MADISON, Wis. — Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen demoted state fire marshal and senior homicide investigator Carolyn Kelly on May 21, saying she had threatened the lives of his executive staff, slowed the release of records in a mass murder in Crandon and obstructed an investigation into her conduct.
Van Hollen stripped Kelly of her law enforcement and supervisory duties and bumped her back to an analyst position, cutting her pay by $34,000 a year.
“She made repeated comments showing her great distaste for a number of people in the executive branch and people who had been civil servants in the Department of Justice for years who were working on the open-records aspect of the Crandon case,” Van Hollen said. “We’re talking about a sworn law enforcement officer who is making life threats. ... I’ve never seen anybody or heard anybody even come close to this type of commentary.”
Kelly’s attorney Dan Bach called the demotion unfair.
The e-mails reflected frustration with Van Hollen’s staff, but they were humorous, Bach said.
“There is nothing in those e-mails that would lead any reasonable person to conclude that a threat was made, or implied, to anyone’s safety,” said Bach, who served as deputy attorney general under Van Hollen’s predecessor, Peg Lautenschlager.
At the heart of the matter was the Justice Department’s investigation into the Crandon slayings.
Off-duty Forest County Sheriff’s Deputy Tyler Peterson gunned down six young people, including his former girlfriend, at a party Oct. 7. He killed himself in the woods hours later as police closed in.
The Justice Department took over the case hours after it began, with Kelly, who doubled as the leader of the agency’s special assignments bureau, in the lead.
The case generated intense news-media interest. According to a group of Kelly’s e-mails released May 21, Van Hollen’s executive staff was trying to contact investigative agents directly days after the shooting to see what records could be released.
Kelly and her supervisor, Jim Warren, the administrator of DOJ’s criminal investigation unit, saw that as micromanagement. Kelly instructed her agents in an Oct. 12 e-mail to pass any requests for information from Van Hollen’s appointees to her or Warren.
Over the next three months, she e-mailed Warren several times wondering if $50 was the going rate for a “hit,” whether she could get group rates for hits on three or four people and where she should advertise for a hit man on Craigslist.
Van Hollen said she referred to his staff in another e-mail as “weasels.” In another, she told Warren she was sick and hoped her germs would spread to eighth floor of the Risser Justice Center, where Van Hollen and his staff work.
“She was clearly threatening the lives of some, if not all, of my executive staff,” Van Hollen said. “In this day and age, obviously with Columbine and Virginia Tech, we can’t afford to take (that) lightly.”
Kelly also allowed local police reports and autopsy reports to be sent back to the original agencies without executive staff review, in violation of Van Hollen’s directive. An agent had to retrieve them.
“She was not elected to make that determination. I was,” Van Hollen said.
The agency finally released all its Crandon documents in February, four months after the incident. Van Hollen said it was impossible to know how much sooner the records might have been released, but, he said, Kelly impeded the process.
He said he wasn’t aware of the frustration within the Division of Criminal Investigation. He relied on Warren to keep him informed, but Warren never brought any concerns to him, he said. But he noted Warren was not a “trusted colleague” he brought into the agency when he took over in January 2007.
“Should I have known more? Yes. Could I have done anything to know more? Not likely,” Van Hollen said. “I was really put in a position where I have to rely on that division administrator and I have no reason to believe I shouldn’t.”
Warren retired abruptly at the beginning of January, saying in an e-mail his year under Van Hollen was difficult. He told the Wisconsin State Journal he decided to quit after Deputy Attorney General Ray Taffora told him he would be reassigned as director of the Training and Standards Bureau — a demotion in his eyes.
Kelly’s e-mails surfaced as DOJ officials gathered Warren’s e-mails at reporters’ request, and Van Hollen suspended her in January with pay pending an internal investigation. She was stripped of her gun and badge when the suspension began.
During her suspension, Van Hollen said, Kelly contacted a subordinate to continue working on a grant application she had been preparing, dialing down the money the executive staff wanted to request. She also contacted a subordinate to coordinate her story for the internal investigation, Van Hollen said.
Bach said Justice Department policy dictates Warren should have been the contact for record requests, not agents. Kelly was upset someone inexperienced with open records released undercover agents’ cell phone numbers, he said.
He complained that Van Hollen released only a handful of e-mails that have no context and most of Kelly’s messages were sent while she was on maternity leave.
“She thinks it’s grossly unfair,” Bach said. “Can one reasonably presume that spreading germs constitutes a threat to somebody in the attorney general’s office?”
Kelly made $87,107 as the fire marshal and special assignments director. She’ll make $53,841 as an analyst. Van Hollen said he chose not to fire Kelly because his management administrator who led the internal probe told him Kelly had 25 years with the DOJ and good performance reviews.
He ordered Kelly back to work on May 27 at her new post. Bach said she’d comply. He said he hadn’t discussed with her about filing an appeal with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, which handles labor disputes, or in court.
Special agent Tina Virgil has been handling Kelly’s duties.