‘In Pursuit’ about Lemke murders spurs tips; TV show highlights shared

By Chris Spangler

Since 1988, John Walsh’s nationally televised crime programs have helped locate some 1,600 fugitives and 60 missing children.

Now, Jefferson County law enforcement officials are hoping to see those numbers soon increase by at least one.
On Wednesday, Oct. 6, the 2020 town of Sumner murders of Jim and Nedra Lemke were featured in a 22-minute segment of “In Pursuit with John Walsh” on the Investigation Discovery channel.

Owners of J-N-L Wrought Iron and active members of Faith Community Church in Fort Atkinson, the Lemkes were fatally shot on June 16, 2020, at Nedra’s late father’s County Highway A farm west of Fort Atkinson. Nedra’s brother, Kevin P. Anderson, 63, has been charged in connection with their deaths, although he remains at large.

A camera crew from “In Pursuit With John Walsh” was at an Oconomowoc lake Airbnb June 29-July 1 to interview the Lemkes’ daughter, Amanda Waterworth; her husband, Jacob Waterworth; Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Det. Sgt. Chad Garcia, Det. Donald Petig, Det. Ryan McIntyre and the first deputy on the scene, who asked to remain anonymous; and Christine Spangler, former managing editor of the Daily Jefferson County Union.

Narrating the show was Walsh, who became a criminal investigator and victims’ advocate after his 6-year-old son, Adam, was abducted and killed in 1981. He was the longtime host of “America’s Most Wanted,” which helped law enforcement officers capture more than 1,200 fugitives and bring home more than 50 missing children.

Walsh later hosted “The Hunt with John Walsh,” which debuted on July 13, 2014, on CNN. That was succeeded by “In Pursuit with John Walsh,” which premiered in January 2019 on Investigation Discovery. 

“We are currently more than halfway through season three of ‘In Pursuit,’ and once the season is wrapped, we will have featured 72 cases in total, including missing children,” said Greg Palmer, executive producer of Jupiter Entertainment, which produces the program. “Since the show premiered in 2019, 26 featured fugitives are now in custody and eight missing children recovered.”

He explained that “In Pursuit’s” researchers locate unsolved crimes to feature on the show. 

“After tips are submitted to us via phone, text or website, our operators hand those off directly to a predetermined point of contact with the lead agency — i.e. local police departments, sheriff’s offices, state police agencies, the United States Marshal Service, the FBI or others,” Palmer said.

Detectives say program was well done

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office detectives interviewed for the “In Pursuit” segment are hoping that the national exposure will lead to locating Anderson.

“We were interviewed by the producers for the television show and I thought it was very well done, very professionally done,” Det. Sgt. Garcia said on Friday.

“We have received some tips already and it’s been less than 48 hours since the show aired, so we’re happy with that. We’re following up on the tips that we’re getting and we hope to locate Kevin Anderson … to find him and bring him to justice,” he added.

Garcia estimated that, as of Friday, the department had received about a dozen tips in 36 hours. 

“They come into the call center to the TV show and they’re forwarded to me by email instantly,” he explained. “So every time one comes, whether it’s 2 in the morning or whenever, it comes to me instantly.”
He, in turn, immediately sends the information to the two cold lead detectives, Petig and McIntyre. 

“They’ll follow up on the tips right away,” he said.

Meanwhile, Garcia said, the sheriff’s office provided “In Pursuit” with Nedra’s 911 call to dispatch reporting a possible break-in at her late father’s town of Sumner farm; and deputies’ actual bodycam, squad car and drone footage of the scene.

“Not only was this the first time the public was seeing it, but a lot of members of our own agency hadn’t seen it,” he said of the footage. 

He noted that this was not the first time that the department had used a drone at the scene of a crime.

“The first case we used drones, and this is what got us involved in drones, was the shooting up at Arby’s in Johnson Creek,” Garcia said, referring to the 2017 incident in which a naked carjacking suspect ran toward the restaurant waving a handgun.

“The Johnson Creek Fire Department fitted us with drones and one of their members had their own drone,” Garcia said. “After that, we realized we needed a drone.”

That prompted the sheriff’s office to budget for purchasing a drone and pilot training.

“We’ve used it on a number of major crash scenes and a few different crime scenes, including searching for missing people,” Garcia said. “We’ve been using it quite a bit.”

In this case, the drone was instrumental in assessing the situation before the SWAT team advanced past the squad cars. Not only did the drone alert them to Jim Lemke lying in front of his SUV, but it also provided the aerial photos of the farmhouse fire and aided in the search for Anderson.

“We can put the drone anywhere,” Garcia said. “Officers can see everything that’s going on. They’re an awesome tool.”

The detective sergeant also shared that as tragic as the double murder was, it could have been even worse with more casualties.

That is because Nedra’s brother, Kurt, who is disabled and nonverbal, was in the back seat of the Lemkes’ SUV. In addition, the gunshots fired at the first deputy arriving on the scene hit his squad car just inches above his head.

Garcia said that the sheriff’s office has assistance for deputies involved in such stressful situations.

