By Chris Vetter
The Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire, Wis.
CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. — A man convicted of raping a woman and leaving her tied to a tree in rural Chippewa Falls in 1983, then later escaped from a halfway house in Madison in 1995, has been apprehended in Iowa, 29 years after he was last seen by authorities.
George V. Hartleroad, 71, is incarcerated in the Polk County (Iowa) Jail while awaiting extradition to Wisconsin. He was arrested June 26 in West Des Moines.
According to Leader-Telegram records and the criminal complaint, Hartleroad kidnapped a woman from Hastings, Minn., on May 21, 1983, at a wayside in Minnesota, raped her repeatedly while keeping her captive in the trunk of her car, then left her naked and tied to a tree in a rural area near Chippewa Falls.
Chippewa County court records show Hartleroad pleaded guilty to endangering safety of another, false imprisonment, and possessing a short barreled rifle. Hartleroad was born in Newton, Ill., but court records show he was arrested in jurisdictions across the United States.
Retired Chippewa County Sheriff Jim Kowalczyk was a patrol officer in 1983 and he remembers when the area SWAT team arrested Hartleroad at the Glen Loch Hotel, 1225 Jefferson Ave., on the north side of Chippewa Falls.
“If my memory serves me right, when she was abducted, when I interviewed her, there was one time they stopped at a gas station. She was so petrified and scared of what he would do that she didn’t want to shout out,” Kowalczyk said. “So, eventually, they wound up west of Chippewa Falls, and he tied her to a tree. A woman jogger in the morning heard her cries for help.”
Hartleroad was released from prison in 1995. The Department of Corrections originally tried to place him at a home in the Chippewa Valley, but after an uproar from the community, he was later placed in the Madison area, Leader-Telegram records state. However, he then escaped from the halfway house in July 1995. DOC records show he has been listed as “absconded” since then with his whereabouts unknown.
According to media reports from Iowa, police officers stopped him for having no rear reflector on his bicycle. Hartleroad is described as being homeless and living in the Valley Junction area. After further investigation, police learned that Hartleroad had the active warrant from Wisconsin.
Kowalczyk was surprised that Hartleroad had stayed off police radar for all these years.
“To avoid law enforcement for that period of time is unbelievable,” Kowalczyk said. “He was always known to be homeless, a vagrant, that type of lifestyle. He probably never had a driver’s license.”
The criminal complaint pre-dates the Wisconsin online court system, but paper files are still on record. The Leader-Telegram reviewed the 1983 court file on Thursday, where the victim testified at Hartleroad’s sentencing on July 29, 1983.
“Regardless of anything else that happened, just being tied up in the woods, I really believed I was going to die,” she told Judge Richard Stafford. “He told me that I was going to die there and it’s my belief that he intended to murder me, because he told me no one would even find me.”
While sentencing Hartleroad to nine years in prison, Stafford said to him, “But frankly, I have serious doubts as to whether or not you have that conscience. I guess I don’t feel that you do.”
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