MANITOWOC, Wis. (Court TV) — A frustrated prosecutor asked a judge to intervene after two defendants appeared at another hearing without representation.
Dominic Pilgreen appears in court, Nathan Reichard appears via Zoom on Nov. 12, 2026. (Court TV)
Dominic Pilgreen, 26, and Nathan Reichard, 15, are both charged with being a party to first-degree intentional homicide, false imprisonment, substantial battery, hiding a corpse and theft from a person or corpse in the death of 16-year-old Payton Vertz, whose body was found in a river days after his parents reported him missing.
Pilgreen appeared in person and Reichard appeared virtually at a hearing on Thursday, and neither defendant had an attorney. Both defendants said they wanted attorneys and had a public defender at their first appearance, but no one from the public defender’s office appeared Thursday.
“The state is very concerned, and I’m asking at this next hearing that a representative from the public defender’s office must be present,” the prosecutor said. “I need an attorney I can talk to about releasing the victim to the victim’s family. The victim’s family desperately wants … that issue addressed, and I can’t do that without counsel.”
The prosecutor said the public defender’s office attorney manager told her the office was still looking for counsel for the defendants, and that the head of the division that assigns attorneys did not respond to her outreach.
The judge appeared to appreciate the prosecutor’s frustrations, but said he had no authority to order the office to appear. “This has been an ongoing problem,” he said, explaining that the public defender’s office policy is to have only one person appear for a defendant’s first appearance in court. “The agency takes the position that they need not appear after the first appearance with a defendant.”
Vertz’s parents reported him missing on Oct. 6, 2026; his body was found washed up in the West Twin River on Oct. 16.
Multiple students who attend the same high school as Reichard contacted a school resource officer on Oct. 16 to say that the defendant had made troubling comments about the victim. One witness reported that while working out at the school, Reichard asked them if they knew Vertz. When they said yes, Reichard allegedly responded, “He’s dead; I killed him.” The witness also noticed bruises on Reichard’s hand.
In an interview with police, Reichard allegedly admitted his involvement in Vertz’s death, but said that he acted as the lookout while Pilgreen killed the teen. “Reichard stated Pilgreen told him that he was going to beat [Vertz] first, then use his shoelaces to tie him to a tree, strangle him with a shoelace and if that didn’t work, he would use [Vertz’s] belt or slash his throat with a knife he had with him,” a probable cause affidavit reviewed by Court TV said.
While Reichard insisted he only acted as a lookout, Pilgreen said in an interview with police that the teenager was actively involved in killing Vertz. Pilgreen allegedly said that the plan to kill the victim was borne out of Reichard’s hatred for Vertz, and that Reichard was the one who came up with the plan to kill him.
“Pilgreen stated that the agreement was that Pilgreen was going to be the one to kill [Vertz] so that this could be his first kill and Reichard’s role was just to assist,” detectives wrote in the affidavit. “He stated that Reichard had to assist him quite a bit because [Vertz] was extremely resistive. He stated that they attempted to tie [Vertz] multiple times to trees to they could punch and whip him and [victim] kept escaping.”
Both Reichard and Pilgreen are scheduled to return to court on Nov. 19 for a preliminary hearing.
