Laufenberg’s böxenwolf journals recorded events as far back as the wolf-dog hunt in 1982. Dennis Laufenberg stole two wolf straps: the first that he wore in monstrous form made him half-female, and the second he wore in both monstrous and wolf form, which made him male.
During the Wolf Panic of 1982, Laufenberg stole the first wolf strap. In 1983, he transfigured into a wolf, but nearly died from thirst because he could not untie the string easily. The wolf strap made him half-female, which felt uncomfortable.
Laufenberg visited Wolfberg, Germany, in 1986, and studied böxenwolves.
Faulty wiring in the police evidence storage caused a fire in 1988, and Laufenberg stole another wolf strap during the fire.
Böxenwolves said that for a year or so, Laufenberg questioned them about the wolf straps and böxenwolves. He acted as if it were part of the wolf-dog hunt, but Sheriff Jordan found no files about his questioning, and he began from 1989-1990. Some people felt uneasy about Laufenberg’s attitude.
In 1988, Laufenberg tried wrapping the wolf strap around his arm for a partial transfiguration, which did not work. He built a hook to assist in removing the wolf strap, but his idea failed.
So, to retain some bodily control, he transfigured into the monster form. It was a temporary measure until he built up strength for a wolf form, but the two forms differed so much, he found the experiment pointless.
Laufenberg hired a prostitute to remove the wolf strap after half an hour, but she untied it after two minutes and ran away. A few days later, he tried to make a second prostitute think that she was hallucinating by taking an unidentified drug.
An anonymous böxenwolf who Laufenberg identified as Dale Vandenheuvel said that because Laufenberg could not properly operate a wolf body, he needed a böxenwolf mentor to assist him. From approximately June through September 1990, the anonymous böxenwolf assisted him, just until he could untie the wolf strap alone. The böxenwolf avoided further contact.
Laufenberg began looking for other böxenwolves to socialize with in the woods, but people tended to exclude him. Disagreeing with the böxenwolves’ attitudes in general, he looked for people willing to become böxenwolves and spend some of their spare time living as wolves. He believed in the concept of alpha wolf, with himself as the alpha wolf and Corey as the beta wolf.
Lisa Marsh told Sheriff Jordan that Laufenberg attempted to recruit her as a wolf in 1996. He scared her to the extent, she moved to Michigan in 1997. Worried about seeming crazy, she refused to press charges against him. Laufenberg wrote detailed accounts of her in the journals, and he treated her similarly to Corey.
Through the 1990s, Laufenberg developed a deeper interest in wolves, böxenwolves, and other werewolves; he preferred böxenwolves. He made a wolf strap and a wolf fur coat.
Laufenberg sent the wolf strap to a German böxenwolf friend—his friend could not hunt a wolf himself. Wolfberg police investigated him and discovered the same types of ideas as Laufenberg had. Laufenberg had received dozens of graphic letters and photographs from him, but German authorities believed his friend destroyed the ones from Laufenberg. He and his friend visited each other twice. Until hearing of the wolf attacks, his friend was considering moving to Wolftown. Sheriff Jordan believed Laufenberg warned him about the investigation.
Sheriff Jordan sent Laufenberg’s wolf photographs to Wayne, who found photographs of Abel, Baker, and Charlie in wolf form. Camcorder footage showed Laufenberg, Corey, and Tyler transfiguring.
Laufenberg attempted to introduce three people to wolf straps, but he scared them. They avoided him.
A dairy farmer was fired at Laufenberg in 1994 for stalking his cow and calf. To Schuster’s relief, it was not his father, but the next second, he worried about the other farmer’s safety. Police records and the journals showed Laufenberg missed work for two days, waiting to recover. Laufenberg wrote that the bullet passed through him cleanly, and he survived two days alone in the woods, near the river, scared of dying. Schuster wished Laufenberg had died then, but Sheriff Jordan strongly disagreed on moral grounds rather than practical ones. Laufenberg’s more recent medical records showed no sign of the gunshot wound.
Since February 1997, Laufenberg had involved Corey in his böxenwolf activities. She originally used the first, female wolf strap.
In July 1996, Laufenberg and Corey met. She was 22 years old and pregnant with Cassidy. Schuster and Foster knew that she and Laufenberg had some sort of illicit romantic or sexual relationship. Corey told Sheriff Jordan that whatever law enforcement called their relationship, Dennis Laufenberg began it and trapped her in it, first in the standard, human ways and then with böxenwolves. The journals provided evidence, and Laufenberg’s friend wished he had someone like Corey.
Dennis Laufenberg’s involvement in Corey’s life led her to break up with Shane Greenbough, though they probably would have separated anyway. Laufenberg discovered she had collected evidence and destroyed it, and threatened to maul her. So, she cooperated with him.
