The State's First Three Witnesses Are Telling the Defense's Story

Three days into the State's case in Wisconsin v. Josie Dikeman, three witnesses have taken the stand. Derek Pedrin. Sergeant Joseph Kernan. Sergeant Robert Pfaff. The State called all three. Every one of them told a chapter of the defense's story.

That is not how this is supposed to work.

When prosecutors put together their case-in-chief, they choose the witnesses, they decide the order, they write the script. The defense reacts. The defense waits. The defense pulls threads on cross. Three days into this trial, the script the State wrote and the testimony the jury heard are not the same document.

This is going to be one of those trials.

What This Case Is

If you are coming to this case for the first time, here is what you need to know. Alexavier Pedrin was six years old. AJ to his family. He was found dead on the morning of February 11, 2023, on a couch in a back bedroom of a house in the town of Medary, Wisconsin. The cause of death was blunt force trauma. There was alprazolam in his system, the prescription drug Xanax, in an amount the pathologist said would be elevated even in an adult.

Josie Dikeman is the woman who called 911 that morning. She was thirty-one at the time. She was the live-in girlfriend of Alex's father, Derek Pedrin. She had been the primary caregiver for Alex and a household full of other children for months before he died, after Derek was arrested in November 2022 on domestic violence charges and placed under a no-contact order with her that left her as the only adult in the home.

The State of Wisconsin has charged Josie with three felonies. First-degree intentional homicide. Chronic neglect of a child resulting in death. Physical abuse of a child by repeated acts causing death. The first count carries mandatory life imprisonment.

The defense theory was named in opening. Christopher Zachar, in his second sentence to the jury, told them that Derek Pedrin killed his own son. He told them that Derek had a history of domestic violence in that household and against everyone in it. He told them that Derek was the only adult in the home with Alex during a critical fifteen-minute window the day Alex died. And he told them the State's investigation looked at none of it.

Three days in, the defense has not had to prove a thing. The State has done it for them.

The Named Alternate on the Stand

Day 2 of testimony. The State's first witness. Derek Pedrin.

Think about that for a second. The defense told the jury yesterday that this man killed his own son. The State responded by calling that same man as their lead witness. The strategic gamble was that putting Derek on the stand under direct examination would let the State control the narrative around him. Get out in front of his criminal history. Frame him as a cooperating witness who lost his son and has been working with prosecutors for almost three years.

Then they handed him to Christopher Zachar for cross.

Zachar took six hours.

In those six hours, the jury heard a Facebook message Derek typed five days before Alex died. The message went to Josie. It said, in his own words: "It's okay. I get it. I did it." He was admitting in writing to causing the brain damage that put Josie on full Social Security disability. Five days before the boy died. The man the State wants the jury to believe is reformed and credible was on a messaging app with his girlfriend admitting he had given her a brain injury.

The jury heard about the Xanax. Derek told them, on direct from the prosecutor, that he had bought Xanax for Josie. White bars. Sandwich baggies. Five at a time, ten at a time, twenty at a time. Multiple times. He told them he had also picked up hydrocodone from Becky Ehlers, Josie's mother. He could not name the supplier. He could not name the dosage. He could not name the price per gram. He could not say, when asked, where the white bars came from.

The State's drug-source theory is that Josie supplied Alex with the Xanax that contributed to his death. The State's first witness, on direct, was the man who repeatedly bought that drug.

The jury heard a recorded jail call from February 11, 2023, the day Alex died. Derek calling his cousin from county jail. Derek using a racial slur to describe Alex's maternal grandmother, the woman who had raised him for years before he moved in with Josie and Derek. Derek admitting on tape that it was him, not Josie, who had cut Alex off from that side of his family. The defense theory of who isolated Alex from the people who loved him was confirmed by the State's first witness on the State's recording.

The jury heard a recorded call from March 27, 2023. Derek to Josie. Derek tells her there were no pills in Alex's stomach. Josie's recorded response: "I'm I'm happy that he, I know that nothing's going to happen. You know, I'm I'm free. I'm done."

