He was not home when Ethan died. The State says his order is why.
October 2026 | Justice Is A Process
On April 20, 2018, a seven-year-old boy named Ethan Hauschultz was carrying a log around a path in a backyard in the town of Newton, in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin.
It was a punishment. According to the criminal complaint, as Fox 11 has reported it, the walk was supposed to last two hours a day, for a week. The teenager left in charge that day gave the reason: Ethan did not know 13 Bible verses to his guardian's satisfaction.
Ethan did not survive the day.
The complaint says he struggled to carry his log. It says the 14-year-old supervising him struck him again and again, and then buried him in packed snow with no coat and no boots. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office found that Ethan died of hypothermia and of blunt force injuries to his head, his chest and his abdomen.
That 14-year-old was Damian Hauschultz. Wisconsin charged him in adult court. He was convicted of first-degree reckless homicide, and he is serving 20 years in prison.
He is not the one on trial.
The man on trial is his father. Timothy Hauschultz, 56, was Ethan's great-uncle and his court-appointed guardian. And here is the fact that sets this trial apart from almost every child death case you have watched: Timothy Hauschultz was not home when Ethan died. Neither was his wife. In everything I have read, nobody alleges he struck Ethan that day, and nobody alleges he packed the snow.
The State of Wisconsin says he did not have to be there. Prosecutors allege he set the punishment, picked the logs, and told his 14-year-old son to make sure Ethan completed it. The defense says the son acted on his own, beyond anything his father told him to do.
So twelve people in Manitowoc County are going to be asked a question that sounds simple and is anything but. A guardian sets a punishment. He leaves a teenager in charge of it. A child dies. Who answers for that?
There is a second story sitting right beside that one, and I am going to keep it in front of you for the whole trial. This case was never supposed to reach a jury. The State and the defense agreed to end it with a plea, more than once. Judges refused. On one of those deals, the State recommended a sentence of time served. Ethan's mother stood up in that courtroom and begged the judge for the maximum.
You may have seen this case called the Buried Beneath the Snow Trial. Opening statements are set for Tuesday, October 13, 2026, in front of a jury of seven men and seven women.
I want to be plain about where I stand before a single witness is sworn. Timothy Hauschultz has pleaded not guilty. He is presumed innocent, and he stays presumed innocent unless and until this jury says otherwise. I am not here to convict him and I am not here to clear him. I am here to watch whether the State can prove what it charged, beyond a reasonable doubt, to jurors who will have to keep two things apart in their minds for the length of this trial: what a teenager did in that yard, and what a grown man ordered.
A child is dead. Somebody is already in prison for it. The question now is whether the law reaches one step further up.
This is Justice Is A Process. Let's begin.
Before I walk you through this, you should know where it comes from. I have not read the criminal complaint itself. What follows is the complaint as Wisconsin reporters who have read it describe it, and I will tell you which outlet each piece comes from. Where two outlets disagree, I am going to show you the disagreement. I am not going to pick the version that makes a better story.
All of it is allegation. None of it has been proven to this jury.
The State's case does not start on April 20. It starts with the punishment itself.
When the charges were filed in 2019, Fox 11 reported that Timothy Hauschultz told police that carrying logs was a form of discipline. WBAY reports that other children who lived in the home told investigators he often made them walk laps carrying heavy logs he had selected, with five seconds of rest after each lap.
How heavy? The outlets do not agree to the pound. Fox 11's 2019 report put Ethan's log at 44 pounds, which it described as "about two-thirds of the boy's body weight." WBAY has reported the log at about 40 pounds, and says deputies put Ethan's own weight at 60 pounds.
According to the complaint as Fox 11 reports it, Ethan's punishment was to carry a log around a path in the backyard for two hours a day, for one week. Timothy picked the logs. His son Damian supervised.
And the offense that earned a seven-year-old a week of that? Fox 11 reports that Damian said Ethan had to carry wood for not knowing 13 Bible verses to Timothy's satisfaction.
Here is the sentence this whole trial turns on. According to the complaint, Timothy told his son Damian, then 14, to make sure Ethan "completed his punishment."
Fox 11 reports that neither Timothy nor his wife, Tina McKeever-Hauschultz, was home when Ethan died.
