Former Colfax man sentenced to 10 years in prison for child sexual assault

By LeAnn R. Ralph

MENOMONIE   —  A 67-year-old former Colfax man who had since moved to Knapp has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 10 years of extended supervision on one felony count of first degree child sexual assault.

Elmer C. Shilts Jr. appeared in Dunn County Circuit Court with his attorney, Kerry Kelm, for a sentencing hearing before Judge Rod Smeltzer August 22.

Shilts pleaded no contest to the felony in June, and Judge Smeltzer accepted Shilts’s plea and found him guilty.

Shilts originally had been charged in two separate cases with more than 10 felony counts of first degree sexual assault of a child, the repeated sexual assault of a child, exposing genitals to a child, child enticement with sexual contact, and the repeated sexual assault of the same child.

Judge Smeltzer ordered the remaining charges to be dismissed but read into the record for sentencing during a court hearing in June.

According to the criminal complaint, the assaults took place at the Colfax Fairgrounds, an apartment building in Colfax and in a parked car in Menomonie.

In the first case, the victim was seven years old at the time, and in the second case, the alleged victim was between the ages of five and seven at the time.

Shilts was accused of committing the assaults between May of 2012 and April of 2014 in the Village of Colfax.

According to the criminal complaint, during interviews regarding the first case with a social worker, former Colfax Police Chief Pete Gehring and an officer with the Menomonie police department, Shilts alternated between denying that anything had happened, that it was not true and he would “deny it until the day he died” and saying he could not remember if anything had happened, but if something did happen, he was sorry — and admitting that during one incident he had asked the girl if he could touch her vagina and then had masturbated.

In the second case, Colfax Police Chief William Anderson received a written statement from the child’s mother in February of 2015, according to the complaint.

Shilts had come up in a conversation, and the girl had asked if he was dead.

The mother had explained he was not dead but he was in trouble for touching a young girl’s private area. According to the mother, the child’s face dropped, and she said, “Mommy, I should have told you something a long time ago.”

When the mother asked about what she should have been told, the little girl said, “He did that to me, too.”

The little girl went on to say Shilts had told her not to tell her mom or dad, her friends or anyone else, according to the complaint.

According to online court records, during an August of 2015 court hearing, Judge Smeltzer granted a continuance to allow time for evaluation of Shilts because there were concerns about his mental health.

During a court hearing in June of 2016, Shilts’s attorney filed a motion to reschedule further court proceedings until in the fall partially because of concerns about the defendant’s health and that he was in the middle of chemo therapy.

During a competency hearing in March, witnesses for the prosecution found that Shilts was competent to stand trial while witnesses for the defense found that Shilts was not competent.

After listening to testimony, Judge Smeltzer found Shilts was competent and ordered the trial dates on the court calendar for April be changed to a June jury trial.

Instead of going to trial, Shilts and his attorney reached a plea agreement with the Dunn County district attorney’s office.  

During the sentencing hearing August 22, Judge Smeltzer ordered Shilts to complete sex offender treatment and to complete mental health treatment.

Judge Smeltzer also ordered Shilts to register as a lifetime sex offender, to have no contact with the victims or their families, to have no unsupervised contact with minors, to complete any other programming deemed necessary by his probation agent and to complete testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

Shilts also cannot vote in any election and cannot possess a firearm.

In addition, Shilts was ordered to pay $268 in court costs and a $250 DNA surcharge.