That is the State's strongest piece of consciousness-of-guilt evidence. The State played it. The State will return to it in closing. I am not going to argue otherwise. I will only point out that Derek's voice is on that recording too. And that the same Derek told the jury, the same day, that he had repeatedly bought Xanax, the drug found in Alex's body.

📺 WATCH PT 3 Day 2: Derek Pedrin on Direct, the State's First Witness

Day 3 was where the State's gamble fully collapsed.

Zachar played Walmart security footage destroying the alibi Derek had given the jury about his movements on February 10, 2023, the day before Alex died. Derek had told the jury a buddy drove him to Walmart that day. The cameras showed something else.

Zachar played body cam from a November 2025 arrest. Just six months ago. Derek standing at the back of a squad car telling the responding officer that "the bitch hit me with a fucking Coke bottle. The next day my fucking kid ends up dead." On tape. In Derek's own voice. Accusing the woman the State wants the jury to convict.

Zachar walked Derek through the cameras inside Josie's home. Derek had told investigators he had no access to the cameras. Recorded calls, video, and body cam played in court showed the opposite. Cameras Derek told the jury he could not see, in plain testimony from the witness stand, recordings he made of himself watching them, body cam video of him telling officers about them.

Zachar walked Derek through the marriage-of-convenience timeline. Engaged to Misty Craig until one week before the wedding. Two weeks after Zachar filed the motion naming Derek as the alternative suspect, Derek married Laura Lee Reigns. The State's first witness married a different woman two weeks after he was officially named, on the record, as the man the defense believes killed Alex.

Zachar walked Derek through the plea deal. Nineteen years of sentence exposure. Zero jail time. The State's first witness has a cooperating-witness deal that protects him from prison if he testifies the way the State needs him to testify.

Zachar walked Derek through the threats. Misty Craig telling investigators Derek said he would "rip her head off in a box" if she crossed him. Betty Cleveland, another woman in his orbit, telling investigators Derek said he would "kill Josie" if she was not convicted.

Judge Levine spoke on the record at the close of cross. He noted that he was "frustrated with the witness." He observed at one point that he "felt bad for the plant that's been on the stand for two and a half days." A judge does not say either of those things about a credible witness.

That was the State's lead witness.

📺 WATCH PT 4 Day 3: Pedrin Cross, Walmart Security Video, the Alibi Falls

The Deputy at the Door

The State pivoted on Day 3 from Pedrin to the welfare check deputies. Sergeant Joseph Kernan took the stand. Seventeen years in law enforcement. Fifteen with La Crosse County. He was the first deputy through Josie's door on the evening of February 10, 2023, the night before Alex was found dead.

The State's purpose in calling him was to put the body camera in front of the jury. Show them Alex alive, sleeping on a couch. Show them Josie answering the door with stories that did not match each other. Show them the directional fact that when Derek saw the headlights of the police squad and got spooked inside the house, he went toward the kitchen, not toward the bedroom Alex was sleeping in.

The State got all of it.

What the State did not anticipate, or what the State accepted as a cost of doing business, was the cross-examination. Zachar walked Sergeant Kernan through every aspect of the welfare check that the system had every chance to do better and did not.

Derek Pedrin was inside that house for fifteen minutes after Sergeant Kernan arrived and before Josie answered the door. During those fifteen minutes, Sergeant Kernan testified from the witness stand: he did not know where Derek was. He did not know what Derek was doing. He did not know what Derek was saying. He did not know what Derek had access to.

Inside that house was a six-year-old boy.

When Sergeant Kernan finally got into the house, he saw Alex sleeping on a couch. Most of the boy was covered with a blanket. The deputy could see the right side of Alex's face. He saw a small healing cut at the corner of the eye. Josie offered three different stories about that cut in the same conversation: that Alex had bumped it, that he had fallen down the stairs, that he had hit it on a desk at school. None of those stories matched any of the others.

Then Josie told the deputies to leave. She said she knew her rights. She said she had a lawyer. She told them to get a warrant.

