Paula Atkinson Cupit, a 24-year-old White/Caucasian woman, was working as a maid at The Abbey Resort in Fontana, Wisconsin, when she was killed in August 1974. Online accounts differ on the precise date, with later case summaries placing the murder on August 13 while contemporary newspaper references reported August 15. During the afternoon, a coworker became concerned after Cupit had not been seen for several hours and began looking through the guest rooms she had been assigned to service.
The search ended in Room 606, where Cupit was found on the floor, partially unclothed and covered with two blankets.
The scene revealed an exceptionally violent attack. An autopsy determined that Cupit had been sexually assaulted, stabbed in the heart and strangled with enough force to break her neck. Investigators estimated that the killing occurred between approximately 1:00 and 2:00 p.m., several hours before her body was discovered. The Abbey Resort offered a $5,000 reward for information, and Walworth County authorities mounted an intensive investigation. Sheriff William Cummings reported that a dozen detectives were working full time on the case and that investigators were pursuing possible suspects beyond Wisconsin.
For more than a year, the investigation remained unresolved. The eventual break came as authorities in Wisconsin and Illinois examined Richard Otto Macek, a violent offender from the McHenry, Illinois, area. Macek had been connected to another attack involving a hotel maid in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and investigators George Hendel and Louis Tomaselli recognized similarities between that assault and Cupit's killing. The circumstances surrounding the attacks on hotel employees helped focus attention on Macek as a suspect in the Fontana murder.
Macek was located in San Bernardino, California, and arrested on December 5, 1975. Wisconsin authorities sought him in connection with the Wauwatosa attack, and by mid-December he had also been charged with first-degree murder in Cupit's death. Accounts of the investigation state that while in custody Macek confessed to the Fontana killing as well as the Wauwatosa assault. His prosecution unfolded while he was simultaneously facing serious criminal proceedings arising from other violent attacks in Wisconsin and Illinois.
By December 1976, Macek was scheduled to stand trial for Cupit's murder, with proceedings beginning in January 1977. On February 22, 1977, he pleaded guilty to the murder charge. As a result of the plea, additional rape and mayhem charges connected with the case were dropped. Judge Robert Gollmar sentenced Macek to life imprisonment, with the sentence to run concurrently with his other Wisconsin sentences. The guilty plea brought a legal conclusion to a case that had remained open for roughly two and a half years after Cupit was found at the resort.
Macek's criminal cases continued after his conviction for Cupit's murder. He was also convicted of other serious offenses, including an attempted murder in Illinois, the Wauwatosa sexual assault, and the murder of Nancy Lossman in Illinois, ultimately receiving sentences that ensured he would remain incarcerated. He died in prison on March 2, 1987, when he was found hanging in his cell at Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin; his death was ruled a suicide. Cupit's murder, however, was no longer an unsolved case: Richard Macek had been formally charged, admitted responsibility in court by pleading guilty, and received a life sentence for killing her.
