No contest plea for soliciting kidnapping

By Daily Times staff and The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 12:25 PM CST

JUNEAU - A sex offender who threatened to have five children killed unless the governor freed him from prison entered pleas of no contest to five counts of soliciation of kidnapping when he appeared in Dodge County Circuit Court Tuesday.

David Day, 48, of Richfield, faces a maximum of 200 years in prison and a $500,000 fine when he is sentenced March 13 in Dodge County Court. He still faces charges of kidnapping and intimidating a victim in Washington County.

Day was serving time at the Waupun Correctional Institute when he hatched a plan to regain his freedom, according to court documents. Day, a convicted sex offender, allegedly plotted from behind bars to have his 12-year-old victim's mother kidnapped and killed unless the boy recanted his testimony. After police learned of his plans, he switched to even more brutal tactics. He hired someone to kidnap the boy himself and his siblings and have them impaled unless the governor pardoned him and he got $1 million, according to investigators.

Day was charged in October of 2004 with sexually assaulting the boy when the two were alone at Day's house in Washington County. Day described himself in testimony as a snowmobile engine repairman who once was a close friend of the boy's family. He said the boy made the story up.

He was convicted in August of 2005 of sexual assault of a child, exposing a child to harmful material and child enticement by a jury in Washington County. Judge David Resheske sentenced Day to 25 years in prison.

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According to the complaint on charges of solicitation of kidnapping, Day and his brother, Dale, had talked since his conviction about having the boy's mother kidnapped. They allegedly discussed the plan in code during visiting hours at the county jail between the conviction and sentencing.

He asked his brother to hire a kidnapper who was to capture the woman at her home when the rest of the family was away, Day wrote. After the abduction, the kidnapper was to call the father on the woman's cell phone. He was supposed to order the father to call the judge and say his son lied about the sexual assault and he had two days in which to make the call or his wife would be killed.

Dale Day told investigators that while he got a call from someone willing to do the kidnapping, he could not go through with the plan.

But while at Waupun Correctional Institute, David Day asked a fellow inmate to find someone on the outside to kidnap the boy, his brother and three sisters. His plan was to ask the governor for a pardon, immunity from any charges, immediate release from prison and $1 million.

The fellow inmate told a corrections officer of the plan.

Day's defense attorney, Daryl Laatsch, initially moved to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. After the judge denied the motion, Laatsch and Day conferred and then entered the no contest pleas.

The pleas surprised prosecutors, said Bob Barrington, the office manager in the Dodge County district attorney's office. “We were really expecting to have a jury trial,” he said. “We had all the witnesses here, ready to go.”

The boy's relatives, who weren't in court, also were shocked, and then relieved, to hear of the pleas, Barrington said.

“They have a previous history of Mr. Day. They hoped, as had we, their trauma was over when he was put in prison,” Barrington said. “They found the situation just continued, it wasn't over. Hopefully, after today, it will be.”

Day's jury trial in Washington County is scheduled for June.