Authorities have arrested Jason Sypher for the murder of his wife Krista Marie Sypher, missing from Plover, Wisconsin since March of 2017.
According to a release by the Plover Police Department, Wisconsin State Patrol arrested Sypher, 44, around 5:30 p.m. on August 24, 2018. He was arrested approximately five miles north of the Illinois/Wisconsin border on I-39/I-90 following a traffic stop. Sypher had moved to Chicago, Illinois shortly after his wife’s disappearance.
“Mr. Sypher was transported to the Portage County Jail where he was booked in on two charges: First-Degree Intentional Homicide and Hiding a Corpse,” the Plover Police Department said in a release.
The press release does not indicate what led to Jason’s arrest or whether Krista’s body has been found. The Plover Police Department had not replied to Dateline’s request for comment as of Monday evening.
Jason Sypher appeared in court earlier on Monday and is being held at the Portage County Jail. He is being held on $750,000 cash bond and is scheduled to return to court on September 10.
Krista Marie Sypher was last seen on March 13, 2017. When Dateline reported on her disappearance about a year after she vanished, Krista’s longtime friend Angie told Dateline that Krista’s husband Jason was the last person to see his wife alive.
“He said that [on March 13th] she’d taken off with her boyfriend,” Angie told Dateline in February of 2018. “He didn’t see her physically leave, which is weird because they lived in a small duplex, so she basically would have had to pass him in order to leave the house.”
Angie said Jason walked into the Plover Police Department to report his wife as missing after seven days of not hearing from her. At the time of the original report, Dateline reached out to Jason Sypher for comment but did not hear back.
Krista’s car was left behind, Angie told Dateline, but she thought it was unlikely that Krista had walked away on foot since she had recently injured her foot. Angie also told Dateline that she called the cab companies in town, and none of them said they took a call to Krista’s address the day she disappeared.
Angie told Dateline she knew Krista had been seeing someone other than Jason – and Jason knew, too. According to Angie, Jason had even recently befriended the man, Corey Kitowski. In February of 2018, though, Corey told Dateline he was not dating Krista at the time of her disappearance.
“We had not been dating for a while. After talking with her husband, it was apparent that she was not getting a divorce like she had told me,” Corey said. “So I decided we would be better off as friends. We still remained good friends and talked with each other on occasion up until she went missing.”
Plover Chief of Police Dan Ault told Dateline in February of 2018 that the Sypher home was searched following Krista’s disappearance, but he couldn’t comment on whether they found significant evidence. He was, however, “highly confident” police would be able to solve Krista’s case.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Krista. I even have a photo of her on my desk in front of my computer,” Chief Ault told Dateline. “It is rare, [and] there are children involved.”
Krista’s three kids, the eldest of whom is from a previous relationship, are now under the primary custody of her parents in their hometown of Plover, Wisconsin. If anyone in Wisconsin, Illinois, or Indiana has additional information regarding this crime or the suspect Jason Sypher, please contact Plover Police Department Detective Mike Tracy at 715-345-5255 or mtracy@ploverwi.gov.
If you have a missing friend or family member, send a private message to Dateline NBC on our Facebook page and tell us your story. We may feature the person’s case in our Missing in America or Cold Case Spotlight series.