SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS
State Patrol accident reconstruction team handles hundreds of accident and crime scenes throughout Wisconsin every year
RACINE – Mike Smith pulls a yellow reflective vest over his blue jacket, grabs a flashlight and slowly walks up to a Ford Explorer that’s straddling a sidewalk in downtown Racine.
Smith’s own SUV is packed with $60,000 in high-tech equipment, but for the moment it all stays behind.
In darkness punctuated by flashing blue and red lights, Smith scans the scene, methodically taking in the position of the Explorer, headlight shards littering the ground, drops of blood, motor oil and transmission fluid on the pavement, papers and other belongings scattered as if blown out by a big wind gust.
Father’s Day is three hours old. Two men lay dead beneath sheets under a nearby tent and Smith is here to determine what happened and who is at fault. He must collect evidence, take measurements and talk to first responders.
***
Smith is among a handful of Wisconsin State Patrol accident reconstruction experts who handle hundreds of accident and crime scenes throughout the state every year.
Law enforcement agencies in all 72 Wisconsin counties have sought the expertise of the unit. State Patrol reconstructionists worked on the killings of six deer hunters in northern Wisconsin during opening weekend of the gundeer season in 2004; the Oak Creek Sikh temple massacre in 2012; the murder of one of their own, Trooper Trevor Casper, killed in a shootout with a suspected murderer and bank robber in Fond du Lac in 2015; the slayings of a lawyer, police officer and two bank employees near Wausau in March.
Last year, the unit handled 415 cases and as of Nov. 29 this year, the team recorded its 400th case for 2017.
The 13 men and one woman in the State Patrol’s Technical Reconstruction Unit are spread throughout the state, concentrating on accidents involving deaths, serious injuries and driver identity disputes. They’re also frequently called by smaller departments to map homicide and other serious crime scenes. Their services are free to any law enforcement agency or prosecutor in the state.
Many members also have a specialty such as 3-D mapping or downloading vehicle electronic control modules, commonly called black boxes. They usually work in pairs, though not always, splitting duties and peer reviewing each other’s reports.
Reconstructionists undergo 80 hours of additional training each year as technology changes; even the least experienced member of the team has several years of reconstruction work on their résumé.
Each was drawn to the unit for various reasons, but their common traits are a love of science and math and the desire to solve riddles and mysteries. How did a car end up traveling a couple hundred feet in the air? How did a body end up in a ditch? How fast was a vehicle traveling when it hit a pedestrian?
“Our guys are like the nerds of the State Patrol,” said Sgt. Thomas Erdmann, the unit’s supervisor. “We kind of get made fun of as the guys with pocket protectors and slide rules.”
***
Smith shines his flashlight into the 2003 Ford Explorer, its driver’s side and passenger’s side doors wide open, its front end smashed, electrical cords dangling from empty headlight sockets. He sees blood on the pavement and inside the Explorer. Looking at the ground, he notices tire mark and a silver-colored 2005 Chevrolet Classic car about 20 yards away, its nose facing the road.
The entire driver’s side of the Chevy is smashed in and peeled away. Two twisted car doors have been tossed near a light pole by first responders removing the victims. Three men were inside the Chevy, traveling home after a pig roast fundraiser for homeless veterans. One of the passengers is at a local hospital being treated for severe wounds; the bodies of the driver and a second passenger lie under white sheets next to the car.
Matt Johnson arrives within minutes of Smith. It’s 3 a.m. on June 21, 2015, and it’s quickly apparent to the two State Patrol reconstructionists that the Ford Explorer was heading south when it crashed into the northbound Chevy Classic, striking the driver’s side and pushing the Classic around until it ended up on the sidewalk in front of the BMO Harris Bank.
Smith and Johnson, with the help of Racine police investigators, must figure out how fast the vehicles were traveling and what exactly happened. Racine police will interview suspects and witnesses, collect blood samples and cellphone records and cut out air bags for evidence. On cases handled solely by the State Patrol, reconstruction unit members also perform these tasks.
This is the 198th accident/crime scene handled by State Patrol reconstructionists in 2015, on what will end up being a total of 441 cases.
Smith and Johnson return to their vehicles. It’s a humid night so Smith takes off his jacket before donning a head lamp, unfolding the yellow legs of a tripod and setting up a forensic mapping tool called a Trimble S6 Robotic Total Station. The $34,000 device — an electronic theodolite integrated with a distance measuring system — works wirelessly on a 360-degree grid, measuring horizontal distance and angles to specific points in three dimensions. That allows them to accurately map roadways, locations of evidence and terrain.
