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Officers rescue man dangling from roof in Florida

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Officers rescue man dangling from roof in Florida



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Dec. 12, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Adam EdelmanWisconsin has quietly emerged as the latest front in the national redistricting fight — and a never-before-used legal process seems likely to determine the state’s congressional lines in the midterm election. The saga unfolding in the critical Midwestern battleground has the potential to put more districts in play for Democrats ahead of next year’s midterms. But unlike in other states that have redrawn their congressional maps mid-decade in recent months, the push toward a new map in Wisconsin is now hinging on a little-known law the GOP-controlled state Legislature enacted 14 years ago.Days before Thanksgiving, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered a pair of three-judge panels to oversee two lawsuits that allege that the state’s current congressional map is unconstitutional and seek a redraw. Both panels will meet for the first time Friday for initial hearings. And Friday’s opening moves are only the latest steps in a long, complex path. Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a pair of suits seeking a redraw of the state’s eight congressional districts — the second time in as many years that the court had dismissed such an effort. Those decisions sparked surprise among many court-watchers in the state. Liberals had regained their majority on the technically nonpartisan bench in an expensive and headline-making election in 2023 and retained the majority in an even more expensive 2025 race. Many Democrats believed that it was only a matter of time before the high court’s liberal majority allowed a redistricting case against the state’s maps to move forward.But, in July, just two weeks after the state Supreme Court’s most recent rejection of the redistricting case, two parties filed fresh cases in Dane County Circuit Court — a lower state court — making the same arguments about the maps. Those cases effectively triggered a process created by state Republicans and signed into law by then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, which requires the state Supreme Court to appoint a judicial panel to hear cases related to redistricting.In an 5-2 order issued Nov. 25, the state Supreme Court explained that it had utilized that process and assembled two panels — one to hear each congressional redistricting case. One conservative justice joined the court’s four liberals, touching off an unprecedented undertaking in the purple state.In interviews with NBC News, nonpartisan experts on Wisconsin law and legal processes explained that even though the process hadn’t been used before in Wisconsin, the notion of a panel of three judges drawn from different courts convening over a redistricting case wasn’t unusual. In fact, it was modeled after federal statues requiring that a similar panel be arranged to hear most redistricting cases.“Yes, it’s the first time a three-judge panel for a redistricting action has happened in Wisconsin state court. But a three-judge panel for redistricting challenges or Voting Rights Act challenges are what happens in federal court,” said Bree Grossi Wilde, the executive director of the nonpartisan State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “This is how redistricting battles played out in federal court.”Grossi Wilde said that while she expected political criticism to mount, she emphasized that the process itself is not a novel solution created by a liberal-controlled Supreme Court.“This isn’t a procedure that the [state] Supreme Court crafted to meet this particular moment,” she said. “This is a legislative procedure that the Supreme Court is required to follow.”However, the process, the venue for the cases, and the accelerated timeline for review of these cases has led many court-watchers in Wisconsin to believe that there’s a high chance the state could have new maps in place before the midterms — and that they’d be all but certain to advantage Democrats compared to the current map, in which Republicans currently hold six of eight seats.But it still might be difficult to do in the allotted time: The filing window in Wisconsin for candidates running for Congress and other offices opens in April, with a June 1 deadline.“If you look at the judges on these panels, where they come from, who appointed them, it’s a biased panel. Call a spade a spade,” said Brandon Scholz, an independent political strategist in Wisconsin. “This is a partisan, political move by what’s supposed to be a nonpartisan court. It really seems like a push to have two partisan panels in place to determine redistricting on a congressional level.”One of the panels comprises three judges who all endorsed liberal Supreme Court Judge Susan Crawford during her campaign earlier this year. The other panel had two judges who endorsed Crawford.The process has already faced criticism from conservatives on the state Supreme Court and Republicans throughout the state. The court’s two conservative justices who opposed implementing the process in the latest order blasted the use of the panels in blistering opinions, specifically slamming their counterparts on the bench for picking the judges on them.