Prosecutors are charging a nurse from Illinois in a cold-case murder in southeast Wisconsin.
Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling says Linda La Roche was arrested in Florida for the July 1999 beating death of Peggy Lynn Johnson. Johnson was cognitively disabled, and her body was found near a cornfield.
Schmaling says Johnson went to a medical center in McHenry, Illinois asking for help, after her mother died. He says La Roche took her in, and “barbarically” brutalized Johnson for many years.
Johnson’s body was exhumed in 2013 to use new technology to identify her.
