Boys,13,hatchet grandmother Barbara Olson for pizza money/Antonio D. Barbeau &Nathan J. Paape.Barbeau already convicted of 1stdegree intentional homicide/Paape faces life in prison with a minimum 20 years behind bars.

By HLNtv.com Staff
updated 3:40 PM EDT, Thu September 27, 2012

13-year-olds held in murder of great-grandmother

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Two 13-year-old Wisconsin boys have been charged with first degree murder for the brutal slaying of one boy's great-grandmother, whom they allegedly bludgeoned with a hammer and hatchet before robbing her spare change and going out for pizza.

Both boys, Antonio D. Barbeau and Nathan J. Paape, were charged Friday as adults in the death of Barbeau’s great-grandmother, 78-year-old Barbara J. Olson, prosecutors said.

In a crime that was both gruesome and callous, the boys are accused of going to Olson’s Sheboygan, Wis., home on Sept. 17 “to get some money,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Barbeau allegedly told his friend they should kill the elderly woman and they armed themselves with a hammer and hatchet.

The boys got a ride to Olson’s home from Paape’s mother and they “hid their weapons in their clothing,” police said.

They entered the house through an unlocked door and when Olson said she was going to call Barbeau’s mother, the teen allegedly struck her in the head with the blunt end of the hatchet.

She fell to the ground but police say Barbeau continued to strike her with the back of the hatchet “as she tried to cover her head, groaning and telling them to stop.”

Paape then struck her twice with the hammer, police said.

Her great-grandson turned the hatchet around and hit her in the head with the blade, police said.

The teens then ransacked the house, taking a purse, loose quarters and jewelry, according to prosecutors.

They also allegedly tried to dispose the victim’s body, dragging her to the garage, but then abandoning the plan.

Instead, prosecutors say the teens stole Olson’s car and eventually left it at a Sheboygan bowling alley. From there, they walked to the pizza restaurant.

Olson's body was found on Wednesday.

"I don't understand how anyone much less 13-year-olds can be so unfeeling about someone who after they kill her, go to have a pizza," Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCecco said.

Both Barbeau and Pappe have admitted to police they killed Olson, the Sentinel said.

They are being held on $1 million cash bond.

Barbeau's defense attorney told a local TV station he will try to have the case moved to juvenile court.

ABC 2 According to police, the two suspects entered the house through an unlocked door and when Olson said she was going to call Barbeau’s mother, the teen struck her in the head with the blunt end of the hatchet.

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By DINESH RAMDE Associated Press
MILWAUKEE September 21, 2012 (AP)

Two 13-year-old Wisconsin boys were ordered held on $1 million bond Friday after being accused of using a hatchet and hammer to kill one boy's great-grandmother while stealing jewelry and a car from her home.

Prosecutors allege that the boys, both charged as adults, went to 78-year-old Barbara J. Olson's home on Monday with the intent to rob and kill her. Authorities said her body was discovered in the garage, in a pool of blood, two days later by her daughter.

The boys appeared in Sheboygan County court Friday, where they're charged with being party to the crime of first-degree intentional homicide.

According to a criminal complaint, the teens told investigators that after they fatally beat Olson in her home in Sheboygan Falls, about 50 miles north of Milwaukee, they grabbed jewelry and loose change before stealing her car and driving to get pizza.

George Limbeck, the great-grandson's attorney, said the boy had a "good relationship" with Olson. "That relationship will come into play in future court proceedings," he said, declining to elaborate but adding that the entire family is distraught.

Limbeck said he will try to have the case heard in juvenile court. A conviction in adult court carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, but if the boys were convicted as juveniles, they could only be incarcerated until they turned 25.

Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCecco said he would oppose moving the case to juvenile court, arguing that the severity of the boys' actions demands that they be prosecuted as adults.

"Look at their actions as alleged in their own statements. They planned this whole thing," DeCecco said. "If they just wanted to rob her, why didn't they wait until she wasn't home, instead of killing her first?"

A message left with the other boy's public defender was not immediately returned.

