Background: News footage of the scene in Milwaukee, Wis., after Amanda Varisco was found dead (WITI). Inset (left): Amanda Varisco (GoFundMe). Inset (right): Mile Dukic (Milwaukee County Sheriff”s Office).
A Wisconsin man allegedly stabbed a woman he was living with after she tried to leave the apartment they shared.
Mile Dukic, 39, was arrested on Thursday after Milwaukee Police Department officers responded to the apartment in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that he shared with 44-year-old Amanda Varisco. According to a criminal complaint reviewed by Law&Crime, police were let into the apartment by Dukic and found Varisco on the floor, “unconscious and not breathing.” The responding officer stated that he attempted CPR on Varisco, but she was already dead.
Police said Dukic told the officer, “I didn’t want to do it.”
According to the complaint, Varisco’s daughter and her boyfriend were the first ones to try to get into the apartment. Police said Varisco’s daughter told them she received texts from Dukic in which he told her that he “killed” her mother. In the texts, Dukic said, “[S]he was disrespectful and mean” and she was talking to another “dude” on the phone. During her phone call with the other man, she purportedly told Dukic to “[shut] the f— up.”
Dukic told Varisco’s daughter, “I think she [is] dead.”
The daughter’s boyfriend was with her when she received the texts on Thursday night, and the couple immediately went to Varisco’s apartment after calling 911. The boyfriend told police that when he tried to get Dukic to open the door and let them inside, Dukic said, “I already told you she’s gone. I’m not letting you in.”
When police detectives interviewed Dukic, he told them his relationship with Varisco was not romantic, but occasionally sexual. On the night of the alleged stabbing, Dukic saw that Varisco was on the phone with another man and wanted to leave to see him. Police said Dukic told her that he did not want her to go, and the two got into an argument.
As the argument escalated, Dukic told police that he punched Varisco “with a closed fist” and knocked her to the ground. He kept punching her until she “appeared to be unconscious.” He then allegedly got a knife and started stabbing Varisco several times in the chest and torso.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner determined that Varisco was stabbed 22 times in the chest and abdomen in addition to defensive wounds on her hands and arms.
Police said Dukic was previously charged with felonies including stalking and had been released from custody on the condition that he not commit additional crimes. Those cases are still open.
Dukic was charged with first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of bail jumping. He remains in custody at the Milwaukee County Jail. Dukic made his first court appearance on Tuesday. He was scheduled to appear in court in connection with the previous charges on March 10.
A GoFundMe page said Varisco was a mother of four children and a grandmother to five. Her family started the page to raise money for funeral expenses.
