POLICE USE OUTDATED DIRECTORY, SLOWING RESCUE THEY WENT TO THE WRONG HOUSE AFTER THE CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING, WHICH COMPOUNDED THE TRAGEDY.(FRONT)(Directory)

Byline: BARRY ADAMS badams@madison.com 608-252-6148

The deadly carbon monoxide poisoning last week in McFarland could have been discovered almost 10 hours earlier had police used a newer version of a directory to locate addresses by phone number.

Instead, McFarland police used an outdated printed directory, kept near the current version, and went to the wrong address three times before using an updated directory to find the correct address, 5860 Osborn Drive, according to McFarland police.

Cory Nonn, 26, was likely dead by the time police got the phone number of the home where he was from Nonn's girlfriend, Lindsay Knepper, at about 10:30 p.m. Dec. 14, according to the Dane County Coroner's Office. Nonn, a contractor, was at the house to work on the basement.

But had the correct directory been used it would have gotten three people critically injured out of the home much sooner, instead of at about 8:15 a.m. Dec. 15.

"It may have, yes," said McFarland Police Lt. Patrick O'Dell. "We're frustrated too."

Eric Thompson, 57, Karen Trow, 56, and her son, Weston Gill, 18, were found the morning of Dec. 15 in critical condition and needed hyperbaric chamber treatments at a Milwaukee hospital.

Thompson and Gill have been released from St. Luke's Medical Center but Trow remained Wednesday in the hospital's intensive care unit, Thompson said.

"We're very lucky to be alive," Thompson said. "I'm glad they got here when they did."

Nonn had been using a gas-powered sprayer to apply paint over drywall in the home's basement.

He had a 76 percent level of carbon monoxide in his blood stream, and Knepper said she was told that anything above 40 percent is considered lethal.

"We're (angry) at how they handled it but it doesn't look like anything would have saved him," Knepper said. "We've gone through a tragedy that we don't want anyone to go through. I just want to make sure everyone has carbon monoxide detectors in their house."

The 2004 Hill-Donnelly directory looks the same as the 2005 version and is a common directory used by law enforcement for cross referencing addresses and phone numbers. The 2004 edition at the McFarland Police Department has been removed, O'Dell said.

"What is tough for us is if there were two books, why were they both not checked that night," said Nonn's father, Mel Nonn, in a letter to the State Journal.

Addresses can also be found by typing phone numbers into Internet search engines such as Google, but law enforcement officials say the Internet isn't always accurate.

"We discourage (use of) any of those Internet Web sites for that purpose," said Duke Ellingson, director of the Dane County Public Safety Communications Center.

Knepper had last spoken with Nonn at 6:30 a.m. and began searching for him after he failed to show at their Middleton home by 7:30 p.m. and didn't answer his cell phone. She called police to report her boyfriend missing but police had no way of knowing if Nonn had simply gone elsewhere without telling Knepper, O'Dell said.

Police went to the wrong address three times but it wasn't until the third visit, when someone answered the door shortly after 7 a.m., that they realized they had the wrong house.

Thompson and Trow had arrived home together at about 5:15 p.m. Gill, a senior at McFarland High School, came home at about 8 p.m.

Thompson said he didn't notice anything unusual and didn't check on Nonn because he heard the machinery in the basement and Nonn had sealed the basement with plastic to prevent spray particles from going upstairs.

He doesn't remember anything after 8:15 p.m.

"It's shortsighted now but I didn't realize he was using a gas-powered tool. I just assumed everything he was using was electrically powered," Thompson said. "I didn't think about it a lot."