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RINGLE, Wis. (WSAW / Gray News) – Standing 20 feet from the bunker, catching a cloud of mosquitoes, no doubt breeding in the nearby swamp, you would never know that it is there.
The jury trial of Jeremiah Button in Portage County was in just two weeks, when he was reported to have disappeared in early 2016. Pursued for first-degree sexual assault and possession of child pornography, Button was released on a $ 25,000 bond for about a year and a half when he disappeared.
It was at this point that he built the bunker, which he later told the deputy ministers of the Marathon County Sheriff's Office. Carved into an embankment near the Ice Age Trail on the lands of Ringle Township and protected from sight by the thick undergrowth that he had himself helped to create, Button would escape the detection of the forces of the island. order for nearly three and a half years until the call of the hunter concerned. police on Friday 9 August.
Thomas Nelson has lived in Wausau all his life and is an avid hunter on state lands near the bunker.
"I followed the brushstrokes, saw the door, I could not get out of there fast enough," recalled Nelson since the first time he had found the bunker there many months ago. Someone lived there and his curiosity invaded him and he came back months later to find out why.
"It was impossible for you to see this if you did not know that there was something there," he said. Last Friday, he approached the bunker – the door was not locked.
"I pushed the door to open it, and I looked inside and I can see canned food.There are small storage boxes and I am like .. I have to go, "he said. "I'm just around the corner and he's lying in bed." Nelson pauses to take a deep breath. "I mean, I was shaking when I came in, I was shaking when I went out."
He went away from a safe distance and called the forces of order, guiding them to the bunker door and leading to a twenty-minute standoff with MCSO deputies on the roof of the Button bunker last Friday morning. At the end of the session, Assistant Matt Kecker described Button's attitude as almost welcoming and contenting human interactions.
"He told us that he was wanted through Portage County for many mandates," Kecker said. Button wanted to speak and the deputies had no difficulty in describing how he had survived the past three wet summers and harsh winters.
Pushing the log gate and crossing the threshold of the bunker, we were first greeted by a stale and dusty air. But after entering, the smell is not really bad anyway, but the television (yes, television) coming from the neighboring landfill – it's cool and smells of cold earth.
There is hardly room for me, my camera and the officers who left with me: Kecker and Detective Lieutenant Jeff Stefonek. Inside, the walls were covered with dusty food boxes, storage bins and all kinds of imaginable objects: miniature fans hanging from the ceiling and an old radio still faintly crackling with an advertisement.
"It has solar panels on the roof that feed three car batteries inside the structure," said Stefonek. "And from its three car batteries, it has LED lamps, radios and cooling fans, all kinds of electronic equipment, some left intact for the purpose for which they are intended, and of other things that he has disassembled to meet their needs. "
There is a bike generator for days when the sun can not power the batteries of solar panels located on the roof of the structure – which forms the top of the slope.
"He said the initial construction had taken him between the moment he was out and the moment he was gone," Kecker said. "It was about half that size, but as he began to report things from the landfill he needed to make his life more comfortable, he had to expand." so dug further into the wall. "
Electricity, computers, television, radio – Button did not even stop there. He built a device to filter the water, pump it through the charcoal and the filters and boil it.
"He not only survived but thrived in this structure with all the supplies he could find," Stefonek said. "There was not a lot of air coming in from outside, and it was a space small enough for him to be able to survive the winters obviously, and to keep warm, and he does Here at this time of year, all the items he could have stolen from the Marathon County dump by sorting garbage. "
But the isolation of human contact is perhaps the most remarkable. He had talked with an occasional hiker, he told the deputies, but other than that, he had never left the area.
"If the opportunity arose, I think the majority of the American population would choose prison rather than this type of isolation from human contact," Stefonek said.
Button is in custody with a $ 100,000 bail and is awaiting a pre-trial conference on September 16th. Stefonek added that the Ministry of Natural Resources was taking control of the area and was planning to dismantle the bunker.
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