Not the prosecutor or detectives. Not the defense attorneys. And not Kiara herself.
The sisters had been trading insults and threats online and through texts for weeks in early 2023. Then came a fateful day in April when Kiara, 34, swung a knife at Quintessa Gaines during a confrontation and fatally wounded her.
In court, the same word kept coming up to describe the situation.
Tragic.
But there were warning signs of an escalating series of threats, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review of public records.
Much of that information went to Kiara's probation agent with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
By April 2023, Kiara's probation agent had received reports from three people concerned about her behavior.
Her sister, known as Tessa, was one of them.
"Nothing is being done to control Kiara," she said, according to the agent's notes.
The case raises questions about what, if anything, could have prevented the homicide and shows the role and limitations of community supervision agents.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections defended how its staff handled the case, saying agents followed DOC guidelines.
"While the outcome of the case was tragic, there was no reasonable way for a person to have anticipated this case to escalate to homicide," said Beth Hardtke, an agency spokeswoman, in a written response to the Journal Sentinel.
Kiara's mother and stepfather, who declined to speak to a reporter, told a judge that the two sisters kept the worst of the conflict hidden from them and lamented missed chances for help.
"We're not saying what Kiara did was right, at all," their mother, Debora Retic-Kneebone, said in court, as tears slipped down her face.
"It could have been so much different."
Thousands under community supervision by the Department of Corrections
On any given day in Wisconsin, about 63,000 people are under supervision in the community by the state Department of Corrections.
Kiara was one of them.
She was convicted of disorderly conduct and battery, both misdemeanors, in 2019 after cutting the hand of her then-boyfriend during an argument. She was sentenced to probation.
Most of the thousands of people under community supervision are either serving probation terms, like Kiara, which means they did not have a prison sentence, or they are on extended supervision after their release from prison.
About 1,200 full-time agents are tasked with monitoring them, or roughly one agent for every 52 people.
Agents can help connect people with jobs, training programs, housing opportunities and programs to address mental health, substance abuse or other issues. They can require phone calls, office visits or home visits, and they can keep tabs on a person through GPS monitoring if it's determined to be necessary.
Not every person requires the same level of attention.
"I do think that community supervision officers are being asked to do increasingly complex things in their profession, to be both law enforcement and a social worker," said Emily Salisbury, a professor at the University of Utah and corrections expert who trains agents nationwide.
When someone breaks the rules of their supervision, an agent can issue an apprehension request, which functions like a warrant. As of mid-November, the department had about 8,800 outstanding apprehension requests, according to an agency spokeswoman.
It's a powerful tool, enabling police to detain and jail someone.
The state Department of Corrections relies almost entirely on local police officers to apprehend those who are wanted. Agents are not sworn law enforcement, but they can try to help find someone by contacting friends, family, employers and other associates, according to a DOC spokeswoman.
Kiara had an active apprehension request at the time of the homicide. But no one seemed to be looking for her -- except her sister.
How early childhood experiences laid the foundation for a troubled relationship between sisters
Since childhood, Kiara and Tessa had a fraught relationship.
"There was always fighting in the house," she told an expert hired by her defense team. "It was never calm."
Kiara said Tessa and their younger sister often painted Kiara as the troublemaker, resulting in her receiving harsh physical discipline.
The expert, Karla Fischer, a psychologist who specializes in the effects of domestic violence, noted in her report that Kiara had many traumatic adverse childhood experiences.
Her biological father was in and out of prison, before he was fatally shot trying to rob a store in 2000. As a young adult, Kiara said she experienced domestic violence at the hands of the father of one of her children.
In 2014, her brother, Tavion Milams, was shot and killed in Milwaukee. He was 24.
As Kiara got older, she found herself entangled in fights and arguments, resulting in low-level convictions for property damage or disorderly conduct.
She faced her first felony charge, substantial battery, in late 2018, again the result of a fight. Kiara had cut the hand of her then-boyfriend during an argument. She told police the man had earlier grabbed her by the face and pushed her down on the bed.
The following July, she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct and battery in a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to two years of probation.
A judge ordered her to complete a domestic violence counseling treatment program, undergo a risk and needs assessment, and to comply with any "care plan goals" identified by the Department of Corrections.
