Former West Allis police officer Steven Zelich talks Monday with his attorney Jonathan Smith in a Kenosha County courtroom, where he accepted a plea deal and pleaded guilty to killing an Oregon woman in 2012. Credit: Kenosha News

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Kenosha — Former West Allis police officer Steven Zelich pleaded guilty Monday to killing an Oregon woman during a dangerous sexual encounter in 2012 and ditching her body in a suitcase along a highway in Walworth County more than a year later.

Zelich, 54, also is charged with killing a Minnesota woman in that state, in similar fashion, in 2013.

Her body was found in a second suitcase along with the Oregon victim. Jury selection in the Kenosha case had been scheduled to begin Monday.

As part of an offer that had been extended early in the case, Zelich agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of first-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon (a rope used to choke the victim for erotic purposes), and prosecutors agreed to dismiss the original charge of first-degree intentional homicide, which carries a mandatory life sentence upon conviction.

At his sentencing March 30, Zelich will now face a maximum prison sentence of 45 years, plus up to five more years for hiding a corpse, to which he also pleaded guilty Monday before Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder.

The Kenosha County charges were for the August 2012 death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez of Cottage Grove, Ore.

Zelich also is charged with murder in the killing of 37-year-old Laura Simonson the following year, but she died in Minnesota, so the charges were filed there.

Known as 'Mr. Handcuffs'

After his arrest in June 2014, information emerged about at least two other women who had discomforting encounters with Zelich, who went by the name "Mr. Handcuffs" on a website where people look for sexual partners interested in submission and domination.

He admitted to killing both Gamez and Simonson but claimed both deaths were accidental.

Zelich has not been tied to any other homicides, despite investigations by the two states and the FBI, which this month agreed to release its extensive records to lawyers in the Kenosha case only after Schroeder imposed restrictions on their use.

A native of Milwaukee's south side, Zelich got his first police job in Mequon. After being forced to resign from the West Allis police in 2001, Zelich had sold prepaid legal service plans, got involved in some failed businesses and worked for a private security company.

He was first charged only with disposing of the bodies, in Walworth County, and only later with the Kenosha homicide, when he told investigators that Gamez had died during "breath play," consensual sex involving asphyxiation, that went too far.

Prosecutors twice tried to get permission to bring up the Minnesota case if Zelich went to trial, even though it occurred after the Kenosha homicide. Schroeder twice denied the request until finally granting a provisional OK on prosecutors' third motion in late December.

A prosecutor from Minnesota was in Kenosha on Monday, having planned to watch the trial. Jim Martinson, chief deputy prosecuting attorney for Olmsted County, said he would likely seek to have Zelich brought there after he is sentenced in the Kenosha County case.

Martinson said Zelich's conviction Monday did not rule out a full trial later in Minnesota. "Where we go (with the case) is really in question," he said.

Zelich also has a charge of hiding a corpse pending in Walworth County, where the women's bodies were found. His attorneys, Jonathan Smith and Steve Kohn, said they expect that would be resolved soon.

Court officials in Kenosha County had set aside Monday for jury selection and had scheduled two weeks for Zelich's trial. But after Zelich was brought to Kenosha from the Walworth County Jail on Friday, he met with Smith for four hours. Later Friday evening, Kenosha County Deputy District Attorney Mike Graveley said, he got a call from Smith indicating Zelich was interested in the original plea deal.

According to court records and testimony, Zelich met Gamez online and invited her to Wisconsin. She had told friends she was moving to Milwaukee to learn welding. He picked her up at the Milwaukee airport and they drove to a Kenosha hotel, where they spent several days.

Zelich told investigators they played a sexual game in which he would choke Gamez. On the last day, he lost control and choked Gamez until she died, according to the criminal complaint.

Zelich told investigators that he put Gamez in her suitcase and took it to his West Allis apartment and stashed her body in his refrigerator.

Simonson, of Farmington, Minn., died in similar circumstances in November 2013.

According to court documents, Zelich said he met her online and killed her while playing the same choking game at a Rochester, Minn., hotel.

He drove home to Wisconsin with her body and later put both bodies in suitcases in his car's trunk. When they began to smell, he dumped them on the roadside, where highway workers mowing grass found them in June 2014.