Brantner Alleged History Of Inappropriate Behavior With Women

More can be learned about the suspect in Berit Beck’s murder from the criminal complaint. Sixty-one-year-old Dennis Brantner was officially charged yesterday in Fond du Lac County Court with 1st degree murder in the July 1990 murder of the 18-year-old Sturtevant woman. His bond was set at $1 million cash. Brantner had some previous criminal history involving women. West Allis police arrested him in 1974 for stealing a woman’s underpants at a hotel. Green Lake County authorities arrested him for stalking his ex-wife in 1989. Officials in Lake County Illinois arrested him in 1994 for an incident in which he held his second wife at knifepoint. Three co-workers told authorities in April of last year that Brantner had a photo of blonde-haired woman in her late teens in or around his tool box. They had seen news reports and recognized the photo as that of Berit Beck. A Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s detective also monitored Brantner’s Facebook page and in early March of last year saw a photo on his page of a blonde-haired woman in her late teens, who went missing from Columbus, Ohio. Fingerprints belonging to Brantner were found in Beck’s van. They were on a Burger King cup, an employee manual for where Beck worked, a bleach kit, on a cellophane cigaretter wrapper, under the front passenger seat and on the inside middle door window. Beck’s van was found in the former Kmart parking lot in Fond du Lac in July of 1990. Her body was found six weeks later in a ditch outside of Waupun. She had been blindfolded or gagged and had been strangled.