STEVENS POINT, Wis. (Court TV) — A Wisconsin man will stand trial on charges he killed his mother and stepfather after a judge ruled that he is competent to move forward.
John Shulfer, 36, faces several charges, including two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of causing mental harm to a child.
John Shulfer appears in court. (WSAW)
Deputies were dispatched to a home in Portage County, Wisconsin, on July 6, 2025, after a woman asked for a welfare check on her children. The mother who called had been unable to reach the children’s grandmother, who was scheduled to do a custody exchange that evening.
When officers arrived at the home, they saw a man, already deceased, lying on the ground and bleeding. After deputies surrounded the house, Shulfer reportedly came out holding a weapon and was shot multiple times. A search of his body before he was taken to the hospital revealed he had three guns on his person when he left the house.
Inside the property, investigators found a female victim who had been shot to death in the home’s attached garage. The defendant’s two 7-year-old children were found in the home’s basement, physically unharmed. A medical examiner determined that Shulfer’s mother sustained 12 gunshot wounds to her legs, arms, torso and head; her husband had nine gunshot wounds to his arms, torso, head and face.
Detectives interviewed the children, who said they had witnessed their father — the defendant — shoot both of their grandparents. The 7-year-old girl told investigators that she saw her father arguing with and threatening her grandmother while holding a gun. She said that “as she was looking away, the defendant started shooting” at the victim, investigators said. When she turned back to see if it was over, her father allegedly fired four more shots. The child said her father told her and her brother to go downstairs to the basement and watch cartoons. “She asked him how long they were going to stay at the house, and the defendant said, ‘Forever,'” according to investigators.
When detectives spoke to Shulfer in the hospital days after the shooting, he allegedly confessed to pulling the trigger but said he had shot each victim only once or twice. “The defendant claimed that he was defending himself because ‘they’ were mad he was drinking and ‘they just had enough’ and that [his mother] ‘probably’ was going to go inside and get a shotgun,” detectives wrote in an affidavit of probable cause. “The defendant said, ‘I should have just f—n’ left. I should have just f—n’ booked it.'”
Shulfer was deemed incompetent shortly after he was charged and spent nearly one year receiving treatment; earlier this month, he was deemed competent. However, his attorneys maintained he was incompetent to stand trial and filed a motion asking for his mental status to be reconsidered. At a hearing on Tuesday, Judge Patricia Baker found no factual basis for the defendant’s motion and announced that the case would proceed to an arraignment next month.
Shulfer faces additional weapons charges because at the time of the shootings, he was on supervision after being convicted of fleeing an officer while driving and second-degree recklessly endangering safety.
