There's an empty hollow feeling in the church today.

The congregation's longtime well-loved leader was found murdered this morning.

In March 1998, Father Alfred Coons bled to death in the hallway of St. Michael's School in Dane, Wisconsin.

Someone slid his throat.

Dave Katnaw, a Dane County Sheriff's deputy, responded to the 911 call.

I walked up to the subject, and it was pretty clear that this individual was deceased.

There was a large pool of blood.

And there was a very gruesome injury to the throat area of the individual who turned out obviously to be Father Coons.

Dave Mahoney was a detective back then.

Now, he's the Dane County Sheriff.

He had actually met Father Coons at the St. Michael Fish Fries,

where Father Coons was known for putting on an apron

and cooking the cod himself.

Well, you know, my initial response was one of who murders a Catholic priest. What issue could you have

to have murdered a Catholic priest? From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this is Unsolved

Season 3, The Devil You Know. I'm Gina Barton.

I've been hearing about the murder of Father Coons since I moved to Milwaukee back in 2002.

It's a mystery that has all kinds of strange twists and turns.

As I was trying to decide which story to tell in season 3 of Unsolved, this one kept rising to the top of the list.

First, one of my editors said I should look into Father Coons' case, and this editor still

had a stack of police reports from 1998 in his desk, which was crazy, but not totally unexpected if you've

ever been in a newsroom. And then one of my friends, who is also a reporter here and who covered

...