KEVIN DEHNE

I don't know where to begin with this one. Kevin was a good friend of mine off and on over the years. He was a fellow troublemaker. And he wasn't stupid - unlike some of the people he hung around with. So Kevin and I were a lot alike in many ways. We were a natural fit.

Kevin joined me at Clarke. I don't know who he had in 6th grade. But I'm guessing it was Mrs. Orth. All I can remember about him is that he used to come into Mrs. Casey's class (where I was) for reading. He and I were in a group together one day, but didn't converse much. That was the only contact I had with Kevin that year. But the following year... oh boy.

7th grade was a transition year. It was the first year with no recess. It was also the first year where we were shuffled from classroom to classroom for every subject. What was odd however was that our group of 25-30 kids had every single class together. That never happened anywhere again. There were only nine males in that class. Kevin and I were two of them.

Kevin teamed up with Jason Anderson. And as I said in Jason's entry, the two of them were like poison together. We were all somewhat friends. But Kevin and Jason used their muscle to bully the rest of us. Still, Kevin had a wild streak in him that was more than an honor student like Jason could be involved with two deeply. So when it came time to doing things that could get one in trouble, I filled in for Jason.

I liked Kevin. Although he scared me a bit too. The two of shared the same attitude - we didn't give a shit about anything and had no respect for authority whatsoever.

One day in Mr. Schamburek's social studies class, we had a substitute - Mrs. Sullivan, mother of fellow graduate Beth Sullivan. And when you have a substitute teacher, that's a license to "peck around" as we used to say back then. Sullivan put on a filmstrip to watch. It was about the Revolutionary War or something. And as was the norm, if we watched a filmstrip, several of us had to get chairs and move up closer to the screen. So all us guys did that. During the show, Kevin found a pointer stick in the chalkboard tray. When Sullivan wasn't looking, he used the stick to point at the crotches and boobs of all the cartoon characters in this filmstrip. We all had a laugh. Of course Sullivan evetually saw this, went up to Kevin and extended her hand for him to give her the stick. But instead, with her palm up, Kevin slapped her hand with his and say, "Hey man, what's happening!" The entire room burst out laughng. And we talked about that all year. It seems sort of childish today. But I'm smirking as I type this.

Kevin and I used to get kicked out of Mrs. Westburg's chorus class nearly every single day. We were usually in the hall after about 10 minutes of class. We'd sit in the halls and talk, making fun of Mr. Vogt and Mr. Schnell. Sometimes when Doug Wall (and on occasion, Tom Grassman) was with us, we'd go into the lunchroom and play tag.

Kevin also used to go into the bathroom next to the chorus room. He would open the door, then jump to the metal bar which opened it, and hang on it until it bent. This made it impossible to close the door.

See my entries on Jenny Malley, Jason Anderson, Toby Schwartz. Richard Wheeler, Steve Cook, Mark Schreiber, Dave Svatek, Stacy Taddy, Randy Ertman, B.J. Lutterman, and Joy Holtz for additional stories about Kevin.

At some point that year, Jason and Kevin decided that they were going to beat the shit out of Jim Colby. They planned to do it on the last day of school. They never did though.

In the second week of school, my parents arranged for me to carry around what was called a "trip sheet." It was a half-sheet of paper which listed all of my classes. It was to be filled out by each teacher at the end of class. It asked two questions. One was, "Was his assignment done?" The other was, "Did he pay attention in class?" There was a third part that said, "Is there a test to study for. (To be filled in by Burt)." As the year went on, about 20 other kids ended up carrying those stupid sheets around. But I was the first! Anyway, sometimes I would grab extra sheets for Toby Schwartz and Kevin. They wanted to have some fun with it as well. At one point, Kevin decided that he wanted people to refer to him as "King." So on his trip sheet, he crossed out my name and put down "King." We would all bring our sheets up and set them on Mr. Stodola's podium. He would sign them and send them back. Then he got to Kevin's (which didn't have Kevin's name on it) looked at it, squinted, looked at it again, held it in front of him with arms stretched out, and said in a disbelieving voice, "To be filled in by KING?"

One day Kevin and I got kicked out of chorus class - as usual. We'd heard that earlier in the day - during lunch or something, Steve Cook and Stacy Taddy had wandered off into the woods behind the school. We had a lot of time to kill. So we decided to do it too - knowing full well that the two of them had gotten suspended for leaving school. What were we thinking? We wandered around a bit, then worked our way into "the pits" as it was called. Then we decided to head back to school. Along the way, we noticed two figures in the distance coming towards us. I could see the sun reflecting off the head of one of them. "That must be Mr. Slattery," (the assistant principal) I said. Sure enough, it was. The police liaison office, Mr. Duvall was also with him. Mr. Duvall was mad. "I ought to kick you both in the ass for this!" He then showed us his foot. As they were coming to retrieve us, his foot had fallen in a hole. And it was caked in mud. Slattery informed us that we were going to be suspended. He brought us into Mr. Vogt's office, who confirmed it. "You boys have earned a three-day vacation." Oh well.

