2 charged in fatal heroin overdose of woman
Video shows Delafield resident injecting self
Two men have been charged in the 2015 fatal heroin overdose of a Delafield woman in rural Waukesha County.
Kayla Raatz, 26, was found dead at her boyfriend’s father’s home in Ottawa on Sept. 5, 2015.
The boyfriend, Jonathan Gapp, 27, and a man authorities believe had been supplying the couple with heroin, Terrence T. Lafaive, 22, have been charged with first-degree reckless homicide, as parties to the crime, in Raatz’s death.
Gapp is also charged with obstructing an officer. Lafaive is also charged with delivery of less than three grams of heroin.
According to the complaint:
Gapp originally lied to police about where they had been the night before he found Raatz dead. He initially claimed that they had only briefly seen a man Kayla knew as “T” the night before, but didn’t buy any heroin, then went to Gapp’s father’s home and watched TV before he found her dead the next morning.
Detectives found plenty of evidence of heroin use at the Gapp home: hypodermic needles, bloody cotton balls, paperwork from a needle exchange and bottles of Narcan, a drug used to counter the effects of opioid overdose.
Raatz had borrowed $100 from her mother the night before, saying she needed it to repay Gapp for paying off a citation she owed.
In a 2016 interview, LaFaive admitted knowing Gapp and Raatz, and said they had been asking him about getting drugs but that he had rebuffed the efforts.
A friend of Raatz’s told detectives she knew that Raatz bought heroin from Lafaive and that after Raatz died, Lafaive called her to say he hadn’t sold her anything.
The friend said Lafaive also kept asking her if she needed any heroin, which upset her because she was trying to get clean.
In January 2017, detectives got a search warrant for Gapp’s cellphone and found a video from Sept. 5, 2015, of Raatz sitting on the bed in Gapp’s bedroom, injecting herself in the hand with a needle. She is wearing the same clothes she had on when she was found dead the next morning.
Lafaive, formerly of Waukesha, is currently serving prison time on other convictions for drug possession and bail jumping.