Man gets 25 years behind bars in Wausau beating death

WAUSAU — As he sentenced Warren Krohn to 25 years in prison in the 2012 beating death of popular Wausau bowler Kerby Kniess, a Marathon County judge focused on how the slaying affected the victim's survivors.

"So, Kerby's dead and all the people who loved him and lived with him now have to live with the memory of what your crimes created," Circuit Judge Gregory Grau said.

Kniess' family did not know if they would be able to have an open casket at his funeral because he was so badly beaten, Grau said. After his death, Kniess' mother made her other children decide what they wanted for their own funerals. One of the friends with whom Kniess was living when he was killed suffers from panic and anxiety attacks and can still see the image of Kniess where he was killed, the judge said.

"You were an essential part of a plan that led to an innocent, sleeping citizen getting his skull bashed in by a baseball bat, never to awake again," Grau told Krohn before sentencing him to 25 years in prison followed by 8 1/2 years of extended supervision.

Grau handed down the sentence Friday after more than two hours of testimony.

Krohn, 23, of Wausau was convicted of felony murder and burglary in December after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors.

His co-defendant, 21-year-old Zachary Froehlich of Wausau, was sentenced on Nov. 4 to 35 years behind bars on a charge of first-degree reckless homicide.

Kniess fell asleep on the night of June 18, 2012, after watching a Milwaukee Brewers game with a friend in a detached, furnished garage in the 100 block of 7th Avenue North in Wausau, where he had been living. Krohn and Froehlich snuck into the garage to rob him, which they had done before without awakening him, according to court documents.

This time, however, the pair brought a bat.

Froehlich hit Kniess in the head with the bat four or five times, hard enough to cause injuries that a forensic pathologist who examined the body equated to the trauma he normally sees in car crashes.

"The bottom line is while Mr. Froehlich did what he did, Mr. Krohn had an equally fatal part in this," Marathon County District Attorney Ken Heimerman said during the sentencing hearing.

He said Krohn took Froehlich, who was angry and humiliated after a robbery earlier in the night, to rob Kniess of booze, cigarettes and money the two needed for rent.

Krohn knew that Kniess was staying in his friends' garage, Heimerman said.

"It's a small garage," Heimerman said. "Mr. Froehlich swung the bat five times and Mr. Krohn did nothing."

The friends with whom Kniess was staying found his body the next morning.

Krohn's attorney, Wright Laufenberg, argued that his client had known Froehlich for only one month before the killing and had no idea Froehlich would swing the bat. Froehlich went after Kniess when Krohn was grabbing a bottle of alcohol with his back turned to Kniess, Laufenberg said.

"Mr. Krohn is a thief; we will not dispute that," Laufenberg said. "But he is not a murderer. He is not a violent person."

He said Krohn had no juvenile or adult record for violent crimes but said Froehlich's record was "rife with abject violence."

Before he was sentenced, Krohn said that Kniess was kind to him. He said his choice to go to Kniess' garage led to Kniess' death "and for that I'll always be sorry."

Alison Dirr can be reached at 715-845-0658. Find her on Twitter as @AlisonDirr