In a revenge plot that gives new meaning to the phrase “sticky situation,” four Wisconsin women taught one serial cheater a lesson he won’t soon forget.
What happens when a man juggles relationships with four different women simultaneously?
In the case of one 37-year-old Wisconsin Romeo, it resulted in a motel room confrontation that ended with his manhood glued to his stomach.
The mastermind behind this adhesive retribution was 48-year-old Therese Ziemann, a mother of six, who discovered something particularly disturbing while snooping through her lover’s phone: he had been in contact with her 12-year-old daughter.
“I had just found my daughter’s number in his cell phone,” Ziemann explained outside a Calumet County courtroom.
“It was just a warning from me to him, to stay away from the kids.”
But how exactly does one end up in such a predicament?
It all started when the man’s wife discovered his multiple affairs and decided to contact one of his mistresses.
Rather than turn on each other, the women formed an unlikely alliance.
Ziemann lured the unsuspecting lothario to a motel room with promises of some intimate fun.
Playing into his fantasies, she convinced him to be tied up and blindfolded for what he thought would be erotic play.
Little did he know, she had already texted the other three women to join the party.
Once restrained, Ziemann’s romantic role-play quickly turned to revenge.
She slapped him across the face, cut off his underwear, and made the split-second decision to grab a bottle of nail glue from her makeup bag—attaching his peniș to his stomach in what she later called “a stupid spur-of-the-minute decision.”
The other women arrived just in time to join in berating and belittling the man for his philandering ways.
Eventually, he managed to work himself free from his restraints, and the women fled the scene.
Fortunately for the victim, Calumet County district attorney Ken Kratz reported that the gluing caused “no permanent physical injury.” Small mercies.
All four women found themselves facing legal consequences for their adhesive-based vigilante justice.
They were initially charged with being party to the crime of felony false imprisonment, with Ziemann facing additional charges of battery and fourth-degree sexual assault.
Through plea deals, the charges were reduced. Ziemann pleaded no contest to battery and disorderly conduct, while her sister, Michelle Belliveau, and the other mistress, Wendy Sewell, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
The man’s wife, initially dismissed from charges, was later charged with disorderly conduct after jail recordings revealed she had collaborated with her husband to concoct her story.
“We got caught up in something bad,” a tearful Belliveau told the judge.
Sewell expressed similar remorse: “I wanted to say what I got to say and leave and never look back.”
The punishment?
All four women received one year of probation plus community service. The judge also imposed—but stayed—jail sentences, meaning they would only serve time if they violated probation.
In a remarkable display of self-awareness, Judge Donald Poppy acknowledged a potential double standard in his sentencing.
He noted that a man who committed similar acts against an unwilling woman would likely face prison time.
However, he placed partial blame on the victim’s “bad behavior,” stating the man “started the ball rolling, philandering with others besides his wife, who was putting bread on the table and taking care of his children.”
Perhaps most surprising of all was the victim’s response.
After the sentencing, he and his wife left the courtroom together.
While he directed obscene gestures toward television cameras, he later told the Associated Press he felt bad for all four women and acknowledged his own actions contributed to the situation.
It seems that even after such a sticky situation, this Wisconsin Romeo still managed to reconcile with his wife—proving that sometimes, what glues people together is stronger than what tears them apart.