What the complaint says happened in that yard is hard to read. I am going to give it to you once, in the complaint's own words where I have them, and then I am going to leave it alone. Ethan was seven. He deserves the truth told straight, and he does not need it told twice.
The complaint says Ethan "struggled to carry his log." It alleges that Damian did "hit, kick, strike and poke Ethan approximately 100 times." Fox 11's 2019 report and WBAY add that the complaint describes a belt or a stick being used at times, and the log being rolled across Ethan's chest. The complaint alleges Damian stood on Ethan's "body and head" while Ethan was "face-down in a puddle." And it alleges Damian buried him in "80 pounds of packed snow" and left him there for about 20 to 30 minutes, without a coat or boots.
Damian talked to investigators. According to WBAY and Fox 11, he said he was frustrated that the younger children kept dropping their wood every five minutes. He said that when Ethan stopped responding, he thought Ethan was resisting. He described Ethan as being "in his own little coffin of snow."
And he told them one more thing. Fox 11 reported in 2019 that Damian said the punishment was directed by his father.
Timothy Hauschultz gave police his own account. According to that same 2019 Fox 11 report, he said log walking was a form of discipline, he said he was not home, and he said Damian called him twice because Ethan was not moving.
What happened next is one of the places where the reporting does not line up cleanly, and I am going to show you the seam.
WBAY reports that Timothy and Tina took Ethan to a hospital, and that he died there after lifesaving efforts. Fox 11, in a November 2025 story, describes Ethan as having been found dead in a snowbank at the home. Both outlets have covered this case for years. I do not know which wording is closer to what the witnesses will say, and I am going to listen for it.
On the cause of death, WBAY reports the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office found hypothermia and blunt force injuries to the head, chest and abdomen. Fox 11's 2019 report also described a rib fracture. NBC26's trial-week story gives the cause as hypothermia alone.
Then there is the letter. In February 2025, Ethan's mother, Andrea Everett, wrote to the court, and WBAY published parts of it. She wrote that Timothy "failed to call 9-1-1" and "lied to hospital staff." She wrote: "Had they known the truth, Ethan still might be here today."
I want to be careful with that, because she has earned care and so has the man she is writing about. Those are her words. They are a mother's allegation in a letter to a judge. No court has found them to be true. Whether the State puts evidence behind them in front of this jury is something we are going to find out together.
Ethan died in April 2018. The arrests came in February 2019.
Three people were charged. Timothy Hauschultz, then 48, was charged with felony murder and other counts. His wife Tina was charged. And Damian, 15 by then, was charged in adult court with first-degree reckless homicide and six other charges, according to Fox 11.
Two of those three cases are over. Damian is in prison. Tina served a prison sentence and is out on supervision. The third case, the one against the man the State says gave the order, took more than seven years to reach a jury. Why it took that long is a story of its own, and we will get to it.
His full name was Ethan James-Lee Hauschultz. The Manitowoc Public Library's index of local death notices records that he was born on September 13, 2010, in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and that he died on April 20, 2018. He was seven years old.
I wish I could tell you more about him than that. I looked. I wanted to tell you what he loved, what made him laugh, what he was like in a classroom. The public record I could find does not say. Nearly everything written about Ethan is about the last day of his life, and I am not going to invent a childhood for him to fill the space. If his family shares who he was during this trial, I will bring it to you.
Here is what the record does say. WBAY reported in 2019 that Ethan and his siblings were placed with the Hauschultz family in 2017, and that the reason "remains unclear." A later WBAY report says Child Protective Services sent him there. He died the following April.
His mother is Andrea Everett. She has written to the court, and she has testified in it. When Wisconsin's governor signed a child-placement law named for her son in 2021, she told WBAY: "There is no easy day. I learn to live with the pain that I'll never see my son ever again, and that's the reality."
Hold onto that when the legal arguments get technical. They will.
Timothy Hauschultz is 56. He was Ethan's great-uncle and his court-appointed guardian.
You are going to see him called "the uncle" in headlines, and Ethan called his "nephew." Fox 11 and NBC26 say great-nephew, and so does the lead of WBAY's own story on jury selection. I am going with great-uncle. It matters less as family trivia than as a legal fact, because the word that carries weight in this trial is the other one. Guardian. A court put Ethan in this man's care.