The idea to rob and kill Olson came from her great-grandson, the other boy told authorities. He said the great-grandson armed himself with a hatchet and the friend got a hammer, and both boys concealed the weapons under their clothes as the friend's mother drove them to Olson's home, according to the criminal complaint.

The boys entered Olson's garage through an unlocked side door. When they encountered Olson, she told her great-grandson she was going to call his mother. As she turned away, her great-grandson allegedly hit her in the head with the blunt end of the hatchet, according to the complaint.

She crumpled to the ground, and he continued to bludgeon her as she tried to cover her head and pleaded for them to stop, the complaint said. The friend said he added two blows with the hammer.

The great-grandson then swung the hatchet blade-first, and it lodged so deeply into Olson's skull that it took the strength of both boys to pry it loose, the friend told investigators. The boys then tried to carry her body to her car but gave up, leaving her in the garage, the complaint said.

Prosecutors allege the boys then rifled through Olson's home, taking a purse, jewelry and money. They stole her car, ditched it in the parking lot of a bowling alley and walked to a pizza parlor, the complaint said.

Police found the car unlocked with the keys in the ignition and a bag of jewelry visible on the back seat. The friend told detectives the boys hoped someone would steal the car and get blamed for the woman's death.

The boys bought cleaning wipes and came back to wipe down the car, prosecutors said. The hatchet and hammer were found in the trunk.

Police found a piece of schoolwork in the car that had the friend's name on it. They also found Olson's purse in a storm drain near the friend's house, in the approximate area where he told them he discarded it.

Officers then executed a search warrant on the great-grandson's locker at a juvenile detention center where he'd been placed Tuesday for unrelated reasons. Authorities said they seized clothes and apparent blood-spattered shoes.

The great-grandson initially denied knowledge of Olson's death but eventually laid out a confession for investigators similar to his friend's, according to the criminal complaint.

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Sheboygan Falls murder victim Barbara Olson loved gardening, volunteering

5:23 PM, Sep 24, 2012
Written by
Dan Benson
Gannett Wisconsin Media

Criminal complaint, Antonio Barbeau and Nathan Paape
Barbara J. Olson, the 78-year-old woman who was killed last week in her Sheboygan Falls home — allegedly by her 13-year-old great-grandson and his friend — was a “great lady” who cared for her Alzheimer’s disease-stricken husband and donated her time to other local senior citizens, her sister said Monday.

“She was a great lady,” said Sandi Gunderson, 66, of Chetek, the youngest of the three Shipman girls originally from Bloomer. Barbara was the second oldest. Bee, the oldest, died a few years ago.

“She loved her flower gardening,” Gunderson said. “She was always a soft touch to buy one more flower or plant.”

Olson was believed to have been killed on Sept. 17 in her home, according to authorities. Her body was found two days later by her daughter in the garage of her home. Her great-grandson, Antonio “Tino” D. Barbeau, and his friend, Nathan J. Paape, were arrested a short time later and charged as adults with first-degree intentional homicide for allegedly beating Olson with a hammer and the blunt side of a hatchet, and then allegedly killing her with a hatchet blade blow to the skull.

According to a criminal complaint, they then ransacked the house, stole Olson’s car and then went out for pizza. No motive for the killing or robbery has been put forth.

“This is like the worse nightmare,” Gunderson said. “I feel so sorry for the immediate family. It’s unbelievable. That’s not the Tino we knew. We’re all just surviving.”

Gunderson said Barbeau and Olson “had a good relationship. She took care of him a lot when he was younger. They were very close. They would play board games together at her house. That’s why this is so difficult to understand.”

Gunderson said she spoke with her sister usually a couple times a week, the last time being during the Green Bay Packers game on Thursday, Sept. 13, just a few days before the attack.

“We usually called each other during the Packers game,” Gunderson said. “She was an avid Packers and Brewers fan.”

Olson had visited Gunderson for about 10 days earlier this month for a class reunion and to visit family.

“Barb studied geneaology, enjoyed family reunions and meeting people and learning the history of our families,” Gunderson said.

