On the Radar
Warrants disclose more details in Zimmermann death
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by Associated Press
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
The 911 call from a college student’s cell phone the day she died carried the sounds of a woman’s screams and a struggle, according to search warrants obtained by a newspaper.
The warrants reviewed by the Wisconsin State Journal include police statements that describe the 911 call from UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann on April 2, shortly before her fiancee found her dead at their apartment.
Madison police and Dane County officials had for months refused to disclose the content of the call, which was mishandled by the 911 center. A dispatcher apparently failed to hear sounds on the other end and did not send police to the apartment, authorities have said.
“The disconnect call started with the sound of a woman screaming and the line remains active and open picking up the background sounds of a struggle for a short period of time,” according to a description of the call by Madison Police Detective Marion Morgan.
The 911 call from Zimmermann’s phone came at 12:20 p.m., the search warrants state. A short time later, her fiancee Jordan Gonnering found her cold and lifeless on the floor of their apartment near campus. She had been stabbed in the heart so many times that he thought she had been shot in the chest, one of the warrants revealed.
The warrants have been sealed and resealed by judges at the request of police and Dane County prosecutors, but the latest seal on them expired last week and no request was made to extend the seals.
Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard said police and prosecutors intended to seek a judge’s order to extend the seals and the failure to do so was an oversight.
Investigators have spent months searching unsuccessfully for Zimmermann’s killer, who they believe was a stranger. Gonnering was quickly ruled out as a suspect.
An autopsy report in one of the warrants said Zimmermann died from “complex homicidal violence including multiple stab wounds and strangulation.” Other reports noted she had also been beaten and nearly half of the knife wounds that killed Zimmermann were to her heart.
The stab wounds were inflicted with a knife that was 2 to 5 inches long with a width of about three-quarters of an inch. The weapon had not been found as of an April 10 search warrant.
Police did obtain a long list of potential evidence from the scene, including clothing, kitchen knives, computer equipment, bedding and other items. They also took bloody women’s slippers, a paper towel with an “unknown red substance,” a sheet of computer paper with suspected blood drops and 18 blood samples.
Investigators also took 23 swabs for DNA and 10 fingerprints. They took nine partial footwear prints from the apartment and two sink traps and their contents.
At the beginning of the investigation, police took DNA from at least three homeless men who had come to their attention. All were ultimately cleared.