He has pleaded not guilty.
He has also already spent years locked up on this case without being convicted of anything in it. Fox 11 reports he was arrested in February 2019 and held on a $100,000 cash bond he could not post. The bond was later reduced to $75,000, and he posted it in May 2022. In January 2026, WBAY reported that a judge denied his request to modify his bond and kept him on GPS monitoring.
Read those dates again. From February 2019 until May 2022, a man the law presumes innocent sat in jail because he could not come up with the money. Whatever this jury decides, that happened first.
Damian is Timothy's son. He was 14 on the day Ethan died. He is 22 now.
His case is closed, and even so, the reporting on how it closed has wrinkles. WBAY and most of Fox 11's stories say he pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide. One Fox 11 story says no contest. Either way he stands convicted. WBAY reports that three child abuse counts and three substantial battery counts were dismissed and read in.
On September 2, 2021, Judge Jerilyn Dietz sentenced him to 20 years in prison followed by 10 years of extended supervision. WBAY reports the State had asked for 12 to 17 years in prison. Some stories call that a 30-year sentence and some call it 20. They are describing the same sentence and counting it two ways.
Damian later asked for a reduction. On June 19, 2026, Sheboygan County Judge Samantha Bastil kept the 20 years in prison and raised his extended supervision from 10 years to 15. She ordered him to have no contact with his father, and she ordered him to write a letter to Ethan's mother. One outlet places that hearing in April. Fox 11 and WBAY both date it June 19.
You will also see Damian's relationship to Ethan described three different ways: cousin, foster brother, stepbrother. I am not going to choose one for you. What matters for this trial is simpler. He was the teenager in charge, he is the one person who can say what his father told him, and both sides have called his testimony critical.
Tina McKeever-Hauschultz is Timothy's wife. WBAY reports she pleaded no contest to failing to prevent mental harm to a child and to child abuse, failing to prevent great harm. She was sentenced to five years in prison. Fox 11, citing state records, reports she was released to extended supervision in January 2024 and that her supervision runs until January 2029.
She is a witness in this trial. WBAY reports she came to court on the day of jury selection to support her husband and was asked to leave the courtroom for exactly that reason.
Ethan was not the only child in that home. Some of the children who lived there are expected to be witnesses. District Attorney Jacalyn LaBre has said in court that testifying will add to their trauma.
You will not read their names here. Not in a headline, not in a description, not anywhere I control the words. They were children when this happened, they did nothing wrong, and they get to grow up without this trial attached to their names in a search result.
The case is in Manitowoc County Circuit Court. Fox 11 gives the case number as 2019CF000075.
The judge is Carey Reed of Calumet County. He is the second judge on this case. Judge Jerilyn Dietz handled it for years, sentenced Damian, and recused herself in May 2025. The outlets describe her reason differently. WBAY says she had acted as a court-appointed guardian in connection with some of the witnesses. Fox 11 says she had been a guardian ad litem for Damian.
Manitowoc County District Attorney Jacalyn LaBre prosecutes for the State. Fox 11 named Donna Kuchler as defense counsel in October 2025 and again in January 2026, and NBC26 reported that attorney Bradley Novreske argued a defense motion in February 2025. I have not seen a trial-week report confirming who sits at each table, so I will confirm that from the courtroom on Day 1.
WBAY reports the jury was seated at about 3:30 in the afternoon on October 12, 2026, drawn from a pool of nearly 100 people, with 20 of them questioned one at a time. Seven men and seven women will hear the evidence. Twelve will deliberate.
This is the section where I have to tell you what I do not know.
Fox 11 reports that Timothy Hauschultz faces six charges, "including neglecting a child, consequence is death, and intentionally contributing to the delinquency of a child resulting in death." Those are the only two that any source I have read names in the current case. No outlet I have read has published the full list of six, and none gives a statute number for any of them.
I am not going to guess at the other four. Guessing at criminal charges against a man who is presumed innocent is exactly the thing this channel exists to refuse. When the charges are read in open court, I will publish the full list.
Here is what I can tell you about how the charges got to where they are.