“We have POST, a police officer support team, for critical incidents,” he explained. “Eight or 10 of us underwent a week of training. If we have a critical incident, we give a debriefing where everyone sits down and has a chance to talk through it.”

He said the team includes a psychologist who works with military veterans and first responders. Area chaplains also are available to assist.

“We’re very proactive in the wellness field,” he said.

Turning back to the “In Pursuit” episode, Garcia called the Lemkes’ murders among about a half-dozen major cases that particularly stand out in his memory during his 27 years with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

Also among them is another double murder: the 1980 deaths of Fort Atkinson’s Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew.

It was that August that the couple went missing from a wedding dance at the Concord House in the town of Concord. Their remains were discovered Oct. 19, 1980, in a woods and field near Ixonia.

It remained a cold case for 29 years until Edward W. Edwards of Louisville, Ky., — a serial killer who had been working as a handyman at the Concord House campground in August 1980 — was arrested July 30, 2009, after DNA on Kelly’s clothing connected him to the case.

A tip from Edwards’ own daughter, April Balascio, who saw cold case reports on the internet from NBC television Channel 15 in Madison, led investigators back to Edwards. 

The Hack-Drew tragedy also was chronicled in “Unsolved Mysteries” and “Cold Case Files.”

“We’ve found over the years that working with media at all different levels — the  local level, print media, radio, TV, national — has always benefited us as far as our investigation receiving information,” Garcia said. “It’s been well received by the public and it’s been helpful for us.

“In the Hack-Drew homicides in 1980, Edwards’ daughter located it online and actually called us and gave us information that led to his apprehension and conviction,” he added.

Hopefully, he said, the “In Pursuit” segment will lead to a similar conclusion of this cold case.

“If you see something, say something,” Garcia advised. “We appreciate the community support.”

Highlights of televised segment

The 22-minute segment of “In Pursuit” that aired Oct. 6 begins with Walsh “introducing” the Lemkes.

“We’re heading to Sumner, Wisconsin, about an hour west of Milwaukee, where James and Nedra Lemke built a life based on love, generosity and hard work,” he said. “Part of a large and tight-knit family, they were active in their church, active in their community and always willing to lend a helping hand.

“So, when shots rang out on their family farm in 2020, everyone was left bewildered, questioning who would ever want to harm this couple, and why?” 

That is followed by Nedra’s actual 911 call to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office dispatch center reporting broken windows at the farmhouse of her grandfather, Verdal Anderson, who had died just 11 days earlier.

“This is not an emergency, but I’m taking care of my parents’ house and there’s windows broken, and we had locked the house down,” she told the dispatcher, who advised her against entering the house because it was not known whether an intruder was inside.

The first deputy is on the scene within minutes after the 5:48 p.m. call.

“I was scheduled to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. It seemed like a normal, run-of-the-mill day, and then I heard the initial call come out,” he said. 

He continued: “As I walked west down the driveway, I started moving toward the vehicle, and that’s when I saw her: a female, lying on the ground. I started trying to talk to her. I remember leaning over, trying to address her, still hadn’t seen any movement, hadn’t gotten any reaction from her.”

That is when he saw a trail of blood and realized the woman had sustained a gunshot wound.

“So I drew my weapon and moved around the back side of the car, and that’s when the first round of shots started ringing out,” he recalled. “As I’m crouched, I can see bullet marks in my car about an inch over my head. I figured out that the shooter was directly looking at me from an elevated position. And then I did a Superman dive into the ditch on the opposite side of the road.

“This is absolutely an ambush,” the deputy said.

He crawled south, rolling over and looking at the tops of trees. 

“I could see smoke coming up, really thick smoke, so it crossed my mind that the suspect had set the house on fire,” he added.

Another deputy arrived, followed by other units and the SWAT team. 

“This is a dangerous situation, because we don’t know where the shooter is,” Det. Petig stated in his interview.” “Is he in the house; has he escaped? Does he have a hostage? He shot at our deputy so they are armed and dangerous and we don’t know what they are going to do next.”

Deputies deployed a drone that enabled them to see not only Nedra Lemke lying near the front of her SUV, but also her husband, Jim. They presumed Nedra had been the 911 caller.

Det. Sgt. Garcia said everything unfolded so quickly that there wasn’t time to even think about suspects. People, including two of the Lemkes’ sons, were arriving and “our priority was safety, no one getting hurt.”

“Nedra’s sons indicated that the grandfather had recently passed away and there was some tension between their uncle, Kevin Anderson, and Nedra Lemke,” Det. McIntyre said.

Walsh said that SWAT teams found Anderson’s truck in a barn, so they knew he was or had been at the residence.

“Next question is: ‘Where is Kevin Anderson?’” McIntyre said.

Authorities reached out to each of the Lemkes’ family members individually to break the news.

“It’s 3 o’clock in the morning and someone started knocking on our door, so I went downstairs and there were two gentlemen,” the Lemkes’ daughter, Amanda Waterworth, said. “They showed me their badges and they started asking me about my mother and my father. We had asked what’s this about and they said ‘we’re here to tell you your grandparents’ house is on fire and there are two bodies that we found on the property.’ 

