2 States Play Hot Potato With Freed Killer : Justice: Texas sentenced murderer to 120 days for killing a woman and, now that he is free, wants to ship him to Wisconsin. But that state wants no part of him.

The states of Wisconsin and Texas are battling one another in an unusual case involving violence against women.

The dispute is over Rolf Huseboe, 31, who was convicted in February for beating his girlfriend to death with a tire iron on a secluded Gulf Coast beach seven years ago.

A Kleberg County jury in Kingsville, Tex., found him guilty of murder and the next day sentenced him to 10 years’ probation, with no jail time. The judge, acting under a Texas law for cases involving use of a deadly weapon, ordered him to spend 120 days in prison and then kept him behind bars a bit longer, but he was forced to release Huseboe July 1.

Texas authorities want to dispatch him to Wisconsin, where his family lives. Hundreds of the rural county’s residents, shocked that he was freed, have signed a petition asking that he be sent away.

Wisconsin authorities say they, too, want no part of him.

“It is absolutely incomprehensible that someone can beat a woman to death with a tire iron and serve only 120 days in jail,” said Mark Liedl, spokesman for Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson. “If Texas isn’t willing to incarcerate him for this crime, they should be responsible for his supervision. They shouldn’t dump him on some other community. This man has a history of violence against women.”

According to Texas prosecutor Ricardo Carillo, two former girlfriends of Huseboe testified to his abusive behavior. “He would tell them, ‘If you don’t do like I say, you’re going to end up like my girlfriend in Texas--dead,’ ” Carillo said.

Huseboe maintained at trial that he was innocent and he still does, according to his lawyer.

The dead woman, Shelley Lynn Webster, 22, was bludgeoned to death sometime before dawn July 17, 1986. Her face and the back of her head were smashed in repeatedly with a force that the medical examiner said would have killed 10 men.

Tourists found her body washed up on the beach at North Padre Island, a few hundred yards beyond the Nueces County line.

But sheriff’s deputies conducted what Carillo later called “a very sloppy investigation” at the outset. They found footprints near a blood-stained patch of the beach but did not measure them or take blood samples.

Huseboe was spotted a few days after the murder driving Webster’s 1978 Mustang, caked with sand. They had argued at a local bar the night she was killed. But his court-appointed lawyer, W. R. Hitchens, said “both went their separate ways” after that. Huseboe was arrested on murder charges, but the evidence was deemed too weak, and he was released.

“He took a polygraph and failed it,” said Sgt. Phil Cunningham, the Corpus Christi homicide detective who kept pressing the case. “He stood up after the first two questions, yanked the wires off and said he wasn’t going to tell us any more because we’d know he did it.”

In June, 1992, a Vermont woman filed assault charges against Huseboe. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and, while he was in jail, a cellmate said Huseboe talked about killing a woman in Texas with a tire iron. Both the Vermont woman and another ex-girlfriend told Texas authorities that Huseboe had also spoken to them about Webster’s death.

Sent back to Texas, Huseboe stood trial in February before a jury of eight women and four men. Prosecutor Carillo said that although he has no doubt of Huseboe’s guilt, “it was not a strong case.” Besides the sloppy initial investigation, by the time of trial, Carillo said, “some evidence was lost,” including cigarette butts Huseboe was believed to have smoked.

County officials told the Dallas Morning News that the prosecution was hampered by two other factors: Both the victim and the defendant were from out of state, and Webster’s lifestyle was “incompatible with the moral values of the jurors.”

“She had a sugar daddy,” defense lawyer Hitchens said. “She was a kept woman.”

Evidence was also introduced showing that she had used cocaine and marijuana shortly before she was killed. Hitchens suggested that the “sugar daddy,” a married, 70-year-old man who paid her apartment bills, was the real culprit.

The “sugar daddy,” whom police describe as a virtual cripple, did not testify. “He died two years ago,” Hitchens said.

Carillo said he had to tread very lightly in trying to bring out evidence of Huseboe’s violence toward women. For the sentencing phase of the trial, he said he managed to bring out the assault conviction in Vermont but could not show the explosive nature of his conduct that he said both girlfriends told him about: “loving, kind and gentle one minute--then point-blank the beatings would start” if they said or did something that displeased him.

“It was ruled that the details weren’t relevant,” Carillo said.

For the moment, Huseboe is under court order not to leave Kleberg County and to report to probation officers every day. The dispute over what to do with him, which officials say is likely to wind up in federal court, involves the provisions of an interstate compact governing the transfer of probationers.

Wisconsin officials say they can reject Huseboe because he established residency in Texas before the crime was committed. Texas officials disagree, citing other provisions of the compact concerning family members and job opportunities.

“Our position is that he’ll be better able to accomplish the terms of his probation (including payment of more than $50,000 in court costs and restitution of $13,000 to Webster’s family) if he has the support of his family,” said Lisa G. Samo, Kleberg county assistant probation director. “He has no ties to Texas at this point.”

Liedl replied: “Wisconsin should not have to suffer the consequences of another state’s flawed criminal justice system.” He said officials there also are worried because Texas officials have hinted that they just might put Huseboe on a plane to Wisconsin, outside the provisions of the compact, and “supervise him by mail.”

“We haven’t made any decision to do that,” Samo said. “I guess it’s an option with any case.”