Word of the arrest — via a friend’s text message — hit Wayne Sankey like a thunderbolt.
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 kind of guy who always waved from his car.
The widower and father of five grown children had lived quietly for two decades among the 800 residents of Lakewood, a northern Wisconsin town surrounded by forests and small lakes.
Now authorities were saying this man was a cold-blooded 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, Vannieuwenoven had lived in plain sight, yet outside detectives’ radar.
It was just too much to be believed. Was the guy next door really a monster?
___
David Schuldes and Ellen Matheys, engaged to be married, set up their campsite at a secluded spot in McClintock Park on Friday afternoon, July 9,1976.
It appeared they were alone.
Schuldes was a 25-year-old part-timer in the circulation department of the Green Bay Press-Gazette; Matheys, 24, worked at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay library.
They were about to go for a walk, according to court documents and news reports of the time. First, Matheys stopped to use the restroom.
Two shots from a .30-caliber rifle shattered the quiet. One bullet struck Schuldes’ neck from 50 feet away, killing him instantly. The other bullet lodged in a bathroom wall.
Matheys ran, with the killer in pursuit, investigators say. He caught and raped her, then shot her twice in the chest.
Her body was found 200 yards from where Schuldes lay, a camera slung over his shoulder.
Investigators were stumped: The killer took no money and left Matheys’ purse in the couple’s car. They didn’t know why the couple was targeted, and leads were scant. For months, campers avoided McClintock Park.
DNA profiling in the ’90s brought new hope, but detectives got no matches when they submitted the semen from Matheys’ shorts to the FBI’s national database.
