Investigations
James Prokopovitz convicted of murdering wife Victoria Prokopovitz
She disappeared from their Pittsfield home in April 2013, and investigators never recovered her remains.
In Brown County, Wisconsin, a jury convicted James Prokopovitz of first-degree intentional homicide in the disappearance of Victoria Prokopovitz, who was last seen at the couple's Pittsfield home on April 25, 2013. Dr. Insanity worked with the Brown County Sheriff's Office to publish body-camera and interview footage from the years detectives spent reopening the file.
James Prokopovitz reported Victoria missing on the morning of April 26, 2013, after saying he left for work around 5 a.m. Investigators found her purse, phone, cigarettes, dentures, and medication at the house. The only footwear missing was a pair of high heels. Victoria's psychiatrist told deputies she had been doing better in the days before she vanished, undercutting an early theory that she had died by suicide.
Detective Sergeant Roman Arenstein pulled the 2013 files back open in 2016 as Victoria's adult daughters kept pressing for answers. A later search turned up luminol reactions in the bedroom, kitchen, and hallway, but analysts never confirmed human blood, let alone Victoria's. When Arenstein asked Prokopovitz to retrace his dawn search by truck, Prokopovitz pointed detectives toward a Maplewood Shell station. Station video showed neither his truck nor him on camera that morning.
Victoria's daughters Marsha and Stacy told detectives their stepfather slept in a chair while relatives searched the property and that he had pitched a new relationship with Kathryn Friday only weeks after the disappearance. Stacy's friend Julie, who joined one of the early searches, said Prokopovitz left after fifteen or twenty minutes, told volunteers they were wasting their time, and said Victoria was nowhere nearby. Friday's son Jason told police the pair had lied about meeting randomly at a casino and that the affair may have started before Victoria went missing.
On May 8, 2019, Prokopovitz and Friday testified under oath at a secret John Doe hearing. Both stuck to the casino story until investigators confronted them, then admitted they had arranged a meeting at a truck stop and fed police the casino lie for years. Brown County deputies arrested them that day. A criminal complaint filed May 22, 2019, charged Prokopovitz with first-degree intentional homicide and charged Friday with perjury and obstruction.
In a jail interview after the arrests, Prokopovitz told Arenstein he would admit he killed Victoria, then repeatedly said he did not know where she was or how she died. Prosecutors argued at trial that he disposed of her body in an industrial sludge pond he could reach through work at a paper mill, a theory Julie had raised years earlier. Friday pleaded no contest to conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction, then died on November 2, 2020, before Judge Tammy Jo Hock could sentence her.
The jury found Prokopovitz guilty in February 2021 after roughly a day of deliberation and also convicted him on perjury and obstruction counts. In May 2021, Prokopovitz received life in prison without parole. Victoria's stepson Wesley was cleared after investigators confirmed his alibi.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice missing-persons entry for Victoria Prokopovitz still lists her as missing and notes the February 27, 2021 homicide conviction. Her remains have never been found.
Source video: Couple Realizes Their Horrifying Secret Is Exposed 6 Years Later