Insets (clockwise from top left): Dominic Pilgreen (Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office), Nathan Reichard (Manitowoc County Courts), and Payton Vertz (GoFundMe). Background: News footage of Ice Age Trail in Two Rivers, Wis. (WLUK).
A Wisconsin teenager will be tried as an adult after he allegedly teamed up with an older accomplice to torture and murder another teenager.
Dominic Pilgreen, 26, and Nathan Reichard, 15, are both charged with being a party to first-degree intentional homicide, physical abuse of a child, hiding a corpse, theft from a corpse and false imprisonment in connection with the death of 16-year-old Payton Vertz. According to a criminal complaint reviewed by Law&Crime, Payton was last seen by his family on Oct. 5 but was reported as a runaway because he had left home before and returned days later.
On Oct. 16, Payton’s body was found floating in a marina in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
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According to the complaint, a student who attended Two Rivers High School approached police and told them Reichard had asked if he knew Payton. When the witness said he did, Reichard allegedly said, “He’s dead. I killed him.” The witness told police that Reichard’s hand was “bruised.”
On the day Payton’s body was found, detectives interviewed a female student who said she had dated Payton when they were in middle school. She told detectives that Reichard seemed “angry” with Payton, and around the time Payton was reported to have run away, Reichard told her, “It’s happening.” The girl told detectives that she believed Reichard meant he was going to kill Payton.
Police said Reichard later went to the girl’s house in the middle of the night and told her, “It’s done.” According to the complaint, Reichard told the girl that he and Pilgreen had tied Payton to a tree, killed him, then dumped his body in the river and burned his clothing.
Reichard later went to the Two Rivers Police Department himself, where he allegedly told them what he and Pilgreen did to Payton on the night of Oct. 5. When Pilgreen was questioned, he told police that he and Reichard discussed how much Reichard “hated” Payton. On Oct. 4, Reichard and the female student visited Pilgreen at an encampment in Zander Park, where he was living, and allegedly decided that Payton “needed to be killed.”
According to the complaint, Pilgreen purchased vodka and beer that he and Reichard planned to give to Payton to get him intoxicated “for the purpose of killing” him. Reichard reportedly convinced Payton to go with him to Zander Park.
Once Payton was intoxicated, Pilgreen and Reichard convinced the teen to come with them down the Ice Age Trail at the park. Payton willingly followed them, and Pilgreen and Reichard allegedly started beating him. After Payton resisted, Pilgreen and Reichard allegedly tied him to a tree and continued their attack, which included whipping Payton with his own belt.
Pilgreen allegedly told police that he and Reichard originally planned to keep Payton tied to a tree for two or three days “to continue torturing him and make him suffer longer” before killing him. Police said Reichard told them that he and Pilgreen were concerned that Payton might escape, saying he was “paranoid about the quality of his knots.” The two then allegedly decided “alright fine we will just get it done and over with tonight,” according to the complaint.
Police said Pilgreen ultimately used Payton’s belt to strangle him to death. The pair allegedly removed Payton’s clothing, except for his boxer shorts, loaded his body into a wagon and covered it with a red towel. Pilgreen told police that he used part of the same towel to muffle Payton’s screams. After allegedly dumping Payton’s body in the river, Pilgreen burned Payton’s clothing.
During Reichard’s first court appearance, Manitowoc County District Attorney Jacalyn LaBre said Reichard and Pilgreen “preplanned how this was going to happen. They preplanned how to incapacitate the victim or make the victim more pliable. They originally had planned on holding the victim for multiple days, but it was only after they realized that that wasn’t going to work that it turned into a one evening event.”
Judge Jewel Scharenbroch called the alleged crime “brutal and depraved.” She set Reichard’s bond at $500,000 cash. Pilgreen remains in custody at the Waukesha County Jail.
Pilgreen and Reichard are both scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 2.
The post ‘He’s dead. I killed him’: Teen brags to classmate after tying 16-year-old to tree and strangling him on park trail, police say first appeared on Law & Crime.