Sergeant Pfaff phoned her from up the back hill of the property and convinced her to bring Derek out. She did. Derek was arrested. While he stood on the porch in handcuffs with Sergeant Pfaff, Sergeant Kernan was inside the doorway with Josie. They were a few feet apart. They both spoke quietly. Derek could not hear them.

Josie told Sergeant Kernan, quietly, that she was scared of Derek.

She told him Derek had been demanding.

The deputy asked two follow-up questions. He asked whether Derek had threatened her. She said no. He asked whether Derek had been drinking. She said not that she knew of.

He did not ask her what scared meant. He did not ask her what demanding meant. He did not ask her what had happened that day. He did not offer her the phone number for New Horizons, the local domestic violence resource that he acknowledged on cross he was familiar with. He did not offer to walk her through any kind of safety plan.

Fifteen hours later, Alex was dead.

I do not know is reasonable doubt with a uniform on.

📺 WATCH PT 5 Day 3: Sgt. Kernan and the 15 Hours Before Alex Died

The 911 Call That Was Not Heard

Sergeant Robert Pfaff testified next. Hired in September 2022. He was the rear-position deputy on the welfare check on February 10, 2023. He made the phone call to Josie that broke the standoff and brought Derek out without anyone getting hurt.

The State called him to authenticate that phone call, the body camera that captured Derek's surrender, the alcohol that Sergeant Pfaff smelled on Derek's person, the airplane bottle Derek admitted to drinking, the zero result on the preliminary breath test that surprised both the deputy and the State, and the directional fact that Derek had not been near Alex's bedroom on that welfare check.

The State got all of that.

Then Sergeant Pfaff testified about something else. He talked about a previous arrest from November 19, 2022, a few months before Alex died. On that arrest, Sergeant Pfaff said, Alex had clung to Derek for ten or fifteen minutes when officers tried to take Derek into custody. Eventually deputies had to physically separate the boy from his father. Sergeant Pfaff became visibly emotional describing this on the stand. The jury watched it happen.

That is the State's strongest piece of evidence that Alex was bonded to his father in a way the defense's alternative-suspect theory has to explain. I am not going to soften it. The deputy got emotional remembering a six-year-old who did not want to let his father go. The jury will remember that moment. It belongs to the prosecution.

Then Christopher Zachar opened cross.

The same Sergeant Pfaff was the same arresting officer on November 12, 2022, on a domestic violence call to Josie's home. On that call, Josie was the victim. Derek had strangled her. Derek had battered her. In front of the children. The same Sergeant Pfaff arrested Derek for those crimes. The same Sergeant Pfaff took Josie's detailed statement at the scene.

Zachar played the recording of Josie's 911 call from that night. November 12, 2022. The jury heard Josie's voice on tape. The jury heard her tell dispatch that Derek was passed out drunk. That he kept following her around the house. That her child was hiding in a closet because Derek was scaring them. That Derek had been teaching the six-year-old to lie. The jury heard Derek yelling and screaming in the background of the call.

And the jury heard Josie say, with Derek audibly in the background, that he had done the same thing to a six-year-old.

The only six-year-old in that house was Alexavier Pedrin.

Zachar asked Sergeant Pfaff one question. Had dispatch told you about the report that Derek had done the same thing to a six-year-old, would you have investigated?

Yes.

Would you have arranged a forensic interview of the boy?

Yes.

Did dispatch tell you?

I do not remember being told that.

Did the forensic interview happen?

No.

Three months later, Alex was dead.

I want you to sit with that. Three months before a six-year-old boy was beaten to death in a house full of violence, his stepmother called 911. She told dispatch that the boy's father had done the same thing to her that he had done to him. The dispatcher who took the call did not relay that detail to the responding officer. The responding officer arrested the father for what the father had done to her. The forensic interview of the six-year-old that should have followed never happened. There is no record of anyone in the system asking Josie what she meant.

