Glenn Mark Kopitske was born on July 24th, 1966 in Chicago, IL. He was adopted by Virgil and Shirley in Weyauwega, Wisconsin. They previously lost two children before adopting, and cared for Glenn as their own flesh and blood. Virgil was a godly man and was active in the church and community. Weyauwega, which is a small town and a little bit hard to pronounce, has blue collar jobs such as farming, cheese production, and plastic bag factories.
Glenn was described by his family and friends as gentle, eccentric, and funny. As a teenager he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and received federal assistance to help pay for basic needs. He also took medication for his mental health issues and there were no known instances of him going off his medication. He had a Historical Studies degree from University of Texas and taught as a substitute teacher occasionally while working at Wal-Mart. He was passionate about pursuing stand up comedy and performed in local plays. He was in one play called “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”.
In 1996, when Glenn was 30 years old, he announced that he was going to run for President of the United States, but later realized he was too young to run, since the minimum age requirement is 35. He later tried running for a more obtainable role as 56th District Assembly in 2000, but he did not win this election. He always had grandiose ideas that his family thought was eccentric, but supported his pursuits anyways. He lived in a split level home with his recently rescued dog in Weyauwega, but stayed in close contact with his parents. He had car troubles often and relied on his parents to help out with rides. He would stay in touch with his mom every other day.
His mom was attending a wedding in Milwaukee when she couldn’t reach Glenn for a few days. Worried, she went to his house to check on him. She noticed his dog outside and distressed. The back door was locked which was something Glenn never did and she found this out of character for him.
On August 2nd 2003, Shirley discovered the decomposing body of her son Glenn. This was not only shocking, but horrifying since he had been shot and stabbed in a vicious attack. The summer heat only increased the rate of decomposition and he was laying face down on the floor in his room with no clothes on. Some reports say that Glenn’s body had been decomposing for 4 days before being discovered. If this is true, then Glenn was killed just 5 days after his 37th birthday. The body was in such bad shape that the head wound and stab wounds were not determined until later by the medical examiner. The medical examiner noted that the cause of death was by the gunshot at close range and the stab wounds were post-mortem. Police later said that the gun shot hole in Glenn’s head was only the size of a quarter even though deer shot was used. In California we call it buck shot so I am guessing they just use a different term because I couldn’t find a specific pellet gauge associated with deer shot. Just a side note, do not google shotgun wounds. I did because I thought it was strange that even at close range the buck shot would cause a hole the size of a quarter. I can’t imagine the state of Glenn’s body if the police couldn’t determine that he was shot. Glenn had a gunshot entry hole to the back of his head and was stabbed twice in the back and once in the heart. Glenn was stabbed so hard post-mortem that the knife penetrated his spine. This attack seemed very personal in nature. There was no mention of DNA that was present on Glenn’s body when they examined it. It was odd that he would be awoken from his sleep and murdered naked, so examiners wanted to rule out sexual assault. The house was untouched with no fingerprints, shoeprints, or hair, and the only thing that could not be found was Glenn’s keys.
There were no obvious suspects to police and after a few months the murder case was starting to go cold. Meanwhile, Glenn’s family buried him at Wolf River Cemetery in Winnebago County. His father Virgil would later die in 2008 and be buried next to his son.
5 months after Glenn’s murder, police were taken off guard when a young woman came forward to say that she knew who killed Glenn. She claimed that her friend confessed to her and that she was concerned for his safety and that he may be a danger to himself. Police could not believe the name that came out of the young woman’s mouth and were in disbelief. They questioned her further to get more details of her story. She told them that her ex boyfriend named Gary Hirte confessed about the murder a few weeks after it happened in August. He told her that he took his dad’s car and shot Glenn with a 12 gauge shotgun and then stabbed him. She said that no one believed him and chalked it up as him trying to look tough. It wasn’t until later that year that he confessed again to her while they were hanging out stargazing. Still not believing her story, the police convinced her to set up a recorded call between her and her ex Gary to see if he would confess to the murder over the phone. During the call, Gary was able to recall details about the murder that were not made public and only someone who committed the murder would know. He also said that he killed Glenn to see if he could get away with it.
