Elderly woman beaten to death with a rock — police said they found her daughter ‘covered in blood’

Residents of a Milwaukee neighborhood are haunted by the death of an elderly woman in her backyard allegedly at the hands of her mentally ill daughter.

Carrie Zettel, 64, called police at about 2 p.m. Sunday to report that her daughter was being violent, according to a search warrant. When police arrived, they found Zettel dead.

‘The girl should have been stopped years ago, and I don’t understand why. And that angers me.’

“It happened in the backyard, and she beat her mother to death with a rock,” said a family friend named Susan Henderson-Hoffmann.

A criminal complaint said that police found a rock weighing about 4 pounds and stained with blood near the body. Her body had been covered with a blanket.

The search warranted identified the suspect as 29-year-old Lauren Spors, the daughter of Zettel.

The mother obtained a restraining order against Spors in 2018 after saying she was fearful of her daughter and her mental issues. Spors then allegedly violated the order four times but was found incompetent each time and was not prosecuted.

The fourth time, she allegedly violated the order by throwing a rock through Zettel’s double-paned window. She was sent to a county mental health facility, but public records did not indicate how long she was held.

“I cannot believe Carrie is gone, but you want to know something? I’m not surprised,” Henderson-Hoffmann said. “The girl should have been stopped years ago, and I don’t understand why. And that angers me.”

The restraining order expired in 2022.

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Spors was charged with first-degree intentional homicide.

“I am really having a hard time dealing with this. I am not going to lie to you guys. I knew her my whole life,” Henderson-Hoffmann added.

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