Hi everyone; thank you for all your insightful theories. I am a very occasional poster, but avid reader of websleuths.
I live in an area in Wisconsin that is a few hours away, (with a very famous murder case of our own playing out on your netflix screens) but the landscape is similar to that in Baron, as is the industry and demographics.
This is all in my opinion, but a couple of insights or thoughts to throw in the ring. There are many that say that they think that it was targeted and some random--I'm on the fence about both. Here is where I am at: we have a family cabin, as well as my parents live in an area similar to Baron. When my parent's initially bought the cabin, and their home now, they bought off a main drag, even though it was down a rural road, it only had one point of access. The reason for this, is with one access point, there's, well, only one way out. In rural areas of Wisconsin, there are a lot of county roads that lead in and out; some old farmhouses that now sit next to well traveled highways. These houses are always a little more vulnerable for burglaries because it can be very dark at night on those roads, and there are many ways to hit the house and get away fairly quickly.
To me, and this is all IMO, I could see two people following the father home, or seeing a house with an easy in and out point, and going in to rob the home and occupants--likely for money for drugs, etc. The arrests with suspicion of meth do ping my hinky meter.
I wonder how dark it was in the house when they tried; did the father come home and were lights on, or was it dark?
I could see a team of two people going to the house and hitting it up either from a case of mistaken identity or drug fever or they knew the occupants but didn't suspect they would be home/be met with force. When the father answers the door, there's a struggle and in the panic, he gets shot. Denise runs and calls 911, and now, shoot, she's seen their faces and so they shoot her so she doesn't name them. I can see this all in a state of sort of frenzied panic.
It is then that they realize, oh S, there's a kid here. If there's a male and a woman, (this is what makes me think there's a woman there) maybe they grab her going, we can't shoot a child! (I could see this as people high on drugs at the moment but still having enough clarity to come through where their conscious tackles them at that moment).
They know the police are coming, so they grab Jayme and book it out of there, and now they have her, are freaking out, and don't know what to do.
This is all IMO. But again, MOO, two perps, one male, one female, and the motivation was robbery/drugs that escalated.
Thank you, again, for all your insightful posts.