Cold case murder suspect pleads not guilty
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — Jon K. Miller, the suspect accused of killing Mary Schlais in the Town of Spring Brook in February of 1974, has pleaded not guilty in Dunn County Circuit Court.
Miller was scheduled for a preliminary hearing December 13, but Miller’s attorney, Travis Satorius, told the court that Miller wanted to waive the preliminary hearing.
During a preliminary hearing, witnesses give testimony, and then a judge decides whether there is probable cause in the case to bind the defendant over for trial.
Judge James Peterson accepted Miller’s voluntary waiver of the preliminary hearing, according to on-line court records.
Miller entered a plea of not guilty.
A status conference in the case is scheduled for February 21.
Miller remained in custody at the Dunn County jail at the time of the December 13 court hearing.
Dunn County Circuit Court Judge Christina Mayer set bail at $1 million cash on November 12.
The Dunn County Sheriff’s Department issued a news release on Friday, November 8, that Jon K. Miller, age 84, had been arrested the day before in Owatonna, Minnesota, for the murder of Mary K. Schlais.
The criminal complaint was filed in Dunn County on November 7, and Judge Mayer issued an arrest warrant.
Miller is charged with one count of first-degree murder, which carries a penalty, upon conviction, of life in prison.
Criminal complaint
According to the criminal complaint, the body of Mary Schlais was found in a snowbank in a rural area of the Town of Spring Brook with multiple stab wounds on her upper body, including her back.
Schlais’s hands also appeared to have defensive wounds, and the autopsy report indicated that Schlais had bled to death from the multiple stab wounds.
In the road near Schlais’s body was an orange and black stocking cap.
Investigators seized the stocking cap as evidence, and hairs were collected from the cap that were later determined not to be Schlais’s hair.
A woman named Judy Daniel reported that Mary Schlais had left home around 10:30 a.m. February 15, 1974, and planned on hitchhiking from Minneapolis to Chicago, the complaint states.
Don Schlais, Mary’s brother, identified the body as being that of Mary Schlais.
News articles published at the time stated that Mary Schlais was an honor student and that she was on her way to Chicago for an art show.
Leads
The Dunn County Sheriff’s Department followed up on continuous leads over the next number of years but were unable to identify any suspects.
Scrapings taken from the black and orange stocking cap years later were used to develop a partial male DNA profile, according to the criminal complaint.
The Dunn County Sheriff’s Department then began working closely with Cairenn Binder of Ramapo College in New Jersey using “investigative genetic genealogy” (IGG) , according to the criminal complaint.
Binder is the assistant director of the IGG Center and the director of the IGG Certificate Program at Ramapo College.
After using the partial DNA profile to identify family members of the suspect, and after traveling to Casper, Wyoming, and East Tawas, Michigan, to interview the people related to the DNA profile, Dunn County investigators finally located a daughter of the suspect in Minnesota.
Finding Miller was more difficult than it might have been otherwise because Miller had been given up for adoption when he was a child.
Miller told investigators he exited off the highway and attempted to hide Schlais’s body in a snowbank, according to the criminal complaint.
He began to cover Schlais’s body with snow, but then another vehicle drove by, and Miller became scared and left the area.
When investigators showed Miller a photograph of the orange and black stocking cap that had contained his DNA, Miller said it was his hat, and he must have lost it, according to the criminal complaint.
Schlais’s body was located roughly 10 miles off Interstate-94.