Olson and her husband, Wesley, raised their three children in Milwaukee, where he was an engineer for Allis-Chalmers and she worked for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Wisconsin. Every year they took their family on vacation, pulling a trailer behind.

They finally moved to Sheboygan Falls several years ago to be closer to their daughter, Barbeau’s grandmother.

Wesley entered a rest home for Alzheimer’s patients this past spring. Gunderson said she and Olson soon went on a sightseeing trip to Tennessee and to visit Olson’s son and his family in Nashville.

“She’d had a rough year. She needed to get away and she didn’t want to go alone so we took a bus together,” Gunderson said.

After she got back, Olson “wanted to get things going again and volunteered with the Sheboygan County Aging and Disability Resource Center in Sheboygan Falls, giving rides to senior citizens to doctors appointments and other places.”

“She was a very giving and active person,” Gunderson said. “She was 78, but you never would have known it.”

Dale Deterding, director of the Aging and Disability Resource Center, called Olson “a very pleasant person and very active for her age. She enjoyed being a volunteer driver. It was something she really enjoyed doing.”

Barbeau and Paape are each charged with first degree intentional homicide and are being charged as adults. Bail has been set at $1 million each. If convicted, they could be sentenced to life in prison. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 2 before Judge Timothy Van Akkeren.

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7:08 PM, Sep 28, 2012/The Sheboygan Press/THE SHEBOYGAN PRES
Written by
Dan Benson
Gannett Wisconsin Media

Outspoken TV commentator and host Nancy Grace’s treatment Thursday night of the murder of Barbara J. Olson in Sheboygan Falls has attorneys in the case fuming over factual inaccuracies in her report and comments that were called “inflammatory” and “misinformation.”

“She was just horrible. She was not acting as a reporter and presenting the facts of the case,” said attorney George Limbeck, who is defending Antonio Barbeau, who along with Nathan Paape is accused of bludgeoning to death Barbara J. Olson, 78, at her Sheboygan Falls home on Sept. 17 with a hammer and hatchet and then ransacking her house.

Olson was Barbeau’s great grandmother. Paape’s attorney is Public Defender June Spoerl.

Grace devoted a major portion of her program, “Nancy Grace,” on HLNTV Thursday night to the murder, headlining it at one point, “Murder for Pizza!,” alluding to the claim contained in the criminal complaint that the boys went out for pizza after murdering Olson.

In her report, Grace said:

• Barbeau’s and Paape’s motive for killing Olson was “for pizza money.” While the criminal complaint says the boys went out for pizza afterward, no motive is given for the crime. “ (I noticed that, too. She inferred they murdered her for pizza money.) Obviously that (Grace’s claim) is not true,” District Attorney Joe DeCecco said Friday. The complaint doesn’t specify where the money came from to buy the pizza.

• They only stole “loose change,” even though the criminal complaint clearly states they also stole jewelry and other items. In fact, the complaint alleges they left the stolen goods in plain view in Olson’s car after they drove it to a Sheboygan bowling alley, hoping someone would steal it and divert attention away from them.

• Police said the motive was to pay for pizza. Untrue. Police and prosecutors have said they do not know the motive for the robbery or the murder.

• Barbeau and Paape were “two gorgeous All-American boys” with “no history of problems.” The criminal complaint, however, states that Barbeau was a runaway from the Sheboygan County Juvenile Detention Center when the murder occurred. Neighbors and friends have said in interviews that Barbeau had recent run-ins with police. Spoerl said in court that Paape has never been “in custody,” but the same friends and neighbors told reporters Paape had frequently been in trouble at school.

A spokesman for Grace’s show could not be reached for comment.

Since hosting her own show on CNN Headline News in 2005, Grace often has been criticized for sensationalizing cases, misconstruing facts and ignoring the legal presumption of innocence and taking a pro-prosecution stance in several high-profile cases. Her show is the fourth-highest rated among cable network news shows in her time slot, behind “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News, “The Ed Show” on MSNBC and “Anderson Cooper 360” on CNN.

