Janice V. Rudell was an 11-year-old White/Caucasian female whose life ended on February 18, 1963, during the killing of five members of her family at their home on the southwest side of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Janice lived there with her twin sister, Judith “Judy” Rudell, their older brother John Rudell, their mother Joyce Hebard, and their stepfather Jack Hebard. Jack’s son from an earlier marriage, Harry R.
Hebard, also belonged to the household and would soon become the focus of the investigation.
In the weeks before the killings, problems had been developing around Harry, who was a high school junior. Court records later showed that he and two friends had been involved in stealing cigarettes. His poor school performance, difficulties getting along with his stepbrother, and indications that he might run away prompted Jack and Joyce to take him to psychologist Dr. Thomas Grib. The psychologist believed Harry had a personality disturbance but was not psychotic. On February 14, Jack told the two friends involved in the cigarette incident that he did not want Harry associating with them. Within the next day or two, Harry attempted to purchase a pistol but was refused because he was too young. On February 17, the day before the murders, he went hunting with one of his father’s automatic rifles.
On Monday, February 18, Harry attended school during the morning but was absent that afternoon. Around noon, he telephoned a friend and arranged to be picked up at approximately 5:30 that evening at a location about two blocks from the family home. What happened inside the residence during the following hours turned an ordinary winter evening into one of Green Bay’s most shocking crimes. Contemporary reports said Jack Hebard was resting on a sofa when he was shot. Harry subsequently killed the Rudell children and remained at the house until Joyce returned. Investigators determined that a pistol and rifle were used, both reported at the time as. 22-caliber weapons.
Janice, her twin sister, and their brother were found in or around the kitchen area. Each of the victims suffered fatal gunshot wounds, with wounds to the head reported in contemporary accounts. Police found evidence that the family had been preparing for an ordinary evening meal: food was on the stove, the table had been set, and the television was still on. There were no apparent signs of a struggle. Jack was found on the sofa in the front portion of the home, while Joyce and the children were found elsewhere in the residence.
Joyce arrived home at approximately 5:30 p.m. and was seen by a neighbor as she reached the house. Later evidence established that Jack and the Rudell children were already inside. Contemporary reports stated that Harry waited for Joyce to return and shot her after she entered. By approximately 6:00 p.m., someone attempted to telephone the home, but no one answered. All five victims were determined to have died during roughly the same period.
Harry left the neighborhood shortly afterward. His friend met him near the previously arranged location at about 5:45 p.m. Harry was carrying a bundle of clothing and said that he was leaving home. He later buried the bundle in the snow and spent the night away from the family residence. That discarded bundle would eventually become an important piece of physical evidence against him.
The murders were discovered the following morning after Jack failed to report for his early work shift. His coworker and neighbor, Darold Aebischer, became concerned and had his wife telephone the Hebard home. The house lights remained on and the dogs could be heard barking, but nobody answered. Police were summoned. Officers looking through a window could see what appeared to be bodies, and Detective Dale Herfort entered the residence and confirmed that Jack Hebard, Joyce Hebard, John Rudell, Judith Rudell, and Janice Rudell were dead.
Harry was missing from the house, immediately drawing investigators’ attention. Police launched a search and located him at a farm roughly 20 to 25 miles away near Pulaski. Contemporary news accounts described him as the presumed killer while the search was underway. After he was taken into custody on February 19, he initially denied responsibility when questioned by the district attorney but subsequently confessed. Newspaper reports said he described feeling excluded from the family, and investigators reportedly discovered a note in his school locker suggesting that the killings had been contemplated beforehand.
Investigators also recovered the bundle Harry had buried in the snow. It contained clothing, some of which was bloodstained, along with a nine-shot. 22-caliber revolver. At the eventual trial, firearms testimony identified that revolver as one of the weapons used in the murders. Although Harry had given oral and written confessions after his arrest, the trial court later ruled those statements inadmissible. The court found that the confessions had been given voluntarily but did not satisfy the constitutional requirements that had been established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miranda decision after the 1963 interrogation but before Harry’s eventual trial. Prosecutors therefore had to proceed without presenting those confessions to the jury.
The criminal proceedings did not move quickly. Following Harry’s arrest, two court-appointed psychiatrists examined him, and he was adjudged mentally incapable of standing trial. He was committed to Central State Hospital in Waupun. Years passed before authorities determined that he had become competent to face the charges. In May and again in August 1967, Brown County authorities received information indicating that he was capable of standing trial.
On December 28, 1967, Harry R. Hebard was formally charged with five counts of first-degree murder, one for each member of the family killed that evening, including Janice. He entered pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. His attorneys unsuccessfully sought to have the trial moved out of Brown County because of the extensive publicity and community awareness surrounding the massacre.
The case finally went before a jury in September 1968. On September 20, the jury found Harry guilty as charged of the five murders. Because he had also pleaded insanity, the proceeding continued into a separate phase dealing with his mental responsibility at the time of the killings. On September 27, the jury determined that he was not legally insane when the crimes were committed. The court subsequently imposed a life sentence for each murder, with the five life terms ordered to run concurrently.
Harry appealed his convictions, raising issues that included the handling of the insanity phase and the refusal to transfer the case to another county. In March 1971, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the judgment against him. A request for rehearing was denied on May 4, 1971, leaving the murder convictions and life sentences intact. Janice’s death was therefore not left as an unresolved homicide: her stepbrother Harry Hebard was identified, arrested, prosecuted and ultimately convicted along with the murders of the other four members of the household.
