Delayed Justice

On Friday we went to Holland, MI, for a talk with Bill Essenburg, Shelley Speet Mills’ high-school boyfriend. He and his wife, Gail, were gracious to us.

Most of the people who sit in front of our lens are not truly joyful to be there. After all, we deal with an unpleasant subject, we don’t know what will happen next in the story telling, and, frankly, most of us are happier to be left alone. All that said, we are grateful that people will take the time and the considerable trouble to talk with us. When we go into someone’s home with all our lights and equipment it looks like we’re moving in (and we travel light for a video crew: one camera, and about two-and-a-half lights). It takes time to set up, a little more than a half an hour. And THEN comes in the interview. At least it doesn’t take as long to strike as it does to set up, but that’s small comfort.

And because we’re making decisions as we go along on this project, the latest decision is that when we have an edit, it will be a quick dip to black. That means the video will quickly fade out and fade back in, usually a second’s duration. We’ve discovered there are plenty of reasons to edit…not everything I ask is germane or productive. Once in a while I’ll edit out one of my questions that seems inane or a comment that’s not helpful. Sometimes in an interview we’ll come back to a topic and so I might organize segments of the interview based on the topic. Part of this is learning as we go. To the best of my knowledge we are using this medium in a new way. I just hope it’s helpful.

Today we have another interview scheduled in the matter of the Shelley Speet Mills case. Care is always called for and your prayers would be welcomed. …And not just for us, but for those we’re interviewing, too.

News comes at us of the wars between drug operators and law enforcement personnel in Mexico and straying over the border into the Southwest U.S. The numbers of murders stagger the imagination. So many!?! Each one a mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter. And each one of these deaths matters. There doesn’t have to be an aggregate count in order for it to be tragedy. Because of the numbers it grows almost beyond comprehension.

And it spells the end of civilization. When a culture is overrun by rank crime, it ceases to function. It decays from without and within. So, how do we preserve and conserve that which we hold dear: the right to our own lives and the lives of others? We start by making sure that every one of these victims is remembered. Somehow. I also pray for them and their families.

And to the best of our abilities we stand up against the tyranny of the cartels, knowing that many innocents have no power. When the mayor of a small Mexican town is greeted by a well-heeled stranger with a suitcase full of money and told to choose either the silver of the lead, what does he do for his own life? …The lives of those in his family? So, my admonition to stand up is a little weak; I’ve never had to make that kind of choice and I’m not sure how much courage I could muster. What can we do to encourage and protect?

Tell the story.

Detective Erik Boillat has been on the Grand Rapids Police Department force since 1996 and the Major Case Team since 2000. In late 2006 he was one of two Grand Rapids police officers who took part in the Kent Metro Cold Case Team investigation that led to the conviction of Lamont Marshall in 2007. It COULD be there is a link to the murder of Shelley Speet Mills. But it hasn’t yet been proven. Take a look/listen to what he has to say.

Lamont Marshall would have been 15 years old at the time. Yeah, it could happen. But no one has been able to place him in Grand Rapids in 1970. A 15-year-old boy does not exist in a vacuum. But records can be discarded or could be missing; maybe he wasn’t enrolled in school. But if he was there, somebody had to know about it; somebody knows somethin’.

What a week this has been. At the heart of it was a spiritual matter that dealt with the direction of this project. The short explanation is that I received a comment that led to an important realization: I’m not an avenging angel. What I need to do is tread with care in areas that can cause so much pain and harm. I had thought that I was going to show visitors to our site as much of what we see as possible. But there is the possibility of too much harm, especially to those who are only tangentially involved or who are innocent of any wrongdoing. There is no excuse that allows turning them into victims of this inquiry.

Now, this brings up some questions, especially relating to the murder of Mina Dekker. In that case the police had a suspect who was clearly identified. But the police could not seal the case against him. What do I do there? He plays a large role. How can I NOT identify or talk about him? Certainly that’s ONE of the things that’s delayed production on that film. Boy, I could use some guidance on that.

But for the rest, with the Shelley Speet Mills murder, I know I need to be very careful not to cause more harm than the potential for any good that we might offer.

You’d think that by the time I got this old I’d have a lot of this figured out. Not always. And we’re in uncharted waters on some of this, trying something that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been tried before.

On the plus side, I’ve finally given a name to what we’re doing. In the history world researchers always want to deal with the primary documents…the true source material. Okay…primary documents…primary documentaries. Yeah, that’s what these are called: primary documentaries.

Yesterday afternoon we spent time with Sergeant Terry McGee and Detective Erik Boillat, both of the Grand Rapids Police Department. This evening I’ll be posting the last of the interview with Vesta Speet. It wanders a little because I’ve gone back to pick up some corrections about things we discussed earlier…where Shelley went to college (Ferris) and a couple other things, too, so if you think you heard some of these topics earlier, you did, but in an interview we often will go back to cover something we elided or that’s been misstated. It happens. But she has much more to offer about the pain of this crime and the cost to her family.

This weekend I’ll work on the interviews with the officers and I’ll get as much up as possible. Oh, they’ve worked this case hard for more than 38 years.