“I watched a part of it and I quit listening, I was getting so irritated,” Limbeck said Friday. “She was talking as if the facts were out and they’re not. She’s talking as if what’s in the criminal complaint is proof.”

Both DeCecco and Limbeck said the report will make it more difficult to select a jury in the case.

“It makes it tough to pick a jury, that’s for sure,” DeCecco said. “But I think it will be overcome. It’s not whether so much they heard about the case but if they’ve formed opinions.”

Limbeck agreed.

“The most direct effect (of Grace’s report) might be trying to pick a fair and unpartial jury,” Limbeck said. “Any and all media coverage potentially runs the risk of minimizing the number of fair and impartial jurors you can find. Even with accurate reporting.”

Sensationalistic reporting could potentially taint the juror pool in Sheboygan County, Limbeck said, which could lead to either the trial being moved out of the county or in bringing jurors in from outside the county.

“That’s even more of a possibility when the reports they’ve heard are so inflammatory and so full of guesswork and speculation like what I heard last night” on Grace’s show, Limbeck said.

DeCecco said “there’s a balance to be found. The public has a right to know but, unfortunately, you get some misinformation,” adding that more facts will come out in a preliminary hearing scheduled for Tuesday. “This has become a national story. I knew this case would be a shock to the community and the state in general. But I’m a little surprised it’s been picked up nationwide.”

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Struggling to understand horrific crime

12:05 PM, Sep 28, 2012

The first question Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCecco asked police when he found out the killers who buried a hatchet in the skull of a 78-year-old Sheboygan Falls great-grandmother were allegedly two 13-year-old boys —– one of them her great-grandson — was a simple and incredulous one:

“Did these kids grow up here?” asked DeCecco. “Did they grow up here in Sheboygan?”

The last murder in idyllic little Sheboygan Falls was in 1996. There are maybe one or two first-degree homicides per year on average in all of Sheboygan County.

This isn’t a big metropolitan area where ingrained poverty, drugs, gangs and family dysfunction have helped foster horrific crime by young teenagers. This is small-town Wisconsin and these kids, Antonio Barbeau and Nathan Paape, look like they haven’t even reached puberty. I have a 13-year-old myself. Kids that age have consciences and an innate innocence that lingers.

Something different grew in Sheboygan.

According to the criminal complaint: They asked Paape’s mother to give them a ride from Sheboygan, where they live, to Barbeau’s grandmother’s house in Sheboygan Falls seven miles away. That’s a meandering, pleasant drive, especially when the leaves are deep red beside the sun-dappled waters of the Sheboygan River. You pass baseball diamonds and parks and the stables of Kohler. It’s the sort of drive you’d take with a picnic basket on your lap. These boys, say police, secretly carried a hammer and a hatchet.

“These two boys were cold, callous and calculating,” said Sheboygan Falls Police Chief Steven Riffel.

Barbeau’s great-grandmother’s house in the quiet Westwynde Bluffs subdivision has a welcome sign affixed to a plant stand in which she helped things grow. Barbara Olson is said to have been like that, welcoming, nurturing.

After Paape’s mother, oblivious, dropped them off, they walked in, struck the old woman several times with the blunt end of the hatchet, then turned it around while she lay groaning on the floor, according to the criminal complaint.

“Nathan stated he hit her twice with the hammer and then Antonio, using the blade end of the hatchet, struck her in the head and the hatchet stuck there and that both of them had to pull the hatchet loose,” according to the complaint.

When they were done with her, it is alleged, they went out and had pizza. Yes, pizza.

DeCecco is a prosecutor, not a minister. But I can’t get over the fact these kids are 13 and from Sheboygan. I asked him if the killing gives him pause about human nature.

“No, no this is an exception. I have been a prosecutor for about 23 years. Of all the people I have prosecuted there are only two that gave me pause like this case does.” Those two had a “dead affect in describing the crime: no emotion, no apparent remorse.”

He thinks there are a “limited number of people in the world” who aren’t just immoral but are “amoral,” people who “have no moral compass at all.”

