Jurors allowed to hear about 2nd woman found in suitcase

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KENOSHA, Wis.  — A Wisconsin judge will allow jurors in a homicide case against a former police officer to hear about a Minnesota woman whom the defendant is also suspected of killing.

The remains of the two victims were found in suitcases along a highway near Lake Geneva in 2014.

Former West Allis officer Steven Zelich is charged in Kenosha County with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse in the 2012 death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, from Cottage Grove, Oregon. Zelich, 54, is also suspected of killing 37-year-old Laura Simonson, of Farmington, Minn., at a Rochester hotel in 2013.

Zelich told investigators he accidentally choked both women to death during consensual sex, hid their bodies until they began to smell and then dumped them on the roadside, where they were found by highway workers in June 2014, according to court records.

The state has been trying to get permission to tell the jury about Simonson’s death during Zelich’s trial in Wisconsin. Judge Bruce Schroeder has twice denied the request.

The state made a third attempt, with prosecutors saying they believe Zelich planned to kill Gamez all along and that they need to talk about what he did to her before she flew from Oregon to Wisconsin, as well as how he lined up meetings with Simonson and a woman identified only as “Petra” in court documents, according to the Kenosha News.

This time, Schroeder said yes.

“Twice rebuffed, (the state) again returns, with a more cogent explanation and specific allegations offered to justify admission,” Schroeder wrote in the one-page decision. “I am now persuaded that the evidence of the Minnesota homicide and the alleged solicitation of another woman should be admitted, for the reasons to be discussed at the next hearing.”

A final pre-trial hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.