2-24-16 brantner-motion hearing

A Fond du Lac judge has rejected a motion to dismiss a case against an over the road trucker from Kenosha  charged in the murder of a Sturdevant teenager.  Dennis Brantner is scheduled to go on trial this summer in the July 1990 murder of Berit Beck.  Police say Beck stopped at the Fond du lac Forest Mall while enroute to a work seminar in Appleton when she was kidnapped in the parking lot.   Her van was found across the street in the Fond du Lac Plaza parking lot two days later and her body was found about a month later in a roadside ditch near Waupun.  At a motion hearing  Tuesday afternoon Brantner’s attorney argued that fingerprints  found in Beck’s van show that while Brantner may have had contact with items in the van they do not tie him to the murder.  The defense  says there is strong evidence that another person, Craig Hron, killed Beck.  Judge Gary Sharpe says he’s satisfied that the transcript from the preliminary hearing does show probable cause that Brantner committed the crime.