Kelly Dwyer: Disappearance, Trial, and Sentence

The Kelly Dwyer murder case ended in 2018 with the conviction of her boyfriend, Kris Zocco, for first-degree reckless homicide, hiding a corpse, and strangulation and suffocation. Dwyer, a 27-year-old Milwaukee woman, was last seen on surveillance video walking into Zocco’s apartment building with him in the early morning hours of October 11, 2013. Her skeletal remains were found nineteen months later in rural Jefferson County, Wisconsin. Zocco received 31 years in prison, to be served after a separate 19-year sentence for child pornography and drug convictions discovered during the investigation into her disappearance. He will not be eligible for release until 2065.¹

The Night She Disappeared

Dwyer arrived at Zocco’s apartment complex at 2036 North Prospect Avenue on the evening of October 10, 2013, around 9:50 p.m. The two went to a nearby bar called Allium, where a friend saw her appearing happy and not particularly intoxicated. At 2:37 a.m. on October 11, cameras in the building lobby recorded them walking in together. She was wearing black leggings, brown boots, and a denim jacket.²

No one saw her again. A review of every camera in the apartment complex confirmed she never appeared on video leaving the building. Her cellphone made its final connection to a cell tower servicing Zocco’s building at 10:08 a.m. on October 11, two minutes after Zocco was recorded driving out of the garage. The phone was never recovered.¹

Dwyer worked part-time as a nanny and as a salesperson at the Lululemon store on Water Street. When she failed to show up for her shift on October 12, coworkers tried calling and reached voicemail. They searched for her and eventually contacted her mother, who filed a missing person report. By October 14, police were investigating at Zocco’s apartment.³

Who Kris Zocco Was

Zocco was 38 at the time Dwyer disappeared. A Boston University graduate, he had previously worked as director of information technology for the New York Yankees and was vice president and chief information officer for TRC Global Solutions, a Milwaukee company.⁴ He had been seeing Dwyer for about ten months, though she was dating other people as well.

Police interviewed five former female partners who described controlling behavior, stalking, threats, and a pattern of ignoring women’s requests to stop during sexual encounters involving choking or asphyxiation. According to the criminal complaint, that pattern dated back more than 25 years.⁵ Some of Dwyer’s own friends later told investigators they had occasionally seen bruising on her wrists and neck, which she dismissed as the result of “crazy nights.”⁶

What the Investigation Found

The physical evidence inside Zocco’s apartment pointed toward a death that had happened there. A cadaver dog named Molly alerted to the presence of human remains on Zocco’s bed, in the bathroom, in a guest bathroom, and inside his car, including the trunk and door handles. The apartment smelled strongly of bleach, and the bathroom appeared to have been recently scrubbed. A shower curtain, bath mats, decorative towels, and a large, padded silver travel golf bag that Zocco’s long-term girlfriend had seen in the apartment were all missing.²

Phone records showed Zocco had removed the SIM card from his phone between the evening of October 11 and the afternoon of October 12, making his location untraceable during that window. His accounts of his whereabouts kept shifting. He claimed at various times to have been Christmas shopping, price comparing, running errands, and working. Detectives noted he showed more interest in whether surveillance footage captured him leaving the garage alone than in Dwyer’s safety.⁷

Credit card records showed that on October 12, Zocco drove roughly 160 miles roundtrip to a cheese shop called the Mousehouse near Madison, then bought a pair of new sneakers in Delafield. Within that trip, detectives identified a 90-minute gap they could not account for, which they believed Zocco used to dispose of Dwyer’s body.¹

A forensic examination of Zocco’s cellphone recovered a video recorded on September 22, 2013, roughly three weeks before Dwyer disappeared. It showed her nude, bound, blindfolded, and struggling to breathe during a sexual act. Photographs on the phone showed her appearing unconscious. A forensic nurse who examined the images testified they showed “signs of asphyxiation” and that Dwyer was clearly “struggling to take a breath.”⁸

