RACINE, WIS. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - A 66-year-old former resident of Illinois has been found guilty of a crime committed in 1999.
Linda Sue La Roche went by Linda Sue Johnson when she lived in McHenry and, according to prosecutors, murdered her live-in nanny, Peggy Lynn Johnson- Schroeder.
Her body was found along a rural road in Wisconsin. She was a Jane Doe for 20 years.
Unidentified until 2019, forensic genealogy revealed who she was. Police then learned she had been living with a family in McHenry.
Schroeder, according to police, was cognitively impaired and La Roche was alleged to have abused her for years.
Her face and entire body showed bruising, abrasions, burns and lacerations and she had been branded.
La Roche became a suspect, police say, in 2019, after telling someone in Florida, where she was living, that she murdered a woman years earlier in Illinois. That person called police.
La Roche showed no emotion when a jury in Racine County found her guilty of first-degree murder.
