Update: While Cameron Strese is identified as 21 years old in the criminal complaint filed with the Jefferson County Circuit Court, according to his obituary, he was 23 at the time of his death.
By Kim McDarison
A Fort Atkinson man has been convicted of first-degree reckless homicide and will face sentencing in August.
Kenneth M. Strese was accused in 2019 as a party to the crime of recklessly causing the 2016 death of his nephew, Cameron J. Strese, then 23 according to his obituary, who died of a drug overdose.
Kenneth Strese was found guilty of the crime after a jury trial held in Jefferson County on July 15. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Aug. 30 at 10 a.m. at the Jefferson County Courthouse.
Strese, 46, faces sentencing for one count of first-degree reckless homicide/deliver drugs as a party to a crime, which is a Class C felony. Class C felonies in Wisconsin are punishable by up to 40 years in prison, up to $100,000 in fines, or both.
According to the criminal complaint, on Nov. 13, 2016, at approximately 11:58 a.m., a 911 call was transferred from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office to the Fort Atkinson Police Department from a citizen, Dylan Strese, who was requesting an ambulance to be sent to a Fort Atkinson address. The caller described a male in his 20s who was not responding and whom he believed had stopped breathing.
Upon arrival, according to the criminal complaint, Fort Atkinson police officers were escorted to a basement-level bedroom where they found Cameron Strese lying on his back in his bed. Cameron Strese was described by police as having “foam on his mouth and nose area and a large amount of vomit on his face, neck and upper torso.” According to the complaint, he did not appear to be breathing and officers noted, when touching his wrist to take a pulse, that rigor mortis had set in.
According to the complaint, a Fort Atkinson police officer told Cameron’s father, Willard Strese, that he was sorry, but his son was “gone.” At approximately 12:28 p.m., Jefferson County Deputy Medical Examiner Larry Warwick arrived on the scene and pronounced Cameron dead.
When officers processed the scene, according to the complaint, they found “multiple items of drug paraphernalia and multiple types of drugs.”
On Nov. 14, 2016, according to the complaint, a representative from the Fort Atkinson Police Department attended Cameron’s autopsy at the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office, learning that “Cameron’s lungs were congested and there was a frothy fluid coming out of Cameron’s mouth which was consistent with a drug overdose. A toxicology report was required, the medical examiner noted, to isolate a cause of death.
After receiving a toxicology report, Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Forensic Pathology Fellowship Director for Milwaukee County Wieslawa Tiomak said, in her professional opinion, based on the autopsy and toxicology results, “heroin was a substantial factor in Cameron Strese’s death.”
During their investigation, Fort Atkinson police officers spoke with several of Cameron’s family members and his girlfriend about the night before officers responded to the 911 call, one of whom described a quiet evening at home playing Yahtzee, during which time, the person said, she did not see Cameron drink or use drugs. Cameron reportedly went to bed around 9 p.m. Another family member said Cameron had a “couple of beers” that night. The same family member later told police, the complaint stated, that he believed Cameron had in the past used Xanax.
The following morning, according to the complaint, family members checked on Cameron and believed he was sleeping.
Over the course of the investigation, in 2017, Fort Atkinson police detectives learned from Willard Strese that he did not believe his son would have brought heroin into his home. Willard Strese did tell police that a couple of weeks before Cameron died, there were “a couple of times Cameron’s behavior was odd.” He described Cameron as “out of it.”
According to statements from Willard reported in the complaint, Cameron was told he could not use drugs at the house.
Recalling the night before Cameron’s death and the Yahtzee game, Willard said that “Cameron appeared to be more than just high or drunk,” noting his appearance as “sleepy.”
After Cameron died, Willard said, while cleaning his room, he found some drugs he could not identify. His brother, Kenneth, came to the house and identified the substance as heroin.
In December of 2017, Fort Atkinson police detectives spoke with Cameron’s uncle, Kenneth, who said he had last talked with Cameron early on the day before he died.
According to the complaint, Kenneth told police he was “heavy into heroin himself,” but did not use the drug with Cameron.
The complaint describes a relationship between the nephew and uncle which was close. Kenneth also described a circumstance in which Cameron gave him drugs.
According to the complaint, Kenneth said that Cameron gave him $40 worth of heroin about two years earlier.
Kenneth further described an incident where the two family members drove to Madison “to get drugs.” At some point during the trip, Cameron began to turn blue.
“Cameron was treated with nasal Narcan and released,” according to the complaint.
In 2018, after being unsuccessful at learning Cameron’s cell phone passcode, detectives learned that a potential existed to get the contents of Cameron’s phone downloaded with help from a criminal analyst at the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Justice.
In 2018, detectives received text messages from Cameron’s phone from Nov. 12, 2016.
Police determined that the text messages they were viewing “appeared to be about Cameron obtaining the heroin he used before his death.”
Within the text messages, Cameron appears to ask his uncle if he can take “another .05” of a drug. Kenneth appears to suggest that he can help Cameron, writing: “ya if u nervous cme by me n il help u.”
After viewing the texts, detectives made contact with a source that is unidentified in the criminal complaint, who said Ken Strese admitted to them that he was the person who sold drugs to Cameron.
Kenneth Strese, according to the complaint, was arrested on Aug. 21 2019.
At the time of his arrest, the complaint states, Strese admitted to officers that he used heroin, but did not sell it. He said he did not have involvement with Cameron’s procurement of heroin, but admitted, the complaint stated: “that Cameron asked him if it was okay to do another .05,” before he died.
In a statement made to police after his arrest, Kenneth Strese said, as noted in the complaint, that Cameron bought “a half,” which the complaint indicates is .05 grams of heroin, from someone who came to the defendant’s house.
According to the complaint: “When Cameron left the defendant’s house, he left on a skateboard going in the opposite direction of his house. Cameron did not inject heroin, he snorted it, which was why the defendant offered to help Cameron (in text messages) if he needed it.”
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