This case has a long way to go, so while Barbeau and Paape have also appeared remorseless to DeCecco, he is resisting definitively lumping these kids in with what the professors would call sociopaths. He did say, however, that some people “don’t see the world like we all see it. ... We just have a sense of conscience, and if we do something wrong, most of us are regretful. ... But there are some people in the world who never have those feelings.”

These boys did indeed grow up in the Sheboygan area. But I don’t think that tells us what we want to know — where they really come from.

That’s a place unknown to the rest of us and one where, we can only hope, there aren’t many more of them.

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Mike Nichols is a syndicated columnist, author and senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. The views expressed in his column are his own. Reach him at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Competency exam ordered for teen charged in murder

Written by SheboyganDaily.com Staff on October 15, 2012.

SHEBOYGAN — A judge has ordered a competency examination for 13 year old Antonio Barbeau, one of two teenage boys accused of killing 78 year old Barbara Olson - Barbeau’s great-grandmother.

Judge Timothy Van Akkeren ordered the review, over the objection of Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCecco. Barbeau’s attorney, George Limbeck, requested the exam, which will be held November 2.

Judge Van Akkeren ruled Barbeau and Nathan Paape will stand trial in the case and bond was set at $1 million for each in early October.

According to the criminal complaint, the teens went to Olson’s home on or about Monday, September 17 in Sheboygan Falls with the intent to kill her. DeCecco said the two boys were driven to Olson’s house Sheboygan Falls house by Paape’s mother.

Once inside the home, the boys used a hatchet and hammer to brutally kill Olson. They then dragged her body into the garage — unable to dispose of her body — they stole her car, eventually parking it near a bowling alley in the City of Sheboygan with the keys inside while they went to eat pizza.

Attorneys for Barbeau and Paape say they will try to get the case back to juvenile court, but the burden of proof for that will be squarely on them.

Barbeau and Paape are due back in court on Friday, November 2 for a status hearing.

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October 30, 2012
Reed Schneider, Opinion Writer

Monday, Sept. 17, 13-year-old Antonio Barbeau and his friend, Nathan Paape, also 13, entered the home of Barbara Olson, Barbeau’s great-grandmother, in Sheboygan Falls, Wis. Barbeau had a hammer in his hand. Paape had a hatchet. With the intent to rob and kill the 78-year-old woman, both boys allegedly used their chosen weapons on the helpless victim.

According to Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCecco’s criminal complaint, the boys were unable to dispose of the body, so they dragged it to the garage and stole her car, $155 and a roll of quarters. Eventually they parked the car near a bowling alley in Sheboygan, Wis. They bought marijuana and pizza with the money they had stolen.

DeCecco said that’s what happened after Paape’s mother drove the two boys to Olson’s house. According to Sheboygan Daily, Olson’s body was discovered Sept. 19, two full days after the murder.

It was Olson’s own daughter who found the body sprawled in a pool of blood.

The brutality of the crime immediately put the Sheboygan Falls Police Department on edge. In a press conference, Officer Steve Riffel announced the department’s need for assistance with the seriousness of the issue.

“Based upon the situation, I contacted the Department of Justice division of Criminal Investigation and asked for their assistance in the investigation,” Riffel said. “Supervisors of DCI immediately began deploying resources to Sheboygan Falls.”

Barbeau and Paape are each jailed on $1 million bonds and charged with first-degree intentional homicide. Their first court date was Oct. 2.

“He was crying and he was upset,” Special Agent David Forsythe said of Paape in court Sept. 23.
Paape had no previous record and this is the first time he is in custody. He allegedly said he was just going along with Barbeau’s plan. Forsythe explained how it happened.

“At one point, she let them into the house, and he had a hatchet. He used the blunt end, struck her in the head at least twice, and then Nate also used a hammer and was striking her in the head,” Forsythe said.

It was after that when Olson was struck with the sharp end of the hatchet, but neither teenager confessed to it.

As with all children, they’re blaming each other for it. While this may actually matter if the sharp-edged hit was the killing blow, it shouldn’t make any difference. Both boys knew what they were doing.

