and a "confession." A slam dunk for the State? Not after we tore their case apart.

The facts in the Complaint were horrible. This was a vicious 1992 murder of a 23-year-old woman and her 33-year-old boyfriend, Tanna Togstad and Tim Mumbrue, respectively. They had been stabbed repeatedly, as had Tanna's dog, "Scruffy." The case rested on three pillars, the "Holy Trinity," according to the State. First was the sperm DNA found on Tanna's body, second was the bloody palm print inside her front door, and finally was Tony's "confession." The crime lab claimed the first two were unequivocal matches to Tony.

Tony was identified through the new "gee whiz" cop tool called investigative genetic genealogy, or IGG. This was just a few months before his arrest. No other family members were investigated, but they focused solely on Tony for reasons that remain a mystery today. Rather than ask for a DNA sample or find an abandoned coffee cup or something, they engineered a ruse traffic stop in order to get him to sign a warning ticket for not having a front plate. That pen testing supposedly came back "consistent with" the sperm sample taken from Tanna's body.

Interrogation

After getting their lab findings, they set up an ambush to go interrogate Tony at the foundry where he worked. Despite the main agent's insistence that he had no plans to arrest Tony that day, they showed up unannounced, of course, with five undercover officers. In addition, there was also a literal swarm (about 35 officers) waiting to execute a warrant on Tony's house. They even had drones!

While at the foundry, they played "good cop-good cop" and convinced a reluctant Tony to "consensually" come to the Sheriff's Dept. to give a DNA sample and take a lie detector test. They explained that his name "came up" during the investigation. That was on August 11, 2022. He didn't walk out of that building until August 11, 2025 - 3 years to the day.

At the Sheriff's Dept., they predictably told him he failed the lie detector and then dropped the bomb about the DNA, deliberately lying about the results. They spent the next 5 1/2 hours effectively using the Reid Technique to bombard him until he adopted their narrative into something they called a "confession." This "confession" was prominent in the Criminal Complaint and every single news story for the next three years.

The case against Tony was a police fever dream, who, after 30 years of failure, desperately wanted to solve this notorious crime. This was particularly so after the Sheriff's Department was rocked by scandal just a year before Tony's arrest. In addition, the entirety of their case arose after the July 6, 2022, traffic stop, which was clearly unconstitutional and illegal.

Jeff Thiel

Tony as a murderer didn't make sense in any rational world. But the police and prosecutors actively resisted the defense, pointing the finger at Tony's uncle, Jeff Thiel, because they falsely clung to the belief that Jeff had been excluded by faulty and outdated DNA testing in 1996. The fact that Jeff was related to Tony ultimately helped jurors disbelieve the DNA testimony that Tony was "the source."

Jeff was also a complete psychopathic maniac. And given the severity of the killing here, it only made sense for him to be a suspect, which he was from day one up until just before Tony's arrest.

The severity of the crime had Jeff written all over it. Tanna was fatally stabbed in her chest, and Tim had 18 stab wounds, including repeated body and skull stabs, and had his throat slit from ear to ear. And perhaps the worst fact was the multiple stab wounds to Tanna's dog Scruffy. All three of them had their noses slit.

At trial, we presented a slew of witnesses - including two of Jeff's ex-wives and his daughter - to talk about seeing Jeff kill many dogs over the years for transgressions like coming into his yard. He literally tore the head off a kitten for meowing too loudly and waking him up from a nap. Also, Jeff's obsession with knives, which he carried at all times.

We juxtaposed Jeff's psychotic behavior with Tony's excellent character and reputation. We called Tony's girlfriend at the time, his sister, and several lifelong friends, who universally described him as the calmest and gentlest person they know, a great friend, and a loving father.

We also called many of the State's own detectives to explain the investigation into Glendon Gouker and Laine Shields. Gouker was also a suspect on day one and, in 2013, confessed to being at the crime with Shields and a third person Shields brought who Gouker didn't know. That third person's description fit Jeff Thiel EXACTLY.

DNA

Deconstructing the crime lab's DNA-based conclusions at trial revealed a theme: the Wisconsin State Crime Lab analysts are just cops in lab coats. They are not trying to do science but are only a biased extension of the police determined to solve a case any way they can. And they will bend/break the rules when they need to - which we showed at trial that they did a number of times.

