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Michael Sisk, 26, was found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide in the death of Tammie Garlin, whose body was found buried behind the house she, Sisk and others rented. That charge carries a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. He originally had been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, which could have put him away for life.
No sentencing date was set.
Under the deal, only one of the original charges against Sisk was dismissed. The dropped charge was for child enticement. Under the nine remaining charges he either pleaded guilty or no contest and was found guilty of them all.
The maximum sentence he could receive is 136 years and 3 months in prison.
On the homicide charge, he entered what is known as an Alford plea, which means he did not admit guilt but said the prosecution has enough evidence to obtain a conviction.
Columbia County Circuit Judge Alan White found him guilty after he entered the plea.
A message left after office hours with Columbia County District Attorney Jane Kohlwey was not immediately returned. Sisk’s attorney, Ronald Benavides, also did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
The plea deal was reached late today, two hours after a hearing on three motions filed by Sisk’s attorney in advance of his trial, which was set to begin on Monday. Sisk attended that hearing, dressed in his orange prison uniform with his hands and feet in restraints.
Investigators believe Sisk and his gang crisscrossed the country with their young children. They survived by stealing people’s identities and running small-time scams.
The group settled in Portage, about 40 miles north of Madison, in February 2007 because they wanted to see snow, according to court documents.
The group included Sisk, Garlin and her 11-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter, Michaela Clerc, Candace Clarke and her 2-year-old daughter.
Police looking for Clarke’s daughter, whom she had kidnapped from her Florida foster parents, tracked the gang to the rental house in June 2007.
They found the kidnapped girl, Garlin’s son in the closet streaked with blood, and Garlin’s body buried in a shallow backyard grave. They took Clarke, Clerc and Garlin’s daughter into custody at the house and captured Sisk the next day at a Milwaukee bus station.
According to a criminal complaint, the boy told detectives that everyone in the gang, including his sister and mother, burned him with hot water and whipped him with an extension cord as punishment. Sisk beat him with a board with a nail in it, he said.
The case spurred an outpouring of sympathy for the boy across the country and forced the Florida Department of Children and Families to reform its system and assign specific workers to track missing children.
Kohlwey, meanwhile, charged Sisk, Clarke, Clerc and the 15-year-old with a host of counts, including being a party to child abuse and first-degree intentional homicide. Clarke, 24, and Clerc, 22, both struck plea deals with Kohlwey over the past year, and the now-16-year-old daughter has been moved into juvenile court.
That left Sisk.
Patti Seger, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence, called the case sad.
“You just don’t hear about this combination of folks all traveling together with kids where everybody is sort of participating in abusing each other,” Seger said. “Somebody killed that woman and somebody hurt that little boy. It sounds like all three of them were involved in some way, shape or form. Sorting it out will be difficult.”