During our suspension, both Kevin and I called the school payphone at a time when we knew our class was done with gym, and would be waiting near the phone. When we returned to school, I was the one who got in trouble for that.

On the day that we got back from that suspension, Mr Longhini decided to spring a math test on us. The shitty thing is that all the material had been taught over the previous three days. So Kevin and I were clueless. It was literally some sort of new topic that we knew nothing about. We both told him that we couldn't take the test because we hadn't been in class the last three days. But Longhini didn't care. He made us take it anyway. I remember it well. There were 50 questions. When Longhini left the room for a few minutes, I looked at Kevin and shrugged my shoulders. Finally I said, "Screw it! I'm putting down any answer." So I went down the math problems and just put answers like "2, 24, 16, 3.5..." The answers made no sense. Kevin followed suit. When Longhini corrected our work, he was absolutely furious. He screamed at us, saying that Kevin had gotten a 2% while I had actually scored a zero. How in the hell did Kevin get one right? But seriously, what did Longhini expect? Kevin said he thought about saying something like, "2% - I feel like milk." But Longhini was too pissed. So he kept quiet.

I got suspended by myself later on in the year. Kevin came over to my house for lunch one day. He and I went outside and sat on my neighbor's garage roof. She came out and ripped into us for being up there. So we got down. She said she was going to tell my parents. And she actually did wander over once, a few weeks later. But my parents weren't home at the time. And I didn't answer the door.

Speaking of that payphone, Kevin lost a dime in it once. For a period of maybe two months, Mrs. Westburg had a helper - a guy named Eric Bush. I knew Eric. He had been a camp counselor at Camp Sinawa. He was a cool guy at camp. In school, he was an absolute prick. He was violent too. When we'd get kicked out of class, he would approach us if we were still unruly and causing trouble. He would lean down to where we were sitting, and yank our earlobes apart. He pulled on them pretty fucking hard too. "Are you gonna behave?" "No! No! No! AHHHHHHHH!" That hurt! So one day Kevin decided to call the child abuse hotline. No joke, Mr. Bush hung up the phone on him while he was making the call. What an asshole. I didn't miss him when he left.

Let's talk about that payphone one more time. One day Kevin, Doug and myself were once again kicked out of chorus. And someone came up with the brilliant idea to call the fire department with a phony fire call. Somehow I volunteered to do it. I called. And in a muffled voice said, "There's a fire at L.B. Clarke School." Then I hung up. About an hour later, we all got called into Mr. Vogt's office. On the way down, Kevin and I talked about it. And we were going to pin it on Doug. But when we got into his office, things changed. Both Kevin and Doug fingered me. I was so pissed! I refused to admit my guilt. Even though Mr. Slattery was pressuring me to tell the truth, I refused to budge. Fuck them! If I was going down, I was bringing everyone down with me. Because they never had an admission as to who actually placed the call, all three of us ended up getting referred to social services - where my mom worked. My social worker was a friend of my mom's. How weird is that? Anyway, all three of us were sentenced to do 15 hours of community service. Kevin and I had to work three hours a day for one week, at the Salvation Army in Manitowoc. And get this, on three of those five days, I was brought over to the personal home of the head of the local chapter, and was made to do his yardwork! Can you explain to me how that is "community" service? A week later Kevin took my place - and also found himself at the guy's house. Doug ended up cleaning churches or something in Two Rivers. As a side note, I got in trouble during my community service. I was fooling around in the truck, and ended up pushing the stick out of park. A few seconds later, the truck rolled out into the street. How it managed not to hit anyone - or anything, is a mystery to me. My social worker made me write a letter of apology for that little trick.

Kevin once brought a whoopee cushion to school, and fooled Mr. Schambureck into thinking that someone actually had a gas problem.

One day in Mr. Fencil's class, Kevin was giving him a hard time. Apparently the day before, Fencil had gotten into a physical altercation with Tim Hauschultz - who I believe got suspended for it. Kevin's desk had already been moved up to the chalkboard all by himself. And from there, he kept laughing and asking questions. "What happened with Hauschultz? Ha ha ha!" This went on for several minutes. Finally Fencil had had enough. He went up to Kevin, grabbed him, and said, "This is what I did to Hauschultz." And he started banging Kevin's head into the chalkboard. Kevin was stunned, quickly broke free, and ran towards the door - with Fencl on his tail. I distinctly remember Kevin dashing by me, as Fencil reached out for him, merely scratching his fingers on the back of Kevin's jean jacket. Kevin disappeared into the halls. And Fencl decided to simply let him go. To my knowledge, nothing more ever came of that incident.

