Leonard R. Lesnieski was a 48-year-old White/Caucasian male and veteran Milwaukee police officer when he was killed in the line of duty on March 19, 1985. Lesnieski had joined the Milwaukee Police Department on March 24, 1969, giving him nearly 16 years of service. He spent about 15 years assigned to District 4 on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side before transferring to District 5 in April 1984. Before becoming a police officer, Lesnieski served four years in the United States Marine Corps.
He was married to his wife, Carol, and they had two daughters.
At approximately 9:30 on the morning of March 19, Lesnieski was patrolling with fellow Milwaukee Police Officer Rosario J. Collura in the area of North 17th Street and West Center Street. The neighborhood was known to police for narcotics activity, and a grocery store in the area had recently been the scene of robberies. The officers noticed a group of men near the store and stopped to investigate. What initially appeared to be a routine field interrogation quickly became deadly.
One of the men was Terrance B. Davis, who was in the process of purchasing a small quantity of marijuana. Davis concealed the marijuana on his body as the officers approached. The officers began searching the men, and as Davis was being searched, he suddenly produced a handgun. Davis shot Lesnieski in the chest and then turned the weapon on Collura, shooting him in the chest as well. Lesnieski suffered a gunshot wound that struck his heart and died from the injury. Collura was transported to a hospital and initially was believed to have a chance of surviving, but he died several hours later from uncontrollable bleeding.
Davis fled from the scene following the shootings. His capture came later after an apparently separate crime in the Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer. A woman reported that a man had attempted to take her vehicle at knifepoint in the parking lot of a Kohl’s department store. Brown Deer police received a description of the fleeing suspect, and Officer Donald Kasprzak spotted Davis within roughly half a mile of the shopping center, southeast of where the attempted robbery had occurred. Davis was stopped and arrested. Court records later described his arrest as being for attempted armed robbery.
The investigation tied Davis to the deaths of Lesnieski and Collura, and he was prosecuted in Milwaukee County. Davis was convicted in 1985 of two counts of first-degree murder while using a dangerous weapon, two counts of carrying a concealed weapon, and possession of a controlled substance. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment plus five additional years on each of the two murder counts, with the sentences ordered to run consecutively. Additional consecutive sentences totaling 19 months were imposed for the remaining offenses. The result effectively placed Davis under consecutive life sentences for the murders of the two officers.
Davis challenged his convictions on direct appeal. Among the arguments he raised were claims that the trial judge had been prejudiced against him, that police lacked probable cause for his arrest, that statements he made after being taken into custody should not have been admitted, that jury selection and jury instructions had been improper, and that testimony from the officers’ wives unfairly prejudiced the jury. He also objected to the trial court's refusal to admit expert testimony concerning environmental and cultural influences that his defense argued contributed to his fear of police. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals rejected the arguments and affirmed his convictions in September 1987.
Davis continued seeking post-conviction relief years later. In 2001 he argued, among other things, that his trial attorney had inadequately investigated his mental state and that he had been incompetent to stand trial. Those claims were rejected, and another attempt to obtain a new trial or sentence modification was denied in proceedings that reached the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in 2005. The appellate court again left his convictions and sentences intact.
Davis remained incarcerated for the killings. In November 2008, while imprisoned at Fox Lake Correctional Institution, he attacked two correctional officers with a claw hammer in the prison furniture shop, seriously injuring them. Contemporary reporting continued to identify him as the man convicted of murdering Officers Leonard Lesnieski and Rosario Collura. He subsequently received an additional prison sentence for the attack. The March 19, 1985 shootings therefore ended with an identified gunman, an arrest, prosecution, convictions on both murders, and consecutive life sentences rather than remaining an unresolved line-of-duty homicide.
