Three people, including a 13-year-old girl, are dead and a 5-month-old is in state custody after what appears to be a domestic dispute that began in Iowa and ended in rural Dane County, where authorities say the man and the girl fired on deputies during a chase and he broke into a home and later shot himself.
The Dane County and Dubuque County, Iowa, sheriff’s offices on Thursday said 38-year-old Alexander C. Grunke, of Middleton, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the basement of a home on Ramsey Road in the town of Albion just before 7 a.m. Thursday, hours after the man and the 13-year-old girl had both fired on officers on Washington Road using a handgun and a rifle.
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The girl was later found dead in a wooded area; authorities did not release a cause of death or her name or where she lived, but Sheriff Kalvin Barrett referred to her as a “community member.”
Barrett said his office became involved at about 5:30 p.m. when deputies were called to a residence on Charles Lane in the town of Dunn by a family who reported that a man and a female, believed to be Grunke and the 13-year-old, dropped off the infant at their home. In a news release, the Dubuque sheriff said the man and the girl dropped the infant off with an “acquaintance.”
Shortly thereafter, deputies found the vehicle Grunke and the girl left in, a black Ford Escape, and tried to pull it over, but the vehicle fled.
“It went through numerous jurisdictions and both occupants of the vehicle fired their weapons at deputies and responding agencies,” Barrett said. They were not hit and no law enforcement personnel were hurt, he said.
The Sheriff’s Office used tire-deflation devices to stop the vehicle in the town of Albion, Barrett said, at which point the 13-year-old girl fled into the wooded area where she would later be found unresponsive. Lifesaving measures by emergency responders could not save her, he said. He said no firearms were found around her and there were no obvious “signs or wounds” on her.
Grunke fled the scene as well and fired several rounds at the home on Ramsey Road before going inside and barricading himself in the basement, Barrett said. Deputies were able to get the family who live in the home out safely, he said. Of the six residents, a woman and two children were at home during the incident.
After the Sheriff’s Office tried unsuccessfully for several hours to contact Grunke, a robot was sent into the home and found him dead from an apparent suicide.
Grunke had been facing two felony charges for child abduction and interfering with child custody and a domestic violence misdemeanor, according to court records. His initial court appearance was scheduled for early June. His criminal record also includes sexual assault, theft and gun charges.
In 2007, Grunke, along with his twin brother and another man, were charged with attempting to unearth a woman’s corpse and have sex with it. Those charges were initially dismissed since the state did not have a law prohibiting necrophilia at the time.
But they were reinstated after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled sexual intercourse with a corpse violated state laws prohibiting sex with someone who cannot give consent, and he was later convicted of attempted criminal damage to a cemetery, attempted misdemeanor theft and attempted third-degree sex assault.
About an hour and a half after the initial call about the infant being dropped off, the Dubuque County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call about a possible homicide in La Motte, a rural area south of Dubuque. Deputies arrived to find 32-year-old Tana Poppe dead and her 13-year-old daughter and 5-month-old infant missing.
Deputies then learned that the person of interest in Poppe’s death, Grunke, was involved in the vehicle pursuit in Dane County, the Dubuque Sheriff’s Office said.
Poppe had petitioned for a restraining order against Grunke twice in October 2023, and court records show multiple text messages in which she referred to him as a “predator of children,” telling him to leave her and her children alone.
At a hearing that month, Grunke testified that “he does not own any firearms and understands he cannot have a firearm while the injunction is in place,” according to online court records.
A history of troubling behavior
According to the criminal complaint in the child abduction case, filed last month in Iowa County Circuit Court, Grunke picked up the girl from Poppe at her home in Highland on Jan. 11. Just after midnight on Jan. 12, Madison police found the girl and Grunke in his car, parked at the Dutch Mill Park and Ride on Madison’s Southeast Side.
According to the complaint:
Poppe told police Grunke was her former boyfriend and that her daughter saw him as a father figure. She was especially concerned because the girl was a diabetic and needed to take insulin six to 14 times per day. She did not take much insulin with her when she left, Poppe told Iowa County authorities.
Poppe said she had a 2-month-old baby with Grunke, but she called him “bat-(expletive) crazy.”
Poppe also said her daughter may have “daddy issues” and feared that the girl and Grunke were in a sexual relationship, and she said her daughter claimed Grunke was her purpose for living.
The girl told police after she was found, however, that there was nothing sexual or inappropriate going on between them. She said Grunke is like a father to her because her biological father was not in the picture. She said Grunke calms her down and loves her like a dad. She also said she did not use drugs with him.
In a later interview, the girl told investigators she called Grunke early on the morning of Jan. 11 because she was feeling suicidal. After Grunke was arrested, the girl and her mother went to a friend’s home, where she told police about her thoughts of suicide and said she had spent some time at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute.
But while she was at Winnebago, according to an Iowa County Child Protective Services report, Grunke presented himself as the girl’s father and was able to visit her until authorities realized he was not her father and had possibly been giving her drugs.
When Madison officers found the pair together at the Park and Ride, Grunke initially ignored the officers’ directions but eventually got out of the car and was arrested for carrying a concealed knife. No charges were filed related to that arrest.
As Grunke was taken from the car, the girl called out to him, “I love you,” Madison police noted.
Homeowners traumatized
The owner of the Dubuque County farmhouse where the woman was found dead said he rented the property to a man about two years ago and that a woman with two children moved in with him about a month ago.
“I met her a couple times and she seemed nice,” said the landlord, who asked not to be identified.
The owners of the town of Albion home, Natasha Iverson and Chad Gallagher, are being assisted by Dane County officials while their house is processed as a crime scene. In a Facebook post Thursday afternoon, Gallagher’s sister Nicole Gallagher Schenk said the couple are in need of clothes, food gift cards and other help while they’re displaced.
“No one likes to ask for help but no one is prepared to be displaced from their home & everything they know either,” Gallagher Schenk wrote. “So much to process on all levels.”
The couple have four children between the ages of 2 and 18, Gallagher Schenk told the Wisconsin State Journal.
Quarry Kennels, 1399 Ramsey Road near the Albion residence, said on its Facebook page Thursday that “All family, staff, & pets are safe,” and that it was open Thursday for boarding pickup and drop-off, with other services canceled.
“Please be patient with us as we regroup and get back to a normal schedule,” Quarry Kennels said.
The nearby Heartland Farm Sanctuary, home to more than 60 animals of 13 different species, was locked down during the incident. Employees weren’t able to put the rattled group of pigs, goats and llamas back in their barn until after 3 a.m. due to safety concerns.
“This is a sanctuary. We don’t expect to have police with guns drawn. This is the antithesis of what we see,” administrative director Steve Suleski said. “I think we’ll be dealing with some of the emotional aspects of this.”
State Journal reporters Jeff Richgels and Barry Adams contributed to this report.