Mr. Fencil had an indentation in his chin. So on occasion, Kevin would bring a q-tip from home, and set it on his desk.

Sometimes Mr. Fencil would banish us to his backroom - which had two windows near the ceiling. So we'd be sitting in class. Then suddenly Kevin's smiling head would poke up in view. He'd make faces and poked fun at Fencl. Of course everytime Fencl turned around, Kevin's head would be back down, out of sight. Of course sometimes Fencil would look in the room anyway. You had to physically climb on some shelves to get up that high. So it wasn't that hard to catch him in the act. Sometimes I would pretend that Kevin was looking - even when he wasn't. It was always fun to see Mr. Fencil take a peek into the backroom, based on my laughing and pointing, only to find Kevin calmly sitting in his seat.

One day per week, Fencil would take us into the library. Kevin and I used this time to play tag. But in order not to be seen by Fencl or the librarian, we played on our hands and knees.

At Christmas time, the library had a Christmas tree. It was decorated with a string of popcorn. kevin and I used to go up and take bites off of it.

One day Fencil sat us all down and passed out a paper to each of us. We were supposed to write down any magazines that we would like the library to carry. Of course Kevin came up with "Playboy." He even convinced Jenny Malley to write down "Playgirl" on hers. When we handed in our papers, Fencil yelled at Jenny. Of course Jenny responded by saying, "Kevin wrote down Playboy." But Fencil told her that Kevin had crossed it out, and put down other magazines that were more reasonable. Kevin got a laugh out of that. But I'm sure Jenny was miffed. Jenny, welcome to the world of friendships with troublemakers.

As a joke, when Kevin sneezed, he would sometimes say, "Achoo-do-do."

In 8th grade, I had Kevin in two classes. One was Mr. Monka's social studies class. The other was english class with Mr. Kern. We also had Mr. Kern for detention. Kevin and I were in there a lot - a LOT! To pass the time, we would sometimes have breath holding contests. I always won those. I have great lungs. We would also have what we called "star contests." We would each be given one minute to draw as many stars on a piece of paper as we could. We'd then exchange papers and count each other's. I always won those too.

One day in Mr. Monka's class, he asked where I had been the day before, as I had missed a day of school. He said, "Where were you... watching soaps?" I said, "No... C.H.O.M.P.S." C.H.O.M.P.S. was a movie about a robot superdog. And I had in fact watched it. Kevin (who also missed class the day before) turned around and laughed, and said, "Ha! I watched that too!" Monka look bewildered.

Speaking of Mr. Monka, he had a huge box full of paper in his backroom. Everyday Kevin and I would steal some of it. We were setting up a really nice book burn. When we finally had enough, I huddled behind Kevin in the hallway, after the bell rang. Those who remember Clarke may recall that the halls were somewhat narrow. And in between classes, they were pretty well packed. So one could easily make a mess unnoticed. Kevin lightly held a folder full of this scrap paper. Then he said "Do it!" I then lightly tapped the folder, causing him to drop it. The hundreds of sheets of paper then got stomped on and spread around by everyone walking by. Kevin and I were long gone before anyone even noticed.

Mr. Kern had some ancient textbooks that we sometimes used in class. They were full of graffiti and profanity from various students over the years. Anyway, one day Kevin was drawing a picture in one of the books, unaware that Mr. Kern was watching over his shoulder. "Wactha drawing?" Startled, Kevin replied, "Umm... an anchor." Mr. Kern simply said, "Ok." And walked back to his desk.

One day Kevin and I were talking before class, when Mr. Kern came up and said, "I have a sniglet." Singlets were phony words made up by HBO's series "Not Necessarily The News." Mr. Kern said, "Ruglump." Then he described it as the act of whenever someone trips, they get up and kind of scuff their foot on the floor where they tripped. Kevin and I looked at each other and sort of smirked. Kern shrugged his shoudlers and moved on.

Kevin once told me that there was a really cool city bus driver in town. If you got him alone on the bus, he would point out the hot chicks he saw. "Ooh... look at her ass!"

Thomas Dolby had a video on MTV during 8th grade. The song was called, "Hyperactivate." Kevin and I used to sing "Hyperventilate" instead.

