Brothers Who Spent 25 Years In Prison For Woman's Murder Exonerated

Two Wisconsin brothers who spent the last 25 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing a woman in 1987 have been released after DNA evidence tied the murder to another suspect, The Wisconsin Innocence Project announced Friday.

David Bintz, 69, and his younger brother, Robert Bintz, 68 were sentenced to life in prison in 2000, after prosecutors say they killed Sandra Lison, 44, a mother of two, the Green Bay Press Gazette reports.

Lison’s body was found near a trail in the Machickanee Forest about 30 miles from Green Bay on Aug. 4, 1987, according to Robert Bintz’s motion to vacate. Detectives noticed Lison’s slip and nylons had been removed and most of the buttons on her dress were undone, and they determined she had been beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted.

Semen was recovered from Lison’s body via vaginal swabs and from her dress, which also had been stained with blood. This DNA evidence did not match the Bintzes, according to the Wisconsin Innocence Project, but after the case went cold for a time, the Brown County District Attorney’s Office in 1998 eventually charged the two brothers with killing her.

Prosecutors alleged at the Bintzes’ trial that the two killed Lison during a robbery at the Good Times Tavern, a bar she worked at, the night before her body was discovered, according to the motion to vacate.

Prosecutors also depended on testimony from David Bintz’s cellmate in a jail where he had been serving time for an unrelated crime. The cellmate told guards about nightmares David Bintz was having, claiming he yelled “make sure she’s dead” in his sleep, according to theInvestigative Genetic Genealogy Center. The cellmate also said David Bintz later admitted to helping his brother kill