Delayed Justice

Nineteen seventy in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  There were 15 murders.  Fourteen of them were solved.  That’s a 93 percent clearance rate, pretty good in anybody’s book.

…Unless you happen to be a family member representing that 15th family.  Then you wait with expectation.  You wait for days, weeks, months, years.  You’ll wait for ever if you need to, because having the case solved is better.

But it hasn’t happened yet for the 15th case.  And tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the stabbing death of Shelley Speet Mills.  She was only 19.  She’d been married only 17 days.  She was stabbed 32 times.  And it’s been 40 years.  

Shelley at her wedding with Bill Mills

 

“We’re still wondering,” said Sgt. Terry McGee.  He’s been in charge of the case for the last few years.  He spoke with us  on camera and you can see his interview if you’ll look through the case file at the right side of the website.  We spoke with a lot of people…her family, her friends, the investigators then and now.  These people gave us a lot of their time.  There was a reason: they want this case solved.  

And it’s not neatly tucked away in anybody’s mind.

The case file  for instance is not tucked away in the file room: “It’s five feet from where I’m sitting,” said Sgt. McGee on Monday.  “I got it sitting five feet to my left on the floor.  I’m staring at it.  It hasn’t gone in the back room.  …And I’m looking at the list from 1970.”  He rattles off the other homicides from the year of Shelley’s death–a murder suicide, a shooting….  “All the rest are solved…but not this one.”

“You’d like to get it solved.  You’d like to be able to say to her family, ‘Hey, this thing is resolved.’  We can’t at this point.”  But the case file is there in the expectation that it’s going to be needed soon.  And the case?  “It’s still spoken about on a regular basis.”

Lamont Marshall continues to be a serious suspect.  He’s in prison for life for another of the slayings that was part of what became known as The Heritage Hill Murders.  Shelley’s murder is considered the first in a run of eight cases (seven deaths and one other attempted murder).  And no one has come forward with concrete evidence that Marshall was even in Grand Rapids, much less at 314 College N.E. on the morning of September 15, 1970.

But Sgt. McGee has plenty enough experience to know that it might have been somebody else, too.

If only somebody would come forward to drop a solid lead.  And somebody knows, make no mistake.  “There has to be more than one person who knows,” said Sgt. McGee.

It’s not hard to drop the dime on this: all it takes is a simple call to the Grand Rapids Police Department (616.456.3403) or Silent Observer (616.774.2345).  So simple.  And it could mean so much.  Even after 40 years.

“Oh, I’m don’t want to think about where that photo is going to end up,” said the retiring but not shy Captain Roger Van Liere.  No, I didn’t see him eat any of ’em and I trust they went for a good cause…like for the many visitors yesterday who were wishing him well.  And, yes, I understand that the department did host a party for him, a little surprise.  Glenna and Jim Chandler were invited and attended.  Jim said Roger was caught unaware and enjoyed the event.  There is another up side to all this: Roger will be serving the county 15 or so hours a week as a bailiff in the Holland court. Those bailiff’s–almost exclusively retired police of sheriff’s officers–bring all their experience to maintaining order and safety in the court.  It’s a great way to kind of retire and stay active in a profession you love.  And when the department need to consult the old hands…they’re just down the hall.

Captain Roger Van Liere of the Holland Police Department is retiring today.  There is likely to be no party or cake; that’s just not his way.  I hope to drive down a dozen donuts.  It’s likely he won’t eat ’em, but he might pass them about.  

Roger is very special to me.  He was one of the team members who worked so diligently to crack the Janet Chandler murder.  With Rob Borowski (also of the HPD), and David Van Lopick, Michael Jaffrey, and Geoffrey Flohr of the Michigan State Police, Roger stayed the course for almost two years.  There were times, he’s said, when he and he team members would come home from interviews and their families would have to scrape the crud from their souls, so toxic was this investigation.  These investigations are never conducted in a vacuum; there is always spill over, always a price to be paid.  The support staff for these investigators also face the same kind of nastiness, even at second hand.  I think of their administrative assistant, Cheryl Achterhof, and their supervisors  John Kruithof of the HPD and John Slenk of the MSP.  Both of the latter also have retired.

But for Roger today…it’s pretty much what I said to him the afternoon that he told me they were bringing Robert Michael Lynch back to Holland under arrest: “Well done good and faithful servant.”