The Green County case against Logan Kruckenberg Anderson carried both a murder prosecution and a high-stakes dispute over juvenile interrogation tactics.
MONROE, Wis. — Logan Kruckenberg Anderson was sentenced to life in prison March 16 for the killing of his newborn daughter, but the path to that sentence ran through years of court fights over whether some of the statements he made as a 16-year-old suspect should ever have reached a jury.
The case mattered beyond its grim facts because it became both a homicide prosecution and a test of how far police may go when questioning a teenager in crisis. Prosecutors accused Kruckenberg Anderson of taking his baby daughter into woods near Albany in January 2021, covering her with snow and shooting her when she cried. Defense lawyers challenged the statements he gave over multiple interviews, arguing some were involuntary and obtained without required warnings. In 2024, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals issued a mixed ruling on those statements. A jury still convicted him in November 2025, and a judge later imposed life with possible extended supervision after 45 years.
The appellate opinion laid out the questioning in unusual detail. It said officers first arrived around 2 a.m. on Jan. 9, 2021, at the home of Kruckenberg Anderson’s 14-year-old girlfriend after a report of a missing newborn. He initially said he had given the child to a friend named Tyler to take to an adoption agency. Later that day, officers brought him to the Albany Police Department for more questioning and took possession of his phone. By early Jan. 10, the interviews had shifted to the Brodhead Police Department, where Special Agent James Pertzborn joined the questioning. The opinion says Kruckenberg Anderson told investigators he had not slept, eaten or had anything to drink besides water over the preceding three days, details the court later weighed when deciding whether his will had been overborne.
What happened next became the core of the suppression fight. The Court of Appeals described Pertzborn making repeated assurances that he would help the teenager, adopting what the court called a parental-like posture during the interrogation. At one point, according to the opinion, the agent held Kruckenberg Anderson’s hand and urged him to be honest so the child could have a proper burial. The court said those tactics, combined with the suspect’s age, emotional state and exhaustion, rendered later Jan. 10 statements involuntary after a certain point. But it did not throw out everything. The court concluded that earlier statements before that turning point at the Brodhead station were voluntary and that Kruckenberg Anderson was not yet in custody for Miranda purposes during part of the questioning.
That ruling did not erase the case. Instead, it narrowed the evidence that could be used at trial and sent the prosecution forward with a more limited statement record. Prosecutors still had the broad outline of the state’s theory: that Harper was born in a bathtub on Jan. 5, 2021, after a concealed pregnancy; that the baby was taken away in a backpack; and that she was left in a wooded area near Albany. Public reporting on the later trial said Kruckenberg Anderson confessed he meant for the baby to die of exposure and then shot her twice in the head after hearing her cry. An autopsy, according to those reports, showed she was alive when she was shot. That evidence helped the state argue intent even with part of the interview sequence excluded.
When the trial finally reached a jury in Green County, the legal argument over interrogation tactics gave way to the basic question of criminal responsibility. On Nov. 5, 2025, jurors convicted Kruckenberg Anderson of first-degree intentional homicide and hiding the corpse of a child. The sentencing that followed in March 2026 turned the court’s focus toward punishment and public accountability. Judge Jane Bucher imposed a life term on the homicide count and a concurrent sentence of four years of initial confinement plus three years of extended supervision on the corpse-hiding count. He also received credit for time served on the concurrent count and was ordered to have no contact with the child’s mother after being remanded to the Green County Sheriff’s Department.
The state used sentencing to drive home its view of the crime’s meaning. Prosecutor Adrienne Blais said in court that Harper had been treated as a problem to be removed. Afterward, Attorney General Josh Kaul called the case horrifying and extraordinarily tragic, and District Attorney Craig R. Nolen said the sentence reflected the egregious nature of the acts. Those official statements came after years in which the file had moved from a missing-child call to suppression hearings, then to a published appellate opinion, then to a trial verdict and finally to a life sentence. Few local homicide cases produce that many layers of judicial review before sentencing is complete.
The record still is not shut. Court summaries published after sentencing show that the defense filed a motion to dismiss and prosecutors were given 120 days to respond. No hearing date had been publicly set in the latest accounts. That means the case continues to carry both tracks that defined it from the start: the brutal facts of a newborn’s death and the legal questions raised by the interrogation of a 16-year-old suspect. The conviction and sentence now dominate the file, but one remaining motion leaves open a final round of argument before any broader postconviction review is finished.
For now, the legal center of gravity has shifted from what the jury heard to what post-sentencing relief, if any, the defense can still pursue, with the next deadline tied to the state’s response to the pending motion.
Author note: Last updated April 8, 2026.