Jury acquits man of break-in, sexual assault

An Ozaukee County jury deliberated less than 90 minutes Tuesday before acquitting a Town of Saukville man of breaking into his neighbor’s house and sexually assaulting her in December.

Patrick M. Gehr, 57, was found not guilty of all three felonies he faced — second-degree sexual assault, false imprisonment and burglary — during a trial before Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Sandy Williams that began Monday.

In his opening statement to the jury of six men and six women, District Attorney Adam Gerol described the crime in graphic detail:

The 58-year-old victim, who lives alone in a relatively remote area of the Town of Saukville, returned home around 3 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 22, after working the late shift as a nurse.

She was in bed when a man with a T-shirt covering much of his face appeared in her room and made vulgar comments before rolling her over, pinning her down and groping her.

That man, Gerol said, was Gehr.

But Gehr’s attorney, Chad Lanning, told the jury that the women, who never got a good look at her attacker, misidentified Gehr as the man who assaulted her. Lanning then questioned whether she was assaulted at all.

“There’s not just more to the story, there’s a lot missing from it,” Lanning said, referring to Gerol’s version of events.

During the course of an investigation that Lanning described as exhaustive, a significant amount of evidence that was collected was never analyzed. And none of the evidence that was tested linked Gehr to the alleged crime, he said. 

Neither Gehr’s fingerprints nor his DNA were found in the woman’s home, Lanning said. 

“There’s no physical evidence in this case,” he said. “There’s nothing that places him (Gehr) in the house.”

Lanning said without physical evidence, investigators were “troubled” by the woman’s claim that Gehr attacked her.

But Gerol said the woman was not able to visually identify her attacker because “one of the first things the man did was told her to take off her glasses.”

He said male DNA was found on the shirt the man used to obscure his face, but the sample was not good enough to match against other DNA. 

Shortly after the attack, the woman underwent an exam that documented a bruise on her back where she said her attacker pinned her down and a bruise on her breast, where she said she was groped, Gerol said.

Lanning said officers described it as a “he said, she said” case, one in which it’s uncertain whether Gehr would have been a suspect at all had he not stumbled into the investigation. 

During the attack, the woman was able to fend off her assailant long enough to call 911, which prompted the man to run away, Gerol said.

Officers arrived within minutes and were investigating when Gehr, who lives next door and had been drinking at area bars earlier, approached a sheriff’s deputy to see what was happening. Then the woman walked outside.

“It appeared Mr. Gehr would not look at her,” Gerol said. 

Referring to the deputy, Gerol told the jury, “He will tell you she looked terrified. She recognized his voice and the smell,” noting Gehr smelled of alcohol. 

Identified as a suspect, Gehr was interviewed at length, and during one of those interviews he broke down and said, “To do what I did tonight, I don’t know,” according to the criminal complaint. 

When asked by an investigator if his DNA would be found in the woman’s house, he replied “I don’t know,” adding that he suffers blackouts when he drinks, the complaint states.

But Lanning said that when Gehr made those comments, he was coming to grips with his drinking problem, not confessing to a crime.

In an attempt to establish a motive for the attack, Gerol told jurors that when Gehr was out drinking he met one of the woman’s brothers-in-law who told him that his family had been trying to evict her from the house they own but she resides in — the same house Gehr had wanted to buy. 

According to the criminal complaint, Gehr told the brother-in-law that he should “go over there and drag her out,” and that if the brother-in-law wouldn’t do it, he would.

But, Lanning said, that at one point in the investigation an officer questioned whether the woman made up the story about her being attacked to distract from efforts to evict her from the house.

Gehr, who was charged on Dec. 26, was released from jail in January in lieu of $50,000 bail while awaiting trial.