MANITOWOC, Wis. (Court TV) — A jury deliberated for more than 11 hours before finding a man guilty of multiple charges in connection with the death of a 7-year-old child.
Timothy Hauschultz is led out of court after his conviction on Oct. 21, 2026. (Court TV)
Timothy Hauschultz, 56, was convicted Wednesday of four of the six charges he faced, including child neglect resulting in death and party to a crime of physical abuse of a child. Hauschultz had been out on bond with GPS monitoring during his trial, and his attorney asked that he remain free pending sentencing, citing his good behavior.
“We’ve gone from a posture of allegations to a posture of convictions,” Judge Carey Read said as he denied the request. Hauschultz was promptly handcuffed and led out of the courtroom by deputies.
In 2018, Hauschultz and his wife had custody of their twin great-nephews, age 7, and the twins’ younger sister. The three children lived with Hauschultz, his wife and their two children, the older of whom was a teenage boy named Damian. Prosecutors said that Timothy Hauschultz used severe discipline on the children, including forcing them to carry large logs in a loop in the backyard for hours.
On April 20, 2018, Timothy Hauschultz and his wife left the house to run errands and left Damian Hauschultz, then 14, in charge of making sure the twin boys, Ethan and A.H., completed their discipline. Ethan, who weighed 62 pounds, was assigned a 44-pound log to carry. At some point during the punishment, Ethan collapsed. After calling his father to report that Ethan was refusing to walk, Damian Hauschultz beat the boy and then buried him in several inches of snow.
When Timothy Hauschultz arrived home, Ethan was cold and stiff; the family attempted to warm him in the house before bringing him to the hospital, where doctors measured his core temperature at 74 degrees. Ethan’s cause of death was ruled hypothermia.
Damian Hauschultz, now 22, pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in Ethan’s death and testified at his father’s trial that while the punishment had been ordered by the defendant, he had not been told to hit the child or cover him with snow. Timothy Hauschultz’s defense attorney, Donna Kuchler, emphasized those statements in her closing argument to the jury, placing the blame for Ethan’s death solely on Damian Hauschultz. “[Ethan] didn’t die because he was required to carry wood,” Kuchler said. “It was Damian’s violence toward Ethan that caused his death. And there’s nothing in this record whatsoever that Tim instructed Damian to impose physical discipline on Ethan.”
Read ordered a presentence investigation ahead of Timothy Hauschultz’s sentencing hearing, which he scheduled for Jan. 15, 2027.
