WI v. Kevin Lychwick

The State of Wisconsin charged Kevin Lychwick, a 63-year-old retired Air Force veteran, with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse. Prosecutors alleged that in April of 2024 Lychwick shot and killed his neighbor, Carlos Maldonado, a 56-year-old father whose daughters reported him missing weeks later when his calls stopped getting answered. According to the State, Maldonado was shot twice, with tape across the bones of his hands suggesting he may have been bound, wrapped in a blue tarp and heavy black plastic, and hidden in a wooded area behind their shared apartment building on East North Street. A maintenance worker found the concealed remains in late October 2024, so decomposed that dental records were needed to confirm who he was. Lychwick pleaded not guilty, and every one of those claims stood as an allegation the State had to prove.

The trial turned on a single piece of evidence: a 9mm pistol found not at any crime scene but inside Lychwick's car, discovered after police stopped him for speeding. The State's crime lab tied that gun to the bullets recovered from Maldonado's body. Lychwick fought to have the search thrown out, arguing officers had no lawful basis to go through his vehicle after a traffic stop, and he lost that motion. The rest of the case was circumstantial: tape and black plastic in duffel bags, surveillance near the wooded area, and a handwritten document the State called a hit list. No motive was clearly established, and police themselves said they could not explain the relationship between the two men. After telling the judge his public defender was not doing enough, Lychwick faced the State alone, cross-examining detectives and forensic analysts with no lawyer at his side.

The case went to trial, and the jury found Kevin Lychwick guilty. We did not walk into that courtroom to root for a verdict. We went to watch whether the State proved what it charged, beyond a reasonable doubt, against a man who stood without counsel and whose most important evidence rested on a search he had contested all the way to a written ruling. That is the test the process is built to survive, and it does not get easier because a defendant represents himself. The full record of how it unfolded, day by day, is in the coverage below.