According to FOX News, DeCecco said neither boy has shown remorse. Both are instead remaining tight-lipped about the crime.

Barbeau’s attorney, George Limbeck, argued that they shouldn’t be tried as adults. He described it as being too hard on Barbeau’s family.

“They loved Barbara Olson. They love Antonio Barbeau, and it is an extremely difficult balancing act,” Limbeck said. “I can’t imagine what they’re going through, and I wouldn’t pretend to understand what they are going through. I don’t think you could unless you’ve gone through something like it.”

If there is anything Limbeck does well, it’s pretending to know what he’s talking about. Sure, it’s definitely an extraordinarily difficult event to grasp for the family, but it doesn’t change what Barbeau did.

Unlike his friend, Barbeau doesn’t have a clean record. Due to his age, juvenile officials can’t release any records.

Prior to the murder, though, he was in a non-secure juvenile shelter and simply walked out. After the crime, he turned himself in for the escape but said nothing about the murder. He left, had his demented fun and returned.

In court Oct. 2, Circuit Judge Terry Akkeren rejected a defense request to obtain the prosecution’s evidence so it could make a case for having the boys tried as juveniles instead of adults.

Paape and Barbeau are due back in adult court Nov. 2.

DeCecco made an excellent point afterward.

“As a prosecutor, you don’t look at a Justin Bieber haircut or their innocent faces. You look at what they did. Whether they’re 13 or whether they’re 80,” DeCecco said, “I think all prosecutors look at people. You are how you act.”

The boys went into Olson’s home with the intent of killing her, knowing the unsuspecting 78-year-old would be completely helpless. Those aren’t the actions of confused teenagers. Those are the actions of remorseless killers. If they are old enough to kill, they are old enough to accept the consequences.

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And because they are minors, they will get their hands slapped smartly.

Jul. 20, 2013
Barbeau's family speaks out: The family of Antonion Barbeau, one of the 14-year-old boys accused of killing his great grandmother with a hatchet and hammer, speaks about how his multiple brain injuries may have changed his personality.
Written by
Josh Lintereur
Gannett Wisconsin Media

SHEBOYGAN — Family photographs cover the kitchen table of Nikki Olson’s south-side home, where Olson and her family are sharing stories about her son’s childhood.

In those photos, a young Antonio Barbeau repeats the same wide smile whether he’s holding his pets, hunting, playing outdoors or spending time with his family.

Olson and other family members say those photos tell as much about who Barbeau is today at age 14, as does a 2009 photo of him in a hospital bed after he was hit by a car, where his right eye is swollen shut and his smile is gone.

Ensuing years would see the boy struggle to cope with permanent brain damage caused by the crash. Olson’s bright, affable and loving son became more withdrawn, began getting into trouble and behaving in increasingly alarming ways.

Then in September 2012 the unthinkable happened — Barbeau, then 13, and his friend, Nathan Paape, also 13, brutally murdered and robbed Barbeau’s 78-year-old great-grandmother, Barbara Olson, at her Sheboygan Falls home.

It’s a narrative that’s left the family searching for an understanding of things where no easy answers exist, as Barbeau awaits sentencing next month after pleading no contest to first-degree intentional homicide.

The boy’s brain injury alone may not offer a complete explanation for what happened, family members said, but it’s something they’ve begun discussing publicly because of questions the case has raised about brain injuries in children and the criminal justice system.

“You’re taking a child at 10 years old, who has an underdeveloped brain, and you’re damaging it,” Olson said. “He has permanent brain damage. He will never fully recover.”

An outgoing, happy kid
Researchers say Barbeau’s story, while extreme, is not uncommon.

That doesn’t mean that the overall population of people who’ve suffered brain injuries will go on to commit serious crimes, which is very rare.

But research has shown that brain injuries, which can trigger impairments to judgment and impulse control, among other things, do raise one’s risk for incarceration.

“I think the idea that brain damage interferes with the normal cognitive functions that one would need to not commit a crime is very well accepted,” said Lyn Turkstra, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and an expert on traumatic brain injury outcomes in adolescents.

