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Update: Deputy testifies about discovering missing woman's body in Geneva Lake

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David Brossard trial, Aug. 19, 2009

A co-worker testifies about the last day she saw Dawn Brossard alive. David Brossard is charged in his wife's killing. Click to play

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David Brossard trial

David Brossard is on trial, accused of killing his wife in 1997 and dumping her bound body in Geneva Lake. He was found not guilty Aug. 31, 2009 after a two-week trial.

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David Brossard enters a Walworth County courtroom Wednesday morning as his trial continues on charges he killed his wife in 1997.

ELKHORN -- At 117 feet, the bottom of Geneva Lake is a lunar landscape, testified Racine County Sheriff's deputy Brad Friend.

"There's no vegetation, no rocks," he said. "It's silty, brown in color. ... The light is dim, about 10 feet of visibility. Everything has a greenish-blue haze to it."

Friend testified Thursday about the day he found Dawn Brossard's body while looking for a shipwreck in Geneva Lake.

David Brossard, 40, of Burlington, is charged with killing his wife, Dawn Brossard. She disappeared in October 1997, and was found at the bottom of Geneva Lake in 2003. David Brossard was charged with the crime last year.

Friend said he followed the anchor line down to the bottom, and, not seeing the shipwreck, used a guide line to search a 75-foot radius from the anchor point. He attached the guide line to the anchor line and strung out 75 feet.

Friend swam south, until the line went taut. Then, he started swimming in a circle, to see if the line would catch on anything -hoping for the shipwreck.

He found a baseball cap and a plastic planter, he said, "the kind of stuff you'd normally find discarded on the bottom of the lake," but not the shipwreck. Then he saw something with a bit of relief to it, outside the length of his guide line. He let out a little more line.

"I initially thought what I had seen was a rather large tree limb," he said. "You get branches and things that will float out, decompose and sink to the bottom. As I got closer it became apparent it wasn't a tree limb. It was a dead body."

Friend said it was "pretty scary," and that's when his training kicked in.

He draped his guide line across the body, and followed the line back to the anchor and went back to the surface, a process that took about 30 minutes.

When he got to the surface, he reported the body, later identified as Dawn Brossard, to the Racine County and Walworth County sheriff's departments. Friend was one of the divers who later brought Dawn Brossard's body up from the lake.