Brothers Who Spent 25 Years In Prison For Woman’s Murder Exonerated

Two Wisconsin brothers who spent the last 25 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing a woman in 1987 have been released after DNA evidence tied the murder to another suspect, The Wisconsin Innocence Project announced Friday.

David Bintz, 69, and his younger brother, Robert Bintz, 68 were sentenced to life in prison in 2000, after prosecutors say they killed Sandra Lison, 44, a mother of two, the Green Bay Press Gazette reports.

Lison’s body was found near a trail in the Machickanee Forest about 30 miles from Green Bay on Aug. 4, 1987, according to Robert Bintz’s motion to vacate. Detectives noticed Lison’s slip and nylons had been removed and most of the buttons on her dress were undone, and they determined she had been beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted.

Semen was recovered from Lison’s body via vaginal swabs and from her dress, which also had been stained with blood. This DNA evidence did not match the Bintzes, according to the Wisconsin Innocence Project, but after the case went cold for a time, the Brown County District Attorney’s Office in 1998 eventually charged the two brothers with killing her.

Prosecutors alleged at the Bintzes’ trial that the two killed Lison during a robbery at the Good Times Tavern, a bar she worked at, the night before her body was discovered, according to the motion to vacate. 

Prosecutors also depended on testimony from David Bintz’s cellmate in a jail where he had been serving time for an unrelated crime. The cellmate told guards about nightmares David Bintz was having, claiming he yelled “make sure she’s dead” in his sleep, according to the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center.  The cellmate also said David Bintz later admitted to helping his brother kill Lison.

In their closing statement at the Bintz brothers’ trial, prosecutors argued that “it’s clear that this was not a sexual assault,” and that “there is no evidence” to suggest the person who left the semen also killed Lison.

In 2023, the Great North Innocence Project, with the help of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at New Jersey’s Ramapo College, found that the DNA evidence found at the scene belonged to another man, William Joseph Hendricks. Hendricks, who is now deceased, had been convicted of similar crimes.

The brothers were released on Wednesday following a hearing.

Judge Donald Zuidmulder told the court “Sandra Lison will rest in peace, because her true murderer is now known,” according to reports by NBC affiliate WGBA. 

When asked how the brothers could have been sentenced to life in prison despite the lack of evidence, Brown County District Attorney David Lasee told the outlet that officials “followed the evidence that they had at that time, and that conviction was sound.”

Christopher Renz, Robert Bintz’s attorney, told HuffPost in an email that he and his colleagues are thrilled with Robert’s vacation.

“It is an injustice that can never be fully corrected, but we are glad to have obtained this relief when we were able so that he can enjoy the freedom that should never have been taken,” Renz said.

James Mayer of the Great North Innocence Project has launched a GoFundMe to help Robert Bintz rebuild his life after 25 years in prison.

“Innocent exonerees like Bobby come out of prison with almost nothing — no savings, no bank account, no driver’s license, no credit or rental history, no recent employment history, nowhere to live, Mayer wrote. “All this to go with the trauma of a quarter-century of wrongful imprisonment.”

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