Whipped Cream Difficulties

One of my tipsters pointed out that Lawrencia “Bambi” Bembenek has died.

For those of you who don’t remember the bizarre saga of  the Bembenek case: Ms. Bembenek was a former waitress in a Playboy Club who became an officer with the Milwaukee PD. Shortly after that, she married a Milwaukee PD detective. Shortly after that, the detective’s ex-wife was capped.

Ms. Bembenek was arrested and charged with the murder, but claimed she had been framed by members of the Milwaukee PD, as retaliation for her cooperation in a federal investigation of the department. In spite of this, Ms. Bembenek was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Eight years after her conviction, Ms. Bembenek escaped from prison and fled to Canada. She was recaptured within three months, but in the meantime had gained a substantial amount of support in Milwaukee.

A reinvestigation of the case followed, and in December 1992 a judge reduced Ms. Bembenek’s life sentence to 20 years after she struck a deal with prosecutors in which she pleaded no contest to second-degree murder. She was immediately released for time served.

Edited to add: slightly more detailed WP obit here. Somehow, I missed the whole “lawsuit against Dr. Phil” thing.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 22nd, 2010 at 7:34 am and is filed under Clippings, Law, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.