Wife’s Suicide Mirrors Man Accused of Trying to Kill Her

It looked as if Donna Stauffacher was getting over the suicide of her husband, the man who allegedly tried to kill her by putting pond water into her intravenous tube as she lay in a hospital bed.

She talked about going back to work as a schoolteacher. She made plans to put the family dairy farm in her name. She went to watch her grandchildren in a church Christmas play.

But last weekend she was found dead in the same garage and the same van where her husband, John “Jack” M. Stauffacher Jr., died four months earlier. Both killed themselves with carbon monoxide poisoning.

“She was having a difficult time adjusting,” said the Rev. William Kapp, who runs the church the Stauffachers attended. “We had great hopes for ’98.”

Donna Stauffacher, 48, nearly died of mysterious infections she suffered after going to a Madison hospital in August for a routine surgical procedure.

Investigators contended that the infections were caused by bacteria from pond water that the 52-year-old Stauffacher injected into her. He denied it.

“I would never want to do anything to hurt Mom,” he said. “I can’t tell you because if I did, I could never face the community. It’s a small community. Everyone would know. I’m a pillar of the community.”

Stauffacher was charged with attempted murder and freed on bail Sept. 15. He was found dead two days later. His wife was found dead Jan. 3.

After her husband died, Donna Stauffacher tried to put her life back together by getting the family farm placed in her name, said Leon Wolfe, who runs a federal farm service agency in town.

She was on leave from Darlington’s elementary school, where she taught since 1971, but had recently thought of going back to work, Lafayette County Coroner Rudy Gebhardt said.

Because of the deaths, it may never be known why Stauffacher could have wanted to kill his wife, police said.

A prosecutor suggested that Stauffacher’s $2 million in debts may have figured into it, but his son told an interviewer that the farm had many more assets than debts.