After establishing a point of reference at the start of the survey, Smith pounds a nail into the roadway to mark where he’s placing the Total Station to make sure it doesn’t move while he collects data points. Smith and Johnson will use those data points to print detailed maps and charts to be shown to prosecutors and defense attorneys. They don’t know it yet, but a jury deciding the fate of the Explorer driver will ultimately look at their maps and charts.
It takes 15 minutes to collect data from the roadway where the two vehicles collided. Then Johnson and Smith work on the skid marks, using a red paint stick to mark the starting and stopping points. Some of the marks are almost imperceptible to the untrained eye, but Johnson and Smith quickly find them.
“When a vehicle is turning, the weight is shifting to the right. As the tires heat up that’s where you get transfer,” Smith explains as he peers at black marks on the gray pavement.
They record data points around the Chevy before moving to the Ford Explorer, marking the fluid trail from the smashed radiator. Smith uses a can of orange spray paint to sketch the “damage profile” of the Ford Explorer — the location of the crash impact —then does the same on the Chevy.
“We can figure out how much energy it took for the damage and figure out the speed,” said Johnson. “The damage profiles will match up and it should fit together like puzzle pieces.”
The sun has come up, brightening the crash scene. Gulls wheel and squawk overhead. Now that it’s daylight, Smith and Johnson kneel down on the pavement with tape measures to record the length of skid marks.
Johnson, an expert in electronic control modules, checks both vehicles for the small device that records speed a few seconds before vehicles brake sharply or stop suddenly. Black boxes — they’re actually silver — use an internal accelerometer to interpret sudden speed changes, whether the vehicle’s brakes and seat belts were used, and the speed the vehicle was moving in the seconds before a collision. Since 2013, all vehicles sold in the U.S. must have them, though many manufacturers began including them as far back as the late 1990s. Within a few years, some form of black box will probably become standard on motorcycles, boats and snowmobiles.
Law enforcement must get consent from vehicle owners before downloading black box information.
“That Explorer isn’t supported,” said Johnson, after checking the make, model and year on his computer perched on the seat of his vehicle.
“Had it been a 2004, it would’ve been supported. This is a 2003.”
That means Johnson will have to use evidence such as tire marks left on the roadway and math to estimate how fast the Ford Explorer was traveling when it smacked into the Chevy. Using a combination of critical speed formula, tire radius, coefficient of friction and road elevation, Johnson determines the Explorer was traveling 55 to 59 mph. The posted speed limit is 30 mph.
Johnson has it a bit easier with the Chevy Classic. It does have a black box. Smith uses a box cutter to open the fabric of the passenger seat but can’t get to it because of a metal plate. He asks firefighters to pull the seat apart, telling them the black box is about the size of a sandwich. Firefighters use a hydraulic spreader to uncover the black box and Smith plugs in the power cord while calling out the vehicle’s identification number, which Johnson types on his laptop. Information flows out of the black box to Johnson’s computer.
They learn the Chevy was traveling 29 to 31 mph when it was hit by the Ford Explorer. The driver didn’t have time to brake.
Racine police tell them that the man thought to be driving the Ford Explorer jumped out of the vehicle and ran down a sidewalk between the bank and an apartment building. A private security guard heard the loud boom of the crash, and when bystanders yelled that the driver was fleeing, the guard ran after him and used a Taser, holding him until police arrived.
Tests would later show the driver’s blood-alcohol level was 0.20, more than twice the legal limit.
Smith and Johnson move the Total Station and slowly begin collecting points for each blood drop and smear. Judging by the trail of blood drops, they see that the man staggered and weaved as he lurched from the scene. Rounding a corner at the back of the apartments, they see one black sneaker, Taser confetti and large splotches of blood on the sidewalk where the driver was apprehended.
They return to the Ford Explorer, where Smith closely examines the seat belts. Seat belts are designed to flex for comfort but lock when wearers suddenly move. When the belts stop and lock, friction on the inside edge near the buckle can frequently be seen, sometimes actually melting the plastic. Smith sees no sign of friction on the driver’s belt nor any evidence that it was worn.