Police had a big problem on their hands because Gary Hirte was the golden boy of Weyauwega. He was a 6’4” 270 lb force to be reckoned with on the football field. He was a 2 time all conference defensive lineman. He also ran track and wrestled in high school while maintaining a 4.4 GPA and was class salutatorian. He was an Eagle Scout, the first in the town in 20 years, and had close connections with the Mayor, who helped him earn a few of his merit badges. Gary helped raise money to construct a welcome sign for the town of Weyauwega. His mom worked for the county while his dad worked for a local foundry. He has younger siblings that looked up to him and was adored by everyone around him. People, such as his 14 year old girlfriend at the time, described him as polite and quiet, a trusted and long-time hard worker at his Dairy Queen job. Out of the small town of 1800 residents, Gary was on his way out to bigger and better things. He had his whole life ahead of him and was even awarded a college scholarship to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota in his Senior year of high school. What did he want to study there? Criminal Justice. Another detail that police couldn’t understand was that Gary was still on 17. How can a child commit such a vicious murder? How did Gary even know Glenn? How did the golden boy and the local loonie cross paths that left one dead?
When police dug further they realized that Gary confessed to more people than his ex girlfriend. He also confessed to his best friend Eric and when police asked him about it, he told them what he knew and that he never believed Gary to be serious. They had been friends for 6 years and Eric couldn’t believe that Gary would hurt someone. Even when Gary showed Eric an 8-inch hunting knife saying it was the one he used to kill Glenn, he figured he was pulling his leg. Eric must have started to believe Gary when he showed him Glenn’s set of keys as a trophy. Eric told police that he and Gary were driving down Glenn’s street a few nights prior shining for deer. Eric knows the area well because his girlfriend lives close by to that neighborhood. They were taking a 500,000 candle power spotlight and shining it up and down the block which the neighbors took note of. Gary was driving his dad’s Dodge Dynasty, which is one of the ugliest cars I have ever seen, sorry to anyone who has one but it’s time for you to upgrade. I am going to assume here that they did this for fun and would shine a flashlight at a deer to make them freeze up. I don’t think they were out there killing deer. Gary confessed that he went to Glenn’s house, parked the dodge down the street, and snuck in to kill him after finding him naked.
When Gary was confessing to his friends about the murder the motive was that he wanted to get away with it. Maybe because he was into criminal justice and felt like he knew a lot and maybe more than the police to outsmart them. Police arrested Gary on January 29th at his high school the day after he got that college scholarship. When they searched his parents house they found Glenn’s keys and two shotguns in the basement. These guns were later determined to not have been the gun used in the murder and police were never able to find the gun used to murder Glenn. Police confiscated the 8-inch hunting knife and tested it to confirm that it was forensically tied to Glenn’s murder and still had traces of his blood on it. His bail was set for $400,000. The judge felt the need to set a high bail because Gary had been talking to his younger girlfriend about committing suicide together and the judge felt she may be in danger if he is out on bail.
Gary was defended by Gerald Boyle. If you are a die hard Dahmer geek then this name should ring a bell because this same defense attorney also defended Jeffrey Dahmer.
When confronted with all of the evidence against him, Gary told detectives a very interesting story that took everyone by surprise. He told this story a few months after his arrest. The details are also a little inconsistent here so I will give all the details that are out there about Gary’s account of what happened. This story was later told again in an ABC interview with Cynthia McFadden. According to Gary, he was laying on his or his dad's car under a bridge and listening to Nirvana when Glenn drove by and stopped to talk. Some reports say it was near a boat dock. Gary says that he was already drunk and had 15 shots of vodka and 6 malt drinks by this time. While talking about football, the conversation became more flirtatious and Glenn asked Gary if he wanted to come back to his house. Gary followed Glenn back to his house and the two engaged in consensual oral sex. Gary left afterwards and it wasn’t until he sobered up after taking a nap in his car that he became enraged at what he had done and drove back to Glenn’s house later that day to kill him. Gary told police that he usually got homosexual urges when he drank, but that Glenn was the first person he ever tried anything with. When he got to his house he instructed Glenn to lie on the floor and then shot him in the back of the head. He then stabbed him so hard that the knife became stuck in one of Glenn’s bones. To get the knife out, Gary had to use both hands to pull it out to keep stabbing.
