The brother of convicted murderer William James “Jimmy” Holisky II is speaking out against DFL candidate Mark Munger for failing to “protect the public.”
Jerry Holisky, an attorney in Illinois, grew up in northern Minnesota with five sisters and one brother. That brother, William “Jimmy” Holisky, was convicted in 2015 for the murder of Lisa Jean Isham. Jimmy stabbed Isham multiple times in May of that year. Isham’s body was discovered roughly two weeks later in her Duluth home.
The presiding judge at Jimmy’s murder proceedings was then-Judge Mark Munger. A longtime fixture in the northern Minnesota community, Munger sentenced Jimmy to 30 years in prison.
However, Jimmy’s appearance before then-Judge Munger was not Jimmy’s first appearance in front of the judge. Just a few months before he murdered Isham, Jimmy was brought before Judge Munger and found to have violated the terms of his probation from a prior offense.
In turn, Munger decided to release Jimmy from supervised probation and placed him on unsupervised probation. According to a Duluth News Tribune article, this meant that Jimmy would not be required to regularly check-in with law enforcement or participate in a domestic abuse intervention program.
Isham was murdered by Jimmy just a few months later.
Today, Munger is a DFL candidate for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives. The seat Munger is running for, known as House District 3B, includes Hermantown, Two Harbors, Rice Lake, Proctor, Lakewood Township, Canosia Township and several other northern Minnesota communities.
As such, Jimmy’s brother, Jerry Holisky, is speaking out against Munger for loosening Jimmy’s probation and allowing a known criminal to walk around “completely unsupervised.”
“My five sisters and I were incredulous that Munger could have made such a decision, that he sent Jimmy back on the streets without a single guardrail in place to protect the community,” wrote Holisky.
This week, Holisky took out a paid advertisement in The North Shore Journal, a paper in Two Harbors, which chronicles what he calls “the abject failure of the criminal justice system, and specifically then-Judge Mark Munger, to protect the public and Lisa Jean Isham when he had the chance and the responsibility to do so.”
Holisky also posted another version of the document on his Facebook page. Additionally, Alpha News has been told that some version of the advertisement will appear in the Lake County Press, another northern Minnesota media outlet.
In his statements, Holisky said Jimmy had an extensive criminal record and had appeared before Munger prior to the 2015 murder of Isham. A Duluth News Tribune article from 2016 which documented parts of Jimmy’s rap sheet said Jimmy had “a criminal record replete with assaultive and threatening behavior toward women.”
“What a difference it might have made if Jimmy had still been on supervised probation in May of 2015,” wrote Holisky.
“Perhaps if Jimmy had been required to meet regularly with his probation officer and report on where he was living, the probation officer may have been able to gauge Jimmy’s compliance with his medication regime; or the probation officer might have been able to identify Jimmy’s rapidly deteriorating mental health condition in the Winter and Spring of 2015, and to intervene appropriately.”
“The truth is we will never know … because of Mark Munger,” wrote Holisky.
Alpha News sent Holisky’s advertisement and Facebook post to Munger seeking comment. However, Munger did not respond prior to publication.
“In January of 2015, Mark Munger had the duty and the responsibility to use all the available tools at his disposal to both protect the public and, if possible, to give Jimmy a chance at recovery,” said Holisky.
“But Mark Munger failed us.”
In Munger’s bid for House District 3B, the retired judge is running against incumbent State Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar, R-Hermantown.
Alpha News previously profiled the race between Munger and Zeleznikar in June of this year. Given the Republican’s razor-thin margin of victory in 2022 (33 votes), this year’s race for District 3B is expected to be one of the few toss-up elections that will decide who controls the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Writing about the election in his advertisement, Holisky stated that District 3B “can do better” than Munger.
“Crime is on the ballot in House District 3B and its name is Mark Munger,” said Holisky. “Hopefully next Tuesday the good people of House District 3B will keep Mark Munger where he is today—in retirement.”
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
