MONROE — A Green County Circuit judge has yet to rule on a motion by the defense team of an Albany teen accused of fatally shooting his newborn daughter in the head in early 2021.
That motion will set the course for an upcoming murder trial. It seeks to throw out, on constitutional grounds, the taped confession of Logan Kruckenberg-Anderson, who was 16 when he was accused of shooting the baby and leaving her to die in the crook of a tree in a snowy field near his Albany home.
The teen is charged with first-degree intentional homicide and moving, hiding or burying the corpse of a child. The motion to suppress was revisited on Oct. 7 in a hearing before Circuit Judge Thomas Vale. One of the assistant state’s attorneys prosecuting the case accused the defense of calling witnesses early who are not relevant to the issues at hand.
“Defense just wants a crack at them to see what they can get out of them,” the prosecution reportedly told the judge, referring to potential witnesses.
One of the attorney’s representing a potential witness in the hearing argued against his client testifying: “…The defense should not be allowed to subpoena the victim and her parents to be interviewed or disposed on the stand, this is not constitutionally allowed. Defense is trying to see how they can blame this on the victim,” attorney Andrea Winder told the court, according to court records.
According to the initial criminal complaint, infant, named “Harper” by her mother, was reported missing at about 1:30 a.m. on and early January morning by the baby’s grandfather. The man said that his daughter had given birth in the bathtub Jan. 5, and that Kruckenberg-Anderson left with Harper, who had not been seen since.
The baby’s mother told officers that Kruckenberg-Anderson told her that he was going to take Harper to his friend “Tyler,” who would then transport the child to a Madison adoption agency.
Just 16 at the time of the killing, Kruckenberg-Anderson then told police Jan. 9 that he did not remember this Tyler’s last name, address, phone number or license plate. Kruckenberg-Anderson said he paid Tyler $60 to take the baby to an adoption agency, but did not know which one. But on Jan. 10, Kruckenberg-Anderson was interviewed again, this time by a Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation special agent. That’s when he allegedly confessed to the crime.
“You did shoot Harper, and you didn’t tell me that in the first interview,” said Special Agent James Pertzborn, of the Wisconsin Dept of Justice, in video-taped testimony Thursday before Vale in July.
According to authorities, he confessed to shooting Harper twice with a .22 caliber weapon and leaving her in a downed tree not far from his Albany home.
He had allegedly taken her there in a backpack.
Ultimately, on the night of the first interview, he led police to her 5-day-old body but did not initially reveal that she had been shot. Kruckenberg-Anderson told agents that he went to Harper’s mother’s residence the morning of Jan. 5. Her mother and he decided that they could not keep the baby and agreed that he would get rid of the child by leaving her somewhere, such as an adoption agency.
Testimony was initially scheduled to resume on the motion to suppress on Thursday, Jan. 13. A jury trial, meanwhile, is scheduled to begin in early March in Circuit Court.