Janesville man Logan Barclay remains in jail on a $1-million bond after being accused in the shooting murder of a Janesville woman last week.
At an initial appearance in Rock County Court Monday, Court Commissioner Jack Hoag set the 23-year-0ld Barclay’s bond at $1 million on a charge of first-degree intentional homicide.
A criminal complaint alleges Barclay went on a walk with the victim along the Peace Trail in Janesville the night of April 16th, and then shot her in the stomach over an argument about her possibly being pregnant. Police say he then left her for dead on the trail.
The woman’s body was found the next day, April 17, by someone walking along the trail.
Police say there’s evidence the woman, who has not yet been named, had tried to crawl through the mud to get to cover under a tree after she was shot. They say she was found with empty pockets except for a cellphone charger and a tube of Chapstick.
Officers say they found the woman dead but crouched against a tree, her body pointing toward the Rock River.
Police say the woman was too covered in mud for forensic investigators to do a full check of her body for injuries, but a medical examiner discovered what appeared to be a single bullet wound to her stomach.
Police say Barclay initially lied to police and said the last time he’d seen the woman was days earlier. He later admitted he’d been with her the night police say she was killed. He admitted he was angry the woman said she was pregnant and she did not want to give up the baby.
Police say Barclay’s parents had been taking care of another child Barclay and the woman previously had together. Barclay had told police he was still resentful over the woman’s decision to keep the first child, a responsibility he said he didn’t want.
He eventually told police detectives during an inquiry that while they went for a walk on the trail, the woman “would not stop talking about the pregnancy and how she wanted to keep it. No matter how many times I told her to stop, she wouldn’t.”
Barclay said that’s when he pulled a small-caliber, .22 gun and shot the woman as she backed away from him in fear.
Barclay told police when he shot the woman, she “freaked out and dropped to her knee, and I walked away.”
Barclay says he then left, and when he noticed the woman’s phone was still in his car, he drove over to her apartment and threw her phone over by her building’s dumpster. Then, he said, he went and drank alcohol with his friends.
Barclay told police the shooting was “accidental,” a result of him “tensing up” when the woman wouldn’t stop talking about being pregnant. He says he shot her in the stomach, thinking it was a solution to “his problem,” which he told police had to do with the woman “being pregnant again.”
Police identified the woman after they matched her to images of tattoos from her Facebook page. Investigators say a Child Protective Services caseworker had told police they got worried after the woman failed to show up to a couple of appointments last week.
The caseworker said it was not like the woman to miss appointments.
Police say they’re still working to analyze the woman’s cellphone, which they said they found behind some garbage bags by her apartment’s dumpster.
At the time a criminal complaint was filed, police said they were waiting for more information from the county’s medical examiner, including whether the woman was, in fact, pregnant.
