’82 crime solved by newsroom confession
MILWAUKEE — A man charged with murder in the disappearance 33 years ago of a 13-year-old Milwaukee girl confessed to police that he pushed her down a flight of stairs because she didn’t want to make out with him and that he “had his way with her” before realizing she was dead, according to a criminal complaint.
The document reveals details in a long dormant case that resurfaced last week after a TV station reported that 50-year-old Jose Ferreira called its newsroom and discussed the case.
Ferreira was arrested Oct. 12, a day after his wife went to police in suburban Milwaukee and told them he had called her and described what he had done, according to the complaint. The same day his wife went to police, Ferreira called WISN-Milwaukee and a mental health crisis hotline and discussed the death.
The girl, Carrie Ann Jopek, went missing in March 1982 after getting suspended from school for walking the halls without a pass. Her mother, Carolyn Tousignant, says she thinks her daughter got kicked out on purpose so she could party at a neighbor’s house with others who had ditched school. The seventh-grader never came home.
At the party, according to the police document, Ferreira said he and others had been drinking and that he saw Jopek take a puff of marijuana, which he gave her. After that, Ferreira said, Jopek asked if he wanted to go to the basement where he assumed they would make out.
Before they went downstairs, Ferreira told police, Jopek had second thoughts and said, “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
He confessed to shoving her and told police she wasn’t moving when he walked down the stairs.
Ferreira said he thought she was “knocked out,” and that he saw that as “an opportunity.”
Chris Gegg, news director at WISN 12, said Monday that Ferreira told a morning show producer he had sex with her.
The police document says he realized her neck was broken when he picked her up from the floor and saw her head was turned unnaturally.
He told authorities he buried her underneath the back porch. The case went cold for 17 months until someone repairing the porch came across the body.
Ferreira has been charged with second-degree murder and faces 20 years in prison.