Murderer Implicates Deceased Tosa Police Clerk in Brookfield Killing

A New Berlin woman and a Wauwatosa police clerk were the cold masterminds behind the brutal murder of a Brookfield businessman, a member of the plot told Brookfield police during during a lengthy confession.

Tommy Douyette said his girlfriend, Lynn Hajny, browbeat him into killing John Aegerter on June 21, 2011, to steal his radio communications wealth after months of planning that included the police clerk, Mark Finken.

Their intention was to murder , steal his identity and eventually split the millions they believed he was worth, Douyette said.

Hajny's husband, Albert Hajny, , who owned about 75 radio transmission towers, ran several companies and was president of Air Page Corp., 14150 W. Greenfield Ave.

Finken had known Hajny for years and got in on the murder plot because he wanted money to help care for his daughter, Douyette told investigators.

Finken, then 43, fatally shot himself July 23 – about a week after being suspended from the Wauwatosa Police Department during an investigation in which his work and home computers were seized and searched his home. Finken left a suicide note saying he was not involved in Aegerter's murder.

Forensics reviews of Finken's computers found copies of a check Aegerter wrote to Albert Hajny and a copy of Aegerter's signature, as well as living will documents, according to information submitted by prosecutors.

According to Douyette, Finken did a lot of the planning, including trying to access Aegerter's business finanical records and practicing how to write Aegerter's signature to pose as him after his death.

Douyette said Hajny took him to meet Finken three times between March and June, with Hajny and Finken trying to persuade Douyette to join their plan to kill and dispose of Aegerter's body and live off his wealth. They wanted Douyette to do the actual killing, or "be the muscle," as a police interrogator put it.

Douyette said at the three meetings Finken and Hajny used a dry erase board and notebook to plan what they needed, hashing ideas on how to dispose of Aegerter's body.

Among the ideas was using saws to cut up his body and dissolving it in buckets or in a sewer septic system with Rid-X. Another idea: to have Hajny, who enjoyed gardening, smash Aegerter's bones with a hammer, plant roses and use the dust as a "bone meal... and spread it on the roses."

'You're not going to get away with this'

Douyette said each time he balked at the plans.

"It's not, you know, it's not something people get away with," Douyette said he told Hajny and Finken. "You're not going to get away with this.

"They go, 'Oh, it's the perfect plan, it's the perfect plan.'"

He said Hajny and Finken had eyed the Fourth of July for the murder, saying it was a good time to kill Aegerter because no one would miss his holiday absence from work. Another plan was to wait until Aegerter moved to Las Vegas, as he was contemplating, and kill him there.

Either way, the two talked about having Finken take over Aegerter's identity and send emails to associates, gradually firing his few employees via email and then selling his assets.

Hajny said her husband, as one of Aegerter's employees and a friend, eventually would want to see Aegerter and challenge the emails, so he would need to be killed as well.

Douyette said Hajny also wanted to kill her husband so she could be with Douyette, with whom she had a 13-year affair.

Finken not there when man was murdered

But Douyette said Finken was not there the night Aegerter was murdered, or the next morning, when Hajny and Douyette frantically fled together after learning Aegerter's body had been found before they got a freezer and hydrogen peroxide to dispose of it.

Douyette said he was the one who the night of June 21, 2011, confessing in a two-day interview that was transcribed in a 99-page document filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court.

Douyette claimed there was no plan to murder Aegerter on the night he died. He said he was having drinks with Hajny at Kip's bar that night, when she said she wanted to confront Aegerter about money she said he owed her husband. The Hajnys were behind in paying their mortgage, having already staved off foreclosure, and needed money.

Douyette said he didn't want to go, but Hajny told him it would be quick and they'd be gone in about 10 minutes. Cell phone records show Hajny talked to Aegerter that night and she made four calls to Finken, with Finken calling Hajny once.

Douyette said when they got to Aegerter's house, Aegerter came out of his garage, Hajny approached him and Douyette trailed behind, admiring Aegerter's collector cars when, he said, "The next thing I know, she's screaming, 'Tom, he hit me, he hurt me, kick his ass!' 

"I said, 'What's up?' and he kind of came, not at me necessarily, but you know, arms kind of flailing at me. I'm like 'What's up?'

"She's like, 'He hit me, hit him!' And I popped him. And she stood over my shoulder, screaming at me, 'If you love me, you'll kick his ass. If you love me, you'll kill him.'"

Plot rapidly unravels

Douyette confessed that as Hajny screamed and urged him on, he beat Aegerter and strangled him with an electrical cord.

Douyette then described a series of inept moves – how he and Hajny left fingerprints on sodas in Aegerter's refrigerator, couldn't cover one of Aegerter's legs in a plastic sheet and panicked the next morning when they learned police had found Aegerter's body before they were able to return.

They had intended to come back with a freezer to hide the body, Douyette said, and possibly store the locked freezer temporarily at Finken's house, as Douyette said Finken had discussed.

The two fled to Hajny's cousin's house in Slinger, where police, acting on a tip, stormed inside and arrested them, court documents say. Investigators found a bow saw and anvil pruners in Hajny's vehicle, Aegerter's key on Douyette's key ring and a bloody shirt of Douyette's.

Hajny, 49, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of party to the crime of first-degree intentional homicide. She plans to take her case to a jury trial Oct. 8.

Hajny's attorney, Michael Hart, said he could not comment before the trial about Douyette's statements to police, other than to say there were contradictions in what Douyette said right after his arrest and what he told police in the two-day interview six months later.

Douyette, 43, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in a plea deal to a reduced charge of first-degree reckless homicide. He faces a maximum possible 40-year prison term followed by 20 years on extended supervision in the community.

Under the plea deal, Douyette must testify in Hajny's case if she goes to trial. He won't be sentenced until after he testifies.