In the predawn hours of an October day in 2010, Tyler Wicklund followed his former girlfriend into the bathroom of her Kasota apartment.
There he cut her throat with a knife and placed her in the bathtub.
One year later he sat in a Le Sueur County courtroom and heard a judge pronounce punishment: Life in prison for the murder of 20-year-old Jessica Buboltz.
Moments earlier Wicklund, a 24-year-old from Elk River who had been arrested soon after the killing, stood to address the court. His voice cracked as he fought back tears.
“I sit here in my jail cell thinking how in the world I could take someone out of this world that I live in. There’s nothing I can say to tell you how I feel.”
According to court records, Wicklund, Buboltz and others had been drinking at the Kasota apartment complex where Buboltz lived. Wicklund told investigators he and Buboltz went to her apartment about 3:30 a.m.
After discussing their tenuous relationship and having sex, he followed her into the bathroom, slit her throat and fled with the 14-month-old daughter he’d fathered with Buboltz.
He was arrested at his grandmother’s house near Elk River. She had called 911 to report he was suicidal and left her house with a shotgun. She told investigators Wicklund admitted to her that he killed Buboltz.
A grand jury charged him with multiple felony-level crimes, two of which carried maximum penalties of life in prison without parole.
In a September plea agreement, Wicklund pleaded guilty to one first-degree murder count and one felony charge of felon in possession of a firearm.
He received a 60-month sentence for the latter. For the murder plea he was sentenced to life with eligibility for parole in 30 years. He is in the state prison at St. Cloud.
On the day he was sentenced Wicklund, clad in orange jail garb, dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief as he listened to crime-impact statements from Buboltz’s family and friends, who repeatedly touched on themes of anger, depression and the sorrow they felt for a little girl who had lost both parents — one to murder, the other to long atonement in a cell.
“Every day I feel my emotions eating me up inside,” Wicklund told the court. “And they probably will for the rest of my life.”
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