When the case was filed in 2019, Fox 11 reported felony murder and five other charges. In February 2025, NBC26 described "six felonies and two misdemeanor offenses." In late 2025, Fox 11 described eight counts, including felony murder, child abuse and battery. WBAY's running list has been murder, intentionally contributing to delinquency resulting in death, and three counts of being party to the crime of child abuse intentionally causing harm.
Then, on November 10, 2025, the lead charge changed. And in 2026, Fox 11 has reported six charges where it once reported eight. How eight became six is not explained in anything I have read.
What it means: The State is not accusing Timothy Hauschultz of killing Ethan with his own hands. It is accusing him of failing a child he was responsible for, with death as the result.
What the law says: Wisconsin's child neglect law is section 948.21 of the state statutes. As it reads now, it applies to "any person who is responsible for a child's welfare who, through his or her action or failure to take action," and "for reasons other than poverty, negligently fails to provide" things a child needs, "so as to seriously endanger the physical, mental, or emotional health of the child." The list of what must be provided includes necessary care, food, clothing, medical care and shelter.
The word to watch: "Negligently." The statute defines it as acting, or failing to act, in a way "that a reasonable person would know or should know" seriously endangers a child's health. That is a different question from whether someone meant for a child to die.
Potential sentence: Fox 11 reports this count carries a maximum of 25 years. That matches the statute books: neglect is "a Class D felony if the child suffers death as a consequence," and a Class D felony carries "a fine not to exceed $100,000 or imprisonment not to exceed 25 years, or both."
A caution from me: I have not read the charging document, so I cannot tell you the exact subsection the State charged. This statute has also been amended over the years, and its history notes list changes in 2017 and in 2025. The wording that controls is the wording Judge Reed reads to the jury, and I will bring you that when he does.
What it means: This one is aimed at an adult's influence over a child's wrongdoing. No source I have read gives its count number.
What the law says: Wisconsin's law on this is section 948.40. It reads: "No person may intentionally encourage or contribute to the delinquency of a child." It also says a person can contribute to a child's delinquency if "the natural and probable consequences of the person's actions or failure to take action" would be to cause it.
The word to watch: "Intentionally." Count 1 asks what a reasonable guardian should have known. This charge, by its name, asks what Timothy Hauschultz meant to do. No report I have read spells out which child's conduct this count is built on. The natural reading is that it points at the 14-year-old the State says he left in charge, and I will confirm that from the courtroom before I repeat it as fact.
Potential sentence: Under the statute, contributing to a child's delinquency is ordinarily a misdemeanor, but "if death is a consequence, the person is guilty of a Class D felony." That is the same class as Count 1, with the same ceiling of 25 years.
What I know: Fox 11 reports six charges in all. Two are named above.
What I do not know: The other four. Earlier reporting on this case listed child abuse and battery counts, but I cannot tell you which of those survive, and I will not fill the gap with a guess.
What I will do: Publish the complete list, with each count's elements and sentence range, as soon as the charges are read in open court.
One reminder, and it applies to every count on that list whether I can name it yet or not. The burden is on the State, all of it. Timothy Hauschultz does not have to prove he gave a milder order. He does not have to prove his son went too far. He does not have to prove anything. The State has to prove each element of each charge beyond a reasonable doubt, or the jury has to acquit on that charge.
Most trials are fights over what happened. This one is different, because almost nobody is fighting about what happened in that yard. A court has already convicted the person who did it.
This case is at trial because the man charged was not home when Ethan died. His teenage son carried out the punishment and is already in prison for it. The jury decides whether the great-uncle and guardian who set the punishment and left a 14-year-old in charge of it answers for the death, or whether the son went beyond what he was told.
That is the whole trial. What did the guardian order? What did he know about how his son carried out orders like that? And does the man who gives an order answer for what is done in his name?
And the reason it is in front of twelve citizens at all, more than seven years after the charges were filed, is that judges refused the plea deals both sides had agreed to. Keep both of those threads in your hand. They are going to cross more than once.
The State's theory, as Fox 11 summarizes it, is that Timothy Hauschultz ordered the punishment that led to Ethan's death.
Look at the pieces the complaint gives prosecutors. He chose log carrying as discipline, by his own statement to police. He picked the logs. The complaint describes the terms: two hours a day, for a week, for a seven-year-old. It says he put a 14-year-old in charge of enforcing it. And according to what Damian told investigators in 2019, the punishment was directed by his father.
