Since 2019, Gov. Tony Evers’ Parole Commission has released hundreds of convicted criminals, freeing them early on parole mostly into Wisconsin communities, including more than 300 murderers and attempted murderers, and more than 47 child rapists.

Randolph Whiting was one of them. His release was discretionary.

First in the series.

Many called the death of Margaret Anderson the most “brutal murder in Green Bay history,” according to WBAY-TV.

Anderson suffered a horrible fate. A book written about her death says she was practically “beheaded” and left to die in a manure pit. A group of biker gang members, including Randolph “Gargoyle” Whiting, gang-raped her in a bar, beat her with a cue stick, and then, prosecutors said, Whiting slashed her throat from ear-to-ear and dumped her in the pit.

“They actually tortured her and beat the ‘h’ out of her,” a retired police officer told WBAY.

The Green Bay Press-Gazette reported that the neck wound was 6 to 8 inches long, appearing to “go halfway through her neck.” Anderson was discovered lying on the road in a pool of blood “with her arms thrashing above her head,” before she gasped and died.

According to WBAY, she was found by a cattle truck driver who initially thought she was a hurt animal crawling on the road.

Evers’ Parole Commission Released Randolph Whiting Early

Date paroled: 01/21/2020 

[If you want to run his parole date yourself, you can put his name in the Corrections database here and click on “movement”]

Released killer lives where: Waupaca, Wisconsin

Age: 62

Convicted: Murder, 1984 case

Sentence: Life

Other factors: According to the Green Bay Press-Gazette newspaper, Whiting claimed to have found religion and wrote articles for a blog called “Between the Bars.” In one of them, written in April 2013, he claimed “I am … no longer the person who committed murder. People can choose to continue to hate me for the person I was 30 years ago, but that person is already dead.”

The victim: Margaret Anderson

As author Mike Duplaise writes, “Margaret Anderson was a divorced mother with a teenage son, scraping out a very modest existence in early 1980s Green Bay, Wisconsin, when a night out during the holiday season turned into a nightmare. Before the next day would dawn, Margaret would become the victim of one of the most horrific murders in Green Bay’s history.

She would endure two hours of torture at the hands of four motorcycle club members inside the Back Forty tavern after closing time, before being driven to a manure clean-out area outside a meat packing plant on the edge of town. There, one of the bikers cut her throat and left her for dead in the snow of a brutally cold winter night.”

Tamra Copple Sonsteng of Helena, Montana, was Anderson’s niece. She told the Green Bay Press-Gazette in 2020, of Whiting and the other men there that day: “There has never been any remorse. These guys didn’t care. They never once contacted family members to say, ‘I apologize, I was drunk, I was really drugged up.’”

The article says that Sonsteng believes Whiting was released in part because her parents and most siblings are gone. She recommended against his release. She received a letter from Evers’ Parole Commission Chairman John Tate saying that Whiting was being released. Evers, who first appointed Tate in 2019, reappointed him in 2021, after Whiting’s release. Tate had sole authority over the release, but Evers noted that he was “pleased” to reappoint Tate after Tate gave Whiting freedom.

What the killer did:

According to a 1984 article in the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the victim, Margaret Anderson, died a horrific death. Her throat was slashed, and she was badly beaten.

The killer was Randolph “Gargoyle” Whiting, prosecutors said. He was 24 at the time.

A newspaper article from the time described how a passerby found Anderson with a neck wound that had “blood coming out like a fountain of water. Her mouth was open, and she was calling for help.”

The Press Gazette reported that the neck wound was 6 to 8 inches long, appearing to “go halfway through her neck.” Anderson was discovered lying on the road in a pool of blood “with her arms thrashing above her head,” before she gasped and died.

The article says that Whiting was the person who slashed her throat, and there was later some dispute over that. But he was the only person ever convicted of murder in her case. Three other men also drove her from a bar to a manure pit, where she was dumped.

A 2020 article in the Press Gazette said all four of these men are today walking free. Whiting’s ex-wife was quoted as saying “they should die there,” referring to prison.

The newspaper reported that the men were part of a biker gang, and they gang-raped the victim at a bar, while one beat her with a cue stick. But it was Whiting who slashed her throat “ear-to-ear” and tossed her in the manure pit, prosecutors argued. She staggered around it before dying.

According to WBAY, the retired police officer said, “What they did to her in the bar was enough to kill her.”