Governor Met With Parents Of Slain Student

Meeting Took Place On Nov. 25

Updated: 7:04 pm CST December 12, 2008

Gov. Jim Doyle met privately in November with the parents of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student whose slaying remains unsolved.

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Brittany Zimmermann was stabbed to death in her apartment on April 2, and police have yet to arrest a suspect.

Doyle's spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner said her parents, Kevin and Jean Zimmermann, requested the meeting that took place on Nov. 25. Doyle's calendar shows they planned to meet for 45 minutes.

Sensenbrenner said he does not know what was discussed at the meeting.

Controversy has been swirling around the unsolved slaying because county officials have said that a 911 call Zimmermann placed was mishandled by an operator.

Zimmermann's phone was not called back, and police weren't dispatched until 40 minutes later -- after her fiance found her body.

The dispatcher accused of mishandling the 911 call said she doesn't know why she didn't hear a scream on the call.

"If I heard the initial 'scream,' it didn't register as a scream," dispatcher Rita Gahagan said during a personnel interview in April.

Gahagan also said background noise on the call that police have described as the sounds of a struggle "didn't register as anyone in obvious distress."

The county on Thursday released four pages documenting Gahagan's recollection of the call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone in response to an order by Dane County Circuit Court Judge Richard Niess.

Media outlets, including WISC-TV, had been seeking release of the document for months, as well as the release of Zimmermann's phone call to 911 sometime before her death.

The county had kept portions of the report secret, citing personnel and disciplinary proceedings that were ongoing.

Meanwhile, the former fiance of Zimmermann is now fighting the release of his call to 911 after he found her in her campus-area apartment last spring.

A Milwaukee law firm on Thursday asked a Dane County judge to temporarily suspend his order Wednesday that Dane County release Jordan Gonnering's 911 call, other unrelated 911 calls around that time.

A Dane County judge on Thursday temporarily stopped the release of Gonnering's 911 call until a lawyer for Gonnering had a chance to argue against its release at a hearing.

Gonnering, as well as the city and the Dane County district attorney, will argue against its release and the release of Zimmermann's 911 call on Dec. 19.

Madison police Chief Noble Wray took part in a taping for the WISC-TV show "For the Record" on Friday, and he spoke with WISC-TV after the taping about why he feels the 911 call should not be released.

He said that if they can do anything to ease the pain felt by the family during this tragedy, they will do it. He also said the tape could be a key to the investigation.

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