John Ferak

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

MANITOWOC - Debi Hochstetler has a message for the person who killed her teenage son, Ricky, in a hit-and-run crash more than 17 years ago.

“Give me the opportunity to forgive you," pleaded Hochstetler, who has been trapped in a nightmare since her son died along a county road in the early morning hours of Jan. 10, 1999.

Hochstetler told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that she isn’t out for vengeance. In fact, she has no interest in having the person prosecuted for the crime.

"My purpose now isn't to get this person in jail; my purpose is to talk to this person," she said. “We need to finish our healing process. My goal is to find out who killed my son. I make a plea for the person to get a hold of me directly.

RELATED:Manitowoc sheriff under fire in 1999 homicide

RELATED:Missteps hamper 1999 hit-and-run death investigation

"I know the person didn't mean to do it, but this person also needs to take responsibility and come forward to help the family."

Hochstetler says she has abandoned hope that the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department will solve the case. She wants the U.S. Department of Justice or the FBI to examine her son's hit-and-run case.

“I would like them to come in and take a look at the case and give this fresh ideas," she said.

She believes the person who killed her son still lives around Manitowoc County.

“My gut is telling me it’s a local person," she said, "and I firmly believe the person was driving under the influence. But it was an accident and not on purpose."

Confers with Dean Strang

For more than 17 years, Hochstetler has been troubled by suspicions that an off-duty Manitowoc County Sheriff's deputy may be the culprit of her son's tragedy. Until this year, however, she was unaware that prominent Wisconsin criminal defense lawyers Dean Strang and Jerry Buting did some preliminary investigation into her son's case as part of their preparation for Steven Avery's 2007 murder trial. They were exploring allegations of police misconduct; many of the same Manitowoc sheriff's officials involved in the Hochstetler cold case had key roles six years later investigating Teresa Halbach's homicide — a case marred by suspicions of planted evidence.

Timeline |Ricky Hochstetler hit-and-run homicide

Who's who in Ricky Hochstetler homicide

This past January, just weeks after the release of "Making a Murderer," Strang filed a formal public records request with Manitowoc County seeking access to material in the Hochstetler homicide. When asked what prompted his renewed interest in the Hochstetler case, Strang told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin he would not comment.

Earlier this year, Hochstetler contacted Strang.

"You know Mr. Strang, I don't know who killed my son that night but I do know that there is a group of law enforcement officers that really believe that Rob Hermann is a person of interest in killing him and covering it up," she wrote in an email.

She also informed Strang, "One thing I find confusing also is the night Ricky was killed, Lt. (Rob) Hermann was called in to analyze tire tracks and grill parts. Based on the small amount of parts they found at the scene, he was able to determine that they were from a Chevrolet K-5 Blazer, Suburban or pickup truck, years 1985 to 1988. And they had that information even before the first press release that morning."

DOCUMENT: State gives Manitowoc County suggestions to solve Hochstetler hit and run

DOCUMENT:DCI interviews Rob Hermann's ex-girlfriend

Strang's former criminal investigator, Pete Baetz, told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that he questions Hermann's rushed conclusion that the hit-and-run vehicle was a full-sized truck. The teen's body was found in the middle of the county highway more than 300 feet from impact.

Based on his review of the autopsy findings, Baetz said the victim's injuries appeared consistent with someone being struck by a car.

"Based on the breaks in the lower legs, I just did not believe it was a pickup truck," said Baetz, a retired Illinois police investigator. "I think he was scooped, and a pick-up truck isn't going to scoop him up. It's too high."

Baetz said the crime scene evidence was mishandled by Rob Hermann, who was allowed to drive around with crime scene parts in his personal vehicle for several hours after the crash.

"The way they handled this case, they overreached beyond their capabilities, and they made these amateur guesses," Baetz said. "From a professional and technical standpoint, the investigation here was laughable.

"It looks like a cover-up, let's put it that way."

No faith in Manitowoc County

At the time of the hit-and-run homicide, then-Sheriff Tom Kocourek put patrol Lt. Mike Bushman in charge of the case and the investigation quickly fizzled.

Hochstetler said she remains frustrated by the sheriff's lack of urgency to find her son's killer.

