Inset left to right: Lauren Spors (Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The house that belonged to Spors’ mother in Milwaukee, Wisc. (Google Maps).
A Wisconsin woman is behind bars after bludgeoning her mother to death with a four-pound rock, Badger State authorities say.
Lauren Spors, 29, stands accused of one count each of intentional homicide in the first degree and domestic abuse – threat, according to the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.
On Oct. 12, just after 2 p.m., Carrie Zettel, 64, called 911 to report that her daughter was “being violent,” law enforcement allege.
By 2:20 p.m., when officers arrived at the residence on West Ramsey Avenue, the elder was found covered in blood and suffering from “severe trauma to her head with brain matter visible,” police wrote in a search warrant obtained by Milwaukee-based CBS affiliate WDJT.
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The victim was pronounced dead at the scene of the crime minutes after police arrived. Investigators quickly noticed a large, blood-stained rock in the grass next to Zettel’s body. Also notably sporting splotches of crimson was Spors, police claim. The daughter is believed to have been soaked in her mother’s blood during the brutal attack.
Other evidence was used to support the arrest, police say.
Another 911 caller reported seeing the younger woman standing over the older woman in the backyard, holding a large object, and repeatedly bringing it down upon the victim, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Milwaukee-based Fox affiliate WITI.
Some believe the alleged matricidal violence was a long time coming.
Loretta Moyer, a close friend of the victim, told WDJT that Zettel believed her daughter killed her own father back in January 2018.
In fact, Zettel told police her daughter “hit” Jeffrey Spors “over the head with two glass bottles,” according to a report issued by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office. Law enforcement, however, learned the dead man “was known to over medicate on his pain prescriptions” and declined to charge his daughter with a crime.
Still, Lauren Spors would be served with a domestic violence restraining order prohibiting her from contacting her mother in the months following her father’s death, WDJT reported. And, she would allegedly go on to twice violate that order – which was in effect until 2022. Each time, the woman was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial.
“I haven’t accepted my dad’s death,” the alleged murderess once wrote to a judge in 2018 after the initial protective order violation. “My mom says I killed him, but I don’t remember doing it.”
Lauren Spors accepted some level of culpability for her violation, though, acknowledging her mental illness caused her to act out.
Over the past seven years, with her daughter in and out of relatively minor legal trouble, as well as institutions and hospitals, Zettel began to fear for her life, Moyer told the CBS affiliate.
Roughly two weeks before her death, the soon-to-be-killed woman made a chillingly prescient statement, the family friend said.
“Carrie even said, she goes, ‘Maybe if she kills me, she’ll get the help she needs,'” Moyer said, “Carrie was hopeless at this point.”
During the early morning hours on the day of the death, Zettel called Moyer and left a voicemail about her daughter, WDJT reported.
“Lauren was here just now, pounding on the doors, the windows. I called 911,” Zettel can be heard saying. “The police came, and they caught her under a tarp and she ran away, so I don’t know. They’re still here. They’re gonna try to look for her.”
That effort apparently did not pan out.
Lauren Spors is detained in the Milwaukee County Jail on $100,000 bond. The defendant is next slated to appear in court on Nov. 21.
