Officials with the Town of Madison Police Department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice announced Wednesday they are offering a $5,000 reward to anyone who can provide information to help solve a 1986 stabbing murder of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student.
“We need help, the police cannot just solve this,” DOJ Division of Criminal Investigation administrator Dave Matthews said. “There are people who know what happened that night. There are people who remember it.”
Andrew Nehmer, 20, was working alone at the Open Pantry Food Mart, located at 2201 S. Park St., when an armed robber held up the store April 22, 1986. Nehmer’s body was found in the parking lot at 4 a.m. next to a pool of blood, and police determined a knife wound in his neck as the cause of death.
Police arrested Donald Braxton, who now lives in Colorado, at the time but were unable to link him to the crime. TOMPD detective David Bongiovani said although there is DNA evidence connecting Braxton to the scene of the crime, it is insufficient, and prosecutors need more information before arresting the suspect.
Investigators reached out to Open Pantry Marts for a donation to provide a monetary reward to people Bongiovani said he knows have information that can bridge the gaps in the case because some witnesses are “suggesting that might be an incentive for them.”
Bongiovani confirmed Braxton passed a lie detector test regarding the Nehmer case in 2011, but he remains the primary suspect.
