On June 12, 1987, three weeks after graduating from a local high school, Angela Fay Hackl disappeared from her hometown of Lone Rock, Wisconsin. Search parties scoured a two-county area after her car was recovered near Sauk City, twenty miles away, and her body was found on June 15, in the woods six miles west of Sauk City. Chained by her neck to a tree, the young woman had been shot repeatedly at point-blank range, leaving final identification to dental records .

A month later, on July 9, schoolteacher Barbara Blackstone vanished from her home in nearby Lyndon Station, leaving her purse behind, her keys in the ignition of a car parked just outside. Her nude and decomposing body was retrieved on August 4 from Lafayette County, sixty miles due south of the Wisconsin Dells that had become a madman's hunting ground.

On July 24, police logged reports of burglary and arson at a home in Oxford, Wisconsin. No one had been home to greet the prowler, but the family dog was stabbed to death, discarded in a bedroom, after which a braided rug was draped across the stove, the burners on and liquor poured around the kitchen to accelerate the blaze. Reported stolen were a .357 magnum revolver, a black holster, and a distinctive "butterfly" knife, so called after its two-piece folding grip.

Four days later, on July 28, housewife Linda Nachreiner was reported missing from her home in Dell Prairie, six miles from the site of the burglary and twenty miles removed from the home of murder victim Barbara Blackstone. A visiting neighbor found Nachreiner's two small children unattended, a basket of wet laundry fresh from the washer, and police were summoned. Officers identified fresh stains of semen and saliva on a bedroom comforter, retrieving panties and a single stocking from the floor.

The missing woman was found next morning, four miles from her home. She had been stripped by her assailant, with her blue jeans pulled over her head, hands bound behind her back. She had been raped and tortured before a single bullet was fired through her head. Tire tracks discovered at the scene matched others found outside the victim's home; a slug recovered by detectives matched bullets fired by the .357 stolen July 24.

By this time, local homicide investigators were deluged by tips from nervous residents of the Wisconsin Dells. Kim Brown was one of those suggested as a suspect, and detectives learned that Brown knew Linda Nachreiner's husband from working together on various jobs. Brown also lived within half a mile of the burglarized dwelling in Oxford, a short seven miles from the Nachreiner home. A review of Brown's work record showed that he had called in sick on July 24 and clocked out after working for less than two hours July 28.

Police interviewed Brown on September 2, observing that tires on his car closely resembled their casts from the Nachreiner home and the scene of her murder. Brown claimed that he stayed home all day on July 24 and accompanied his wife on shopping errands four days later; his wife, meanwhile, recalled that Brown had worked a full shift on both days in question. Searching the trunk of Brown's car, with the suspect's permission, police found the stolen revolver and "butterfly" knife, together with a quantity of .357 ammunition and two spent cartridges. A second knife, found in the glove compartment, bore animal hairs matching those of the dog stabbed to death on July 24.

In custody, Brown first told detectives that the stolen weapons belonged to "a friend," later changing his story to claim that he "found" them. Samples of the suspect's blood and saliva matched those from the Nachreiner home, and casts of his tires provided further confirmation. On September 4, 1987, Kim Brown was charged with arson, burglary, and the murder of Linda Nachreiner. No further charges have been filed, although authorities consider him responsible for all three local slayings, and the string of crimes stopped short with Brown's arrest.