LAKEWOOD, Wis. — Word of the arrest — via a friend’s text message — hit Wayne Sankey like a thunderbolt.
“I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me,'” Sankey recalled. “And then I told the wife and she couldn’t believe it. ‘There’s no way,’ she said. ‘Ray down the road?'”
Ray Vannieuwenhoven was his next-door neighbor — a helpful, 82-year-old handyman with a gravelly voice and a loud, distinctive laugh.
The widower and father of five grown children had lived quietly for two decades among the 800 residents of Lakewood, a northern Wisconsin town.
Now authorities were saying he was a killer. They had used genetic genealogy to crack a cold case that stretched back well into the 20th century — a double murder 25 miles southwest of Lakewood.
For nearly 43 years, Vannieuwenhoven had lived in plain sight, yet off detectives’ radar.
It was just too much to be believed. Was the guy next door really a monster?
Full Story:
https://nypost.com/2019/06/04/arrest-in-decades-old-murder-case-stuns-wisconsin-town/
“I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me,'” Sankey recalled. “And then I told the wife and she couldn’t believe it. ‘There’s no way,’ she said. ‘Ray down the road?'”
Ray Vannieuwenhoven was his next-door neighbor — a helpful, 82-year-old handyman with a gravelly voice and a loud, distinctive laugh.
The widower and father of five grown children had lived quietly for two decades among the 800 residents of Lakewood, a northern Wisconsin town.
Now authorities were saying he was a killer. They had used genetic genealogy to crack a cold case that stretched back well into the 20th century — a double murder 25 miles southwest of Lakewood.
For nearly 43 years, Vannieuwenhoven had lived in plain sight, yet off detectives’ radar.
It was just too much to be believed. Was the guy next door really a monster?
Full Story:
https://nypost.com/2019/06/04/arrest-in-decades-old-murder-case-stuns-wisconsin-town/