The lab had sent the DNA swabs from the scene to a lab in California, which falsely excluded Jeff Thiel as a contributor. The Wisconsin testing did not begin until 2000, when the lab first started performing STR testing. That profile went nowhere and completely consumed the semen swabs from Tanna's body. Part of that wasted evidence was a huge screw-up by the analyst, which she admitted on the stand.

Despite this screw-up and now not having any evidence sample, they miraculously continued "testing." In 2014, they used tubes left over from the 1996 testing, which were empty. But she somehow managed to get a profile that they ultimately chose not to use.

This became important later, as there were both an STR and a YSTR profile that, if used, would have excluded Tony. In the Autosomal profile, two loci had alleles that could not have come from either Tony or Tanna. In the YSTR profile, there were two loci that would exclude Tony.

In 2017, the analyst explained that as a "last-ditch effort," she used the "spin baskets" from her 2000 testing. That lame attempt produced a different YSTR profile than in 2014. That's scientifically impossible. Their continued testing seemed to be contradicting itself.

Importantly, she also crossed out 13 alleles from the 2017 profile as being too low to count. This turned out to be a huge turning point.

In 2020, the testing analyst retired, and a new analyst took over, who did no actual testing of the sample from the scene. He ultimately did both the traffic stop and buccal swab comparisons for Tony. He took the alleles that crossed out and added them back in with a yellow highlighter!

He did this so that there would be 20 alleles counted and, therefore, he could submit it to CODIS, the national DNA database. But when he did the Tony comparisons, he left the added alleles in! The jurors later told us that this was what really got them to concentrate on Jeff Thiel as the real suspect.

Both the analyst and the DNA unit head admitted on cross-examination that one analyst should never change another analyst's work. Maybe for CODIS but never for inclusion purposes. Basically, they were tripping all over themselves over the new analyst, lamely contending that he never "added" anything because all those alleles had already been counted. Why the yellow highlights? No good answer from him.

Confession

With the DNA nut cracked, the confession predictably bothered many jurors. When the whole 7 hours (1 at the foundry and 6 at the Sheriff's Dept.) were played during the trial, the DA would stop the recording many times and ask the lying DCI agent stupid questions. They never got to see the whole, uninterrupted flow of how they led Tony around by the nose so as not to really "admit" anything, but rather to adopt their theory.

It was classic Reid Technique with the relentless pounding of themes: You were super drunk, maybe others were with you, you had to have bloody clothes, you had a thing for Tanna, maybe someone paid you to do it, maybe you just wanted to talk to Tanna, and things got out of hand, etc., etc.

Tony denied everything down the line but was ultimately shifted because they told him the DNA (from the traffic stop) was "100%" and "infallible." Also, that they "could not lie" to him because they "would lose their jobs" if they did. He bought that, assumed he did it, and couldn't remember.

So towards the end of the many hours of pounding, he said, "I must of done it" and "I never knew I did it." And his mind concocted a reason: His dad was killed in a snowmobile accident when Tony was 7 (14 years prior to the murders) while racing with Tanna's dad and one other person. No one ever knew whose fault it was, but that story was prominent in the Complaint and in every news article for 3 years. It was stupid, of course, and even the agent admitted he didn't believe that as a motive.

Our expert on false confessions testified and explained in court that this was a "coerced-internalized false confession." In other words, they got Tony to believe he did it! He had done a full psychological workup on Tony and found him to be a "rule-conscious" man and "highly suggestible." So when they told him the DNA was 100%, and they couldn't lie, his mind found a way to please his interrogators.

Verdict

Ultimately, the jurors returned verdicts of Not Guilty on both counts because there were many, many reasonable doubts that Tony could even be capable of this crime. They reasonably concluded that the engineered and manipulated DNA profile could easily be his uncle, Jeff Thiel. They dismissed the palm print out of hand after seeing all the gamesmanship the crime lab was up to. Finally, during deliberations, they asked to watch the interrogation uninterrupted and saw for themselves more clearly the lies and manipulation by the police and how all of Tony's "confession" was him merely parroting back what the police told him.

Takeaways from Tony's 3 year ordeal:

1. That the crime lab "findings" are often an illusion and based mainly on trying to help the police rather than doing science.
2. That the police will lie, and do outrageous, even unprecedented things (like the traffic stop) to get a conviction
3. That you should never, ever, talk to the police without an attorney present - even if you know you have done nothing wrong.