Police say Michael Jon Hurlburt called 911 after the killing and described a plan formed hours earlier.

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — A Menomonie man is charged with first-degree intentional homicide after police say he fatally stabbed his mother Friday, May 22, inside her Eau Claire apartment and then called 911 to report the killing.

Michael Jon Hurlburt, 27, is accused in the death of Lisa Marie Bragg-Hurlburt, 56, a longtime Colfax Public Library director whose death drew public tributes from family, library colleagues and community members. The case now turns on a criminal complaint, an emergency call, police interviews and a medical examiner’s finding that Bragg-Hurlburt suffered 44 stab wounds.

The case began shortly before or around 8 p.m. when dispatchers received a call from a man who said he wanted to report a homicide, according to police accounts of the complaint. When the dispatcher asked how he knew a homicide had occurred, Hurlburt allegedly said, “I killed her.” Police said he identified the victim as his mother and told the dispatcher she might still be alive. Asked what happened, he allegedly said he found a kitchen knife and stabbed her about 40 times. The call sent officers to Half Moon Lake Apartments near West Grand Avenue, where they found Bragg-Hurlburt unresponsive and bleeding. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Officers and detectives said they found a bloody kitchen knife about 6 feet from Bragg-Hurlburt’s body. Investigators said Hurlburt was later located and arrested near 6th Street and Congress Street, blocks from the apartment complex. Police said the first account came not from a neighbor or a witness inside the apartment, but from Hurlburt himself during the emergency call. In that call, he allegedly spoke about being “gang stalked” by the U.S. government and the Chinese government. When asked what that had to do with his mother, he allegedly said he believed she “kind of made me crazy in the first place” and that others were forcing him to get along with her. Authorities have not said that anyone else was involved in the killing.

After his arrest, Hurlburt was taken to police headquarters, where investigators said he received Miranda warnings and spoke with detectives. In that interview, he allegedly said he had thought before about killing his mother because she had been “mean to him” when he was a child. Police said he described forming a plan at about 4 p.m. on the day of the killing. Before going to the apartment, he allegedly said he wanted what he called a last meal at Dairy Queen before he was arrested. Investigators said his mother picked him up there, and the two later went to her apartment, where he asked to speak with her alone. He allegedly told detectives he waited several minutes inside before attacking her.

The complaint says Hurlburt told investigators he stabbed his mother 30 to 40 times and left while she was still breathing because he was unable to “finish her off.” The medical examiner later counted 44 stab wounds, most of them in the neck and upper back. Police said Hurlburt told detectives he wanted to “make a statement” to the rest of the family. The details described in court records place the alleged planning, the restaurant stop, the ride to the apartment and the 911 call within a narrow Friday evening timeline. Officials have not publicly described any prior police calls to the apartment connected to Bragg-Hurlburt and Hurlburt, and the complaint does not describe a struggle witnessed by others inside the unit.

Bragg-Hurlburt’s death reached beyond the apartment building because of her public role in Colfax, a village east of Menomonie. Library colleagues said she had been director of the Colfax Public Library since 2016 and had worked there before taking the top role. Public posts from the library in the weeks before her death showed her promoting a spring book sale, a Little Seed Library, a summer reading kickoff and a weeklong library closure. A memorial fundraiser described her as an artist, a creative mind and a person with a quirky sense of humor. Her obituary said she was born Aug. 22, 1969, in Woodruff, grew up in Rhinelander and graduated from Rhinelander High School in 1987.

Public records and prior reporting also show Hurlburt had faced a separate Dunn County case in 2024 involving accusations of terrorist threats and telephone harassment. Reports on that case said the allegations involved social media posts about a shooting at Colfax High School and a voicemail left for a school superintendent. In December 2025, the case was discharged after Hurlburt was found guilty but not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. The new Eau Claire County homicide charge is a separate case. Authorities have not said whether any mental health evaluation has been ordered in the homicide case, and the full path of that case remains before the court.

Hurlburt is being held in the Eau Claire County Jail on a $1 million cash bond. The homicide charge carries the most serious level of accusation under Wisconsin law, and prosecutors will have to prove the charge in court. No plea was described in the reports reviewed for this article. Hurlburt’s next court date is scheduled for July 6, when the case is expected to move forward through early proceedings. The court record will determine what evidence is admitted, whether any competency or mental responsibility questions are raised and whether the case proceeds toward trial or another resolution.

For Bragg-Hurlburt’s family and colleagues, the public record of the killing now sits beside a very different public record of her life. The Colfax Commercial Club had honored her and youth services librarian Jolene Albricht with the 2024 J.D. Simons Community Volunteer Award. Library system colleagues wrote that she was “not a headline” and “not a statistic.” Her obituary remembered her as the eldest sibling in a large family and as someone whose love of nature came from childhood in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. Those remembrances have become part of the story as the criminal case moves ahead.

The case stands with Hurlburt jailed, Bragg-Hurlburt dead at 56 and a July 6 court date ahead. Police have described the killing as a planned attack; the courts will decide the legal outcome.

Author note: Last updated June 22, 2026.