26 Year-Old Cold Case Remains Unsolved
OnFocus – An unsolved 1995 hit-and-run case in Vesper, Wisconsin is getting national attention after being featured on NBC’s Dateline program page. (A Dateline Tik-Tok and Facebook post are also expected today. The case is not expected to air on the television program, just online.)
Case documents are available for viewing on the Justice for Deidre website. According to these reports, on March 24, 1995, at approximately 6:30 p.m., a hit-and-run vehicle struck and killed 11-year-old Deidre Week as she pedaled home after play practice.
After first stopping at Winch’s Mini Mart to buy treats for her and her brother, Deidre headed for home (just a few minutes away) on County Highway HH, immediately north of Vesper, Wisconsin. The sole eyewitness to the event reported that there were two people in the hit-and-run vehicle.
Her death at the time was classified as a hit-and-run. (The statute of limitations to file hit-and-run charges expired in 2001; however, there is no time limit for vehicular homicide.)
According to the Justice for Deidre Facebook page, stories didn’t match, alibis didn’t add up, and people who should have been immediately questioned were not. A promised John Doe investigation never happened despite these discrepancies.
A case study, written by an unknown author, further demonstrates the numerous inconsistencies, lost opportunities, and other errors made during the investigation into Deidre’s death.
The family has never given up that justice will be attained for Deidre. Since his election in 2018, Wood County Sheriff Shawn Becker has taken a renewed interest in the case. He told Dateline that though there is no “new information or significant updates to share,” there are new leads in the case and they haven’t given up.
“We’re always looking for people to come forward with information regarding this case. Somebody knows something and we’re hoping with the recent media attention that’ll bring some more attention to this case where someone could come forward to provide something,” said Becker, adding that though the statute of limitations may be up (on the hit-and-run part of the case), his department is not giving up.
“We’re going to continue to work on this case,” he said. “We look into any leads and we encourage people with any type of information to come forward.”
Becker added that the current investigator on the case, Investigator Sergeant Scott Goldberg, is from the Vesper area and knew Deidre.
“The passion is there to work on this,” he said. “We all want to solve this. That’s the goal for everybody here and Scott is doing an outstanding job of it. Any new leads that come in, he follows up.”
Anyone with information related to the case should contact Wood County Sheriff’s Department.
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Author: News Desk
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