Union Grove

Intruder slashes man’s throat

Complaint: He broke into Kansasville home with intent to kill

A 28-year-old Kansasville man is facing attempted homicide charges after allegedly breaking into a Dover home with the intent of killing its occupants Saturday morning.

Ronald E. Kaehne has been charged with two counts attempted first-degree intentional homicide, as well as armed burglary and substantial battery with use of a dangerous weapon.

Kaehne, Ronald
Ronald E. Kaehne

All four charges are felonies, and Kaehne remained in jail as of Tuesday. His bail was set at $500,000 during an initial appearance in Racine County Circuit Court Tuesday.

According to the criminal complaint from the Racine County District Attorney’s office, deputies were dispatched to the home in Dover at about 2:42 a.m. Saturday.

The criminal complaint painted a terrifying scene, with a woman who lives in the home describing waking up at 2:30 in the morning to her boyfriend “flailing his arms” and then fighting with someone.

During the fight, the boyfriend’s throat was cut with a knife from his ear to about a quarter of an inch from his Adam’s apple. Flight for Life was called, and the man was transported to an undisclosed hospital.

The man later spoke with investigators at the hospital, according to the complaint. He told them he awoke to a man standing over him with a knife pointed at him, and although he was able to punch the suspect, the victim told investigators he said to his girlfriend who was sleeping in the same bed, “he just cut me.”

The girlfriend responded by saying, “I have a gun,” and fired a shot at intruder as he fled down a hallway and out the same window through which he entered, the complaint says.

Deputies noticed a blood trail in the hallway as well as the knife. They followed footprints from the home that led to Kaehne’s residence. The complaint states Kaehne was read his Miranda Rights and agreed to talk to investigators.

Kaehne allegedly told them that his grandparents were psychopaths and his father was a murderer, and that he had picked his target based on the fact it did not look many people lived there.

Kaehne also allegedly told investigators he stood over the couple for about 40 minutes while both were sleeping – and that he knew if he had killed one of them, he would have to kill the other and run.

When police searched Kaehne’s residence, a brown journal was found. Kaehne allegedly told police that the journal was his.

The last journal entry from the day before included, “I’ll kill my targets tonight.”

A later entry allegedly included the following account of the incident:

“I’m leaving with a saber tooth knife, box cutter and latex gloves … I’m thinking of trailing the blood out to the driveway to implicate a car. I failed; both are alive and both called out ‘he’ and worst of all I left a knife and both gloves there before I accidentally cut myself.

“No, there’s more I may have cut myself on the window. Police were called and I wasted more than 30 minutes standing over them and panicked. I’m so (expletive).”

In the journal, Kaehne also allegedly wrote that he knew he couldn’t write off the incident as breaking and entering, and he was going to try and get rid of the evidence and “stay inside for as long as I can.”

One of the investigators added that, during a search of Kaehne’s room, a diagram of the human body was found – with handwritten arrows pointing to areas such as the throat, neck, spine, heart and kidneys.

A preliminary hearing in the case is set for 8:30 a.m. Jan. 28.

Comments are closed.