In many ways, Barbeau’s story fits the same profile seen among other kids convicted of crimes following a brain injury, Turkstra said.

Family members say the changes they saw in Barbeau in the years following his accident were dramatic, given the happy and outgoing child they’d known.

As a young boy, Barbeau was active in Cub Scouts, learned to hunt at a young age and played just about every sport he could.

Barbeau’s relatives said that making friends came easy for him, and they still laugh when telling stories of how sociable he was.

“He never stopped talking,” said his stepgrandfather, Mike Offutt. “He used to carry a conversation by himself. If you didn’t have anything to say, that was OK.”

Barbeau also loved animals and regularly convinced his mom to take in stray cats he found in the neighborhood. He once found homes for a litter of kittens he rescued from their yard and only agreed to bring the kittens’ mother to the Sheboygan Coumnty Humane Society after his mom promised to take him for visits and bring her food.

Throughout his childhood, Barbeau was surrounded by a tight-knit family, including Barbara Olson, who moved to Sheboygan Falls about eight years ago and would regularly babysit her great-grandson, attend his football games and plant flowers with him at her home.

“She always made sure to praise him and tell him how much she appreciated his help,” Olson said. “He would be beaming. It meant a lot to him.”

Never the same
Barbeau’s life was forever changed at age 10, when he was hit by a car while riding his bike to Wilson Elementary School.

Officers would find Barbeau’s footprint on the car’s bumper, his hand print on the hood and his hair in the shattered windshield. He was taken by helicopter to Children’s Hospital in Wauwatosa where doctors later said he’d sustained a traumatic brain injury.

“In the hospital, he was shaking and moaning, his face was swollen and his whole body was shaking, and his jaw was chattering like if someone is freezing,” Olson said. “I didn’t know where I could touch him, so I held his hand and sang to him.”

Barbeau was in the hospital for three days and then home for several weeks before going back to school on a limited basis.

Olson still isn’t sure whether the injury was compounded by a concussion Barbeau suffered in football practice less than two weeks before the bike crash, or the concussion he suffered six months later while playing with his friends.

Either way, it would take months for the most glaring symptoms to cease following the bike crash, such as his debilitating headaches, motion sickness and sleeplessness.

Less obvious were the odd personality changes that began to emerge and will likely never go away.

Barbeau would regularly become stressed out about being late and started to require a great deal of predictability to his day. A knock on the door of his mom’s home would cause him to panic. He’d always been good at saving money, but after the injury he was unable to do so.

More noticeable was how he became withdrawn and less talkative. Family members said he still likes to be around people, but he tires out quickly and shuts down.

“You couldn’t stop him from talking before,” said his grandmother Judy Offutt, who’s also Barbara Olson’s daughter. “But within two years you could notice a big, big change in him. He was quiet, more distant and shut down, where he didn’t want to socialize.”

More troubling was how Barbeau began to struggle with reasoning and logic. He later showed signs of impaired judgment, and became increasingly impulsive and easily frustrated.

As a result, school became more difficult, and his behavior became more unpredictable.

“He was always a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky boy, and that accident changed him,” said his stepgrandfather Steve Wappler.

Red flags
Family members won’t discuss events leading up to Barbara Olson’s murder in September 2012, as Barbeau’s criminal case is still pending, but said there were a number of red flags.

Barbeau started to get into trouble in August 2012, and things escalated quickly, ending with the boy being sent to a juvenile detention center.

“Things sort of exploded,” Olson said. “I felt like I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know if I was responding right, and I was starting to get frustrated with him, and myself, and I started asking people for help. That was a very rough summer.”

Judy Offutt said the family would tackle one problem with Barbeau and then another would arise.

“It was just so fast and quick, it would just about take your breath away,” she said.

There was no warning for what would happen next.

Barbeau had run away from the juvenile detention center and was staying at the home of his friend, Nathan Paape, when on Sept. 17, the two traveled to Barbara Olson’s home intending to rob and possibly kill her.