When Vesta Speet discovered the body of her murdered daughter she went into shock.  She had the presence of mind, though, to pick up the telephone and call for the police.  I have a hunch she must have dialed “O” for Operator; these were the days before 9-1-1 if memory serves me right.  That operator not only summoned the police but urged her to stay on the line until they got there.  This was a woman, Mrs. Speet says, of great compassion and expertise.  But who was she?  There’s no record of her name in the police file; I’ve checked.  i don’t recall any mention in the newspaper.  Somebody know, though, and we might find out who this was.  you never can tell in a murder investigation exactly what’s going to be turned up.

I had a very dear friend who graduated with her master’s degree in her late 80s.  It was her contention that miracles happen every day.  The secret, she said, is in recognizing them.  Wouldn’t THAT be a miracle to find that operator.  Let’s see….

We conducted this interview with Vesta Speet in 2006, soon after we heard about this case. There are a few pieces of information to set straight: by the time of her marriage, Shelley had spent one year as a student at Ferris State College (now University). She was planning to enroll at Grand Rapids Community College but hadn’t done so at the time of her death. She and her husband, Bill, took the apartment on College so Shelley could be close to classes. The neighborhood was rough and her friends said Shelley kept the doors locked.

It was Mrs. Speet who walked into the apartment and found her daughter murdered. Here she talks about Shelley growing up and getting married.

The first part of the interview with Shelley’s mother, Vesta Speet, is up for you to see.  Don’t expect a lot of drama out of the box; it doesn’t work that way.  We start at the beginning, trying to get a sense of the victim.  In this case, what was Shelley like as a person?  How did she grow up?  What were her interests, likes, dislikes?  How did she fit into the family?  How was she regarded by her friends?  What about her meeting, romance, engagement and marriage with Bill Mills?  It may seem a little slow to most of you, but it’s foundational.

We conducted this interview in October of 2006, as soon as we sense that we might be telling part of this story.  Mrs. Speet was very kind to allow this. Imagine talking with a pushy stranger who wants to know the details of your daughter’s murder.  I can hear the hesitation in my own voice as I begin, knowing that I am likely going to be causing some pain.

I have talked with a fair number of family members of murder victims.  They say the pain is not from remembering…in the first place they’ll never forget and the story is always close.  Very often, they say, they wish they could talk more about their murdered loved ones.  Remembering their lives is good; remembering their death is not.  I suppose it must be painful to know that these interviews are soon going to be available for everybody to see and hear….  The act of murder puts the victims’ families in the public square.  It’s not a private matter.   Often we don’t know what to do and until it happens to us (please, no) we can never truly understand.  But we can make the effort.  Respect and sensitivity are called for.  So, we go about the business in the believe that this is not gratuitous; this case CAN be solved.  I have to have faith in that.

And we can ask the somebody who knows something to come forward.

It’s taken parts of three weeks, but at last the scans of the police file in the murder of Shelley Speet Mills are scanned…with one significant exception.  In all the work I put off scanning perhaps 20 or so two-and-a-quarter by two-and-a-quarter negatives of the evidence once it reached the crime lab.  These negatives were separated, so they are very difficult to handle and each one is in a plastic sleeve.  I was not eager to remove them and I didn’t have cotton gloves.  It’s possible that I will return to them (with gloves) once the interviews are underway…but we’ll see.  The case file isn’t really evidence, per se, but it is often a copy of evidence and I wanted to treat it with every bit of care and caution that it deserves.

This case is as brutal as anything I’ve ever encountered in my 60 years.  The crime scene photos are grisly and bizarre.  Shelley was a strong and athletic young woman (she took part in waterskiing shows during the summers).  She kept her doors locked (at least, that what her friends said).  There was no sign of forced entry so you might think she willingly let in her assailant.  The killer hit her hard enough to split her lip and cause a lot of other damage, so he had to be strong.  But the 32 stab wounds were shallow, perhaps delivered with a paring knife.  She fought hard and there are plenty of defensive wounds on her hands.  And whatever kind of knife it was, it was plenty enough: the killer severed both jugulars.  She bled profusely.  And then the killer posed his victim, washed up in the bathroom…and left.  Nobody saw or heard anything.

Surely, though, somebody knows something.

These days do happen, when what you need to get done doesn’t.  The worst part of technology is that most often the problems involve operator error.  That would be especially so today.  I’ve been trying to set up a player account just for delayedjustice.com and have reached my LOI…my level of incompetence.  When I was teaching I frequently told students that it was no crime being stupid but it sure is powerful unhandy.  It’s true, it’s true.  And, lest you get the wrong idea, I was not referring to them but all of us in general.  I am foremost in that number.

So, I’m stumped for now.  I’ll take the time to think this through tomorrow as I’m scanning at the Grand Rapids Police Department.  I’ll be pondering what I’m doing there, too.  The Shelley Speet Mills case leads to a huge, unanswered question: who could do this and live with himself?  Somebody could and did.

Certainly I’ve come to a couple realizations.  The first is that the crime scene photos are not likely to show up on the web site.  Second, there are a lot of people who are tangentially associated with a crime.  Most of those people tried to help the police and even if they had some interesting things going on in their own lives, they have the right to privacy, so there will be files that are not going to be shared here.  It’s a fine balance.  But the interviews we do…well, that will be another matter.  I expect those to be wide open.

I look forward to starting them in the next few weeks.  These things do not happen fast.