“I burst into tears, I was shaking, and the police couldn’t tell us anything,” she added.

The Waterworths drove to the town of Sumner farm.

“We got there and my older brother was standing in the driveway. And he was crying, and I’d never seen my brother cry. And it was just awful,” Waterworth said.

Investigators asked the family who they thought might have done this.

“My parents didn’t have enemies. There was nobody we could closely finger as they didn’t like my parents,” Waterworth said.

Meanwhile, Nedra’s brother, Kevin, was nowhere to be found.

“We knew that Kevin had had some arguments about some things with my grandparents,” Waterworth said. “That he had a little bit of a rocky relationship with my parents. But to kill them? It just doesn’t seem possible.”

Meanwhile, authorities spent three days sorting through the fire debris.

“No human remains were found,” McIntyre said.

“Kevin Anderson is not in the residence, clearly not in the pole barns or outbuildings, so where did he go?” Garcia added.

Investigators scoured the 80-plus acre property for three days.

“We continued to search the areas using drones, canines. We even used cadaver dogs, aircraft,” Petig said.

“A canine did hit on a specific field back into the large marsh area, so it’s quite possible that that might have been Kevin’s trail that the canine had located,” Garcia stated.

Walsh reported that officials turned to the community for help and local press “jumped on the story.” Former newspaper editor Christine Spangler said that officials asked that hunters keep their eyes out for something that looks like someone who might be living in the woods, as Anderson was an avid hunter and outdoorsman, and very familiar with the marsh area.

“That was kind of the talk of the town. How in the world could he get away?” Spangler said.

Waterworth, meanwhile, reflected on her uncle, saying that he felt like the black sheep of the family.

Her husband, Jason Waterworth, added that Anderson didn’t always get along with his parents and would argue with then about things at the farm and financial struggles.

“Meanwhile, as detectives dig into Kevin’s past, a picture of a possibly volatile and dangerous man comes into focus,” Walsh said.

Garcia said that Anderson had a criminal history dating back more than 20 years.

“Back in the 1990s, he had been convicted of reckless endangerment and firearms violations,” Spangler said.

Garcia reported the details: “Kevin and a friend walk to a bar and start breaking into cars. When bar patrons come out to confront them, Kevin starts shooting at the bar patrons and is arrested for doing so. At which time he receives a felony conviction, so he is not allowed to own guns, and our investigation shows he owned a number of guns.”

Waterworth said that on the Monday after her grandfather’s funeral, his will was given to family members.

“The will still did share everything equally; it just was who was in charge of settling the estate,” McIntyre said. “The will listed Nedra as the personal representative of the state.”

“Kevin was upset that he wasn’t the executor of the will, that he wasn’t receiving the farmland that he was entitled to,” Garcia noted.

Walsh said that on the day of the shooting, Nedra had left Anderson a voicemail saying she was going to the property that day to mow the lawn and she needed keys to get into the shed.

“Authorities now believe that Kevin might have been lying in wait to take out his revenge on his sister,” Walsh said. 

“I feel that him burning down the house definitely was a revenge move,” Waterworth told interviewers. “Whether it was my parents for something or whether it was my grandparents for what he felt he had been wronged with. One of my biggest fears is that he will hurt somebody else.”

She said she and the rest of her family are determined to honor their parents’ memory.

“My parents’ legacy was live life to the fullest. And they would always tell me ‘Go have your adventure,’” she recalled. “In the days after my grandfather died, my dad told me something special. He said, ‘When I go, it’ll be OK because I’m going where I want to go. So don’t you worry about me. You just go on and live your life. And when you get to heaven, I’ll be there.

“And I think I can wait for that,” she concluded.

“This story really breaks my heart,” Walsh said. 

He described Anderson as 6 feet tall weighing 200 pounds and having blue eyes, brown graying hair and sometimes sporting a white beard. 

He is “more than capable of living off the grid” and the ATF is so concerned that it has posted a $10,000 reward for his apprehension, Walsh stated.

“If you think you’ve seen this guy, don’t approach him. He’ll do what an animal does when you back it into a corner: He’ll attack,” Walsh added. “So please, help us bring peace to James and Nedra’s family. Do the right thing. Call me or text me and I guarantee ya, you can remain anonymous.”

“Host John Walsh guarantees anyone who reaches out to his hotline can remain anonymous,” Palmer said. “Calls are not traced. Tips can be called in or texted 24/7 and if they would like to speak to a hotline specialist, they can call 833-378-7783 (3-PURSUE) on show nights or during the week between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST.” 

They also may provide information at www.InPursuitTips.com. 

Authorities caution that anyone who sees him should not approach Anderson. Instead, area residents are asked to contact the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office immediately at (920) 674-7310.

Titled “Bad Blood,” this segment continues to stream on discovery+ and is available for viewing at  https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/tv-shows/in-pursuit-with-john-walsh/.