Paape’s attorneys have alleged that the scheme was Barbeau’s idea, as he was a runaway and needed money, and that Paape never thought they’d actually go through with it. Barbeau said the two hatched the plan together.

The boys had just entered Olson’s garage through an unlocked side door when Olson found them and invited them into her home.

The boys followed her inside and attacked her using a hatchet and hammer. The medical examiner who performed Olson's autopsy said she’d been struck a minimum 27 times, though both teens only admitted to striking her no more than eight times between them.

The two have given widely varying accounts of how they carried out the attack, but both admitted to having participated.

After the attack, the boys stole jewelry and money from Olson’s home and a day later attempted to cover up the crime by parking Olson’s unlocked car at a Sheboygan bowling alley and leaving the jewelry inside it in hopes someone would steal the vehicle and be implicated in her death.

Ultimately, they made away with about $150 in cash.

Insanity plea entered, then withdrawn
Barbeau initially pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity but later withdrew the plea. In June, he pleaded no contest as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors.

Olson said the insanity plea was dropped because of “barriers” that she feels have nothing to do with law or science that make such pleas difficult. She otherwise declined to discuss the decision until after the case is concluded.

Under the terms of Barbeau’s plea agreement, the state will recommend that he be eligible for parole in 35 years, when he will be 48 years old. However, the judge is not bound by that recommendation.

Paape, meanwhile, was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide following a jury trial last month. Both boys face life in prison and a minimum 20 years behind bars before they’re eligible for parole. Because of their ages, neither teen can be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The case has raised questions about whether juveniles can get the help they need when being tried as adults and whether they deserve different treatment.

Such questions are only compounded by Barbeau’s brain injury.

Barbeau’s attorney will be able to ask that the teen’s brain injury and rehabilitative needs be considered when he’s sentenced Aug. 12 by Sheboygan County Court Judge Timothy Van Akkeren.

But Turkstra said the U.S. court system has only begun to consider brain injuries as a mitigating factor when considering a convicted criminal’s sentence.

“Now we know all this stuff about adolescent brain development and brain injuries, and we’re still talking about life with the possibility of parole. It seems like we haven’t advanced, even though the science has advanced,” Turkstra said. “I would say the court system is behind the science.”

'He knows that it was terrible'
Family members responded to the crime with shock, denial and then grief. In the ensuing months they turned to one another and their church for support.

Olson has since devoted considerable time researching traumatic brain injuries and learning how to help her son manage the lasting effects of his injury. She’s come to believe that her son’s brain damage can’t be the sole explanation for what happened, but it’s certainly a factor.

“The brain injury caused physical, emotional, and mental changes that he struggled to cope with,” Olson said. “It also left him with impaired judgment and altered his ability to regulate his behavior.”

Other things are more certain.

Family members said that the boy loved his great-grandmother dearly and doesn’t lack remorse, as has been suggested by prosecutors and investigators.

“Where they say he was ‘cold, cruel, heartless,’ — no, no no, not even close,” Wappler said. “What transpired and made the whole thing happen? I can’t say. But as far as it happening, no, he knows that it was terrible.”

Barbeau’s family continues to support him, as they always have.

Wappler is always quick to tell Barbeau he loves him, but the boy has told him he doesn’t deserve it.

Olson visits her son every day in jail, where he’s mostly kept isolated. He still asks her about his cats and makes sure she’s giving them enough attention and offering them the right toys.

There’s little they can do together, so she comes ready with things to talk about by reading the books he’s reading and watching the same TV shows he watches, ensuring that not only is his mother still involved in his everyday life, but that he also still has a friend.

“I love him very much, and I’m pretty sure he knows I love him,” Olson said.

— Josh Lintereur writes for the Sheboygan Press.

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Thanks for the update Wrap. What a sad, sad story.

Very sad. Poor Barbara.

Have to say..it seems many parents see red flags w/their kids but don't do enough (IMO) to ensure they get the CONSISTENT help they need. MOO.

Think Adam Lanza and the Griego boy in Albuquerque and of course, Holden. It's always AFTER the fact. MOO again.