PHILLIPS — A recent story on a 38-year-old missing person case questions investigative processes where outside agency reviews did not. Price County Sheriff Brian Schmidt and Investigator Krista Trimble said the focus on solving the case should be forward thinking and not a critique of the past.
A recent investigative story by Wisconsin Watch into the Nov. 12, 1987 disappearance and possible murder of Marchelle “Shelly” Hansen, 23, of Phillips, questioned whether circumstantial evidence was enough at the time to have arrested a suspect, Michael Raskie.
The Wisconsin Watch story said family, co-workers and other law enforcement comments say Hansen was pregnant by her married work supervisor, Raskie, and that the sheriff’s office had a search warrant for Raskie’s DNA in 2008, but that no charges resulted while he was in prison for assaulting his wife, or before his death in 2015.
The Hansen case remains unsolved with Hansen never being located, alive or dead.
Schmidt said his department appreciates that the inability to share information from ongoing investigations is frustrating. If someone sends a letter or makes a phone call regarding the case those items are immediately investigated and to simply assert that the department is sitting on its hands, is corrupt or hiding something, “is crap.”
“So to sit and say that the case is at a standstill is, I think, inaccurate,” Schmidt said.
The Department of Criminal Investigation of the Wisconsin Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were part of the Hansen investigation shortly after her disappearance, along with other stakeholders who were asked to review the entire case, more than once, he said. There were multiple agencies involved in assisting with the case from the earliest days through the 2000s.
“So the whole notion that we’re doing this alone is incorrect,” Schmidt said. “We would have heard about it by now if there would have been issues with the investigation. When you get the FBI involved, when you’re dealing with behavioral science and their level of investigation they want to see every shred of paperwork.”
Investigator Kristina Trimble said the case remains open, ongoing and active.
“My predecessors, Investigator Christopher Jarosinski, myself, my partners: we all actively work on leads in this case or anything that comes up that we can do to further the investigation,” Trimble said.
The investigators actively look into new information with the priority and goal of finding Marchelle Hansen and bringing closure to her family, she said. The family has waited a long time and should be confident that the department continues to do its best and understand the problems that tend to happen with older cases.
“I hope by the end of my career, hopefully before then, that we can locate her and bring that family some closure,” Trimble said.
DNA evidence can include or exclude individuals from certain aspects of any investigation, Schmidt said. The look back 40 years is based in part on a court’s decision to unseal the DNA search warrant on Raskie after his death.
“With the most recent testing we discussed, there was not enough information that would provide enough evidence to make an arrest,” Schmidt said.
Investigators work with new evidence and then must look at what was happening in the time frame from when the case was opened and then bring that forward, he said.
In situations like this when an older case is brought into the public eye it presents an opportunity to have Shelly’s name and story told to more people who weren’t aware and keep the dialogue going in the community, Schmidt said. That awareness may lead to the investigators receiving new information.
“I can’t sit and open up the case file to everyone to review,” he said, “I don’t think that’d be fair to the investigation. I think it would taint our investigation if there was any potential prosecution that could move forward. I think that could cause damage to the investigation. But if we learn of something, we keep that information, we move to the next level and look at what’s been given to us and try to investigate and make another attempt somewhere else to locate or find what took place that evening for Shelly.”
Trimble said the media’s forensic studies of these ongoing cases can sometimes overlook the wishes of families and friends, as well as the efforts of investigators. The focus should be on finding Hansen rather than what somebody believes was or wasn’t done.
“I think that anybody can sit there and look at that sort of thing, but I think it’s important that Shelly’s case is looked at in a positive light and that the goal is to find her,” she said.
The sheriff and the investigators communicate with the family and discuss what they can. They cannot discuss details of the investigation but reassure them that the work continues to find enough evidence for the District Attorney to prosecute the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It’s always been ongoing,” Schmidt said.
The Price County Review reported in April 2004 that the sheriff’s office was investigating a lead in the Hansen case in the town of Harmony earlier that month. Then-Sheriff Wallace Krenzke said he addressed the matter because the investigation led to widespread speculation about the missing Hansen and that with no remains or foul play officially suspected the case was ongoing.