He sees blood stains on the passenger’s side seat belt where it crossed the passenger’s chest and signs of friction on the buckle. Smith tells Racine police to take photos of the suspected passenger with his shirt off because it’s common for bruises to form within hours from the seat belts suddenly locking in place.
“Those seat belt bruises can tell who is driving because they will be on different sides of the body — which helps with cases where someone claims they weren’t driving,” said Smith.
That’s exactly what happens in this case.
***
Unlike other crime scene investigators, State Patrol Technical Reconstruction Unit members do much of their work outdoors, at all hours and in all kinds of Wisconsin weather. While law enforcement guarding a scene or directing traffic can often take a break in their squad cars from bitterly cold temperatures or summer heat and humidity, reconstructionists usually don’t have that luxury. Snow, rain or wind can obliterate their evidence.
Sometimes they must hurry because traffic is backed up on a major highway on a holiday weekend. They also deal with scene contamination by first responders — sometimes jokingly called “evidence eradication teams” — who unwittingly destroy evidence with fire hoses or quick dry powder on slippery spots.
“I say ‘Imagine you have a homicide inside a residence. You have two hours to collect everything you need to collect and at the end of the two hours there are 10 bulldozers who will knock down the house and take away all the evidence,’” said unit member Mike Marquardt.
“If it’s on a side road or county road, we can set up a detour and maybe slow down a little bit. But if it’s on the interstate, it’s ‘go time.’ We’re running and gunning.”
So reconstructionists learn to work quickly to get what they need — shortlived evidence like fluids, debris and tire marks — and then sometimes return later to record data that isn’t urgent, such as the terrain or general road conditions, or to see the scene in daylight.
Advances in technology have greatly helped accident reconstruction specialists and reduced the amount of time at scenes, said Thomas Parrott, who spent 26 years of his three-decade-long State Patrol career in accident reconstruction before retiring. When Parrott, now a private consultant, started in reconstruction his tool kit was three tape measures (100 foot, 300 foot and a carpenter’s 25foot ruler), paint, chalk and a film camera.
Now, in addition to Total Stations, 3-D laser scanners, Global Navigation Satellite Systems, digital cameras, laptops, and computer programs that can re-create murder scenes or crashes in 3-D, some departments are starting to use drones to map crash scenes.
Wisconsin’s unit does not yet use unmanned aerial vehicles — Michigan, Illinois and other state crime reconstructionists already do — but Erdmann said it probably will soon. However, there are limitations to using drones at accident scenes. They can’t be used in poor weather or darkness and a large percentage of accidents happen at night.
“I could never have guessed in 1990 when I started this,” said Parrott, “that I could roll up and start a 3-D scanner and then download the engine’s black box. From a technical standpoint, I think we’ll make better use of drones. I think we’ll get to the point of flying UAVs over the site and taking photos.”
But no matter the gizmos and gadgets, Parrott said, all reconstruction specialists deal with the same laws of nature.
“If you were to open a college physics textbook, what we deal with in accident reconstruction is really the first three chapters. It comes down to the detail, amount, quality and quantity of the evidence you have,” Parrott said.
*** Evidence isn’t simply skid marks on pavement or debris left behind in a hitand-run. Increasingly investigators are using DNA and cellphone metadata — photos and video, text messaging and call histories, and GPS locations on smartphones. While they frequently collect cellphones at the scene, they can’t look at them until getting permission from the owners or obtaining a warrant.
Erdmann recalled a case in which four women were in a crash that killed two. The driver was ejected from the car but claimed she wasn’t behind the wheel. However, one of the women in the back seat had taken pictures on her cellphone minutes before the crash showing where the occupants were seated. Authorities used those pictures, the time stamp and GPS to prove who was driving.
Evidence also includes injuries, or what reconstruction specialists call “occupant kinematics,” a scientific way to explain bodies violently moving within or outside a car during an accident. The location of injuries on a body, as well as DNA found on air bags, seat belts and seats, can be used to pinpoint where everyone was seated inside a car.
“We can prove through injuries: ‘Well, you have a steering wheel mark on your chest and you say you’re in the back seat?’ Or, ‘You have a Ford symbol imprinted on your forehead.’ That would be what’s called a clue,” said Tracy Drager, the only female Wisconsin State Patrol reconstructionist. “You can only take people’s words so far.”
Smith recalled a motorcycle accident that seriously injured a couple who were both drunk. The man denied driving the motorcycle and said it was his female companion — until authorities pointed out to him that some of his passenger’s teeth were found embedded in the back of his head.
