Editor’s note: The following story has been reprinted, with permission, from the online news site: Walworthcountycommunitynews.com. 

The suspect in the murders of Gina and Emerson Weingart Feb. 1, 2024 at the Sports Page Barr in Elkhorn was ordered held on $2 million cash bond during a court appearance Friday.

Thomas A. Routt Jr. faces two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and one-count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide along with other felonies in the case.

Police say Gina Weingart was working as a bartender early that morning and her husband was also at the bar that evening, as he often was.

According to a news release from the Elkhorn Police Department, a witness told police a man using a video gaming machine stood up and pointed a gun at Gina behind the bar, telling her not to move.

The witness said she stood up from her barstool and backed away from the bar. She said the man told her not to move, then the man with the gun shot Gina behind the bar.

She said she ran out the back door of the bar and heard gunshots as she was running out of the bar and through the alley. The witness called 911.

The complaint reads that Routt said he then shot the man who was also at the bar and took $120-140 from the register.

Routt spent nearly 25 years in prison for setting his ex-mother-in-law’s home on fire in 1995. He received parole in 2020.

Routt is expected back in court Feb. 21, 2024.

Dan Plutchak is the founder of Walworth County Community News, a countywide, online news outlet covering Walworth County, Wis., begun in 2021. Weekly newspaper coverage in Walworth County began in June of 1978 when The Janesville Gazette launched Walworth County Sunday, a weekly insert into the Gazette. Walworth County Sunday was revamped in 1991 into a standalone publication, The Week, and Plutchak joined as a staff photographer. Plutchak went on to edit The Week from 1995 to 2008. That year, Bliss Communications purchased Community Shoppers Inc., and rolled The Week into CSI’s Walworth County Sunday. During those years, Plutchak launched TheWeekExtra.com and WalworthCountyToday.com, which are no longer being produced. Plutchak later became editor of Walworth County Sunday until he departed for WKOW 27 News in Madison in 2017 to oversee the station’s digital operations. Now retired, Plutchak founded Walworth County Community News to provide coverage that doesn’t always make it into other local media outlets.