Is Kyle Rittenhouse's mother 38 years old in 2024? No, that's not true: Previous news reports as well as voter registration data show that she was older than that in 2021 when her son's trial began. The photo reused in posts on social media does not predate the trial.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on June 2, 2024. It read:
Kyle Rittenhouse's mom is 38. 38.
This is what it looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Thu Jun 6 15:33:39 2024 UTC)
Kyle Rittenhouse was charged at age 17 (archived here) with multiple counts (archived here) in the case of the fatal shooting of two persons and wounding of the third during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was later acquitted (archived here).
In 2020, as news media covered the developing story, CBS News (archived here), the Chicago Tribune (archived here) and Fox News (archived here) reported that Kyle's mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, was 45 at the time.
VoterRecords.com, which describes itself as a free political research tool for the study of public voter data, shows one person of the same name from the same age group (archived here): Wendy Elaine Rittenhouse who previously lived in Antioch, Illinois, which is consistent with the address history mentioned by The New York Times (archived here) and previous court records also available via Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER). That person is 49 years old, as of this writing.
The image reused in the post on Threads was first published online in 2021 (archived here). The elements of Wendy Rittenhouse's look seen in this photo are consistent with her appearance on November 2, 2021, when her son's legal team gave an opening statement to the jury: A different image (archived here) taken on that day captured her wearing the same dark emerald blouse and the same heart-shaped pendant, and her hair was partially tied up in a ponytail in the same fashion as in the photo reused on Threads. All of it confirms that the image in question does not predate the trial, which took place years after Wendy Rittenhouse had been 38.
The same claim was previously reviewed by PolitiFact.
Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Kyle Rittenhouse can be found here.