I think it was in 8th grade when Kevin got the brilliant idea to put pins in his shoes. They may have been hiking boots actually. Anyway, he would stick the pin from inside, and push it out through the toe area. Then he would go up and kick a few people, sticking them with the pin.

Kevin and I used to have a saying, "The cops... what can THEY do?"

After lunch one day, Kevin and I (along with Rob Ebbole, Mike Clarksen, Lenny Lewis and perhaps a few others) played a game on the bleachers. I sat next to an unsuspecting victim. The others would then take seats next to me. Then on my signal, Kevin and the rest would start pushing me - hard. I would ram into the person and send them flying. Of course I could always play innocent as well, as I was just sitting there, getting pushed just like them. On one of these days, I heard Rob whisper to Kevin, "let's push Burt off the edge." Kevin simply shook his head and said, "No." THAT was respect!

I'm not exactly sure what the details were. But Kevin was taken into the hall by Mr. Kern one day. The two of them had some sort of exchange. And Kern allegedly shoved Kevin into a locker. Of course Kevin overreacted, grabbed an open locker, and ripped it off its hinges. Kevin ended up getting suspended. But he came back to class for a few seconds, grabbed his stuff, then yelled, "You can keep your damn book!"

One day Mr. Monka was out sick. And Mrs. Beth was our substitute. I immediately moved from my seat and took the desk behind Kevin's. On this particular day, everytime Mrs. Beth walked by us, we would casually throw a wrapper or some other garbage into the pocket of her vest. After several pieces she finally took notice. But she didn't do anything.

It was in Mr. Monka's class where Kevin taught me how to make myself pass out. We would take really deep breaths, then hold our breath while pressing the veins on our necks. It really worked! I did this many times in my life. When you came to, you were dizzy and tingly. It was a really cool cheap high.

In freshman year, I had Kevin in Ms. Sapa's literature class. I have a fond memory of Kevin going to the pencil sharpener, opening it up, placing his gum in the gears, then turning the handle. What this did was make it impossible to turn it, and thus impossible to sharpen your pencil. I can't imagine the amount of work it took to get the gum out of all those grooves.

One day Kevin brought a throwing star to class. He'd made it in shop class. He wanted to toss it back and forth to me. He was on one side fo the room. I was on the other. I tossed it a few times. Kevin was afraid to throw it though. So he'd send Ken Bartz over to me with it. Well, the last time I threw it, it bounced off the wall, loudly clanged on the desk, then stuck into the floor. Sapa heard it, and brought me in to see Mr. Wood. This was about the third week of school. And it was my first meeting with the beast. What did he do? When he saw the throwing star, he said, "I know what this is. I got one of these." He then fished through his desk, actually found one, then whipped it against the wall, inches from my head. Was this man insane? He yelled and screamed. "This ain't L.B. CLarke!" When it was all said and done, I'd earned myself three detentions.

In the fall of freshman year, there was a period of time where every single day after school, Kevin, Mark Schreiber and myself would ride our bikes all over town - usually ending up at Kevin's house. Kevin was the only guy I knew that had a satellite dish.

One day Kevin said, "We gotta go to Rollie's. The aisles are like two feet wide." Rollie's was a small grocery store near Kevin's house. So we went in there and got a little rowdy. I ended up throwing a loaf of bread at Kevin. The owner then kicked us out.

Kevin and I also used to play a game where we tried to get kicked out of other stores as well. We would go into Evans, then start pushing each other and getting really loud, challenging each other to a fight. "Come on man! Let's go! I'll kick your ass!" Anything for a laugh.

In October, Kevin and I ventured into T& R Video for the first time. It had only been open a few months. The owner was a really cool guy. He talked to kids just like they were peers, as opposed to talking down to us like an adult often would. Kevin told him that he needed to get some Motley Crue videos. And the guy agreed. A few years later, that guy became my boss, when I got a job there.

Kevin and I used to hang out during lunch. Kevin found an unused room outside the basement gym. A bunch of us used to go there. Besides us, there was Mike Clarksen, Lenny Lewis, and sometimes B.J. Lutterman or Greg Flemal. We called ourselves "The lunch bunch."

On the last day of school before Christmas break, we got to see the movie "Fletch" in the auditorium. I shit you not, Kevin brought a garbage bag full of popcorn. I ended up not sitting with him though.

Kevin was with me when Ron Gretz, Mike Zeman and myself got caught in the ceiling tiles incident. See my entry on Ron for all the details on that.

At the end of the year, we all got our yearbooks. Kevin stole someone's, cut out some pictures, and used them on his dartboard. I remember him asking me, "Who the hell is Her Vang?"

I'm not sure if it was freshman year or sophomore year. But Kevin stole a fire extinguisher from the shop area. He smuggled it out in his duffel bag. If memory serves, he ended up shooting it off in the locker room one day.

