Delayed Justice

There are times when it seems nothing is going on, when the appearance of any activity is just absent.  That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening; quite the contrary.  But it’s not always something to write about or chat about.  We all have these times when is seems we are at our nadir, our lowest point.

The point is to keep on, knowing that one thing leads to another.  And even if we are still for a time, the rest of the world is churning.  And that activity will have an impact on us and the circumstances that surround us.

There will be more, later.  I promise.

In the early morning of May 22, 2008, around 2:15 a.m., Maurice Simmons was shot in a field near the My Place Bar in the 1400 block of South Division, Grand Rapids, Kent County, MI.   Wounded, Maurice made his way down South Division for about a mile before being taken to the St. Mary’s Health Care, where he later died.

According to police, there are no suspect in Maurice’s death.  A reward of up to $1000  is being offered by Silent Observer for information that leads to an arrest.

MJVH

It went!  Who knew?  As always a few technical issues, the kind that happen when you mix a Mac into a Windows World.  But it all seemed to work in the end.  The staff at The Grand Rapids Public Library, as a part of its Big Read, asked me to come and present the Mina Dekker case.  I have long promised that I would NEVER give a PowerPoint presentation managed to escape with my virtue intact.  Instead it was the Mac version, Keynote, and it worked beautifully, mixing newspaper pages, video and audio, pictures…oh, it was fun to learn.

And it seemed to work.  I wasn’t in the audience so I can’t say definitively, but it seemed about the right length, about the right level of material to share.  And there were lots and lots of questions.

Amazingly, there were people in the audience who KNEW Mina.  There was even a lead generated last night.  The brother of a woman who had dated a fellow who also had dated Mina was there. He related that this fellow showed up at the family’s front door the day after Mina’s death and talked about the murder.  He was rattled and was clutching a parcel to his chest.  He had to leave town and in a hurry, he said.  Off to Alaska.

At least, that’s what I took away from listening.

Yes, of course the lead has been passed on to Sgt. Chris Postma who is now in charge of the case.  What’s he supposed to do with it?  I don’t know.  One miracle at a time.

It’s stunning to think of people who were involved with the case then who are still remembering it today.  One woman at the event had lived on Oakland, the street where the Dekkers lived.  She talked of Mina’s stylishness and grace.  As a ten year old, she said she was in awe in Mina’s presence.  But, she said, Mina was not remote; she was always friendly.

My thanks to Kristen Krueger-Corrado, the Marketing and Communications Manager, and the rest of her staff, including Amanda and others who do all things tech.  That library is a trove: without it and the helpful staff, I’d have not so much on this case.

There is no serious evidence to consider shoe repairman Ray Peters a suspect in the murder in 1938 of Mina Dekker.  He was interviewed at length because her found her nearly lifeless body on the third floor of the Judd Building but he was never asked to take a polygraph test (he begged to be able to do so to clear his name) and he was never charged.

But somewhere in the public mind people judged that he was suspicious enough that they muttered about him.  There were two reports from individuals who said there may be something to contradict his testimony to the police.  The police didn’t find anything that overly concerned them.  Then-Chief O’Malley proclaimed his innocence in the newspapers.

It didn’t seem to matter: the result was the ruination of Ray Peters’ health and well being.

Even the crazies came out of the woodwork.

Goodness gracious!  A werewolf??!!!  Well, there are other letters, too, and most of them are about as well reasoned.

So, it was with interest that I responded to an e-mail exchange that originated from Chris Bedford of Rockford.  Ray Peters was her grandfather, she wrote.  I had known he died in the 1950s, but I didn’t know the cause.  It turned out to be suicide.  My first thought was there might have been a link between his self-murder and Mina’s murder.  Chris and her brother Bob Rosenzweig were willing to come and talk about their grandfather.  Only Bob knew him, Chris being MUCH too young.  The impact of the man’s life, though, was on the family whether or not he was alive and there.

What grew out of that interview was the realization that in finding Mina Ray Peters said goodbye to a normal life.  Everything changed.  He was never the same after that. 

His suicide?  There is no mention of Mina Dekker in his last note, no admission of guilt, no indication that his death was other than a deep missing for his wife who had died shortly before and a suspicion that he might have had the onset of a neurological disorder, perhaps multiple sclerosis.

The reference to Exodus 20:5 usually serves as a measure of God’s displeasure at those of us who hate Him.  That’s NOT what I’m saying here and I’d make a pretty poor theologian.  Murder, though, visits subsequent generations of all involved.  A murder rolls through the generations even when the person is neither a victim of the assault nor the perpetrator.  Ray Peters was a bystander.  And the effect of that murder has rolled down through the generations to his children and his grandchildren.

