WAUPACA COUNTY, Wis. (WFRV) – A 1992 double murder case is now in the hands of a jury.
After lengthy closing statements from attorneys, jurors deliberated for about three hours on Wednesday afternoon. They weren’t able to reach a verdict and will reconvene on Thursday morning.
Tony Haase faces two first-degree murder charges for allegedly brutally stabbing and killing Tanna Togstad and Timothy Mumbrue in her Town of Royalton home back in 1992. Prosecutors said Haase told police his father had died in a snowmobile accident that also involved Togstad’s father. After getting drunk one night, he decided to confront Tanna Togstad about the accident leading to the murders, according to prosecutors.
On Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors and Haase’s defense team had one more opportunity to sway jurors on Wednesday afternoon.
“The evidence in this case overwhelmingly shows you that beyond a reasonable doubt, that this defendant over there murdered Tanna, Tim, and Tanna’s dog Scruffy,” said Waupaca County assistant district attorney Amy Ohtani.
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One of the cornerstones of the state’s case against Haase is an interview he did with police back in 2022. Prosecutors said he confessed to the murders, and jurors need to believe what their eyes and ears are telling them.
“It’s not that he’s struggling to remember,” said Waupaca County district attorney Kat Turner. “He’s struggling to say it, to admit to anybody but himself exactly what he did.”
Turner reminded jurors of all the testimony they heard throughout the trial from witnesses, laying out how investigators meticulously preserved the crime scene. They said that DNA found on Togstad’s body and a bloody palm print found on the door of her home matched Haase’s DNA.
Prosecutors said that it’s incredibly rare for a DNA match like this to be incorrect.
“The statistical probability of randomly selecting another individual on the face of the earth whose profile would match BE the second swab was 1 in 234 quintillion,” Turner said. “He (Haase) doesn’t want to remember, but the DNA doesn’t forget.”
Haase’s defense team has a very different theory on what happened. They said that Haase is a gentle, mild-mannered man who isn’t capable of committing a vicious crime like the one he currently stands trial for.
John Birdsall, one of Haase’s attorneys, said that it was actually Haase’s uncle, Jeff Thiel, who murdered Togstad and Mumbrue. Several witnesses throughout the trial testified that Thiel was a violent man who threatened to kill several of his ex-wives and viciously killed multiple animals.
Haase’s attorneys said Thiel had broken a kitten’s neck because it was being too loud and had even buried alive one of his family members’ dogs. They also said that Thiel had an obsession with knives and was constantly making sure the ones he owned were as sharp as possible.
Thiel died by suicide in 1995.
“Those injuries (at the crime scene) are done by somebody who is deeply, deeply unstable like a Jeff Thiel,” Birdsall told jurors.
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Birdsall also told jurors that a personality test showed that Haase is susceptible to coercion, and that’s what led him to confess to the murders. He also questioned the accuracy of DNA pulled from a crime scene over 30 years ago, saying that investigators didn’t do a good job maintaining the integrity of that scene.
He said detectives left their own prints at the scene and didn’t examine everything that could have had evidence.
“They (investigators) wanted to solve this case,” Birdsall said. “Police are like everybody else; they want to solve it and be successful. And good, we want them to do that, but not at the exclusion of proper leads.”
Birdsall reminded jurors that if they find any shred of reasonable doubt as they consider all the testimony and evidence presented throughout the trial, they must return a not guilty verdict.
“He (Haase) has zero connection to Tanna and Tim; he has zero motive,” Birdsall said. “It isn’t in his character. The focus on Tony was late in the game, and the reason it came at all is because they ran out of cards to play.”
“Think about all the family photos that Tony Haase got to take over the last 30 years,” said Turner. “Think of their (Togstad and Mumbrue’s) last photo together. He stole that from them; he stole that from their families. He stole the gifts they might have bestowed on our community.”
Jurors will begin deliberating again at 8:30 a.m. at the Waupaca County Courthouse.