Hochstetler said she wanted to mobilize a team of volunteer searchers to comb the area's roads and ditches for more vehicle debris but the sheriff's department rejected the idea. Instead, she said, she was encouraged to distribute flyers publicizing a reward fund.

State Division of Criminal Investigation reports compiled in 2004 stated that after about a month, leads coming into the sheriff's department began to dry up. "Bushman went back to his normal duties with the Sheriff's Department but continued working on the case when he could," the DCI said.

In the early years of her son's case, Hochstetler said she also dealt with Manitowoc County Sheriff's Detective James Lenk. She said she does not trust him because he attempted to deceive her on two instances between 2002 and 2004. She had asked Lenk about bringing the DCI into the investigation.

According to DCI reports, Lenk claimed that he had already called the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation and was told that the DCI does not help local police agencies investigate vehicular homicides. Both of Lenk's statements were untrue, she said.

Only through Hochstetler's persistence did the DCI agree to get involved in 2004, after the crime was already five years old and wasn't being actively investigated by the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department.

"Up to that point, when I kept calling and asking the sheriff's department if there was anything going on, it was always the same answer," Hochstetler recalled. "'There's no new leads.'"

According to DCI special agent Eric Szatkowski's reports, he "thoroughly reviewed the case file ... and was unable to identify any suspects that had not already been investigated and cleared by the sheriff's department."

Szatkowski also stated in his September 2004 report that he found no evidence linking Rob Hermann or other members of the Hermann family to the crime.

On a positive note, Hochstetler said, Szatkowski compiled an extensive list of recommendations to help the sheriff's department "as to how they might be able to generate new leads in the case and how to better investigate an accident like this in the future."

Unfortunately, Manitowoc County did not appear to follow up on many of Szatkowski's investigative tips, the victim's mother said, based on her review of Manitowoc County's case file. Earlier this year, she went to the sheriff's department and met with Lt. Andrew Colborn, who now oversees her son's case.

She also put a recording device in her purse. Colborn gave Hochstetler a gloomy outlook in terms of solving her son's homicide.

"Whoever did this, obviously, has been able to harbor that guilt since 1999," Colborn told the victim's mother. Manitowoc County's top detective also told her that "we have nothing to go at.

"You know, now we're asking someone in 2016, 'Where were you in January 1999 and who were you with?'" Colborn said. "I necessarily could not answer that question."

Eventually, Colborn offered a couple of theories about who killed her son. He recalled how he had once asked Bushman, who retired in 2005, for insight on why the hit-and-run driver was never found.

"I don't remember his exact words but he was strongly leaning towards this having been perhaps somebody that was in the country illegally, striking your son, knowing the trouble he was going to get in, and looking at sure deportation once he was through with whatever sentence was handed out to him and then just left the country, probably with the vehicle," Colborn theorized. "Are we saying 100 percent that is the case? Absolutely not."

Colborn said his other theory was that her son was killed by a former Manitowoc entrepreneur, Bradley Kugel. He ran Sunshine Limousine, a Manitowoc-area taxi service, and Countryside Auto, a used-vehicle business just up the road from the hit-and-run fatality.

Kugel died in 2006 at age 49. Reports show he was interviewed as a suspect in 2004, but nothing came of it.

"He was an odd duck," Colborn said of Kugel. "He denied any involvement. ... He would be the kind of person probably that could have took it to the grave with him, took that secret to the grave."

One of her biggest frustrations from her meeting with Colborn, Hochstetler said, was the apparent misplacement of investigative records on her son's case.

Back in 1999, the sheriff's office had obtained a master list of 25,000 vehicles that were supposedly all inspected and cleared during the hit-and-run probe.

"When I asked (Colborn) for the list, he said there is no list or he has no idea what happened to it," Hochstetler wrote Strang in an email.

In January, when she met with Colborn and Larry Ledvina, deputy inspector of support services, the discussion was held within earshot of Rob Hermann. He stayed in his office the entire time with his door slightly propped open, Hochstetler said.

"I did not meet with her," Hermann told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

Hochstetler said that Hermann still resents her decision about a decade ago to start a website to keep her son's memory alive and generate clues about who killed her son.