The State does not have to say Timothy wanted Ethan dead, and as far as I can tell it is not saying that. Listen to how District Attorney LaBre described her own witness at Damian's resentencing in June 2026. Fox 11 reported she said Damian was "following his father's orders," and that Damian was the one who made the punishment violent.
Think about what that sentence does. The State's own prosecutor has said, in open court, that the violence came from the son. So the State's case against the father cannot rest on the violence alone. It has to rest on the order, on the conditions, and on what a guardian owes a child he has sent out into the cold to be punished.
For most of its life this was a felony murder case. On November 10, 2025, at the State's own request, it stopped being one.
That day Judge Reed approved the State's motion to change Count 1 from felony murder, as party to a crime, to child neglect with death as a consequence. LaBre's explanation, as Fox 11 quoted her: "Further review with witnesses, the state feels that amending count one to the child neglect is a more appropriate reflection of the facts of this case."
There are two ways to read that, and you should hold both.
One reading: after seven years, the State took the word murder off the case against Timothy Hauschultz. A prosecutor does not do that lightly.
The other reading comes from Fox 11's own headline a month earlier, which described prosecutors asking to upgrade the charges. By Fox 11's numbers, substantial battery carries three and a half years and felony murder adds 15 to that, while the neglect count carries 25. So the label got lighter and the ceiling got higher.
Both things are true at once. My read, and it is only my read: the change tells you where the State thinks its proof is strongest. On the duty of a guardian, and less on tying him to each blow.
Fox 11 states the defense in one line: "The defense contends Timothy's son, Damian, acted on his own accord, beyond Timothy's instructions."
That is a real defense, and you should take it seriously. An order to make a child finish carrying a log is one thing. What the complaint says Damian did after that is another. If the jury believes Timothy ordered the first and Damian invented the second, the State has a problem on any charge that requires intent.
The defense has also fought hard on the ground rules. It asked for a jury from outside Manitowoc County. Denied. It asked for the jury to be sequestered. Denied. In February 2025 it accused Judge Dietz of bias after she refused a plea deal. Denied. In December 2025 it asked Judge Reed to step aside. Denied. WBAY reports the defense also filed statements it wants the jury to hear under exceptions to the hearsay rule, and I have not found a report of the ruling.
Whether Timothy Hauschultz testifies is open. As of September 28, 2026, Fox 11 reported: "It is not yet known if Timothy Hauschultz will take the stand on his behalf."
Now the second thread.
On February 20, 2025, the State and the defense walked into Judge Dietz's courtroom with a deal. NBC26 and Fox 11 report it involved two counts of being party to child abuse. Judge Dietz refused it. WBAY reported audible gasps in the courtroom. NBC26 quoted the judge: "And to now arrive at this agreement suggests that something significant changed."
The defense moved to have her removed for bias. NBC26 quoted attorney Bradley Novreske's argument that "the punishment available to Mr. Hauschultz is not severe enough for the court's liking." She denied the motion. In May 2025 she recused herself, and the case went to Judge Reed.
On November 10, 2025, the two sides tried again. This time, Fox 11 reports, Timothy Hauschultz offered an Alford plea to two charges: failure to act, and neglecting a child. In an Alford plea a defendant keeps saying he is innocent while conceding the State has enough evidence to convict him. The State recommended time served.
Ethan's mother took the stand. Fox 11 reports she said she was not against a plea agreement as such. She was against time served. Her words to the judge: "I beg you to impose the maximum sentence possible." And: "Timothy deserves to be held accountable for the irreversible harm that he has caused."
Judge Reed said no. "In exercising the discretion that this court is afforded, I'm not going to accept the plea, bargained, as stated here." Fox 11's reporter wrote that the judge criticized Hauschultz's refusal to take accountability. The lawyers conferred and came back with a second proposal the same day. WBAY reports that Hauschultz agreed to change his plea to guilty on both charges. The judge refused that too.
How many deals is that in total? Fox 11 reported in January 2026 that three plea deals had been presented to the two judges and that all three were rejected. WBAY's stories count two. I am giving you both numbers because both are in print.