While reconstruction unit members have been to many scenes and handled hundreds of crashes, even they are occasionally surprised, amazed or dumbfounded at some of the things they see.
Ryan Zukowski vividly remembers handling a scene near Verona where a drunken driver speeding around 90 mph on Highway 18/151 drove into a ditch, rolled and was ejected right before the car hit a concrete overpass and was destroyed. The drunken driver, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt, was pitched into the air at just the right angle to vault on top of the overpass. Slightly injured, he limped into town and authorities were called to the scene.
Noticing dirt and debris on the overpass that flew up from the rolling car, Zukowski calculated the man’s speed and trajectory and told disbelieving first responders what happened — that the drunken driver’s velocity and apex after he shot out of the rolling vehicle were akin to landing a plane.
“Years ago people would say ‘Well, isn’t it worse to wear seat belts? Isn’t it better to be ejected?’ I would say 99.9% of the time it’s best to wear your seat belt because that’s the only example I know where not wearing a seat belt saved the guy’s life,” said Zukowski, an expert in 3-D modeling.
An even stranger case was handled by Marquardt near Montello more than a decade ago. A couple in a Jeep Wrangler with an open top were traveling south on I-39 at night when the man lost control and the vehicle rolled down the median. A local sheriff ’s deputy was sent to the scene. A few minutes later the sheriff’s department got another call, this time from a pickup truck driver saying he had struck a deer while heading north on I-39. A second deputy was sent to that scene a short distance away from the Jeep Wrangler accident.
When the deputy arrived at the Wrangler accident, he found an injured and dazed woman walking in a ditch. In the darkness, she was looking for her boyfriend who had been driving. Then the second deputy arrived at the cardeer accident and saw a hole in a side window of the pickup truck and damage on the side of the vehicle. The driver told him he didn’t know what happened but thought he’d hit a deer.
When that deputy walked around the vehicle to assess the damage, he discovered a human corpse. It was the Jeep Wrangler driver.
Marquardt, who joined the State Patrol in 1998, was called in to reconstruct both accident scenes. Based on speeds, geometry, timing, geography and evidence that included scratches and gouges on vehicles, Marquardt figured it out.
“As the Jeep Wrangler was rolling over, the driver was ejected up and out into the driving lane and he was doing a Superman position like a spear through a windshield into the back of the truck. Here I had this guy flying like Superman through the air, through a vehicle and that driver never knowing a human being just flew through his vehicle,” said Marquardt. “One of the craziest cases I ever had.”
*** Wisconsin State Patrol accident reconstruction experts say they’re drawn to the job because it occupies a unique niche within the department, one that demands arithmetic, trigonometry, science and problem-solving skills. They’re self-motivated and curious. Aside from responding to accidents and crimes, they set their own hours.
And it’s a job that requires the humility to know they don’t always know all the answers, that sometimes they must seek help from others in the department. Or that occasionally they must tell prosecutors there’s not enough evidence to determine what happened or who was at fault.
“I’ve learned you never jump to conclusions right away,” said Derrek Hanson, who joined the State Patrol in 1997 and became a member when the unit formed in 2006. “You have to follow the physical evidence. It’s a cliche but you do want to take the totality of everything. You can think this guy was coming this way and this guy was coming that way. Then you look at the evidence and learn it was incorrect.”
A motorist who slammed into the back of an Amish buggy carrying a load of cornstalks at night without lights or slow-moving vehicle signs was charged with homicide recently. But the charges were dropped after the State Patrol reconstructionist showed the prosecutor that it would have been impossible for anyone to avoid hitting the buggy.
Johnson remembers his high school physics teacher telling him about the real world applications of physics and the teenage Johnson thinking: Yeah, right! Now, of course, he marvels at just how correct his teacher was because he uses the basic physics he learned so many years ago every day on the job.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Johnson joined the State Patrol in 2000 and spent several years patrolling I-94 in Jefferson County until he became a fulltime reconstruction unit member in 2006. While he enjoys the science and problem-solving skills needed to reconstruct accidents and crime scenes, Johnson’s motivation for becoming an accident reconstruction expert is based in tragedy.
Many law enforcement officers say that by far the worst part of the job is telling someone their loved one has suddenly died. Johnson’s first fatal crash as a trooper was in 2002. He was the first on the scene — two teenagers died when their car struck a tree — and it was his responsibility to make the death notification.