“Today, my colleagues — disregarding the United States Constitution, the Wisconsin Constitution, and fundamental legal principles — approve a collateral attack of our court’s decision by a panel of circuit court judges, unsupported in the law,” conservative Justice Annette Ziegler wrote in an opinion.“Handpicking circuit court judges to perform political maneuvering is unimaginable,” she added. “Yet, my colleagues persist and appear to do this, all in furtherance of delivering partisan, political advantage to the Democratic Party.”Elected Republicans have criticized the court decision, too.”These folks care about one thing: power,” GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, whose 3rd District would likely be affected in a new map, posted on X after the ruling.In a statement to NBC News, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Devin Remiker accused the GOP of “throwing a temper tantrum because they lost their state Supreme Court majority, which had been vital in rigging the rules in the Republicans’ favor.””Now, Wisconsin Republicans are being forced to play in a far more fair and impartial system where they don’t have a judiciary to stack the deck for their candidates,” Remiker said.Attorneys challenging the current congressional map in one of the cases said that it was a normal legal course to try a suit with a lower court after being rejected by a state Supreme Court.“We followed the normal course — which is to bring a regular lawsuit in the lower court which is how often lawsuits typically proceed,” said Abha Khanna, an attorney with Democratic-aligned firm Elias Law Group, which filed one of the cases before a panel.But many political figures in the state see the current process as a counter to Republican efforts in states like Texas to gain seats in their own redistricting fights ahead of 2026.“There is a rush to change Wisconsin’s lines,” Scholz said. “And it’s because this has become a national story — everyone got all jazzed up over the summer. And the truth is there is a real opportunity for Democrats and for the liberals on the court, to possibly change those lines. So this is where we are.”Adam EdelmanAdam Edelman is a politics reporter for NBC News.
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Nov. 21, 2025, 5:49 PM ESTBy Tim StellohFor as long as she can remember, Heather Thiel believed her father was a killer.She was so convinced that she twice urged authorities to examine whether he was responsible for a horrific, unsolved double murder that shook rural Wisconsin more than three decades ago. But her role in the investigation into the slaying of Tim Mumbrue and Tanna Togstad led to an outcome she never could have imagined: three years ago, authorities concluded that her cousin, not her now-deceased father, fatally stabbed the couple on March 21, 1992.For more on the case, tune in to “Raising the Dead” on “Dateline” at 9 ET/8 CT tonight.DATELINE FRIDAY SNEAK PEEK: Raising the Dead01:59Just as head-spinning, that cousin, Tony Haase, was acquitted in the murders earlier this year. During a nearly monthlong trial, Haase’s lawyers made the case that the evidence pointed at Heather Thiel’s dead father, Jeff Thiel. For Heather Thiel, who is 40 and works at a group home for mentally ill adults, the whiplash of the last three years left her questioning longstanding beliefs and wrestling with a familiar feeling.“I wish there was a definite answer,” she said. “Now, I feel like we still don’t know for sure.”Fixated on murderOn March 11, 1995, Jeff Thiel pointed a shotgun at a law enforcement officer after he was pulled over in a traffic stop. The officer retreated to his car, and Jeff Thiel, who’d worked in the maintenance department of an iron foundry in a rural community east of Green Bay, escaped, Haase’s defense attorney said at trial. Heather Thiel. Courtesy DatelineHe blew through a roadblock and fled the state, said the attorney, John Birdsall. Nearly three months later, in a hotel room in Washington state, Jeff Thiel died by suicide, according to his daughter. He was 44. Heather Thiel, who was 11 when her mother told her the news, can still recall her response: “I said, ‘When’s the party?’”Heather Thiel described her father as a scary and abusive parent who killed neighborhood pets and would casually — and routinely — threaten to shoot her mother. Her mom, Marie Stanchik, also believed her ex-husband was a killer. In an interview with authorities three years ago, she recalled how his “ultimate dream was to kill somebody.”Jeff Thiel. Courtesy Dateline“He used to tell me that all the time,” Stanchik said, according to audio of the interview. “He’s had a gun in my face and said if I ever call the cops on him, he’s gonna use it.”Jeff Thiel also had a thing for knives, said Heather Thiel, who has memories of him sitting in a recliner with sharpening tools and blades. Because he worked at a foundry, she said she came to believe he easily could have brought a murder weapon to work with him and melted it down.And there was this comment, which she said her father made the day Togstad and Mumbrue were killed: “It’s funny how you can get away with murder these days.”A suspect from the start The murders were brutal. They were found in the bedroom of Togstad’s farmhouse. Mumbrue, 34, was stabbed 27 times, according to a forensic pathologist who testified at Haase’s trial. His throat had been cut. Togstad, 23, had been stabbed once in the chest and appeared to have been sexually assaulted. Tanna Togstad and Tim Umbrue.Courtesy DatelineEven Togstad’s dog, a terrier named Scruffy, was fatally stabbed. According to one of the original detectives who investigated the case, authorities focused on Jeff Thiel as a possible suspect early on. “With his background and build and strength, he was certainly a person that we had to go after,” said Al Kraeger, who retired from the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Department six years ago.But physical evidence soon cleared those suspicions for law enforcement, said Capt. Nick Traeger of the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Department. In 1996, just as DNA was revolutionizing forensic sciences, an analysis eliminated Jeff Thiel as the person who sexually assaulted Togstad, Traeger told “Dateline.” A blood sample taken from the clothes he was wearing at the time of his suicide did not match semen found on Togstad, the captain said.Heather Thiel said she knew none of this. And as the years passed and no arrests were made, she said she would tell anyone who would listen that her father was probably responsible for the murders.In 2010, she saw a billboard authorities had put up seeking information about the killings and called the listed phone number.According to a law enforcement summary of the interview that followed, Heather Thiel told investigators about her father’s habit of killing animals and his casual comments about murder. She told them that he’d wanted to be with Togstad and had an obsession with knives. And she told them that he’d taken his own life after fleeing from law enforcement. “I had spent my whole life thinking my dad did this and maybe I’d get answers,” Heather Thiel said. “But then, literally nothing came of it.”One of the investigators who interviewed Heather Thiel, Mike Sasse of the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, said that they did nothing with her information because he already knew that DNA had eliminated Jeff Thiel as a suspect years earlier.“Now, could he have been a peripheral character” in the murders? Sasse added. “At that time, yes, he could have been.”A confession from a night in a ‘drunken stupor’More than a decade passed and still, there were no arrests. Then, on April 8, 2022, Heather Thiel found herself speaking to law enforcement — again. This time, her mother was present for the interview, according to a case report from the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation. Authorities were interested in obtaining their DNA and learning about the family’s allegations against Jeff Thiel, the report states.During the interview, Heather Thiel said she raised the same concerns that she’d detailed for Sasse in 2010. She provided a buccal swab, she said, as well as access to a family tree she’d been developing on a genealogy site. “She turned on her profile, and it was like the Christmas tree lit up,” said Traeger, one of the investigators who interviewed her. The mystery DNA obtained from the crime scene did not match Jeff Thiel, Traeger said, but it did match someone else in the family — Heather Thiel’s cousin, Tony Haase, a father of four with no criminal record who worked at the same iron foundry as Jeff Thiel.Authorities confirmed the link by surreptitiously collecting Haase’s DNA from a pen during a traffic stop, Traeger said. During interviews with authorities, Haase, 54, denied that he had anything to do with the murders. When one of the officers told him that his DNA was found at the crime scene, he said: “I still don’t buy it,” a video of the interview shows.Tony Haase. Courtesy DatelineBut as investigators continued to press Haase, he admitted that over the years he’d had “little clicks” — or memories — that made him wonder if he’d been involved in the killings. He said he remembered a barbell in the house — crime scene photos showed one in the bedroom — then leaving the house and vomiting outside, according to the video. In an interview at the sheriff’s office, investigators said this latter detail was a natural human response following an extreme event.Haase described how his father had been killed in an accident while racing snowmobiles with Togstad’s father, and how on the night the couple was killed, he was drunk and all he could think about was the accident.