Two Brothers Spent Decades in Prison After a Wisconsin Woman Was Raped and Murdered. Dna Reveals It Was Someone Else
Two Wisconsin brothers who spent nearly 25 years in prison have been freed thanks to genetic genealogy.
In 2000, David Bintz, 69, and his brother, Robert Bintz, 68, both of Green Bay, were found guilty of Sandra Lison’s murder.
Lison, a 44-year-old mother of two, went missing in early August 1987 while working as a bartender at Good Times in Green Bay, according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
Her bones were discovered shortly thereafter in the Machickanee Forest in Oconto County, 30 miles distant.
An autopsy revealed that she had been strangled, according to local source WFRV. According to the outlet, investigators discovered evidence that she had been sexually molested before her death.
Police questioned the brothers, who were present at the bar that night. According to Fox 11 News, David and Lison argued about the cost.
For years, the case went cold.
Then, in 1998, while David was serving a sentence for another crime, his cellmate told investigators that he had confessed to killing Lison in his sleep, WFRV reports.
Despite the absence of physical evidence linking the brothers to the crime, prosecutors claimed they looted Lison before killing her, according to WFVR.
In 2000, both were condemned to life in prison.
Their luck changed in 2018 when the Great North Innocence Project in Minnesota began investigating the matter.
When local genealogists couldn’t discover any evidence linking the brothers to the crime, Jim Mayer, the project’s legal director, turned to the Investigate Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College in New Jersey, according to Fox 11.
According to Fox 11, in 2023, IGG detectives created a genetic profile of DNA recovered at the crime site and posted it to consumer databases such as GEDmatch.
Based on this information, they began searching for relatives who matched the DNA sample.
IGG limited the matchups to three brothers from Green Bay. One of these brothers was William Hendricks, a convicted rapist who passed away in 2000.
The IGG received a DNA sample from his disinterred bones in April and discovered that it had a one-in-329 trillion chance of belonging to anybody other than Hendricks, according to Fox 11.
On Wednesday, September 27, a judge granted a motion to release the two brothers, according to NBC 26.
Sandra Lison will be able to rest in peace today because her genuine murderer has been identified,” Judge Donald Zuidmulder stated, according to NBC 26.
“It is therefore my bounded duty to exercise and follow the law, well satisfied that I will sign judgments vacating the convictions in both of these for both of these defendants and save them free.”
When asked how the brothers could have been sentenced to life in prison despite a lack of physical evidence, District Attorney David Lasee told NBC 26, “The prosecutors and law enforcement officers were handling this case at the outset, followed the evidence that they had at the time, and that conviction was sound.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or visit rainn.org.