A Wisconsin man convicted in a decades-old double murder and serving a life sentence in prison has died, according to court records.
The Wisconsin Circuit Court Access listed Raymand Vannieuwenhoven as "deceased" in a records update posted Wednesday. Vannieuwenhoven was sentenced last year to serve two consecutive life sentences for the 1976 double murder of a Green Bay couple at a Wisconsin park.
Following a trial last summer, a Marinette County jury found Vannieuwenhoven guiltyin the killings of David Schuldes, 25, and his fiance, Ellen Matheys, 24.
The couple was killed during a camping trip in 1976 at McClintock Park in Silver Cliff. Reports show Schuldes was shot in the neck and died instantly. Matheys was sexually assaulted and shot twice, once in the abdomen and once in the chest.
Prosecutors previously said they used DNA and genetic genealogy to connect Vannieuwenhoven to the crime. DNA from the sexual assault was gathered and submitted to a database. That evidence was matched to Vannieuwenhoven in 2018 through genetic genealogy.
The court followed sentencing rules from 1976, since that's when the crime occurred. The judge stated before the hearing the appropriate sentence for the crime, called first-degree murder at the time, was life imprisonment for each charge and could run concurrent or consecutive.
Due to the gravity of the crimes, the judge said the life sentences would run consecutively. Vannieuwenhoven was 84 years old at the time of his sentencing in 2021.
