Thr Machett Investigation, Part II

On October 31, 1980, two young boys, Daniel and David Laabs, stumbled upon the body of 10-year-old Brad Machett in a town of Grafton cornfield. After contacting authorities, Ozaukee County Sheriff's deputies searched the area and located the young boy's remains.

Law enforcement officers immediately cordoned-off the area just west of N. Port Washington Road and north of Lakefield Road, about three quarters of a mile west of I-43. Footprints were visible near the body; however, joggers frequented the area. A tire mark left at the scene suggested that a vehicle sped off after the corpse was discarded.

At the center of the crime scene, Brad Machett's head pointed to the north, while his feet faced Lakefield Road to the south. The young boy was attired in a blue nylon jacket, tan pants, and tennis shoes -- the same clothing he wore on the evening of October 25. The tan trousers were undone, as the killer hastily pulled them upward after a sexual assault. Machett had bruises on his face, an indication his abductor employed blunt force trauma to subdue and control his victim.

The drop site was not an isolated area. Herbert Matthews, who owned the land where the body was discovered, told the Milwaukee Sentinel that Lakefield Road is heavily traveled. Matthews told investigators that he went to bed at 11 PM on October 30 and did not notice anything out of the ordinary.

The location of the scene suggests a randomly selected dump site. Since the area is well-traveled, the killer is probably not indigenous to the Grafton area. Instead, the suspect likely drove north, away from the area he generally frequents. In 1980, the Grafton area was relatively undeveloped and was probably the first patch of rural area that the killer encountered as he traveled north on I-43. The body, physically transported a short distance from the vehicle, was likely dumped under the cloak of darkness. Within five minutes, the perpetrator was likely back on I-43 heading south towards the Milwaukee area.

A neighbor of Brad Machett's, Valencia Drew, told the Milwaukee Sentinel that the young boy "was the type of child who wouldn't meet strangers. He was too wise a child to do that." This information, coupled with the severe bruising to the face, indicates that the victim resisted. The Riverwest area is highly urban with many homes and businesses. In the five blocks between N. Weil and E. Center Streets and his grandmother's tavern -- The Aid Station -- Brad Machett may have taken a short cut through an alley, where he was snatched or coaxed into a vehicle.

Besides the unidentified footprints and the tire track left at the scene, head hair from the killer was located on Machett's chest. Earlier this year, investigators once again searched DNA databases for possible suspects, but a matching profile is not in the system.

On November 7, 1980, the Milwaukee Sentinel ran a composite drawing of "a man being sought in connection with the slaying of Brad Machett. The man is described as 5 feet 10 inches to six feet tall, 30 to 40 years old, with shoulder length brown hair." An article on the next page listed the suspect as "white, 5-foot-7, with dark brown, collar length hair."

At one point, investigators turned their attention to a man from out of state--a convicted sex offender--who stole the identify of a psychologist. If my recollection is correct, this man later obtained employment at a Wisconsin prison and actually treated sex offenders. Investigators believe that this man was in Milwaukee the day Brad Machett disappeared.

For the next twenty-eight-and-a-half-years, the Machett case ran cold. Then on March 23, 2009, Greenfield police arrested Daniel Acker, 61, a swim coach in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis. A man, now in his 40s, made a complaint that Acker had sexually assaulted him from 1971 to 1976. Investigators then searched Acker's abode. "Police found an immaculate home when they entered Daniel Acker's off-white, two-story Waukesha condo," reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote. "He had hidden his darker secrets in the basement."

Inside a model police precinct Acker had constructed, detectives discovered several photos of abducted and murdered children slapped on the walls. "It's bizarre," Greenfield Deputy Inspector Bradley Wentlandt told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "No agency has seen anything like it before."

One of the twelve pictures on the walls of the model police precinct was that of Brad Machett.

Greenfield police believe Acker molested at least 28 boys between 1972 and 2005. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Acker admitted "details about the 19-year-old and about five victims in the 1970s" but did not provide any additional information. In September, Acker entered a no contest plea to molesting two boys.

Now that Acker is a convicted felon, Wisconsin law requires the submission of a DNA sample.

A photograph taken of Daniel Ackert in the 1980s, published on WISN Channel 12's Web site, bears some resemblance to the composite sketch published in the Milwaukee Sentinel. The man in the sketch has sideburns, an oval face, and hair that exposes the ear but is longer in back.

"The mortician's brush," wrote reporter Joe Manning, as he covered Brad Machett's funeral for the Milwaukee Sentinel, "hid the bruises inflicted on his face and throat. He died of strangulation."

Prior to retiring from the Milwaukee Police Department, I received a telephone call from a member of the Machett family. Sandra Morrical, Brad's mother, was in poor health. The relative stated that it was Sandra's dying wish to see her son's killer brought to justice. Unfortunately, this wish never became a reality.

Brad Machett's body rests is an upper level vault at Wisconsin Memorial Park. While the 29th anniversary of the young boy's tragic death is only a few days away, detectives from Ozaukee County and the Milwaukee Police Department continue to work behind the scenes to bring his killer to justice.
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Steven Spingola is a retired Milwaukee Police Department homicide detective and the author of The Killer in Our Midst: the Case of Milwaukee's North Side Strangler.

Copyright, Steven Spingola, Milwaukee, WI 2009