“I can remember this house in Lake Mills. I can remember walking up to the front door at 2 o’clock in the morning and ringing the doorbell. I can remember the look on the parents’ faces when they opened the door. I had to go inside and tell them what happened to their son,” Johnson recalled.
“The biggest thing I remember was the dad asking me what happened. How do you explain what happened to a dad — and I really didn’t know? All I knew was they went off the road and hit a tree.
“I went into crash reconstruction to explain that,” said Johnson.
Marquardt, who joined the State Patrol in 1998 after serving in the military and training to be a children’s librarian, knows intimately the pain of losing a loved one in a motor vehicle crash. The week before his wedding, his wife’s beloved grandmother was killed in a traffic accident while picking up the dress she planned to wear to the ceremony.
Marquardt enjoys the science and investigative element of his job and knows that most of the people he deals with are not hardened criminals since most traffic accidents are not intentional.
“I tell people: You’re not an evil person but you did something very horrible and you’ll have to deal with the consequences,” said Marquardt.
Reconstructionists say they deal with the death and tragedy by focusing on their jobs and trying not to let their emotions take over. Frequently, bodies have already been taken away by the time they arrive. But often victims are still on the scene and they find themselves working in the middle of blood and gore.
“I’ve got guys in my unit that probably see a dead body at least once a week,” said Erdmann.
They know the job is important because often they’re the voice for someone who can no longer speak, said reconstruction unit member Justin Bender. They are the ones answering the questions of loved ones left behind after a fatal accident who desperately want to know what happened and why.
*** Sometimes their jobs do spill over into their personal lives: getting out of bed in the middle of the night to go to a crash scene; sometimes being away for days if the case is particularly complex; and missing family gatherings, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, church, kids’ sporting events.
Marquardt has vetoed his daughters’ choice of motor vehicles, telling them that although they think a particular car is cute, he has responded to dozens of fatalities in that particular model. There’s no way he’s letting them drive one.
Johnson remembers working a case last year where a young boy was killed. “He had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack, the same one my son had. First thing I did when I came home is I threw away my son’s backpack because I knew every time I would see it, I would remember that little boy,” said Johnson, who replaced it with a Spiderman backpack.
Duane Meyers remembers the names of children killed in bicycle accidents, even ones who died decades ago. Meyers joined the State Patrol in 1982 and started the unit in 2006. He’s now retired from the State Patrol and works as a private crash reconstruction specialist.
Last spring, he was using Google maps as he drove a backroad in Wisconsin. Suddenly, memories began flooding back.
“I told my wife I reconstructed a scene here almost 20 years ago. She said, ‘Yeah, there’s a cross right there.’ I go through parts of the state where I specifically remember the details of the crash. You never push it out of your mind, it’s always there,” said Meyers.
When Meyers went through the State Patrol Academy, his training included a two-week session on crash investigation. He was intrigued. Six years later he convinced his superiors to send him for more accident reconstruction training which would eventually add up to thousands of hours over the decades.
Until the founding of the Reconstruction Unit in 2006, crash investigations were handled through the State Patrol’s regional offices. Meyers knew how challenging it was to be in the middle of a complex reconstruction case only to drop it to answer a call of a stranded motorist or fender bender. He encouraged his bosses at the Fond du Lac district to create a special unit to conduct crash reconstruction. Eventually, it went statewide and Meyers was named the supervisor, tasked with hiring 14 experts plus a mechanical inspector, all of whom were already serving as troopers.
Though some people have the mistaken impression that the reconstruction experts work for the prosecution, Meyers always told them “you’re not an advocate for anyone except the truth.”
***
While the bulk of their job is collecting and analyzing evidence, tire marks, paint transfer and speeds, plus writing reports and compiling charts and diagrams, reconstructionists must be able to explain their conclusions to a jury. That means breaking down how Newton’s Third Law applies to determining how objects move inside a closed space — like bodies inside colliding cars — or how a crumpled car contains clues to determine the exact energy needed to create that damage.
“This is what they do. This is their wheelhouse,” said Emily Thompson, an assistant attorney general, traffic safety resource prosecutor for the state Department of Justice. “They have a level of expertise that many of the local reconstruction teams don’t have.”
Thompson was a Dane County prosecutor who specialized in serious vehicular crimes cases for five years and has worked extensively with the reconstruction unit.