In our sophomore year, Kevin was only with us for about six weeks. I never found out what exactly happened. But there was allegedly some sort of incident involving Mr. Wood. Kevin's parents showed up at school. And Kevin ran away from home. And he remained on the run for something like six months. I think he was actually hiding out with Ken Bartz' sister Dawn. I recall reading a story in the paper about the arrest of a 14-year-old runaway" in which a TV set at the police station was destroyed. It was Kevin. I could just picture him struggling with the officers, and kicking a TV over. Anyway, a week or so later, Kevin was back in school. But he only lasted maybe two weeks at the most. After that, he was gone for good.

Kevin told me a story about how he once stole a rabbit. The rabbit was gigantic - as big as a dog. And he described how it was scratching him while he attempted to carry it home on his bike. I think he said his dad eventually killed it and cooked it. Speaking of Kevin's dad, Mark Schreiber and myself were over at his house one day. Kevin's dad brought out a plate and asked if we wanted to try some of it. It was squirrel. I passed. Kevin actually has pictures of the rabbit. You can see them below.





Kevin had a hobby of collecting bumper stickers for radio stations. He kept them in his room, on a water heater. He used to peel them off of people's cars.

I saw Kevin during junior jear. Somehow I bumped into him. I was with Dave Svatek and Dave's next door neighbor Bill. Kevin was going to ride his bike to Sheboygan to get in line to buy Motley Crue tickets. Bill was going to drive him. But at the last minute, Kevin got another offer - and stayed with Dawn Bartz. I have a micro cassette tape from that night. Bill once told me that Kevin got arrested for punching a cop at a Dio concert. I don't know if that's true. But I doubt it.

I believe it was during the end of our junior year when Kevin got arrested for helping to beat the shit out of Steve Cook. See Steve's entry for the details on that one.

Kevin stayed in contact while I lived in Two Rivers. We never saw each other. But he would prank call me all the time. One time he invited me over to "smoke some dope." I declined. Although had it not been in the middle of winter, and had I lived closer, I would have.

At some point, I'd heard a rumor that over the winter time, Kevin had broken into every single boat that was parked at the Manitowoc Marina. Allegedly he got all kinds of goodies - fishing equipment, microwaves, TV's, radios... Because it was winter, the theft wasn't discovered until the spring. If memory serves, Kevin had a lot of the loot stashed in someone's barn - but had to dump a lot of it into the river when the cops began snooping around. I don't know who told me all this. But something tells me Kevin himself told me something about this. I could be wrong though. It's possible that none of this ever happened also.

Kevin once told me a story about breaking into a neighbor's house and stealing some fishing poles or something. He ended up throwing a lot of the stuff away. But he said he got in trouble for that anyway. He was in the police station, and discovered that the cops had taken his garbage, and had recovered some of the stolen property. He was shocked.

Kevin eventually moved to Manitowoc. Over the years, I think he's bounced around between Manitowoc, Two Rivers and Sheboygan. Every once in awhile, I'd see his name pop up in the paper for some minor offense. I ran into Kevin a couple of times at the video store. I even gave him a ride home once, when he was drunk. He burst in, laughing and having a good time. He told me about throwing some dude's bike off a bridge. Then he said that earlier that night some cop had been hassling him at the bar. I remember thinking, damn, this could have been me.

The last time I saw Kevin was October, 1997. I was with my friend Amanda. We had driven up from Milwaukee, and were hanging around in Manitowoc. We went into Book World on 8th St. And as we were walking in, Kevin was walking out. We talked for a couple of minutes. It was just like old times. I think Kevin had a beard though. And his arms were covered in tattoos.

It looks like Kevin lives in Sheboygan these days. I believe he's married to a woman named Becky. I don't know if they have any children. Kevin has been stopped for drunk driving on three occasions, and has been ordered into treatment. I wish him well.

UPDATE - 4/13/06 - Kevin provided me a recent photo. Look down to see it.



UPDATE - 7/11/06 - Another very recent photo. Don't mess with King Kevin!

UPDATE - 2/15/07 - Kevin sent me some recent pictures of himself. They were taken today, as he watched the Steven Avery trial live on his computer. Look down to see them.







UPDATE - 4/16/07 - Kevin provided me with two more photos of himself. The first one is from two hours ago, as he watched the Brendan Dassey trial on TV. This of course follows the Steven Avery trial-watching photos he provided above. The other photo os from sometime in the 1990's. The guy next to him is Ken Bartz.





UPDATE - 5/1/07 - Here's a picture of Kevin Dehne, which was taken yesterday.