On the evening of November 3, 2024, a caller reported a fire in a drainage ditch at the intersection of Wisconsin Highway 13 and Withy Road in the Price County town of Hackett. Responding officers found human remains, wrapped in a blanket and burning. The victim was Blanca Jesenia Hernandez-Portocarrero, a 28-year-old Marshfield woman who’d been killed an hour away in her own apartment.
TLDR: Deyvin Castro-Gutierrez, 38, of Marshfield, killed his roommate in Wood County and drove her body to a Price County ditch, setting it on fire. The case split across two counties, with separate charges in each and a $10 million cash bail.
We’ve covered Price County crime for years, and this case stands out. Not because of the violence itself, tragic as it is, but because of what it reveals about how jurisdictional boundaries can complicate justice in rural Wisconsin. When a crime starts in one county and ends in another, nobody agrees on who owns the case. That’s not a hypothetical. That’s exactly what happened here.
The Crime: What Happened on November 3, 2024
Castro-Gutierrez and Hernandez-Portocarrero were roommates sharing an apartment in Marshfield, which sits in Wood County. On November 3, 2024, Castro-Gutierrez told police he struck Hernandez-Portocarrero in the neck and held his arm across her neck until she stopped breathing. He claimed self-defense, according to former Wood County District Attorney Craig Lambert, who presented the case at Castro-Gutierrez’s initial appearance.
After killing her, Castro-Gutierrez wrapped her body in a blanket and used zip ties to secure it. He placed her in his car in the apartment complex parking lot and drove roughly 60 miles north to Price County, about an hour’s drive. He poured gasoline on the body and set it on fire in the ditch along Highway 13 near Withy Road, in the Town of Hackett, about 15 miles south of Phillips.
A passerby spotted the fire that evening and called 911. Price County sheriff’s deputies arrived to find human remains burning in the ditch. Four days later, on November 7, Castro-Gutierrez himself reported Hernandez-Portocarrero missing. Authorities identified the remains through her fingerprints.
Here’s what we think matters: the delay between the fire and the identification wasn’t just investigative lag. It was a jurisdictional problem. Price County had a body. Wood County had a missing person report. Nobody connected the two for four days.
Two Counties, Two Sets of Charges
The case didn’t stay in one jurisdiction. Wood County charged Castro-Gutierrez with first-degree intentional homicide for the killing itself. Price County charged him separately with mutilating a corpse for burning the body. Two counties, two court cases, two separate proceedings, all stemming from one crime.
Castro-Gutierrez pleaded not guilty in Wood County on January 9, 2025. He pleaded not guilty in Price County on March 31, 2025, waiving his right to a preliminary hearing in front of Price County Circuit Judge Mark Fuhr. Judge Fuhr ordered the Price County case to move forward.
He’s been held on $10 million cash bail. That’s not a typo. Ten million dollars. The court clearly considers him either a serious flight risk or a serious danger, or both. As of March 2025, his next Price County appearance was scheduled for June 5, and his next Wood County appearance for May 27.
Why Cross-County Cases Are a Problem
Price County has about 13,500 residents spread across 1,278 square miles. The sheriff’s office, based in Phillips, is small. For a major crime like this, they rely on the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation for forensic support and lab analysis. But coordination between agencies takes time, and time matters when evidence is sitting in a burning ditch 15 miles north of Prentice.
Think about what had to happen here:
- Price County Sheriff’s Office responded to the fire call and found the body
- Wood County had the murder scene (the apartment) and the suspect
- Marshfield Police conducted the initial interview with Castro-Gutierrez on November 11
- Wisconsin DOJ Division of Criminal Investigation provided forensic support
- Two separate district attorneys’ offices had to file charges in two different courts
Each agency has its own protocols, its own evidence chain, its own timeline. When a body turns up in Price County but the murder happened in Wood County, who takes the lead? The answer, in practice, is both agencies run parallel investigations and hope they don’t trip over each other.
In our experience covering rural Wisconsin crime, these jurisdictional gaps aren’t theoretical, they’re the reason cases drag on for months longer than they should. We don’t think that’s acceptable. When someone kills a person in one county and dumps the body in another, the investigation shouldn’t be slowed by bureaucratic confusion about who’s in charge.
What the Records Show
Court documents from Wood County lay out the timeline clearly:
- November 3, 2024 (evening): Fire reported at Highway 13 and Withy Road, Town of Hackett, Price County. Officers find human remains on fire.
- November 7, 2024: Castro-Gutierrez reports Hernandez-Portocarrero missing. Remains identified through fingerprints.
- November 11, 2024: Marshfield Police interview Castro-Gutierrez. He confesses to the killing and describes driving the body to Price County.
- January 9, 2025: Castro-Gutierrez pleads not guilty in Wood County to first-degree intentional homicide.
- March 31, 2025: Castro-Gutierrez pleads not guilty in Price County to mutilating a corpse. Judge Mark Fuhr presides.
That’s an eight-month span from the crime to the last plea hearing we have on record. Eight months for a case with a confession! We don’t think that’s fast enough.
The Bigger Question: Rural Justice Infrastructure
Price County doesn’t have a homicide unit. They don’t have forensic labs. The sheriff’s office handles everything from traffic stops to burglary to, occasionally, a murder that crosses county lines. When a case like this lands on their desk, they do their best, but they’re working with a fraction of the resources that a metro department would have.
We’ve reported before on Price County’s 8-month gap without a district attorney and the broader challenges facing rural law enforcement. This case is another data point. The system works, eventually, but it works slowly, and it works slowly because nobody has invested in making it work faster.
Wisconsin has procedures for resolving jurisdictional questions. In practice, those procedures mean meetings, phone calls, and negotiations between agencies that are all understaffed. The real problem isn’t the law, it’s the infrastructure that doesn’t exist to support the law.
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What Happens Next
Castro-Gutierrez faces trial in both Wood and Price counties. The Wood County case addresses the homicide itself. The Price County case addresses the mutilation of the corpse. If convicted in both, he faces decades in prison, with sentences that could run consecutively.
The $10 million bail tells you everything you need to know about how seriously the court views this case. That’s an extraordinarily high number for Wisconsin, where typical homicide bail runs $500,000 to $2 million. The judge who set it clearly wasn’t taking any chances.
For Price County, the case highlights something we keep coming back to: rural jurisdictions need better support. The Wisconsin DOJ can help, but they can’t fix the structural problem. When three agencies have to coordinate on a single homicide, the investigation takes longer than it should. And in a criminal case, time isn’t just money. It’s evidence degrading, memories fading, and a community waiting for answers.
We’ll continue following this case as it moves through both court systems. If you have information about similar jurisdictional issues in Price County, we’d like to hear from you.
Sources: Marshfield News-Herald (March 31, 2025), Wood County Circuit Court records, Price County Circuit Court records, criminal complaint filed in Price County.