The Drug and Child Pornography Case

While searching the apartment, police also found large quantities of drugs and child pornography. On October 17, 2013, Zocco was arrested on drug possession charges. The search eventually turned up cocaine, marijuana, oxycodone, drug paraphernalia, and 23 video files containing child pornography.⁹

Zocco posted $5,000 bail and was released while awaiting trial. In November 2014, a jury convicted him on 16 of 17 counts of possession of child pornography. He also pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine, possession of THC, and maintaining a drug trafficking place.¹⁰ On January 30, 2015, he was sentenced to a total of 19 years in prison for the combined convictions.¹¹ He was already serving that sentence when he was charged with Dwyer’s death.

Finding Her Remains

On the evening of May 1, 2015, nineteen months after Dwyer vanished, a local resident walking along Inlynd Road in the Town of Sullivan, Jefferson County, spotted something white near a tree line about 20 feet from the road. It was a human skull. He reported it to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office at 5:13 p.m.¹²

A forensic odontologist used dental records to positively identify the remains as Kelly Dwyer. The skeleton was found in a “very contorted” position, with one arm behind the back and a leg completely turned, leading investigators to conclude the body had been compressed into some kind of container, consistent with the missing golf travel bag. The site was roughly 45 miles west of Milwaukee, along the general route Zocco had driven on October 12, 2013.¹

The Jefferson County medical examiner conducted both a medical autopsy and a forensic anthropological examination but could not determine a cause of death. The advanced decomposition left nothing to show how Dwyer had died.¹³

The Homicide Trial

In May 2017, two years after the remains were identified, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office charged Zocco with first-degree reckless homicide, hiding a corpse, and strangulation and suffocation. The reckless homicide charge alleged he caused Dwyer’s death “under circumstances which showed utter disregard for human life” and carried a maximum penalty of 60 years. The strangulation count was based not on the night of her death but on the September 22, 2013 incident captured on his phone.⁷ The case was assigned to Judge Jeffrey A. Wagner.¹⁴

The prosecution’s theory was that Zocco killed Dwyer during a sexual act, either by manually strangling her or by forcing his penis down her throat and causing her to asphyxiate, then transported her body out of the apartment in the missing golf bag and dumped it in Jefferson County.¹⁵

With no eyewitnesses and no forensic evidence from the burial site, the case was built on circumstantial layers: the surveillance footage, the cadaver dog alerts, the bleach-cleaned apartment, the missing shower curtain and golf bag, the September 22 phone video, and the testimony of former partners who described Zocco ignoring pleas to stop during choking. Prosecutors also presented 110 pornographic files found on an external hard drive in his apartment that depicted bondage and asphyxiation.⁸

A jailhouse informant, a former cellmate, testified that Zocco told him he had “accidentally killed her while having rough sex and later hid her body.” According to the informant, Zocco also said Dwyer had been “speedballing” and “got wasted,” and that she “would never be found.”¹⁶

Zocco was represented by attorneys Craig Mastantuono and Rebecca Coffee. They argued the prosecution’s case was “conjecture” and that investigators had engaged in “tunnel vision.” Coffee told jurors the encounter was consensual, however “offensive” it might appear, and that a person’s sexual lifestyle should not be grounds for a murder conviction.¹⁵ The defense presented evidence that the building had a street-level exit detectives had been unaware of, and that at least one camera had never been reviewed, undermining the claim Dwyer was never seen leaving. The defense maintained she had left on her own around 9:00 a.m. on October 11.¹⁷ Mastantuono also attacked the cadaver dog alerts for not being video-recorded and expressed “great concern with a case based entirely on an inmate jailhouse, snitch, informant” who stood to benefit from a sentence reduction.¹⁶

A separate felony witness intimidation charge, based on the cellmate’s claim that Zocco had offered him money to “deal with” an ex-girlfriend expected to testify, was dropped during trial on October 4, 2018 for insufficient evidence.¹⁸