Why would a prosecutor recommend time served in the death of a seven-year-old? WBAY reported the State's stated reasons: the case was seven years old, and evidence and witness memory get less reliable with time.
Here is my opinion, and I am labeling it as opinion. A time-served recommendation in a case like this owed the public a fuller explanation than it got, and I understand why a judge asked out loud what had changed. I also think you should notice what the plea history does not prove. A man who is willing to end seven years of prosecution with a plea has not confessed to anything, and an Alford plea by definition comes with a claim of innocence. I am not the jury, and neither are you. The twelve people who are will be asked to decide this on evidence, and a deal that never happened is not evidence.
Everything comes back to Damian.
Fox 11 reports: "Both the state and defense have said Damian's testimony is critical to having a fair and complete trial." The same story reports: "Damian's attorney has said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and not testify."
That standoff is a large part of why you are reading this in October 2026 and not earlier. In December 2025 both sides asked Judge Reed to delay the trial for Damian, and he answered that the case "will proceed as scheduled." In January 2026 it was postponed after all. LaBre told the court that without Damian, the State would have to lean harder on three other children from the home.
Then came Damian's resentencing on June 19, 2026. Fox 11 reported that it clears the way for him to testify. WBAY lists him as a potential witness.
Whether he takes the stand, and what he says if he does, is not something any source I have read can tell you. I would rather say that plainly than pretend to know.
Other coverage will tell you what each witness said. I want to watch whether the process holds up under the weight of this case. And this case is heavy. When the victim is a seven-year-old, every instinct in the room pulls toward punishing somebody. The rules exist for exactly that moment.
The jury is going to hear, in detail, what Damian did. It will be the hardest testimony of the trial. And every juror will have to do something that is hard for any human being: hear it, feel it, and then set it to one side and ask a separate question about a different person.
Timothy Hauschultz can be convicted only for what the State proves about Timothy Hauschultz. What he ordered. What he knew. What he failed to do. If the State spends its days proving how terrible that afternoon was and its minutes proving what the defendant's part in it was, that is a problem, and I will say so.
It cuts the other way too. "I was not there" is not a complete answer to a neglect charge. As the statute reads, neglect can be committed through a "failure to take action." A guardian's duty does not end at the driveway. If the State proves he set up something a reasonable adult would know was dangerous and walked away from it, his absence is part of the State's case.
Damian Hauschultz has a constitutional right not to be made a witness against himself. If he invokes it, watch how the court handles it. Does it happen in front of the jury or outside its presence? What is the jury told?
And if he does not testify, watch what happens to the things he told investigators in 2019. The Sixth Amendment gives every defendant the right to confront the witnesses against him. A statement that the punishment was directed by his father is powerful. A defendant who cannot cross-examine the person who said it has lost something the Constitution promises him. The defense's own request to bring in statements under hearsay exceptions tells you both sides want pieces of what was said outside this courtroom. Which pieces come in, and why, could decide this case.
Timothy Hauschultz may testify. He may not. In a case that turns on what one man said to his son, the pull to hear from that man is enormous.
If he stays in his chair, the jury may not hold it against him, and I will not either. The State carries the burden. He carries none.
Manitowoc County has been reading about Ethan Hauschultz since 2019. The plea rejections made headlines well beyond the county. The defense asked for jurors from somewhere else and asked for sequestration, and Judge Reed denied both.
That does not mean the jury is unfair. WBAY reports nearly 100 people were brought in and 20 were questioned individually. It does mean the fourteen people in that box were picked from a community that has had seven years to form an opinion. I will be watching how the court protects them from the coverage, including coverage like mine.
The State has told the court that other children from the home are among its witnesses, and that testifying will add to their trauma. I believe that.
The defendant still has the right to test what they say. Those two things are both true, and a good judge protects both. Watch for how the questioning is handled, how long each child is kept on the stand, and whether either side loses sight of who is sitting in that chair.
A judge has the power to refuse a plea bargain. Judge Reed used it, and Fox 11 reported he criticized the defendant's refusal to take accountability when he did.
That same judge now presides over the trial of a man who says he is not guilty. The defense asked him to step aside and he declined. I am going to watch his rulings on objections and evidence with that history in mind. If the rulings are even, I will tell you. If they lean, I will tell you that.
