The “person of interest” who was taken into custody in the shooting deaths of Wisconsin newlyweds at a sports bar has been identified as a parolee with a long rap sheet who served several years in federal prison.
Thomas Routt Jr. was detained in connection with the deaths of Gina Weingart, 37, and her husband Emerson Weingart, 33, who were gunned down Feb. 1 at the Sports Page Barr in Elkhorn, TMJ4 reported.
Russell Jones, a criminal defense attorney retained by Routt’s family, told the outlet that his client says he was not involved in the case and that he maintains his innocence.
Routt — who has served several years in federal prison for a long list of convictions, including arson, burglary and forgery – was sent to the Walworth County Jail on a corrections hold due to his extensive rap sheet, TMJ4 reported.
Jones said his client may be held longer than the typical 72 hours because of his parole status.
Routt has not been formally charged in the shooting deaths of the Weingarts.
“Officials have been focusing efforts on an investigation lead that developed over the weekend which identified a person of interest,” Elkhorn police said in a statement Tuesday.
“The person of interest has been taken into custody on an unrelated matter as officials continue their investigation,” they added without naming him.
Authorities did not provide additional information “to protect the integrity of this ongoing investigation.”
Corrections records cited by Wisconsin Right Now show that Routt was released on parole in August 2020 on an underlying burglary charge but he had been incarcerated for arson.
He was sprung by John Tate, Gov. Tony Evers’ controversial appointee to run the state Parole Commission, according to the outlet.
“The sentencing court had deemed Routt’s ‘horrendous crime’ of arson—in which he burned down the home of his ex-mother-in-law while that family was at another daughter’s wedding—to be ‘one of the worst I’ve ever seen,’” according to a description of the crime in a Wisconsin Court of Appeals order cited by Wisconsin Right Now.
“‘This is one of the sickest, most dangerous kind[s] of arson that I’ve ever encountered because it was an arson for revenge, an arson to inflict great pain upon the victims and it did,’” it states.
The appellate court rejected Routt’s request to get out of community supervision in 2023, according to the outlet.
Routt has appeared in a video by Gateway Tech College, where he was a campus ambassador and described being molested as a child and became depressed, Wisconsin Right Now said.
He said he turned to drugs and was imprisoned in 1995, serving 25 years before he was released in 2020.
The Weingarts, who got married last summer, were the only two people in the bar when a gunman came in and killed them shortly after midnight last Thursday, police said.
Several agencies rushed to the scene after getting a call of shots fired at the business, where Gina worked. The newlyweds were discovered with fatal gunshot wounds and their killer was nowhere to be found.
Police have not released a motive or description of a potential suspect – and have not said whether the couple was targeted specifically by their killer or if it was a random attack.
But Emerson’s father, Jeff Weingart, firmly believes someone must have witnessed something.
“It’s gut-wrenching. Somebody saw them. Somebody saw them. I don’t care, you don’t pull something like that off,” he told WIS.
“I can’t believe that it was just her and him in the bar. So somebody saw them, and somebody had to give a description of them, and somebody had to see the car when he drove away, and they better find him,” the grieving dad said.
His son and daughter-in-law, who grew up in Wisconsin, began dating in 2020 and quickly “became inseparable,” according to their obituaries.