After a ten-day trial in October 2018, the jury found Zocco guilty on all three homicide counts.¹⁹

The Sentence

On December 14, 2018, Judge Wagner sentenced Zocco to 26 years in prison followed by 14 years of extended supervision for reckless homicide, and five years in prison followed by five years of extended supervision for hiding a corpse. The total came to 31 years of initial confinement and 19 years of extended supervision, to be served consecutively to his 19-year sentence for child pornography and drugs.²⁰

Addressing Zocco at sentencing, Wagner said: “What started out being consensual at one time became an utter disregard for human life. You ended up choking the life out of the victim for your own self-gratification.” When Zocco shook his head, Wagner added, “You can shake your head, but that’s what the evidence was, and that was the verdict of the jury.”¹⁹

Dwyer’s mother, Maureen, told the court, “I’m so filled with rage when I think about how alone she was and there was no one there to comfort her. That image haunts me every day.” Her father, Tony, said, “Our hearts are broken to the core. He must suffer as we are suffering.”²⁰

Appeals Exhausted

Zocco challenged his conviction through every level of court. He filed post-conviction motions in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, primarily arguing the search warrants used to obtain evidence from his cellphone were overly broad. The circuit court denied those motions in July 2021. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction on October 31, 2023, rejecting his arguments on the search warrant, the cadaver dog evidence, and claims that the prosecution had presented misleading evidence about the pornographic files.⁸ The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied discretionary review on April 16, 2024. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his petition for a writ of certiorari on October 7, 2024.²¹

What Dwyer’s Family Did Afterward

The Dwyer family maintained a Facebook page called “Finding Justice for Kelly Dwyer” throughout the investigation and trial. They also established the Kelly Dwyer Memorial Peace Project in partnership with the Sojourner Family Peace Center of Milwaukee, a nonprofit that provides crisis housing and support to victims of domestic violence. Tony Dwyer announced the family would match every donation to the project up to $10,000.²²

1
CBS News. Kelly Dwyer Death: Solving the Mystery Behind Wisconsin Woman’s Disappearance
2
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Death of Kelly Dwyer: Key Questions in Prosecution of Kris Zocco
3
WISN. Family, Friends Search for Missing Milwaukee Woman
4
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Boyfriend of Missing Milwaukee Woman Posts Bail on Drug Charges
5
FOX6. Police: Kris Zocco’s Been a Sexual Deviant Engaging in Extreme Aggression Since He Was 16
6
TMJ4. Jury Learns About Zocco’s Computer History as Murder Trial Continues
7
htv-prod-media. Kris Zocco Kelly Dwyer Criminal Complaint
8
FindLaw. State v. Zocco
9
WISN. Kris Zocco Returns to Court on Drug Charges
10
FOX6. Kris Zocco Sentenced to 19 Years in Prison on Child Pornography, Drug Charges
11
CBS58. Kris Zocco Sentenced to 19 Years for Possession of Child Pornography and Drugs
12
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Remains Found in Jefferson County Identified as Kelly Dwyer
13
FOX6. Medical Examiner Testifies No Cause of Death Determined for Kelly Dwyer
14
vLex. State v. Zocco
15
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Kris Zocco’s Trial for Murder of Kelly Dwyer Opens in Milwaukee
16
TMJ4. Man Accused of Killing Kelly Dwyer Charged With New Crime; Informant Says He Confessed to Homicide
17
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Kelly Dwyer Case: Jury Sees Kris Zocco Loading Trunk
18
FOX6. Witness Intimidation Charge Dropped Against Zocco; His Mother Takes the Stand
19
FOX6. Kris Zocco Gets 31 Years in Death of Kelly Dwyer
20
CBS58. Kris Zocco Sentenced in Death of Kelly Dwyer
21
Supreme Court of the United States. Docket for Zocco v. Wisconsin, No. 23-1355
22
FOX6. Family of Kelly Dwyer Sets Up Fund for Sojourner Family Peace Center