In October 2003, Gary first pleaded guilty to first-degree intentional homicide but later claimed insanity. Some reports say he claimed insanity in August 2003 so I don't know the exact dates without the court documents. After 2 hours of deliberation, the jury rejected his plea for insanity.
On March 17th 2005 Gary was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence, with the eligibility for parole in 32 years in prison since Wisconsin does not have the death penalty. Gary will be in his 50's when he is eligible for parole. Before his sentencing, Gary spoke about what he thought was his worst crime. He said that he can’t feel guilty for what he did to Glenn because another person inside him did it. In an ABC interview with Cynthia McFadden, Gary had a distorted view of what he was doing. He claimed he did it impulsively out of rage because to Gary, a homosexual act is worse than a murderous act.
According to prosecutors, Gary concocted a “Gay panic” story to lessen the severity of his crimes and cold motives. Neither the prosecutors, nor Glenn's family believe that he lived secretly as a gay man. Yes he was odd, but his parents never suspected him as gay. Gary’s defense said that they do believe his story and that he was polygraphed and shown to be telling the truth. I do not know if it was the defense or the police that polygraphed him, but I am going to guess it was the defense that did it in an attempt to prove this story.
During the trial, a few of Gary’s friends testified about who he was as a person and the golden boy wasn't so golden to everyone in the town. Stories of Gary torturing and killing animals surfaced in testimonies. Some people said he liked to kill animals with his car and bragged about it. Later in the ABC interview, Gary admitted to these claims and clarified that he didn’t have any guilt for killing little animals because he figured he was doing them a favor. During the trial, Eric testified against Gary and spoke about their friendship. He said it had become strained over the years. Eric was described as being a smaller kid than Gary with mediocre grades. People felt that Eric piggy backed on Gary’s success, but I don’t think that is fair to say of Eric who may just have truly cared enough about Gary to stick around, even if he had admitted to killing someone. Eric could not recall any times that Gary showed signs of homosexuality or questioning his sexuality in their 6 year friendship. If Gary was gay, then he kept that aspect of his life secret from Eric and his family. When asked if he thought Gary was gay, Eric testified that he did not believe it based on what he knew about his friend.
Prosecutors had psychologist James Armentrout speak on Gary’s mental state when committing this crime and it was his professional opinion that Gary knew what he was doing and what he intended to do. Sheriff’s Captain Steve Verwiel believed that Gary did this to see if he could do this. He saw it as a challenge and was fueled by arrogance.
Gary did not testify at his trial.
Maybe the judge had a small town way of thinking, but in my opinion he went a little easy on Gary. he said this was not a horrendous case and even said that Gary has a good heart at times. He did throw a little shade and said that he believes that Gary has an inferiority complex and that he isn’t sure if he will ever have remorse for his crimes. Gary did apologize for his actions, but not to Glenn's family. Gary apologized to his own family for putting them through all this. His parents are convinced of the story he is telling and say it was very difficult for him to tell this story since he was facing a life sentence anyways. According to Gary’s mom, she believes that her son was a victim as well and that Glenn manipulated her son. She is quoted as saying, “Glenn Kopitske lost his life but went to a better place, but Gary lost a promising future as Glenn Kopitske took his innocence.”
Glenn’s mom Shirley has a heart of gold because she stayed strong through the trial and accepted the judges ruling saying that she is satisfied that Gary will be behind bars and supervised even if he is let out on parole. She feels that enough was done to get justice in this case and move on from it. Up until the end of the trial, neither parent believed that Glenn was gay. Not because they would be ashamed if he was, but that he never showed signs or behavior. Glenn was very close with his supportive parents and they believe that he wouldn’t keep a secret like that hidden for so long.
Gary tried appealing his conviction to the 2nd District Court of Appeals in October 2006, but this was denied.
Resources for this episode include the following:
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