A Fond du Lac judge has denied a defense attorney’s request to postpone a jury trial for an over the road trucker charged in the cold case murder of a teenager in Fond du Lac County. Sixty four year old Dennis Brantner is scheduled to go on trial starting February 12. At a motion hearing Thursday, Fond du lac judge Robert Wirtz denied a request from Brantner’s attorney for a delay because of the voluminous amount of evidence and files in the case. Brantner is charged with first degree murder in the July 1990 death of 18 year old Berit Beck. The Sturdevant woman disappeared after stopping at the Forest Mall. Her van was found a couple days later across the street in the K-Mart parking lot and her body was found about a month later in a ditch along a county road near Waupun. Brantner was charged years later after his fingerprints were found in Beck’s van. Brantner is being retried after a mistrial was declared last year when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. Brantner is currently serving a six and a half year prison sentence for trying to smuggle drugs into the Fond du Lac County Jail.