In 2006, she launched the website rickyh.com because, she said, the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department had shown a general lack of interest in solving her son's death. The Ricky Hochstetler website also features a section called the Rumor Mill, where people can send the victim's mother emails with their theories about her son's crime.

One of the emails she posted states, "There is not a question in my mind that an off-duty sheriff's deputy is the one that hit your child and left him for dead. ... There is no doubt in my mind that this is a case of an officer protecting an officer."

At one point, Hermann complained to Debi Hochstetler that her website was only “fueling the flames and wasn’t helping matters.”

Looking back, Hermann, 52, doesn't think he put the investigation on the wrong path by immediately guessing it was a 1985-1988 Chevy full-size truck before an autopsy and before roads were combed for vehicle parts. The vehicle Hermann predicted was involved in the crime was never found.

"I'm confident that's the type of vehicle we're looking for," Hermann said. "We remain optimistic. I guess we're just waiting for that break in the case."

The three-term sheriff said he won't second-guess the actions of his former boss, Kocourek, who decided not to bring the DCI into the case back in 1999.

"I don't think that would have mattered," Hermann said. "This particular case, to this day, we would not call the DCI and have them involved."

Hochstetler said she lost faith in Hermann a long time ago.

She said she still can't believe that Manitowoc County refused to seek help from the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation from the outset of her son's death. After all, the DCI has a proven track record in such hit-and-run cases.

The DCI had provided assistance in a similar, but unrelated, case. The agency, along with the Wisconsin State Patrol's crash reconstruction specialists, brought justice to the grieving family of James Gengler, 17.

The Watertown teen was struck while riding his bicycle home from work on Sept. 5, 2002. In that case, local authorities received multiple tips pointing the finger at Moose Balian, a volunteer firefighter for the Town of Lebanon. He had a Dodge pickup truck and lived about three miles away.

However, Dodge County investigators were told to stay away from Balian's house. The suspect's wife, who was a Dodge County board member, complained to the sheriff and other county politicians, according to a Wisconsin State Patrol article about the case.

Months later, seasoned investigators at the State Patrol tracked Balian's damaged vehicle to a scrap yard 40 miles away in Sussex. Eventually, Balian pleaded no contest to causing the hit-and-run death. In December 2003, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

"That remains one of my biggest questions to this day," Hochstetler said. "Why Manitowoc County didn't get any outside resources right from the beginning?

"It's very possible they were always looking for the wrong vehicle."

John Ferak of USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin: 920-993-7115 or jferak@gannett.com; on Twitter @johnferak

THE HOCHSTETLER INVESTIGATION: A 3-PART SERIES

On Jan. 10, 1999, high school student Ricky Hochstetler was killed along a dark county highway in rural Manitowoc while walking home from a friend’s house. The hit-and-run driver was never caught. The crime has been marred by long-standing suspicions of a Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department cover-up.

This year, Manitowoc County’s most high-profile cold case has drawn renewed interest, particularly from “Making a Murderer” viewers; many of the same Manitowoc sheriff’s officials who were involved in the 1985 and 2005 convictions of Steven Avery also had roles in the Hochstetler unsolved homicide.

During the past eight months, the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin has investigated the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department’s handling of the hit-and-run homicide. We inspected close to 1,000 pages of reports generated by either Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department or the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation. Current Manitowoc County Sheriff Rob Hermann was investigated by the DCI as a suspect while he served as an undersheriff/inspector, DCI reports show.

Part 1: Suspicions of a cover-up: Within weeks of Ricky Hochstetler’s death, several employees at the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department start to suspect that an off-duty deputy may be the hit-and-run driver.

Part 2: Mistake-riddled homicide probe: Though broken parts from a newer style car were discovered in the thawing snow near the site of Ricky Hochstetler’s hit-and-run fatality, ex-Sheriff Tom Kocourek’s administration dismissed the evidence, insisting that an older model truck or van was involved.

Part 3: Mother wants to forgive her son’s killer: After 171/2 years of heartache, Debi Hochstetler longs for the truth regarding her son’s hit-and-run homicide.