If she did what she was supposed to do, she could get off probation six months early.
Instead, later that year, a volatile family dispute drew police to her mother's house in Madison.
How someone under supervision can become an 'absconder' and stay that way for three years
On Dec. 7, 2019, Madison police got a call about a domestic disturbance.
Kiara, Tessa and her mother had been embroiled in an argument that had turned physical. Kiara told police it was over her desire to convert to Islam. Her mother said Kiara was upset, claiming that it was always them against her. She told Kiara to leave.
As officers tried to sort out what was happening, Kiara began shouting at her mother and moving toward her. Kiara's mother swung, landing a punch on her daughter's face. Kiara's mother was arrested; Kiara was taken to a hospital for her injuries and released.
That night, Kiara went to a relative's house in Milwaukee and demanded to be let in. When the relative refused, she kicked the front door, cracking the glass, and threatened to break the windows.
Police took her to an emergency center for mental health care, where she was placed in restraints after threatening staff. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, prescribed medication and released after about a week.
Kiara's probation agent knew all of this, according to state records.
The agent, Miles Jobke, had issued an apprehension request -- essentially a warrant -- for Kiara after learning of the incidents in Madison and Milwaukee. He spoke to Kiara on Dec. 17, 2019, and told her to turn herself in.
Two days later, someone -- the name is blacked out in public records -- told Jobke that Kiara had been threatening her and her son. The agent asked a specialized team of DOC agents and police in Milwaukee to look for Kiara.
It's unclear if the team did. The last reference to the team in the agent's file said Kiara's case was still on their "to-do" list.
Kiara entered absconder status.
She would not have contact with any DOC agent for the next three years.
After coming back to the attention of DOC, a series of escalating threats
The law caught up with Kiara in 2023.
That March, Milwaukee police responded to a battery call and found Kiara. Officers ran her name through a state database, saw her open warrant for violating her probation and took her to jail.
By then, she had a new probation agent, Dakota Kelnhofer.
Kiara was ordered to meet with Kelnhofer in Madison as soon as she was released from jail. She missed the meeting, blaming bad weather and a lack of transportation.
The agent's supervisor, Marc Peterson, filed a violation summary for absconding, meaning Kiara was not where she was supposed to be, and issued another apprehension request.
On March 13, 2023, Kelnhofer received screenshots from someone -- the records released to the Journal Sentinel blacked out the name -- showing Kiara made threats over the weekend. That same day, Kiara showed up to meet with Kelnhofer in Madison and was taken into custody.
She was released three days later.
By then, Kiara and her sister were involved in a deeply personal dispute.
Court testimony later revealed the sisters had criticized each other's parenting. Other people got involved on Facebook and text messages. Kiara began sharing painful family secrets -- secrets that were not hers to tell.
Amid the turmoil, Kiara's agent received more reports about her behavior.
On March 20, a man told the agent that Kiara had "ruined his life in the past" and had been "acting wild" since her recent release from jail, according to the agent's notes.
Peterson, the agent's supervisor, wrote another violation summary, this one for threatening statements or behavior.
Soon after, Kelnhofer, the agent, heard from the stepmother of Kiara's older children.
The woman said Kiara was making threats to kill her on Facebook.
The woman was not overly concerned but knew Kiara had "some issues" and did not know "what she is capable of," the agent's notes read.
The stepmother remembered the conversation differently.
"Day after day, many of us were threatened, even when we didn't respond," she later wrote in a letter to a judge, describing Kiara's actions in March 2023.
"As the threats escalated, I reached out to Kiara's probation officer for assistance," she continued, "but was met with the dismissive question, 'Do you really think she will come to Atlanta?'"
How a last confrontation turned fatal
Kiara was scheduled to see Kelnhofer in person on March 27, 2023.
Instead, she called.
The agent was clear: You have a warrant and you need to turn yourself in.
Kiara said she needed to take care of something in Children's Court first. After that, she said, she would turn herself in.
The Journal Sentinel asked the state Department of Corrections if agents attended any hearings Gaines had in Children's Court to try to place her in custody with the assistance of local officers or deputies. An agency spokeswoman said agents were not aware of any hearing in Children's Court at the time, and the department had no record of a Children's Court hearing on the date in question.
