The Dane County 911 center Friday released two recordings related to the Jan. 28 murder of Joel Marino at his home near Monona Bay, including the first dramatic call asking dispatchers for help for a bloodied and unconscious victim.

On the second recording on March 21, a witness calls the non-emergency police number to report he has spotted a suspect in a murder investigation walking on Park Street with another man. The caller never identifies which murder investigation or the name of the victim.

The witness later told Isthmus, a weekly paper, that he saw the suspect on Jan. 28, minutes after Marino was stabbed in his home.

On March 21, he said, the suspect was one of two men who walked past his home as he shoveled snow. He said he was certain it was the same man. Police came under fire when the witness later told the paper that police had let the suspect get away by not responding quickly enough.

Capt. Jim Wheeler, who leads the Police Department's South District, which is conducting the Marino investigation, said a Madison police non-emergency dispatcher received the man's call at 4:58 p.m. that day and sent two squad cars at 4:59 p.m. They arrived in the area at 5:02 p.m.

Call notes indicate they did not find anyone matching the suspect's description.

On the call released Friday, the witness never mentioned Marino's name to the Madison police non-emergency dispatcher, who told officers the "caller thinks they are possibly part of a murder investigation. We're not quite sure what he's talking about."

The witness reported two suspicious men walking on Park Street in connection with "that murder investigation you have going on here."

"One's got like that tannish coat on. I was the person who saw him the first day."

The witness has declined to be interviewed by the State Journal and told a reporter that he fears for his family's safety if he is identified.

Call is chilling

The call on Jan. 28 to the 911 dispatcher is more chilling. In it, a caller says her boss has found an unconscious man in the alleyway at 707 S. Park St.

"He's just laying in the snow," the female caller says.

She tells the dispatcher she doesn't think the man is breathing. "He's purple," she said. "... it looks like he took a tumble. His glasses are off, and there's blood all over."

The dispatcher tells the woman to roll the victim onto his back. "There's a lot of blood," the caller says. "It looks like he's really hurt. He's very, very limp, very purple, (there's a) lot of blood. His eyes aren't blinking."

The dispatcher starts telling the caller how to do CPR on the victim.

"I'm freaking out," she says. "I don't know what to do."

Another woman comes on the line as the first caller tries to apply compression to the victim's chest as directed.

"When she tried to do that, more blood comes out," the second woman says. "He seems to have some wound in his chest."

Defending the police investigation, Wheeler said so far police have contacted more than 800 people, developed a list of more than 80 suspects and cleared them all, at least for now. Leads have been followed as far as Houston, Wheeler said. Police also have worked closely with the state Crime Laboratory and the FBI. More than 2,000 pages of reports have been generated, he said.