Delayed Justice

Busy, busy, busy.  There are projects that demand attention, not always associated with murder.  That doesn’t mean that my heart wanders far from the topic, though.  And those other projects deal with justice issues as well.

It’s nice to get some help on all this.  I rely heavily on Melissa, our necrologist, and Phil Blauw, the wonderful videographer (shooter in other parlance), but some more good fortune came my way in the guise of Nancy Spier, a former editor at the Muskegon Chronicle.  She had a little time to chase down two cases that I really wanted to get up on the We Remember node of this site.  Her meticulous reporting is now giving presence to these two victims.

The first is Sidney Hildebrant, a 76-year-old man beaten to death in 1997 at his rural central Michigan home.  This is a case with some twists.  There were early leads.  Police investigated, but were drawn from that path to another, a result of what may have been false testimony on the part of an inmate looking for a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card.   Other suspects were arrested, tried, and exonerated.  Even after a subsequent cold-case team took on the case it remains unsolved.  Alas, we have no photo of Mr. Hildebrant.  If you do , will you please share it with us?  Thanks.

The second case is that of Melissa Simmons of Scottville.  She was just 15, when she went missing in 1993.  He body later was found floating in the Pere Marquette River.  She may have gone to a party with friends, and….  Investigators are not even saying for sure that she was murdered.

The stories are compelling, the reporting is first rate. As I am grateful for Melissa and Phil, I also am grateful Nancy’s time on these stories.

We received this word from Doug Pollock, the father or murder victim Ryan Pollock, that America’s Most Wanted will be re-airing its piece about his son’s case tonight.  AMW has moved from Fox to Lifetime and the ‘cast is scheduled for  9 p.m. eastern time.   Police have a good idea who killed Ryan, even had warrants.  But when they went to arrest the alleged murderers, they’d done a skip to Mexico.  It’s possible that suspects Eric Santiago and Juan Reyes have returned to the U.S.  Heck, they could be visiting family in Grand Rapids.  If they’re here, the need to be arrested and prosecuted.  As John Walsh would say: “You know what to do.”

Shows like AMW can be an essential tool in catching criminals and alleged criminals.  That’s the whole point of the television broadcast of our film Into the Dark earlier this week: sharing the story with a caring public in order to develop leads so that the police can do their work. And we may not know the results, but we can trust that all things work together for the good, which, in this case, is solving the murder and Shannon Marie Siders.

Shannon, Doug, Sherry, D’wan, Lee…and all the rest  of them whose cases require our help.  You DO know what to do..