Delay hurts everybody. It hurt Ethan's mother, who told the court in November 2025: "My family deserves justice, justice we've been waiting for over seven long years." It hurts a defendant who lives for years as an accused man. And it hurts the truth, because the State itself said the evidence and the memories were getting less reliable. Remember that when a witness is asked what they saw and heard in 2018.
There is one more question, and this jury will not be asked to answer it. How did Ethan end up in that home?
WBAY reported in 2019 that the reason for the placement "remains unclear," under a headline about the questions his death raised over guardianship. In 2021 Wisconsin answered with a statute. Governor Tony Evers signed Senate Bill 24, known as Ethan's Law, on July 15, 2021. WBAY's description: "The law seeks to protect children from being placed with known abusers."
The senator who led the bill, Andre Jacque, told WBAY that county human services workers had felt pressured to make placements they did not feel were necessarily safe because of how the law was written. He said: "Ethan's death at least is helping to expose the flaws in the system."
Ethan's mother put it more directly. "The system failed my children because my son lost his life." And: "It's heartbreaking to me that it cost my son his life for a bill like this to be made."
Nobody from that placement process is on trial in Manitowoc County. One man is, on six charges, and he is presumed innocent of every one. But I do not think you can watch this trial honestly without keeping the larger question open. A court and an agency made a decision about where Ethan and his siblings would live. Ethan is dead. The trial will tell us what the State can prove about Timothy Hauschultz. It will not tell us who signed off on the placement, or what they knew.
My father, Steven M. Askin, was a criminal defense attorney in West Virginia. I was twelve when I watched him get indicted, and I learned what a courtroom looks like from the family's side of the rail.
What I carry from that is simple. The rules have to hold in the hardest case, or they do not hold. This is a hard one. A child is dead, the facts are brutal, and the man at the defense table is easy to be angry at. That is exactly the kind of case where the presumption of innocence gets tested for real.
So the standard here is proof. Evidence about this defendant and what he did. A verdict from twelve jurors and from nobody else.
Here is how a 2018 death became a 2026 trial. Each date below comes from the outlet named in the sources at the bottom of this page.
On length, the reporting gives two figures. WBAY and NBC26 say the trial is scheduled for two weeks. When the date was set in March 2026, Fox 11 reported the lawyers expected eight or nine days. Plan on the two weeks.
On witnesses, here is what has been reported. Tina McKeever-Hauschultz is on the witness list. Damian Hauschultz is listed as a potential witness. The State has told the court it would rely on other children from the home. The medical examiner's findings are at the center of the cause of death, so expect testimony on hypothermia and on the injuries. There was also a pretrial fight over expert testimony, and I will tell you who that doctor is and which side is calling that witness when I can confirm it.
On the defense, expect the opening statement to put distance between an order and an outcome. The line is already public: the son went beyond his instructions.
And expect the first real test of this case to come early. Somebody has to tell the jury what Timothy Hauschultz said to his son before he left the house. Watch who the State calls to do it.
Starting October 13, 2026, we are in that courtroom for all of it, gavel to adjournment.
Here is what you get from this channel for the life of the trial:
Live broadcasts. The trial as it happens, so you can watch the witnesses yourself and not take anybody's word for what they said, including mine.
No Breaks Editions. The court day for uninterrupted viewing, for those of you who cannot sit through the recesses.
The Case Story. The trial told in order, part by part, each one picking up where the last recess left off. If you miss a day, this is how you catch up without losing the thread.
Key moments. The testimony that moves the case, cut so you can hear every word of it in context.
Commentary. My read on what the evidence did and did not prove, labeled as my read.
Three promises go with that.
First, I will not name the other children from that home, and I will not put a child's worst day in a headline to earn a click. Ethan's name is on this case because his life is the reason for it. The others get their privacy.
Second, when the reporting conflicts, I will show you the conflict, the same way I did on this page. And when I learn the four charges I could not name here, this page gets updated.
Third, I will keep asking the one question this trial is built on, of every witness, every day. What did the guardian order, what did he know, and does the man who gave the order answer for what was done in his name?
Live broadcasts. No Breaks Editions. The Case Story, part by part.
Timothy Hauschultz is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
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