Man arrested in 1996 slaying of veterinarian

HELENA  (AP) — A South Dakota man will be sent to Montana to face a murder charge in the 1996 shooting death of a veterinarian who was seeing his ex-girlfriend, authorities said Friday.

Montana prosecutors revived a deliberate homicide charge against Thomas Jaraczeski in the slaying of Bryan Rein, a 31-year-old veterinarian in the central Montana town of Geraldine.

Rein was shot three times in his trailer with his own .357 Magnum on July 12, 1996, about a month and a half after Ann Wishman broke up with Jaraczeski and began dating the veterinarian.

Jaraczeski was charged in 1998 and pleaded not guilty before the charge was dropped after a judge dismissed dog-tracking evidence prosecutors said linked Jaraczeski with the crime scene.

Jaraczeski later got married and has been living in South Dakota, most recently in Brandon, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported.

Montana prosecutors issued a new arrest warrant for Jaraczeski on April 25, charging him with deliberate homicide. He was arrested Wednesday night in Sioux Falls, and he waived his right to an extradition hearing, Minnehaha County authorities said.

Montana Department of Justice officials would not say what new evidence they may have found in the case.

“Several years ago, at the request of law enforcement, our Prosecution Services Bureau took another look at the case,” Justice Department spokeswoman Anastasia Burton said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear whether Jaraczeski, 41, has an attorney or when he would be extradited to Montana.

A sworn statement that accompanied the arrest warrant said Jaraczeski began stalking Wishman after she broke up with him after 4 1/2 years and began dating Rein. Jaraczeski wrote her a 25-page letter and told his family he was thinking about killing himself, authorities said.

He drove by the homes of Rein and Wishman on several occasions in different vehicles and followed Wishman at least once, the statement said.

He also broke into Wishman’s home and read in her diary that she had “found the man of her dreams” and wanted to spend the rest of her life with Rein, according to the statement by Assistant Attorney General Brant Light.

The night of the shooting, Wishman was talking to Rein on the phone, but it disconnected before Rein was able to say goodbye, Light wrote. She tried calling him over and over the next night, but his line was busy.

Rein’s body was found July 14 by a man who owned the property where the trailer was located. Investigators determined Rein had confronted and struggled with somebody on the trailer’s back steps, and Rein was shot twice in the arm.

Rein apparently tried to go back into the trailer, but the assailant grabbed him, ripped his shirt and shot him once more in the chest, Light wrote. He made it to his kitchen and apparently died trying to use the phone.

Jaraczeski told investigators that he had been working on his truck at his family’s farm that night and fell from it, hurting his back. Records from a Great Falls hospital show he received treatment at the emergency room.

He initially denied ever having been in his trailer and later said he had been in the trailer 10 days earlier purportedly to call for assistance for his broken-down truck. He later told investigators that had been a pretext to check whether Wishman was there.