Tiffany Workman was jolted awake by a loud noise at midnight on March 10, 2014.

Concerned, she got out of bed and headed downstairs to where her boyfriend, Daniel Raven, had fallen asleep on the couch. Shockingly, she discovered a scene of shattered glass, blood, and a gaping wound in Daniel’s arm.

“I’m not a hunter, so I wasn’t familiar with the smell of gunpowder inside a home,” Workman recalled during the April 5 episode of Oxygen’s Snapped. “It’s a scent I will never forget.”

Emergency responders arrived promptly at their rural Wisconsin residence and confirmed that Raven had succumbed to a gunshot wound. The startling twist? The shot had been fired from outside the house.

“There was a clear view from the front porch to the couch in the basement,” explained former Barron County Sheriff’s Detective David Kuffel on Snapped. “Someone approached the door from outside, didn’t try to enter, and fired two rounds through it, aiming perfectly at a defenseless victim.”

Investigators found two spent shell casings outside and noticed tracks leading from the road around the house, pointing detectives to a single, troubling conclusion.

“It wasn’t random,” said Kuffel. “It truly was as much of a hit as I have ever seen.” 

When police asked Workman who wanted Raven dead, she was quick to offer a name: His ex-wife Trista Hrabak.  

Inside Daniel Raven and Trista Hrabak’s Marriage—and Messy Divorce

Raven and Hrabak were high school sweethearts who married in 2005. A few years later, the couple—parents to a daughter and a son—opened the Bullwhip Cafe in Barron.  

Running a family business while raising kids, however, strained their marriage and they divorced in 2013. Loved ones said Raven was depressed and drank heavily—until he fell in love with coworker Workman. 

Meanwhile, Raven and Hrabak’s divorce grew volatile, namely over financial issues. A few months before his death, Raven suspected Hrabak of misrepresenting her finances to receive more child support. Though he planned to alert the court, according to Workman, he worried she would retaliate. 

As Workman admitted, “He had told me, ‘You know, Tiff, if anything ever happens, it’s her, it’s Trista.’” 

Who Is Ian Skjerly?

Amid the murder investigation, police received a tip from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services notifying them about Hrabak’s boyfriend Ian Skjerly. A caseworker had been asked to interview him and Hrabak at the request of his ex-Karen Hanson, who claimed the couple mistreated her and Skjerly’s daughters. 

During the interview, “Skjerly made an off-hand comment,” former Barron County Sheriff’s Detective Jeffrey Nelson told Snapped, “that the quickest and easiest way to end this conflict is to kill Dan Raven.”  

Police set their sights on Hrabak and Skjerly, pulling their phone records and tracking them down at a restaurant.  

Skjerly told police that he and Hrabak were home at the time of Raven’s murder, offering up his home security footage as evidence. Meanwhile, Hrabak dismissed any problems between her and Raven and told police whoever killed her ex should receive the death penalty. 

Trista Hrabak and Ian Skjerly’s “Chilling” Phone Records Revealed

Their text messages told a different story, with Barron County Sheriff’s Detective Kuffell calling their correspondences “chilling.”

“The persuasion, threats, violence,” he recalled, “it was all spelled out.” 

It was clear from the messages that Skjerly backed out of multiple attempts to kill Raven, which frustrated Hrabak. 

“Ian was texting Trista saying, ‘I’m promising you, he will not make it Monday morning,’” Kuffel said. “Trista replied by saying, ‘Don’t make me promises you can’t keep.’”

The messages revealed a third suspect: Robert McBain, a friend they paid to drive the getaway car. 

When police contacted McBain, he confessed that he and Skjerly made at least six trips to the farm to kill Raven. 

McBain was arrested and charged with first-degree intentional homicide; in Sept. 2014, he pleaded guilty. 

Skjerly later admitted to police that he killed Raven, but insisted Hrabak was the mastermind. 

He confessed that after murdering Raven he returned home, entering through a door obscured from his home security cameras. 

Skjerly was arrested and pleaded guilty to first-degree intentional homicide. 

Hrabak, however, held her ground. 

“Trista’s initial response to officers was, ‘Why am I being arrested? I didn’t do anything,’” said Kuffel. “She believes because she didn’t pull the trigger, she’s not responsible.” 

Skjerly and McBain were sentenced to 20 years and 15 years in prison, respectively. 

Hrabak accepted a plea deal and in February 2015, she was sentenced to 15 years of initial confinement and 10 years on extended supervision.  

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