The State's redirect on Sergeant Pfaff tried to explain away the call. They argued the strangulation reference came at the start of the call and the six-year-old reference came much later. They argued Sergeant Pfaff did not know what specific incident Josie was referring to. They got him to confirm Josie did not, in her detailed statement to him, ever report that Alex specifically had been strangled that day.

All of that may even be true. The redirect did not explain why the call said what it said. It did not explain why no one followed up. It did not explain why no forensic interview happened.

📺 WATCH PT 6 Day 3: Sgt. Pfaff and the 911 Call From Three Months Before

One Story, Told Three Times

Three witnesses. Three days. One story.

The State's lead witness, the boy's father, told the jury he repeatedly bought the prescription drug found in his son's body. He admitted on tape from a separate call that it was him who isolated Alex from the maternal family that loved him. He confessed in writing five days before his son died to giving his girlfriend a brain injury severe enough that she is on full disability. He sat in front of cross-examination so devastating the trial judge said on the record that he felt bad for the plant on the stand.

The first welfare check deputy testified he could not account for the lead witness's whereabouts inside the house during a critical fifteen-minute window the day before the boy died. He testified he never asked the woman at the door what she meant when she whispered to him that she was scared. He acknowledged that domestic violence victims sometimes protect their abusers, that calmness in the moment is not evidence of calm earlier in the day, and that abused children sometimes protect abusive parents.

The second welfare check deputy testified that three months before the boy died, the woman the State has charged with killing him called 911 and reported that the same lead witness had done the same thing to a six-year-old. That call was not relayed. That follow-up did not happen. That forensic interview of the boy did not happen.

These are not three different stories. This is one story told three times. The State has spent three days putting the defense's case-in-chief in front of the jury, with the State's own witnesses delivering it from the stand under oath.

I am not going to tell you Josie Dikeman is innocent. I am not going to tell you she is guilty. I am not asking you to render a verdict on a Saturday morning before the State has rested. The jury has not heard from Major. The jury has not heard from Brantley. The jury has not heard from the pathologist Dr. Quinton. The State's case is going to keep coming.

What I am going to tell you is what every viewer who has been watching this trial already feels. The State decided to build its case around Derek Pedrin's credibility and the welfare check deputies' authentication of the body camera. By the close of business Friday, the State's lead witness had been turned by the defense into the most damaging exhibit in the case, and the welfare check deputies had testified, under oath, to a system failure that put Alex in front of a sworn officer fifteen hours before he died and a 911 dispatcher three months before he died.

The system had its chance. The system did not take it.

The jury is going to have to decide whether the State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the only person who could have killed this boy was Josie Dikeman. The defense does not have to prove anything. The defense does not have to identify the killer. The defense does not have to put up a single witness. The burden is and always has been on the State.

After three days, I do not know how the State carries that burden without the jury asking why the man on the stand was holding the supply chain for the drug found in the boy's body, why he was named in the call dispatch never relayed, and why the system that was supposed to protect this child had a deputy in his bedroom and walked away.

What Comes Next

My father, Steven M. Askin, used to say the system only works when it works for the people nobody wants to defend. He spent his career on that principle, and the system put him in prison twice for the trouble. I think about him every time a high-profile child homicide trial fills the courtroom with people who have already decided who did it. That is exactly the moment when due process matters most.

Josie Dikeman is presumed innocent. She is innocent in the eyes of the law right now, on this Saturday morning, just as she was when she was arrested. The State carries the entire burden of proof. The State has not yet rested. There is more to come.

But three days in, the State has not put a single witness on the stand who tells the State's story without telling the defense's story along with it. That is unusual. That is going to be hard to come back from.

I do not know what the jury will decide. I do not know who killed Alexavier Pedrin. I know the system that should have protected him before any of this happened was warned three months in advance and walked into his bedroom fifteen hours in advance and missed both moments. I know that whoever the jury decides killed him, the system that left him in that house when every relative who loved him was begging it not to has to answer for what happened too. And I know that we are going to keep watching, every day, until the jury comes back.

Watch with us. Question everything.