A St. Paul truck driver serving life in prison for murdering six northern Wisconsin deer hunters last fall is no longer a suspect in the unsolved slaying of a deer hunter in Clark County four years ago, an investigator said Tuesday.
Chai Soua Vang was working as a truck driver in the Twin Cities on the day James Southworth was shot, said Kerry Kirn, a detective with the Clark County Sheriff's Department.
Southworth, 37, of Medford, Wis., was shot twice in the back near his tree stand on family land near Neillsville on Nov.
23, 2001, during the nine-day deer hunting season. People reportedly saw three Asian men and a white pickup truck in the area where Southworth was hunting.
Vang was considered a "person of interest" in Southworth's slayi
ng based on some similarities to the Sawyer County murders he was convicted of.
In that case, four victims were shot in the back Nov. 21, 2004. Moreover, the shootings occurred on private land surrounded by acres of public land, a circumstance similar to the Southworth killing.
The Sawyer County killings occurred after Vang, 37, was found in a tree stand on land owned by some of the hunters about 100 miles north of Neillsville.
Two months ago, Clark County Sheriff Louis Rosandich has said no physical evidence linked Vang to Southworth's slaying and he would likely need a confession to solve the case.
Investigators believe Southworth<sp
an s
tyle
='color:red'> was murdered and not the victim of a hunting accident </span>because he was shot after apparently leaving the tree stand, Rosandich said.
Investigators have said no one reportedly seen in the area where Southworth was hunting has come forward, despite fliers and other information distributed among Wisconsin's
Asian community.
