PORTAGE (WKOW) -- Authorities have formally charged a West Allis man with murder for the shooting death of a rural Columbia County man in 2019.
The Columbia County District Attorney's Office has charged Jason Kijewski, 43, with first-degree intentional homicide and armed burglary.
A Columbia County judge set Kijewski's bail at $2 million during a court hearing Wednesday.
A criminal complaint filed in the case against Kijewski details what led to his arrest.
On Sept. 27, 2019, Keith Wolf was found dead from a gunshot wound after going to investigate a sound he and his wife heard in the basement of their town of Leeds home.
Investigators recovered a DNA sample from the basement that did not match Wolf or his wife.
According to the complaint, "an investigative lead was developed with Jason Kijewski of West Allis, Wisconsin, as a potential suspect." The complaint did not specify how investigators developed the lead.
West Allis police talked to Kijewski in January at their station, giving him a facemask during his visit, the complaint said. When the interview ended, officers took the mask back from Kijewski and had it submitted for DNA analysis.
The analysis found that the DNA found in the basement likely belonged to Kijewski.
When he was questioned about the investigation, Kijewski allegedly admitted to trying to rob Wolf's house. According to the complaint, Kijewski said that he shot Wolf when the latter man came down the basement steps with a gun.
Columbia County Sheriff Roger Brandner says at the beginning of the investigation, with no eyewitnesses to the shooting, a wide net was cast.
"I know the family at times felt like they were suspects," Brandner says. "We go back to day one. We needed to find out who killed Keith Wolf and put his wife and his daughter in harm's way that night."
Brandner says Kajewski's DNA was not in a law enforcement database, so connecting evidence to a suspect was challenging. He says there was not a critical, citizen tip leading to Krajewski. Brandner says extensive law enforcement networking led to Brandner, without elaborating.
Court records state investigators recovered a spent, shell casing from the homicide scene and a round from Wolf's body. Records state that evidence matches a handgun seized from Kajewski's West Allis home last month.
While Kajewski's DNA was absent from the database as a result of his lack of any records of criminal convictions, Milwaukee County Court records show guns were seized from Kajewski in 2018. The guns were returned to him a few months before Wolf's killing.
"District Attorney has affirmatively declined to file charges in connection with the seizure against the person and ten months has passed since the seizure," online records of an April 2019 hearing into a petition for return of property states. Available records do not cite the reason for the seizure of Kajewski's weapons.
Brander says Kajewski is also a suspect in the armed robbery of a Juneau County business in the hours immediately after Wolf's fatal shooting in the head. He says that crime appears similar in motive to what happened in Columbia County. "He was looking for money," Brandner says of the home invasion. "That was going on here."
A preliminary hearing for Kajewski is scheduled in April.
Brandner says eighteen months of investigative work paid off by providing the beginning of closure. " 'Cause this is what this is really about is a suffering family that lost a loved one."
Columbia County District Attorney Brenda Yaskal says Kajewski's claim he fired after seeing the homeowner point a gun at him fails to change Kajewski's intent to kill.
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