In the summer of 1978, a man in Waunakee, Wisconsin would also make a grisly discovery just off a highway.
It was the afternoon of Wednesday, June 21st, and contractor John Wagner was busy clearing some land in a wooded area near Highway 12 when he stumbled across the nude body of a young woman buried in a shallow grave. Due to recent weather conditions, the remains were far more decomposed than would normally be expected, and the cause of death of the victim was not readily apparent. Investigators initially thought the woman might have been killed by blunt force trauma, but later amended that statement, as only one small mark was found on her head. The coroner later speculated that perhaps she had been hit hard beneath her jaw, then left in the woods for dead, at which point she had succumbed to exposure.
The body was also covered with bruises and scratches, though it was unclear whether the victim had been raped. Post-mortem examination suggested that the victim had been dead for three to five days.
Two days later, on June 23rd, the remains were identified as eighteen-year-old Julie Ann Hall, who had moved to Madison, Wisconsin from Fennimore two months previously, and worked at the State Historical Society as a library assistant. She lived in an apartment on the south side of Madison with one of her brothers.
According to her brother, Julie had gone out on the evening of Friday, June 16th, 1978, and witness reports placed her at a tavern called the Main King Tap near Capitol Square in downtown Madison later that night. She had been drinking with an unidentified male friend. The contents of her stomach at autopsy also revealed that she had eaten a large meal not long before she was murdered.
Investigators interviewed all of her friends, and subjected a few persons of interest to polygraph tests, but not much progress was made toward solving the case, despite police informing the media that they had a very strong suspect.
In 1984, there was a brief rekindling of interest in the investigation when serial killer and notorious exaggerator Henry Lee Lucas confessed to killing Julie, but he later recanted his statements, and detectives had little other reason to believe he had been involved.
Julie Ann Hall’s unsolved murder stands as another crime in the possibly interconnected Madison series sometimes known as the Capital City Killings.
Crime Immemorial 