A week from tonight, May 19, I’ll be at the Main Branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library at 7 p.m. to share what I know of the Mina Dekker murder. This is daunting. As a former professor I’m pretty much used to standing at the front of a room, but there was then and there is now the desire to make best use of the time to convey the most important information. Preparation helps and in one respect I’ve been preparing for this for years. But even with the best preparation, so much of what I’m doing is only electrons holding hands. I rely on them, but I don’t trust them. So, what to do? I hope to be able to pull things from the internet connection, but it would seem smart to have a local backup for the video portions. Well, just how much am I likely to play? I’m still sorting through all that. Hmmm. Ponder, ponder, ponder.

Much of last week was spent on the road, going to Detroit and Lansing to show the Jump Back, Honey film. The audiences were small but enthusiastic. We’re still finding our own level with all of that and the economy is depressing a lot of things…not just finances. People are not quite at the point where they will seek out something entertaining outside the house. Or, that’s my take on it anyway.

To be able to share in the meeting of the Conquerors Support Group on Saturday was a great privilege. I thought it was likely to be so, but for as much as I had hoped…it was even more; it turned out to be a gift for me, too. Here are people who have had family members murdered. They gather to talk/listen/support. As organizer Carolyn Priester said, when they first organized some who attended could only come and cry. That crying was valuable; these are holy tears and they were welcomed for what they represent. There is a lot happening in addition to tears including a resolve to understand (as much as anyone can understand the senselessness of murder). What I attempted to share was my belief that telling the stories of their loved ones is critically important, whether the murderers are known or unknown. It’s necessary to remember the face that’s no longer there at the dinner table and to pass down the meaning of that life to the rising generations.

I suppose it’s a neologism.  Distempora…if I’ve conjugated aright would mean out of touch with the current time.  It seems to happen whenever I drift into historical researches.  In this case I’ve been going over and loading up newspaper accounts from the time of the Mina Dekker murder.  To a historian of ancient times this would seem but yesterday; to me it is a time so far out of mind as to be in another world entirely.  Goodness, it was only 10 years before I was born (yeah, I’m 60), but things were so different.  There was hubbub, a seeming sense of progress, still the economic malaise from The Great Depression, an ascendant Germany, trains and stations, and if you had to get a message someplace, it had to go by Western Union.

There are some things that are the same: goodness and evil.  The evil done to Mina beggars description.  The same holds true of Shelley Speet Mills, Janet Chandler and all those (and thousands of others) listed in We Remember.

This Saturday I am to meet with The Conquerors, a group of people and families who have had loved ones murdered.  Some of them know the whole story behind the crimes: the killers have been identified and brought to justice.  For some others, though, the murders remain unsolved.  What could I possible have to offer?  Sometimes we’re not sure about all that, but we know we have to go.  I believe I’m supposed to share the importance of stories.  I’ll try to be ready, to be prepared to say something cogent, but I will know what I’m really supposed to do when I get there.  T.S. Eliot writes a lot about that in The Four Quartets.  Those poems remain among my favorites.  The present, the past, the future…all deliciously jumbled.  Why deliciously?  We have to suck the marrow bones of time.  It is in time we find our meaning and it is out of time we find our worth.

Had I stayed in the newspaper business I think I would very much have liked to be the kind of reporter Ken Kolker was and is. At the time of our interview with him last spring about the Mina Dekker Case, he was reporting for the Grand Rapids Press. With the shakeup in almost all the media, Ken has moved to report for WOOD TV, Channel 8 in Grand Rapids. The Press lost a tremendous resource and WOOD TV gained a fledgling broadcaster who is a heck of a researcher/interviewer/writer/reporter.

This shuffling in the media is, I think, a terrible blow to the continuity of reportage. In this case, though, the community gets to keep the resource close to home; everything that Ken knows he’s still able to use in telling the stories of the area.

We are losing the whole senior generation of reporters across the country. I know, I know: most of the public doesn’t have much respect for reporters. And it’s true there are those who don’t deserve any. But there are so many more whose truthfulness, thoroughness, and dedication to telling the whole story will be sorely missed. I can see the changes underway.

Even as I am one, I am not overly inclined to think that citizen journalist bloggers are going to be able to pick up the slack. Oh, it COULD happen, but I think it unlikely. Journalism school and a looooooong apprentice period under senior reporters served us well. The best route, I still think, was earning a bachelor’s in a cognate and then earning a master’s in journalism.

For now, I’m mighty glad Ken is still reporting. And here’s the latest file on the Dekker case.