Man pleads not guilty to killing wife, hiding body

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STEVENS POINT, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin man on Monday pleaded not guilty to killing his wife last year and hiding her body, which hasn’t been found.

Jason Sypher, of Plover, entered the pleas to first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse in Portage County Circuit Court. Krista Sypher, 44, disappeared in March 2017. Prosecutors in August brought charges against her husband, who had reported her missing.

In the criminal complaint, police contend that Sypher engaged in several suspicious activities around the time his wife disappeared. He bought large, black trash bags the day she was last seen and didn’t disclose the purchase to investigators. They say his fingerprints were found on a shopping bag that contained his wife’s damaged cellphone, which had been discarded in a public trash container.

Prosecutors say GPS records show Sypher’s car drove past the Portage County Solid Waste Transfer Facility twice in two days at around the time Krista Sypher disappeared. Police say video footage of Waste Management Disposal trucks emptying their loads showed a long, black plastic bag “consistent with the size of a human body” fall to the ground on March 20, 2017.

Defense attorneys say there is no physical evidence to suggest a crime was committed and there is no video footage that shows Jason Sypher dumping a bag big enough to fit a body in a Dumpster.

Sypher remained jailed in Portage County on $750,000 bond. Plover is in central Wisconsin, about 125 miles northwest of Milwaukee.