Making of US Open course: Death, intrigue shadow Erin Hills

Trattner, 55, is the one-time software programmer whose passion for golf led him to call a Milwaukee-area millionaire businessman, Bob Lang.

[...] only seven months before Lang — cash strapped and in need of revenue — rushed the course to open to the public in 2006, Trattner pleaded no contest to first-degree reckless homicide for killing his wife, Sin Lam.

The attorney says he finds it "sadly ironic" that at the time of his sentencing, Trattner, who worked part-time as Erin Hills project manager with a salary of $2,000 a month, was "portrayed as being this kind of bum who was puttering around with this land near Holy Hill."

According to the criminal complaint and other court documents along with testimony from authorities:

—Trattner told police he placed sleeping pills next to his wife's head to make it look as if she had committed suicide.

The Waupaun Correctional Facility at which Trattner is incarcerated denied The Associated Press a phone interview with the inmate, citing "concerns about the impact on the victim's family."

Lang, who built an empire selling calendars and greeting cards, lost more than $10 million on the project, according to several reports, and was forced to sell Erin Hills at a loss after a series of costly renovations, construction projects and adjacent land buys spiraled out of control.

In 2004, with the PGA Championship being contested 70 miles away at Whistling Straits, Lang and his friends lured USGA executive director Mike Davis, then the U.S. Open championship director, to the unshaped expanse that would eventually become Erin Hills.

[...] eager was the USGA to find a Midwestern host for its biggest event, it awarded Erin Hills the 2008 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links before the course was even complete, and later, the 2011 U.S. Amateur, which is a traditional prelude to a course being placed into the U.S. Open rotation.