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Logan Barclay speaks during his sentencing hearing on Feb. 11 (Law&Crime).
A Wisconsin man who admitted to fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend in the stomach after an argument over a possible pregnancy was handed a life sentence with the possibility of parole in 50 years.
Logan Barclay, 23, pleaded guilty in November 2024 to first-degree homicide with a domestic abuse modifier, months following the April 2024 shooting death of his ex-girlfriend, Kiersten Hansen, 22. According to the criminal complaint obtained by WMTV, a local NBC affiliate, Barclay told police that on the night of April 16, 2024, he and Hansen went for a walk on a local biking trail. They had an argument about the possibility of her being pregnant for a second time; the two already shared a young son.
Barclay reportedly told police that he “snapped” and shot Hansen in the stomach, leaving her for dead on the trail.
In court on Feb. 11, Hansen’s mother, who did not identify herself by name, spoke after prosecutor Jason Sanders interrupted his own statement to let her speak first. She mentioned the young son that her daughter shared with Barclay, “who will grow up only knowing her through photographs and stories.” She described how she now lives in a “nightmare” since her daughter’s death.
“My last memory of her is seeing the back of her head from where I sat on the couch as she ran out the door, not knowing she was meeting her killer,” she said.
She also addressed Barclay directly.
“You walked away and left her for dead,” the told him. “In her final moments, she died alone, at a place called Peace Trail, a place that will never be peaceful for me or her family and friends. You threw her away like a sandwich wrapper and then ditched her phone in her apartment dumpster, like you have done before.”
Hansen’s mother ended by saying, “You gave us a life sentence, a life without our daughter and sister. Therefore, you should have to forfeit yours.” On behalf of her family, she asked the court to show “no leniency.”
Her final statement, addressed directly to Barclay, was: “Rot in hell.”
After Hansen’s twin brother delivered a brief statement, Sanders resumed speaking. He dove into Hansen’s short life, that he said was not easy, but when it came to making a life that included her child, “she would not give up.” Sanders, who revealed that Hansen tried to get her friends to call her “Rocky” as a nickname, compared her to Rocky Balboa, “trying to run up a big hill in Philadelphia to win some insurmountable thing, because she would not quit.”
Sanders said that when Hansen found out she was pregnant again, Barclay sent her texts that he admitted to police “in version four” of his story to deleting from his phone because they “looked terrible, because the messages were filled with threats to her, to kill the baby, or to force an abortion.”
But Sanders’ biggest selling point when it came to Barclay’s crime was what happened after he shot and killed Hansen after “luring” her to “a trail, off a trail, off a park” during a thunderstorm “to cover [the] gunshot.” In describing the “pretty incredibly detailed plan” to dispose of her phone and create an alibi for himself, Sanders compared Barclay’s actions following the murder to a “beach read,” saying, “I think if you were reading that book, you would know real dang well he planned it down to a T.”
The “smoking gun,” Sanders explained, was the alibi that Barclay attempted to create. According to Sanders, the timeline of Barclay’s texts revealed that hours before he took Hansen on their final walk, he tried to set up a night out with a couple of friends. He continued to text them throughout the evening, even while he received no responses from them. Less than an hour after the medical examiner determined that Hansen was dead, a text was sent from Barclay’s phone asking those friends if they still wanted to get together. Sanders pointed out that Barclay had claimed to police that he accidentally shot Hansen during a heated argument — at the very time he was sending texts to his friends.
Sanders also pointed out that Barclay’s own comment during his interview with police two days after the murder about how he dealt with Hansen, “Fear is the only thing that’s ever worked for me,” was a sign that there was domestic abuse in their relationship leading up to its tragic end.
To drive his point home that Barclay planned Hansen’s murder, Sanders cited a “throwaway” line from his interview with police that said he liked playing Dungeons and Dragons. “Logan Barclay’s position is, ‘I’m just a player, Judge. Fate dealt me some bad hands. I made some bad calls. I rolled some bad dice. And I regret it, but I didn’t mean it. I’m not bad, I just screwed up. Pretty, pretty please, let me someday get out to play again.””
But as Sanders added, “Fate didn’t get [Hansen] pregnant. Fate didn’t lure her to the woods and bring a gun. Fate didn’t shoot her in the stomach and leave her there to be found by joggers or eaten by animals, or whichever came first. Fate didn’t cruelly walk away, stashing the evidence, hiding her phone, and fate didn’t lie about how he ‘hopes she’s out with friends.’ Logan Barclay didn’t play anything. He’s the Dungeon Master. He set everything up from the very beginning of a concrete plan that he has still, to this day, refused — against all evidence — to acknowledge.”
After Sanders was finished, Barclay’s attorney Melissa Frost spoke. She conceded that first-degree intentional homicide, along with repeated sexual assault, was “the worst possible crime that you can commit against another human being.” But she disagreed that, as Hansen’s mother said, that her client should have to “forfeit” his life because he took one. While Frost said that even considering sentencing guidelines that parole for her client after 20 years was “too low,” she did say that she did not believe Barclay “has fully come to terms with the fact of the complete impact” of his crime.
Frost described her client as a young man who had a troubled childhood, whose family had been traumatized by the murder of his brother, and who had past issues dealing with his own emotions, even saying that he lacked “emotional maturity.” She characterized his relationship with Hansen as “toxic,” saying that had they had a second child, they likely would have had to turn the child over to foster care, as they did with their first child.
When it came to Barclay’s plea agreement, Frost recounted that her conversation with her client about whether or not to go to trial was brief. Barclay, according to Frost, did not want to put the families through a trial and agreed to plead guilty to first-degree intentional homicide. Frost said that should be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not he deserved a chance at being paroled. Given his actions, but taking into account the possibility that Barclay may benefit from treatments he can access in prison, Frost told the judge that she hoped he could be released “down the road.”
After Frost was finished, Barclay was given the opportunity to speak. Once given the mic, he made a brief statement apologizing to both families for his actions.
Rock County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Kuglitsch then delivered his decision after pointing out Barclay’s proven lies, premeditation, and attempts to cover up his crime. Saying that “a long time in prison is necessary,” the judge issued a sentence of life with the eligibility for extended supervision after 50 years, given the “heinousness” of the crime.
WMTV reported that an autopsy performed on Hansen did not disclose whether or not she actually was pregnant at the time of her death. Her cause of a death was a gunshot wound, revealed by police to have come from a .22-caliber pistol. A search warrant later uncovered a .22 handgun and ammunition at Barclay’s home.
During the investigation, Barclay told police that he and Hansen were not dating at the time of her death and that she was “obsessed” with him. After initially providing a false timeline of events surrounding his interactions with Hansen, he admitted to bringing her to the bike trail and shooting her in the stomach.
KWOW, a local ABC affiliate, had more details about the investigation, reporting that detectives said that when Hansen’s body was found the morning after her murder, “It appeared she crawled to [a] tree. While she had small personal effects, like chapstick and an iPhone charger, she did not have a wallet or cellphone.”
Barclay told police that he threw Hansen’s phone in a dumpster. The phone was recovered in the dumpster by her apartment.