The Canadian media seemed to be more on top of the generally sad news about Bembenek’s death last Saturday but the Milwaukee paper had a good obit. During her escape in 1990, I read an informative piece regarding the woman’s incarceration and the larger picture from the Shepherd Express.
Back when Bembenek joined the police, there weren’t many women officers. Thanks to its J. Edgar Hoover-like chief, the Milwaukee force’s composition by the late Seventies was still mainly white and male and he wanted to keep it that way. The Hoover comparison came into play in how this guy used undercover cops to spy on political enemies.
Anyway, the obit states she was fired during the probationary period. What they left out were the details surrounding her termination and why she sued for discrimination. She stumbled upon a party in a public park involving drinking, drugs, and nudity and the participants were off-duty cops. Bembenek then made the mistake of reporting this to internal affairs who were in cahoots with those same party goers. Getting canned as retaliation? Pretty likely. She probably made some mistakes to make the firing stick by her enemies.
The sudden marriage to another cop while filing a lawsuit against the department always seemed weird. As for the murder which followed. It never held up 100 percent and the state didn’t make a good case. I’m not saying there was a conspiracy, I’m more of an advocate that the Milwaukee PD did a poor job gathering evidence, solidifying a motive and proving opportunity. There’s a chance Bembenek murdered her husband’s ex-wife yet these bumbling cops botched it, giving fuel to the framing theories. Three of Milwaukee’s finest failed to catch Jeffrey Dahmer when he practically handed himself over on a golden platter. Therefore I wouldn’t put it past these cops on trying to silence “some big-mouthed broad” who would’ve drawn attention to the larger problem, MPD’s involvement with the drug dealers on the east side.
To the status quo’s luck, Bembenek wasn’t a sympathetic defendant on the stand as her past was dredged up: she was manipulative, she could get jealous to the point of being irrational, she felt the world owed her, there were cocaine-usage rumors and the Playboy bunny gig (she was a waitress at the club for three weeks, not Hef’s girlfriend). Convicted to a life sentence because Wisconsin doesn’t have the death penalty, it seemed to be the end of the lady’s story.
Then 20 years ago Bembenek escaped from prison with the help of some sucker she was engaged to. Innocent or not, busting your boy/girlfriend out is incredibly stupid. Getting caught is never a matter of how but when. The duo hid out in Canada for three months before they were caught. The extradition took about a year.
The part which baffled me afterwards were the terms of her receiving parole at the end of 1992. I know she accepted the second-degree murder charge after claiming innocence for a decade. Sounds unwise. However, doesn’t murder still involve prison over many years? Maybe she was willing to do anything to get out and/or the city didn’t want further exposure of its corrupt, inept police.
Now she’s deceased and the closest thing to the truth will probably never happen. Meanwhile, some retired, dirty ex-Milwaukee cops are raising their beer mugs, congratulating themselves. After the harsh winters, that city’s police are the next least-favorite thing I remember; they had a hard-on for harassing college students.