“I didn’t go there to hurt nobody,” he told investigators. “I honestly can tell you that I don’t know what started, what happened, what started it all.”Asked why it took so long for him to acknowledge what he’d done, Haase said: “Because I didn’t want it to sound like I had this planned.”On Aug. 11, 2022, Haase was arrested for the murders of Togstad and Mumbrue. A probable cause affidavit filed in Waupaca Circuit Court said that at the time of the killings he’d been in a “drunken stupor.”Doubt surrounds murder trialHeather Thiel was shocked. She didn’t know her cousin well but said he didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body.The arrest also prompted some self-reflection.“I was like, how could I have had it wrong?” she said. “If I was wrong about my dad and it was actually my cousin — well, sorry, you should pay for what you did.”Jeff Thiel, however, continued to loom over the case as Haase’s trial approached. In a pretrial hearing in May, Haase’s attorneys said that because Jeff Thiel’s genetic profile had not been excluded from all of the blood evidence gathered at the crime scene, they should be able to argue at trial that he was still a possible suspect in the murders. Prosecutors objected, but the judge sided with the defense, a transcript shows. So the state asked to exhume Jeff Thiel’s remains to carry out additional DNA testing — a process that Waupaca County District Attorney Kat Turner said would allow them to exclude him from physical evidence gathered at the scene. In June, Jeff Thiel’s remains were disinterred from a Waupaca County cemetery.“The DNA analyst worked on nothing but that until he had the analysis complete,” Turner told “Dateline.” “And again, excluded Jeff Thiel from all of the blood evidence that was available.”In the pretrial proceedings, Haase’s lawyers sought to bar that evidence because they said they didn’t have time to prepare a response before trial, which was scheduled to start two weeks later. Prosecutors again objected, Turner said, but the judge ruled that if the trial started as scheduled, the state would be prohibited from presenting any DNA evidence related to Jeff Thiel.Instead of delaying the trial and challenging the ruling — a process that could have taken years, Turner said — the prosecution forged ahead. Turner said that decision was made after consulting with victims’ families and weighing the challenge of trying an old case in which investigators and scientists were becoming sick or dying.’Somebody who has no conscience’Haase’s trial began in July in a Waupaca County courthouse. His attorneys argued that Haase’s confession had been coerced — investigators planted false memories in an hourslong interrogation — and they said the male DNA found on Togstad’s body had been degraded by years of testing and storage. As evidence of Jeff Thiel’s involvement in the murders, attorney John Birdsall cited an apparent motive — Tanna had rejected Jeff Thiel’s advances — and he linked Jeff Thiel’s habit of killing pets to Scruffy’s death.“This was killed by somebody who has no conscience, who has absolutely no problem killing anything in its path,” he said in his closing argument. “That’s Jeff.”Amy Ohtani, the assistant attorney general who also prosecuted the case, described the defense’s strategy as an effort to “weave together a fantasy to keep you from paying attention to the actual evidence.” The DNA had been properly collected, preserved and tested, she said in her closing argument, and the idea that Haase’s admissions were false was a “distraction.” Jeff Thiel, she said, was the “perfect scapegoat.”Jeff Thiel. Courtesy DatelineAt trial, she said, he’d been described by family members as an “absolutely terrible person” — but wasn’t there to defend himself and there was no evidence actually linking him to the crime. “Jeff Thiel sounds like he was a terrible guy,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean he killed Tim and Tanna.”On the fourth day of deliberations, the jury acquitted Haase of the murders.For his cousin, that decision was the right one. Heather Thiel had come to doubt the forensics that excluded her father from the murders and linked her cousin to them, she said, and she believed Haase had been coerced into making a false confession.Although the trial produced no definitive answers, Heather Thiel said, the proceedings prompted her to return to a long-held position about who killed Mumbrue and Togstad.“Until proven otherwise, I will always believe it’s my dad,” she said.Tim StellohTim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
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