In June 1997, he manipulated Corey into making a wolf strap from a female wolf they caught together. He abandoned the wolf’s pups, but Corey anonymously reported them to Wayne, who rescued them.
Wayne found no sign of a wolf killing at the den. If the wolf had been poached from the den by a person, somebody destroyed the evidence. He saw paw prints from one large, fat wolf, and one small, light wolf, a third wolf, and a scuffle, which he considered normal with pups’ lives at risk. When examining the Vasquezes’ campsite, he identified similarities, as if somebody had hidden human activity. However, at the time, Wayne thought the human elements came from the anonymous reporter, who felt delayed guilt about orphaning adorable little puppies.
Simply for safety reasons, Wayne doubted a poacher would transport a live wolf. According to the instructions Corey used, a wolf strap required an extremely fresh carcass, and so Laufenberg discovered that bringing a live wolf to the tanning area increased the chances of success.
Sheriff Jordan found no evidence that Dennis Laufenberg hunted or trapped animals in human form.
Corey said that Laufenberg contracted brucellosis from eating raw elk, and when she built a fire to cook her portion, he threatened her into eating raw elk. She refused to eat elk at all and almost passed out from hunger before reaching civilization. Dr. Paulsen explained that wolves survived on a feast-famine cycle, living for days between meals and then gorging themselves, but the cycle gave humans severe gastrointestinal distress. Böxenwolves burned more calories and could ingest more food than they would as humans, but they needed regular meals to control their blood sugar levels.
Laufenberg had contracted other diseases before, hence Corey’s insistence on fully-cooked meat. To treat the diseases, Laufenberg scheduled appointments hours away from Wolftown under the name Peter Angua.
Dennis Laufenberg began recruiting Tyler Wilson in November 1998, but waited for Tyler’s eighteenth birthday (March 1999) before taking him into the woods. Tyler quickly agreed to be a böxenwolf, but Corey privately discouraged him. He conversationally told Laufenberg, who mistreated Corey for her opinion. It annoyed Laufenberg that the only wolf strap they had made Tyler feminine, and that Tyler had to hunt his wolf as a human. A human and two wolves hunting together might alarm anybody who saw them. In July, the three of them caught a male wolf alive, and Tyler cut out its ear tag. Tyler borrowed Dennis Laufenberg’s wolf strap to kill him. They left the skinned wolf near a coyote den.
Corey successfully warned Dale Vandenheuvel that Laufenberg would attempt to blame him for the attacks and possibly kill him so that he could not give a true account. He and his family took a spontaneous vacation to Milwaukee the week of the wolf attacks, and Sheriff Jordan found credit card charges, security footage, and alibis for his trip. At the time, Dale Vandenheuvel was too scared to call the authorities. His account matched Corey’s, and he identified her as the woman who warned him.
The week before the wolf attacks, Joel Block and Dennis Laufenberg somehow met in the woods. Sheriff Jordan thought they had never had contact with each other before and that nobody had invited him to the böxenwolf campsite. According to the journals, Dennis Laufenberg saw Joel in the woods and town. He recognized that Joel was as close to a backwoodsman as Erica Block tolerated, but Laufenberg considered him too independent for joining the pack.
Corey said that by the time she was within hearing of the campsite, Joel Block and Dennis Laufenberg were arguing. Since she was in wolf form, she heard from several miles away. Tyler was also there but not participating in the argument. She thought it devolved from coherent arguing to fear and force.
Just as she saw them, Joel fired his shotgun, and Dennis Laufenberg transfigured into a human. Joel tried to run away, but seeing Corey in wolf form scared him, and he reloaded his shotgun. Corey dreaded transfiguring before people, and Tyler defended her opinion. Laufenberg untied the wolf strap to demonstrate that Joel did not need to shoot her.
Immediately, Corey transfigured into a wolf again, terrifying Joel. The situation escalated. He intended to warn other authorities about the wolf attacks. Dennis Laufenberg threatened to arrest him unless he dropped the shotgun; Tyler bit Joel’s leg to defend Corey.
Joel dropped his gun, and Tyler picked up the gun with his teeth and dragged it aside. Laufenberg turned into a wolf as Joel stood and ran. Then Laufenberg leaped at Joel. He knocked Joel forward, and Laufenberg bit his upper back near the spine.
As Joel begged for help, Corey thought the bite had paralyzed him. The medical examiner, Dr. Groves’ son, said that Joel would have been quadriplegic.
Tyler transfigured into a human.
