John Henkelmann

John Henkelmann - another Wisconsin district attorney behaving badly.

Unlike Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz, Henkelmann didn't send inappropriate text messages to an abuse victim. He isn't in trouble for harassing several women.

Henkelmann's wrongdoing was caught on surveillance video and only he was involved in the inappropriate/illegal incident.

From the Associated Press:

A Wisconsin prosecutor was caught on video looking at porn in a resort’s business room and engaging in what an employee called “lewd” and illegal behavior, but sheriff’s deputies who interceded downplayed the incident and resort management ordered it kept quiet, records show.

Wood County District Attorney John P. Henkelmann was not charged with any wrongdoing stemming from the Nov. 6, 2009, incident at the Osthoff Resort in Elkhart Lake. In his office at the courthouse in Wisconsin Rapids on Thursday, he declined comment on the specifics of what happened, only saying he had been drinking, that he didn’t do anything illegal and was “shaken” when deputies showed up. He said he doesn’t remember if he told deputies he was a district attorney.

According to a report obtained by The Associated Press through the state’s open records laws, Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department deputies were called to the resort after an employee reported that a hotel guest had been repeatedly observed viewing porn in the business room. Deputies found Henkelmann looking at porn, but let him go without obtaining the video footage and left their report vague.

Resort managers demanded silence and ended up firing an employee for talking about the DA’s behavior with a Wisconsin Department of Justice official, e-mails obtained under the records law show. And Justice officials decided not to get involved after learning the incident didn’t involve one of their employees.

...Henkelmann, 53, was at the Osthoff with 200 other prosecutors who attended a three-day training conference hosted by the Wisconsin Department of Justice. The incident happened just two months after Gov. Jim Doyle appointed him the top prosecutor in the central Wisconsin county.

Doyle appointed Henkelmann.

Will Doyle go after Henklemann as aggressively as he's gone after Kratz?

Here's a more detailed account of what happened and the alleged cover-up, from the Sheboygan Press:

Security footage captured at the Osthoff Resort in Elkhart Lake last year shows the Wood County district attorney masturbating while viewing pornography in a public area, an employee fired for reporting the conduct said in an interview Friday.

The Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department was called to the Osthoff about 1:30 a.m. Nov. 6, but deputies never obtained the footage, and the prosecutor — John Henkelmann — was never arrested or charged, records show. But based on the former employee’s firsthand account, Sheriff Mike Helmke said Friday he would reopen the investigation of Henkelmann’s actions.

“We’ll certainly take a look at it,” Helmke said. “I’ll have our people talk to her and see if she tells us the same thing.”

The incident had stayed hidden for nearly a year after Osthoff management ordered it kept quiet and issued veiled threats while firing Amanda Cain, a reservations assistant who mentioned the matter to the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Henkelmann, 53, was one of about 200 prosecutors attending a three-day conference hosted by the DOJ.

The former employee, Amanda Cain, spoke publicly for the first time Friday. Cain said she saw the security footage herself and was told Henkelmann had been warned twice about watching pornography in the publicly accessible business lounge.

“From what I was told … security went down earlier in the evening, opened the door to our general business center and asked him to return to his room, which he did,” Cain said. “And a few hours later he came back, and that’s when they decided this is something police should be called for.”

Henkelmann was on the lone computer in the resort’s business room, which was monitored by a video camera that fed a monitor at the front desk. Cain saw the video later Nov. 6 as managers reviewed the footage in an open area of the Osthoff office.

She said it was clear from watching the video that Henkelmann was masturbating.
“Everybody who worked in the office (saw it),” Cain said. “They wouldn’t have just called the cops for a guy watching porn, they would have sent security. … There was clearly more going on.”

But sheriff’s Capt. Cory Roeseler told The Associated Press earlier this week that deputies responding to the resort did not request the video footage or interview employees. He said then the sheriff’s department had no information indicating Henkelmann was doing anything beyond looking at pornography, which is not a crime by itself.

Cain said her firing stemmed from her contact with Tami Dzikowich, the DOJ employee who organized the conference. E-mails obtained by the AP show Cain first broached the subject in an e-mail referring to the incident as a “really funny story about one of your guests,” but Cain said Friday she believed it was a serious matter.

“I could just see (Dzikowich) being, ‘Why didn’t somebody tell me you called the cops on one of my people?’ so I warned her — no name involved. I had no idea who he was,” Cain said, adding that she still didn’t learn Henkelmann’s identity until the AP first reported the story Thursday. “That same day was when I was called in and told (by Osthoff General Manager Lola Roeh), ‘Why would you tell her this? We protect our guests,’ and I said, ‘Even if they’re breaking the law?’

“(She said) ‘Yes, we protect our guests.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I find that immoral and wrong and won’t have any part of it,’ and I walked out.”

Cain said she was suspended for two days, and when she returned she was fired for violating “guest confidentiality.” She said management stressed the confidentiality agreement she signed when she was hired and told her she would continue receiving unemployment pay as long as she kept quiet.

“They reiterated how I signed (a confidentiality agreement) as an employee there, and that to me was just kind of like a threat — keep it quiet,” Cain said. “In my opinion that’s not breaking anyone’s privacy when you don’t know their name.”

Cain added that Osthoff management told her they were worried they could be sued because of Henkelmann’s ambition to be a judge. Henkelmann ran unsuccessfully for circuit court judgeships in 2003 and 2009. He was appointed to the district attorney post two months before the conference.

This is really a weird story.

I don't know why the deputies didn't investigate more thoroughly. Why didn't they obtain the security footage?

Was Henkelmann given preferential treatment?

I don't think the Osthoff should be protecting a man masturbating in a public place, even if Wisconsin's governor had just appointed him district attorney of Wood County. Management isn't protecting the other guests of the resort. Certainly upholding guest confidentiality doesn't include looking the other way if someone is breaking the law.

What will Jim Doyle do about Henkelmann? That is the question.