Investigators say medical findings showed the victim died before three fires were deliberately started inside her New London apartment.
NEW LONDON, Wis. — The central timeline in a Wisconsin homicide case rests on what investigators say the victim’s body did not contain: soot in her lungs or carbon monoxide in her blood, findings authorities say show she was already dead before several fires were set around her apartment.
That sequence is a key part of the case against Rodolfo Gonzalez, 39, who is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the July 26 death of his mother. Prosecutors also accuse him of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, arson of a building, mutilating a corpse and resisting or obstructing an officer. According to the criminal complaint, the woman died from multiple sharp-force injuries to the neck before at least three separate fires were started inside the fifth-floor apartment. Investigators allege those fires were intended to conceal the homicide. Gonzalez has not been convicted of any of the charges.
Fire personnel were initially responding to smoke at Franklin Park Apartments on Division Street when they entered the unit and found an unresponsive woman on a bed. Rather than one apparent source of an accidental blaze, investigators reported multiple separate fire locations. Firefighters extinguished the fires, and authorities began documenting the room and the victim’s condition. Investigators observed wounds to the upper chest and neck. They also reported cat litter around the woman’s head. The details were included in the complaint as part of the scene investigators encountered, although authorities have not publicly supplied a motive explaining the condition in which she was found.
The autopsy provided the next major point in the timeline. The medical examiner concluded that multiple sharp-force injuries to the neck caused the woman’s death. Investigators further reported finding neither soot in her lungs nor carbon monoxide in her blood. Those findings were significant because a person breathing during a fire can inhale combustion products. Authorities interpreted their absence as evidence that the woman had already died when the fires were started. The complaint consequently treats the killing and the fires as separate stages of the alleged conduct rather than attributing her death to smoke or burns.
That distinction matters to several of the charges. Prosecutors allege Gonzalez intentionally killed the woman and then committed additional crimes through his treatment of her body and the apartment. The arson charge concerns the intentional burning of the building, while the mutilating-a-corpse allegation addresses conduct prosecutors say occurred after death. First-degree recklessly endangering safety reflects the alleged risk associated with setting fires in the residential building. Each count has elements the state would have to prove separately. The complaint provides the state’s probable-cause theory, not a final factual finding.
Investigators also sought evidence that could connect a person to the scene at the relevant time. Security cameras from the apartment complex allegedly showed Gonzalez on the fifth floor around the period when the fires were set. Authorities identified him as the victim’s son and said he lived with her. The public reports do not say that the surveillance footage itself recorded the killing. Instead, prosecutors rely on it as part of a broader collection of circumstantial evidence placing Gonzalez near the apartment during the timeframe under investigation.
After leaving the apartment complex, Gonzalez was located later that day on a bench near an elementary school, authorities said. Officers attempted to arrest him, and law enforcement reported that he resisted. Deputies used additional restraints, including leg restraints, before taking him into custody. Investigators said two lighters were found on him, along with a Bible. Other accounts based on the complaint reported several cellphones among items recovered from Gonzalez or the nearby area. The relevance and admissibility of those objects, including whether prosecutors can tie either lighter to a specific fire, would be questions for later proceedings.
The complaint also brought investigators to an earlier case involving Gonzalez and the same woman. In February 2025, Outagamie County prosecutors charged Gonzalez with attempted first-degree intentional homicide after authorities alleged that he attacked his mother and another man with a rock and knife. He was later found not competent to proceed to trial. Because of that ruling, the earlier criminal case was suspended rather than resolved through a plea or trial. His release from custody was approved in May 2026 with conditions that included cooperating with treatment and evaluations.
The prior case does not establish that Gonzalez committed the July killing. Evidence of previous accusations is subject to legal rules governing whether and how it may be considered in another prosecution. It is nevertheless relevant to the current procedural situation because Gonzalez’s competency has again been questioned. At an Aug. 13 review hearing in the Waupaca County homicide case, his attorney raised concerns about whether he is presently able to understand the proceedings and assist in his defense. Judge Troy Nielsen ordered competency proceedings and an evaluation.
The court then removed an Aug. 17 preliminary hearing from the calendar. That means the next major question is procedural rather than forensic: whether Gonzalez is competent to continue through the criminal process. If he is found competent, prosecutors can return to hearings addressing the evidence and charges. If not, the case can be suspended while Wisconsin’s competency procedures are followed. The evaluation does not decide whether Gonzalez killed his mother, and the earlier competency finding does not automatically dictate the outcome of the current examination.
For investigators, however, the alleged order of events remains one of the clearest claims in the public record. The woman suffered fatal sharp-force injuries first, the complaint says. Fires were then set in three areas of the apartment. Prosecutors allege that the later fires were intended to obscure evidence of the earlier killing. Surveillance footage allegedly places Gonzalez on the fifth floor during the relevant timeframe, and officers later found him away from the building carrying lighters. Those points form a sequence that the state can attempt to prove, while the defense retains the right to challenge each link.
Several important questions remain outside that sequence. Authorities have not publicly identified a motive in the reports reviewed for this story. The victim’s name was also not provided in those reports. No public trial testimony has explained precisely what happened inside the apartment before emergency crews arrived, and the reviewed material does not identify an eyewitness to the killing. Nor does it establish through a trial-tested forensic finding that a particular lighter recovered from Gonzalez started any specific fire. Those gaps are significant because a charging document need only support probable cause; a conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
The allegations concerning the fires are therefore important not because of their disturbing character but because investigators say they help define the chronology. Medical evidence is being used to distinguish the fatal injuries from the later burning, while fire-scene evidence supports the claim that more than one ignition point existed. The surveillance and arrest evidence are then used to connect Gonzalez to the broader timeline. Prosecutors will have to show how those separate categories of evidence fit together if the case advances beyond its current competency proceedings.
Currently, Gonzalez is being held on a $1 million cash bond. His previously scheduled preliminary hearing had been removed while the court awaited the competency process, and no later competency ruling was found in the sources reviewed. Until that issue is resolved, the allegations outlined in the complaint remain untested at trial, including the state’s contention that a fatal attack occurred first and the apartment fires were deliberately started afterward.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 30, 2026.