Welder charged with 1990 death of Boldt employee

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Milwaukee (AP) — Justice may be finally coming for a former employee of The Boldt Co. who was killed nearly 25 years ago.

Dennis Brantner, 61, of Kenosha, was charged on Monday with first-degree murder in the death of 18-year-old Berit Beck, who was then working as a secretary for Oscar J. Boldt Co., the former name of the Appleton-based general contractor. Around the time of her disappearance, Beck was traveling from her home in the southern Wisconsin city of Sturtevant to a computer training seminar in Appleton, about 110 miles north. The van Beck was driving was found in the parking lot of a Kmart store in Fond du Lac. She had been last seen two days before, on July 17, 1990.

According to news reports, Beck had been in Racine, at the construction site for the headquarters of J.I. Case Co., a manufacturer of farming and construction equipment. Beck worked in a trailer, performing clerical work for Boldt, the general contractor on the project. She took the job after finishing her senior year at Case High School, according to a 1990 report from The Journal Times in Racine.

She was supposed to attend a four-day computer training seminar at Boldt’s headquarters in Appleton and had reservations at the Holiday Inn in Appleton. According to the criminal complaint filed on Monday, the seminar was supposed to start at 1 p.m., but she never arrived and was later reported missing.

Beck’s body was found August 22, 1990, in a ditch in Waupun, according to the complaint. An autopsy showed she had probably been strangled. A red gag was found tied around her head, according to investigators.

Brantner’s bond was set at $1 million during a court appearance Monday, and he remained in the Fond du Lac County Jail by deadline Tuesday afternoon. Brantner’s attorney asked for the bail to be set at $10,000, saying his client was not a flight risk.

“Mr. Brantner is innocent,” Milwaukee defense attorney Craig Powell said Monday. “He has been nothing but cooperative with investigators since they named him as a suspect one year ago.”

Fond du Lac Sheriff Mick Fink was a detective at the time Beck was killed. Fink said he wasn’t celebrating the arrest.

“I don’t see a win in this. I don’t see a win for the Beck family. I don’t see a win in it for anyone,” Fink said at a news conference Monday. “I don’t feel anything other than it was tragedy.”

According to the criminal complaint, Brantner was targeted as a suspect in February 2014 after a State Crime Lab analyst traced previously unidentified fingerprints from Beck’s van to him. Additional fingerprints were submitted to the crime lab earlier in March, and an analyst found two additional matches in Beck’s van — stemming from prints on a cellophane cigarette wrapper found under the front passenger seat and from prints on the inside middle door window, the complaint said.

“If that’s the evidence they have, it is an extremely weak case,” said Powell, Brantner’s attorney.

The complaint also describes statements provided by three of Brantner’s former colleagues at the Kenosha office of Pneumatech Inc., a maker of compressed-air systems where Brantner had worked as a welder. The men said they saw, in Brantner’s welding area, a photo of Beck clipped inside Brantner’s toolbox. They said Brantner described her as his girlfriend.

Another colleague at Pneumatech, according to the complaint, said that Brantner, in 2012, had told her he had done a lot of “messed up things,” including committing burglary and rape, and beating a woman so bad he would have killed her.

The complaint also details previous criminal charges against Brantner. In 1974, a complaint was filed against him for stealing a woman’s underwear at West Allis Inn. In 1989, he was arrested for breaking into a home across from his first wife’s home and stalking her. In 1994, he was arrested for holding his second wife hostage and threatening her with a knife.

Before Brantner’s arrest, investigators had talked to a man who said a different suspect had admitted to killing Beck and had showed him her body, according to the complaint. Investigators interviewed the man again earlier this month and he recanted his story, according to detectives.

Even though so many years have passed, Fink said the “bold stranger abduction” of Beck and her death have never been forgotten.

When detectives interviewed Brantner in 2014, he denied killing her, then began crying and added he couldn’t remember anything and didn’t want to, the complaint said.

District Attorney Eric Toney said Monday that investigators believe Brantner acted alone.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.