On April 6, the agent heard from Kiara's sister, Tessa.
Kiara had been calling her early in the morning and showed up at her house, violating a no-contact order, she said.
Tessa said she planned to go to Madison to talk to the agent's supervisor because "nothing is being done to control Kiara," according to the agent's notes, which were added to the file later on April 27, a day after the homicide.
At the time, Kelnhofer told Tessa to call police if she saw her sister.
On April 20, someone else did call the police.
That day, Tessa and her friends drove up to her aunt's house in Milwaukee to confront Kiara.
Kiara ran outside, spotting a gun on the hip of one of her sister's friends, and waved a coat to lure them away from the house as she fled. She didn't return home for more than an hour, spending most of that time hiding in some bushes.
Kiara's cousin called 911 to try to get help, but no one was arrested that day.
It's unclear if DOC agents were aware of the 911 call. There was no mention of the incident in the notes from Kiara's probation agent, according to records reviewed by the Journal Sentinel.
That encounter was one of several jurors heard about during a three-day trial this September.
The jurors listened as the prosecutor quoted from a text Kiara sent her sister and others the night before the homicide, saying Tessa "needed to be laid down like the (expletive) dog you are."
They heard from Fischer, the domestic violence expert, who said Kiara fit the definition of a battered woman.
They listened to Kiara as she described what happened on April 26, the day of the homicide.
How she saw her front door burst open and her daughter run through it.
How she heard a frantic warning - "Tessa's running up!" - and pushed her daughter and a friend to the backroom, handing them her 5-month-old son.
How she grabbed a knife on her way to the door, stepped on the porch and swung at her sister.
How both women fell to the ground, and how Kiara, after weeks with an open warrant, was finally arrested.
A woman is held accountable in court as the DOC defends its actions
Kiara faced the possibility of life in prison.
Instead, the jury convicted her of second-degree reckless homicide, deciding her actions were unreasonable given the circumstances but that she had not intentionally planned to kill her sister. They rejected her self-defense claim.
A spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections said no one was disciplined related to Kiara's supervision.
"While she did abscond from supervision from December 2019 to March 2023, DOC has no evidence she committed other crimes during that time period," said Hardtke, the DOC spokeswoman. "Absconding is not considered a crime in Wisconsin."
Absconding is a "mid-level rules violation" of supervision, Hardtke said, noting that Kiara was jailed when she absconded "as a consequence" and that the time she absconded did not count toward her supervision, effectively extending it.
The agent also changed the rules of Kiara's supervision before the homicide to order her to have no contact with Tessa and to participate in community programming, Hardtke said.
"The actions her agent took were in line with DOC's evidence-based responses to supervision violations," she said.
At sentencing, the prosecutor, Daniel Flaherty, called the case "absolutely tragic" and representative of how social media fuels and escalates disputes. Kiara's stepfather echoed those comments, harshly criticizing Tessa's friends who brought her to Kiara that fateful morning.
"This whole city just go by what they hear, rumors and social media," he said. "They didn't know the facts about anything."
One of Kiara's attorneys, Vincent Guimont, reminded the judge that his client never denied her actions, never left the homicide scene and called 911 to get her sister help.
"She knelt over her sister and wept," he said.
The defense asked the judge to sentence Kiara to five years in prison. The prosecutor recommended eight to 10 years.
Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey A. Wagner decided on seven, telling Kiara: "You're going to have to live with this for the rest of your life."
The judge did agree with the prosecutor that once Kiara is released from prison, she should spend 10 years on extended supervision by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
The prosecutor, Flaherty, had pushed for the maximum amount, citing Kiara's history of mental health and anger leading to violence.
"We need to make sure that she is addressing those issues under the supervision of the DOC for as long as possible," he said.
Editor's note: This story was reported using public records from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Dane County Circuit Court, Madison police and the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office. A reporter observed portions of the homicide trial in September, including the full testimonies of Kiara Gaines and Karla Fischer, and attended Gaines' sentencing hearing in October. Kiara's mother and stepfather declined through their daughter's attorney to speak to a reporter after court hearings.