2 Wis. women, 2 kids found dead in linked slayings; police seeking ‘person of interest’

Police search for man linked to 4 Wis. slayings

MADISON, Wis. — Police investigating the fatal shootings of a mother and her young daughter in Madison and the slayings of another woman and young girl found dead in a nearby suburb were searching Friday for the girls’ father, whom they identified as a “person of interest” in all four deaths.

Police were looking for Tyrone Adair, 38. Court records show Adair had paternity cases with two women and a criminal record in Dane County, including convictions for battery and bail jumping.

Officers found all four victims Thursday evening. Adair had a relationship with both women and the girls were his daughters, police said.

“We believe these (slayings) are somewhat domestic in nature,” Madison Police spokesman Joel DeSpain said. “We’re still putting this all together.”

DeSpain said Adair’s photograph has been distributed to police across the country. Adair has family in Madison, and investigators were working Friday to contact them and anyone else he knows, DeSpain said. He cautioned that Adair should be considered armed and dangerous but could be a long way from Madison by now.

“At this point in time we don’t know where this guy has gone,” DeSpain said.

Police were called to a duplex on Madison’s southwest side around 6 p.m. and discovered the mother and daughter shot inside a vehicle in the garage.

Around 8:30 p.m., Madison police asked officers in nearby Middleton to locate a vehicle that eventually was found in a parking lot with the bodies of a woman and a girl in the trunk, Middleton Police Lt. Noel Kakuske said.

The woman had suffered a head injury, but investigators couldn’t tell if it was a gunshot wound, Kakuske said. It was unclear how the girl, whom he said may have been 2 or 3 years old, died. He declined to comment on their relationship.

Investigators believe they may have been killed elsewhere and the car abandoned in Middleton. It wasn’t immediately clear how Madison police became aware of the vehicle.

“It’s possible it was just a random location to leave the vehicle,” Kakuske said.

The victims’ names and ages haven’t been released.

Court records, however, indicate Adair was involved in paternity cases with a woman in Middleton and a woman who lives in the same block as the Madison double slaying.

In 2008, court records show that Adair and Tracy Graser of Middleton reached a court settlement acknowledging that Adair was the father of a child named Deja Adair, who was born on Christmas Day 2007. A family court commissioner ordered Graser and Adair to share custody of the child because they were living together in Middleton at the time.

Graser’s ranch-style home in the Town of Middleton was encircled with police tape Friday morning. Sheriff’s deputies came and went from the house. A child’s plastic playhouse sat in the backyard. All the blinds were drawn.

A next-door neighbor declined to comment. No one else nearby on the street answered his or her door Friday morning. A voice mail message left on Graser’s phone was not immediately returned.

In the other paternity case, Dane County Circuit Court Commissioner Mary Beth Keppel ruled in March 2008 that Adair was the father of a child named Neveah Weigel-Adair. The child’s mother, Amber Weigel, had petitioned the court for a paternity judgment against him.

Keppel ordered Adair to pay Weigel child support and birth expenses. She ordered the two to share custody and outlined a weekly schedule.

Weigel complained in court records that in March 2009, Adair stopped seeing the child and changed his phone number. In April, “he raised the possibility of me having sole custody,” Weigel wrote in court documents. In June, he again told her he did not plan to “exercise his visitation rights.”

Adair did not show up for a court hearing in August where he was again ordered to pay child support plus extra money for falling behind.

On Friday morning, police tape still surrounded the Madison duplex, whose address matched the one for Weigel in court records. Christmas lights decorated the front porch and Halloween decorations hung on the door. The blinds were drawn. A Dane County Sheriff’s crime scene vehicle was parked in front of the home.

Neighbor Crystal Hutson, 29, said the area is normally “pretty quiet,” other than a rash of burglaries a few years ago. Hutson, who didn’t know the victims, said she saw nothing unusual Thursday.

Hutson, who has a 6-year-old son, said she locked her doors when she heard about the deaths.

“It’s really sad and really unfortunate and happening so close to home,” she said.

Court documents also show that a woman sought a restraining order in 2006 against Adair after she said he stalked and threatened her for months.

The woman said Adair slashed her tires, broke into her apartment, destroyed her computer, phone and television, and repeatedly made threatening phone calls to her.

“Don’t forget I know where you live,” he told her in one call, according to court documents.

Dane County Circuit Judge James Martin granted the restraining order, prohibiting Adair from contacting the woman or possessing a firearm until 2010.

At one point, she said she left her apartment because she was scared of him and went to live with friends.

Associated Press writers Scott Bauer and Ryan J. Foley contributed to this report.