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Thursday, September 19, 2024

The Steven Zelich Murder Case

     On June 5, 2014 a highway worker cutting high grass along a road in Geneva, Wisconsin, a town in Walworth County 50 miles southwest of Milwaukee, exposed a pair of large suitcases. The overpowering odor of rotting flesh caused the highway employee to notify the police.

     Each of the suitcases contained a badly decomposed body of a woman. Through dental records the authorities identified the women as 37-year-old Laura Simonson and 21-year-old Jenny Gamez. The forensic pathologist, due to the condition of the bodies, could not establish their causes of death. Neither woman, however, had been shot.

     One of Laura Simonson's relatives reported the mother of seven from Farmington, Wisconsin missing on November 22, 2013. While her cause of death was unknown, before she died someone had tied a rope around her neck. That person also stuffed a ball attached to a collar into her mouth. The gag collar looked like a device commonly used by sadomasochists in bondage/slave sexual activity. According to family members Laura Simonson had struggled with mental illness.

     No one had been looking for the younger woman, Jenny Gamez. According to her foster parents she left their home in Cottage Grove, Oregon to start a new life. In 2008, as a fifteen-year-old, she gave birth to a son. The baby's father in 2010 gained full custody of the child. In keeping with the sadomasochistic theme of the case someone had tied Gamez's hands behind her back.

     On June 27, 2014 police officers arrested 52-year-old Steven M. Zelich at his home in West Allis, Wisconsin. Mr. Zelich had been seen with each woman on separate occasions in Wisconsin and Minnesota. A Wisconsin prosecutor charged him with two counts of hiding a corpse.

     In 1989 the then 27-year-old Zelich started working in West Allis as a police officer. Three years later, following an off-duty altercation with a prostitute, the chief of police forced him to resign. Since 2007 Zelich had been an employee of a contract security guard company.

     Zelich's sexual tastes, in light of evidence of bondage associated with the bodies in the suitcases, led detectives to suspect he was the last person to see these women alive. On a bondage and sadomasochism website he solicited sexual partners with the following message: "Seeking no limit enslavement, imprisonment, captivity, animalization ideally in a farm/caged situation."

     Following his arrest Zelich told detectives he met the 21-year-old Gamez through the sex website. In November of 2013 he spent several nights with her in a Kenosha County Hotel where they had sadomasochistic sex that included bondage. Upon her accidental death in the course of this activity he stuffed her body into a suitcase and took the corpse home.

     After connecting with the 37-year-old Laura Simonson through the sadomasochistic Internet site she and Zelich engaged in bondage sex at the Microtel Inn & Suites in Rochester, Minnesota. This took place on November 21, 2013. Simonson had checked into the motel under her own name but never checked out. After she died while having sex with him Zelich placed her body into a suitcase that ended up in his house with the other corpse.

     In late May or early June 2014 Zelich dumped the suitcases along the road in Geneva, Wisconsin. According to Zelich's attorney the women as willing participants in rough sex died accidentally. By dumping the suitcases along the road Zelich wanted the bodies to be discovered. The attorney did not believe that homicide charges in this case would be appropriate.

     In January 2016 Steven Zelich pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree homicide as well as one count of hiding a corpse. The judge, in March 2016, sentenced him to 35 years in prison.

1 comment:

  1. Nice writing, but you have a lot of the facts wrong. According to the murderer, he killed Jenny in late 2012 or early 2013 at a hotel in Kenosha County. There is no evidence that they spent several nights together. Laura was murdered on Nov 2 or Nov 3, 2013 at the Microtel in Rochester, Minnesota.

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