Not guilty plea entered in overdose homicide case

A 49-year-old woman accused of selling drugs to a friend of her son who lived in Saukville and died of an overdose in March 2022 pleaded not guilty Tuesday to first-degree reckless homicide.

Nicole L. Eisentraut, a former Saukville resident who now lives in Sheboygan, also pleaded not guilty to felony charges of delivery of narcotics and delivery of cocaine.

Eisentraut, who was arrested in September — three-and-a-half years after the overdose death — is being held in the Ozaukee County jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.

The case dates to Tuesday, March 2, 2022, when at 4:48 p.m. a police officer was called to a Saukville home and arrived to find a man performing CPR on his son in a small upstairs room, according to a criminal complaint.

The victim, who is not named in the complaint, did not have a pulse and was taken by ambulance to Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, where he was pronounced dead.

The victim’s mother told an officer that her son had been at home for the last 24 hours and woke that morning very pale. Shortly before an ambulance was called, she noticed her son’s breathing was labored. Then he stopped breathing and the victim’s father called 911, the complaint states.

In the room where the victim was found, officers found drug paraphernalia, including a pipe used to smoke crack cocaine, and substances that tested positive for heroin, fentanyl and cocaine, according to the complaint. 

The cause of death was acute mixed drug intoxication from methamphetamine, cocaine, fentanyl and trazadone, according to a Milwaukee County medical examiner autopsy report.

The victim’s father turned his son’s cell phone over to officer Eric Ramthun, and on it Ramthun found a text message exchange between the victim and another person identified only by the phone number. Using in-house records, Ramthun traced the number to Eisentraut, who he knew was the mother of one of the victim’s friends, the complaint states.

The exchange began on Feb. 28, 2022, according to the complaint, with Eisentraut writing to the victim, “I’m going down in the morning at 10:30 so you’re going to have to drop the money off with me,” adding “It’s 120 a g,” presumably a reference to a cost of $120 per gram.

The exchange continued on March 1, 2022, — the day before the victim’s death — with messages about logistics and the victim writing, “OK is it really 120 though?”

In response, Eisentraut wrote, “Yup. I’m not charging you anything extra because you shared with me that one day.”

The victim asked, “Will my mind be blown?”

Eisentraut wrote, “I know it was amazing when I had some. My throat went numb immediately.”

The exchange between Eisentraut and the victim then focused on whether the victim wanted “boy,” which Eisentraut later told an officer is code for heroin, or “girl,” which is crack cocaine, the complaint states.

The victim placed his order by writing, “A g of boy and a g and a half of girl.”

Later that day, Eisentraut and the victim discussed where he could buy a pipe and Chore Boy, a kitchen scrubber that is also used as a filter in cocaine pipes.

That afternoon, after Eisentraut apparently delivered the victim’s purchase, she texted to see if he liked it.

He responded, “There’s no way I’m gunna do all of this boy in my life haha so I’ll def just end up sharing most of it with you,” then asked Eisentraut what she was doing that night.

She wrote that she was supposed to go out with her “ex” but she had not heard from him.

The victim responded “gboooi6tj lol lets hang out then.”

During a March 17, 2022, interview, Eisentraut told Ramthun that the victim was a friend of her son and was “like a son to me,” the complaint states.

Eisentraut said the last time she saw the victim was a couple of days before his death when she gave him a ride to the bank. Ramthun interviewed Eisentraut again on Dec. 8, 2022, and this time she said that when she was giving the victim a ride to the bank, he asked if her “guy had the same coke,” according to the complaint.

Eisentraut said she made a call to check, and after telling the victim her “guy” didn’t have the same coke, he said he would get his own “stuff,” the complaint states.

She told Ramthun she gave the victim a pipe and Chore Boy and he later told her he found a gram of “boy.”

Eisentraut said she had “guys” in Milwaukee but she didn’t know where the victim would have purchased drugs, according to the complaint.