In cases where the identity of the driver is in dispute, reconstruction unit members can explain in simple terms exactly how and why bodies moved, where they moved and how fast they were moving.
“Occupant kinematics is pretty fascinating. (Reconstruction unit members) will start talking about ports of ejection and how did this person get ejected from the car as it was rolling,” said Tara Jenswold, who also works as an assistant attorney general, traffic safety resource prosecutor and prosecutes serious vehicular crimes throughout the state.
“The defense likes to say once the car is rolling it’s like popcorn popping in the car. Well, that’s not true. People are moving in fairly predictable ways,” Jenswold said.
A few years ago, Thompson handled a case in Dane County where a speeding car overturned, ejecting both occupants, killing one and injuring the other. Both had high blood-alcohol levels. The survivor was the owner of the vehicle, and he told authorities he couldn’t remember who was driving. Police worked to learn the last movements of the motorists before the crash, which taverns they were drinking at, etc. They concluded the crash survivor was most likely the driver.
Zukowski spent many hours at the scene and returned the next day to look at evidence in daylight. Thousands of quarters littered the ground. It turned out the vehicle owner was a businessman who owned several car washes. It took Zukowski several days to piece everything together and his conclusion surprised Thompson.
“He said: ‘You know what? It was the deceased person who was actually driving,’ ” recalled Thompson. “He determined that based on the evidence at the scene. Without his expertise, I feel I may well have charged the guy who lived. He essentially saved that person from prosecution.”
Smith and Johnson submitted their lengthy report as well as diagrams and photos to Racine County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Tanck-Adams in the case of the Father’s Day double homicide hit-and-run. Smith spent many hours helping her build her case before the jury trial last February, 20 months after the crash.
As the trial date for Ramone A. Campbell, 33, of Racine, was postponed several times throughout 2015 and 2016, his defense attorney revealed in court documents that he planned to try to convince a jury that Campbell was not the driver but the passenger, and the purported passenger in his Ford Explorer, Jacob Bahling, was actually driving.
Smith told Tanck-Adams to show the jury Bahling’s blood-spattered shirt and line it up with the blood-soaked passenger side seat belt. The two patterns fit together.
“Once that angle was given to us as a defense, we were able to work with Mike (Smith) to show why that was impossible, and also focus on why we could prove our case,” said Tanck-Adams.
In a Racine County courtroom, Smith spent two hours on the stand answering questions from Tanck-Adams and showing charts to the jury that were created from the information he and Johnson collected at the scene. One of the maps showed all of the blood drops Campbell left behind as he ran from the scene; other maps showed the skid marks and direction of the vehicles before, during and after the fatal collision.
Smith easily explained Newton’s Third Law of Motion — for every action, there’s an equal and opposite action — and the concept of principal direction of force to account for the movement of Campbell’s unrestrained body inside his Explorer when it struck the Chevy. Smith said the speed, impact and direction of Campbell’s vehicle resulted in Campbell being violently thrown to the passenger’s side of the SUV. It accounted for the serious injuries to his face — likely striking the rearview mirror, which was broken off in the crash — and his head breaking the passenger window. Smith told the jury that the severe facial cuts and bruises Campbell suffered accounted for the blood spattered on Bahling’s shirt and seat belt.
“This is a very dynamic crash, a lot of speed involved,” testified Smith, adding that he would not expect to see a person wearing a seat belt to be injured. Bahling was uninjured.
One of Campbell’s black Nike sneakers was found on the floor of the SUV on the driver’s side. Tanck-Adams asked Smith if it was possible Campbell’s shoe could have ended up in that spot if he was sitting in the passenger seat. Smith explained that was impossible because centrifugal force was spinning the vehicle but nothing, not even a shoe, would have been lifted up and over the center console from the passenger side to the driver’s side.
Following a trial that lasted several days, a jury convicted Campbell of 13 counts. In August he was sentenced to 70 years in prison.
By then Smith and Johnson were busy handling more homicide cases and traffic fatalities.
Reporter Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel staff received unprecedented access to the inner workings of the Wisconsin State Patrol’s Technical Reconstruction Unit for this story. In June 2015, she arrived at the scene of a double traffic fatality in Racine shortly before accident reconstructionists Mike Smith and Matt Johnson. She followed them at the crime scene, interviewed them during their work on the case and was in a Racine County courtroom in February 2017 when Smith testified. She also interviewed other team members, retirees and prosecutors, and reviewed court documents and reports.