After a few minutes of arguing between Corey and Laufenberg, who mainly ignored Tyler and Joel, Laufenberg rolled Joel onto his back and positioned the shotgun and Joel’s hands as if to shoot himself. Corey said Tyler kept her from stopping him. Laufenberg fired the shotgun, blowing off the front of Joel’s face. He said that carrion animals would disguise the wolf bite, and the medical examiner would call Joel’s death a suicide.
Corey thought Joel lived for a few minutes, while Laufenberg audibly plotted how to hide the body. Tyler vomited.
He wanted to drag Joel’s body to an animal den, but found one too far away to move Joel. Laufenberg and Corey took turns carrying him under the shoulders, and Tyler carried his feet. Tyler and Corey hardly managed to obey him, but Laufenberg tolerated the gore.
Laufenberg worried somebody would see them moving the body. When Tyler and Corey tired, Laufenberg forced them to cover Joel’s body with vegetation, and he hoped that scavengers would arrive quickly.
On their return home, Laufenberg changed his mind. He forced Tyler and Corey to return to Joel Block’s body and bring him to the campsite. They staged it to look like his campsite.
The next day, Laufenberg changed his mind again, and he forced Tyler and Corey to return to the campsite with shovels. Corey emphasized she would not hide the body for a fourth time; she already considered it too nasty and gruesome. Tyler probably would be incapable of a fourth plan.
A late winter-early spring cold snap and the half-frozen ground probably preserved Joel’s body.
Corey said that Laufenberg disposed of the shovels; nobody knew where. While he was gone, she and Tyler destroyed the camp according to his instructions and established a new camp, which happened to be six miles away from the Vasquez campsite, within hearing range of a böxenwolf in wolf form.
She thought Laufenberg heard the Vasquezes before Corey and Tyler arrived. Laufenberg sent her and Tyler home. Sheriff Jordan suspected the next time Corey saw him, Laufenberg had killed Sergio and thought Miranda would die.
Then Dennis Laufenberg, Corey Brown, and Tyler Wilson proceeded to attack Wolftown.
The District Attorney’s office thought the prosecution could prove that Laufenberg had control over a wolf that attacked people, despite the absence of a wolf. Criminals tended to dispose of things necessary for their crimes.
Sheriff Jordan wrote Dennis Laufenberg’s most recent charge sheet and re-read it carefully, and then again in the morning. It described the böxenwolf activity, but omitted Sergio.
Calmly and firmly, Sheriff Jordan informed Laufenberg that he had good evidence that Laufenberg transfigured into a wolf and committed six counts of homicide, two counts of attempted homicide, one count of assault with the intent to kill, two counts of improper disposal of a corpse, multiple counts of assault, and multiple counts of assault, trespass, public disturbance, conspiracy to commit a crime, and an assortment of other crimes.
“Is there anything you want to confess to?” Sheriff Jordan asked.
Dennis Laufenberg attempted to stand up, and the handcuffs and footcuffs pulled taut. Sheriff Jordan expected him to transfigure into a böxenwolf, though he understood the method well. He sat quietly and ignored the spittle.
A jail guard opened the interview room door. Laufenberg’s veins bulged, and he roared at the guard, who jumped and grabbed his baton.
“We’re fine. He does this once in a while. Ignore him long enough and he stops,” Sheriff Jordan said.
“We’ll be outside.” The guard shut the door.
“You’re not going to intimidate me,” Sheriff Jordan said, although Laufenberg alarmed him. “Instead of arresting somebody for a homicide without his confession, I’d rather arrest somebody for a homicide he willingly and freely confessed to. It’s hard to get the charges dropped afterward if I’m wrong. The accused can only be tried once. Is there anything you want to confess to?”
Laufenberg said, “I’m innocent,” with more profanities than Sheriff Jordan thought could fit in a two-word sentence.
As Sheriff Jordan reviewed the evidence, probably because the restraints pulled Laufenberg into an awkward, painful position, he sat again. He radiated fury, though.
“I haven’t had a straight answer from you about the cases, so I might be wrong about the charges. You lied or came up with a theory in every interview, and I couldn’t verify them. Is there anything that I can verify as true that will lessen the charges against you?”
Laufenberg denied committing any crime. “I’m not a wolf.”
“We call wolf teeth the murder weapon. Your wolf strap is in custody, so we know where you keep your wolf teeth.”
“The DA won’t allow it.”
“Böxenwolf evidence isn’t admissible in court, but we have circumstantial evidence of many of the crimes without mentioning böxenwolves. We have adequate proof of enough crimes to imprison you. It’s better for your case if you confess now.”
“I don’t have anything to confess.”
“Whoever committed the six homicides is either a spree killer or a serial killer, and the evidence points to you,” Sheriff Jordan said.
Because none of the DNA samples from the bite wounds returned conclusive results, Sheriff Jordan required a confession. He pressured Laufenberg without violating his civil rights.
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