Barbeau, Paape to be sentenced tomorrow, Tuesday

Sentencing is scheduled this week for teens Antonio Barbeau and Nathan Paape, who were convicted earlier this year of murdering Barbeau’s great-grandmother at her Sheboygan Falls home.
The boys, who are each 14 years old, face life in prison and a minimum 20 years behind bars before they’re eligible for parole. Because of their ages, neither teen can be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Barbeau‘s sentencing hearing begins Monday morning before Circuit Court Judge Timothy Van Akkeren. He pleaded no contest in June to first-degree intentional homicide as part of a plea deal.

Under the terms of Barbeau’s plea agreement, District Attorney Joe DeCecco will recommend that he be eligible for parole in 35 years, when he will be 48 years old. However, Van Akkeren is not bound by that recommendation.
Paape, meanwhile, was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide following a jury trial in June. He’s scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday morning before Van Akkeren.
DeCecco can argue for any sentence in Paape’s case.
An entire day has been allotted for each boy’s sentencing, and a number of witnesses are expected to testify.
Barbeau’s family has said the boy suffers from permanent brain damage incurred during a 2009 accident. His attorney is free to argue that the injury should be considered a mitigating factor at sentencing.
Barbeau had run away from a juvenile detention center and was staying at Paape‘s home when on Sept. 17, the two traveled to 78-year-old Barbara Olson’s home intending to rob and possibly kill her. The boys were 13 at the time.
Paape’s attorneys have alleged that the scheme was Barbeau’s idea, as he was a runaway and needed money, and that Paape thought it was a joke and never thought they’d actually go through with it.
Barbeau has testified that the two hatched the plan together.
The boys had just entered Olson’s garage through an unlocked side door when Olson found them and invited them into her home.
The boys followed her inside and attacked her using a hatchet and hammer. The two have given widely varying accounts of how they carried out the attack, but both admitted to having participated.
During his trial, Paape testified that he only struck Olson twice with a hammer out of fear Barbeau would turn on him. Barbeau, meanwhile, testified that they each took turns striking Olson with the hatchet.
Both teens admitted to striking her no more than eight times between them, yet the medical examiner who performed Olson’s autopsy said she’d been struck a minimum 27 times.
After the attack, the boys stole jewelry and money from Olson’s home and a day later attempted to cover up the crime by parking Olson’s unlocked car at a Sheboygan bowling alley and leaving the jewelry inside it in hopes someone would steal the vehicle and be implicated in her death.
Ultimately, they made away with about $150 in cash.

Linoro Gioielli