Delayed Justice

Carefully and thoroughly.

Those are the watchwords for the investigation of the 1989 murder of Newaygo’s Shannon Marie Siders. The 18 year old was abducted overnight July 17-18, 1989, and her remains were found Oct. 15 of that year.

In late 2011 a cold case team picked up on the still unsolved crime. The team was led by Michigan State Police D/Sgt. Scott Rios.  He was joined by Newaygo Chief of Police Pat Hedlund, D/Sgt. Adam Mercer of the Newaygo County Sheriff’s Department, and D/Sgt. John Forner and D/Trooper Mike Stephens, both of the Michigan State Police.

At the start of their work the complaint was more than 1200 pages. You can imagine the size of it now with more than a year’s full-time investigation added to it.

“The unit did a phenomenal job. They literally left no stone unturned.” That’s the assessment of Newaygo County Prosecuting Attorney Robert Springstead.

And their work, while not entirely finished, is no longer consuming all their days. “New information does come in and the members of the team respond, but they no longer work on this case full time,” Springstead said.

In fact, their work is now awaiting the assessment of the state’s Attorney General.

Springstead and the team have met with members of the AG’s office several times, the first to present the case.

“The investigative team and I met with personnel from the Attorney General’s office and did a file review,” said Springstead. “We’ve met once or twice since then, and we’re still in the process of review; the file is still under review for bringing potential charges. (…) Now we’re looking at whether we can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

That’s what it takes: beyond a reasonable doubt.

And that’s why it needs to be careful and thorough.

The video hosting service we used–BlipTV–has let us know that we are not the clients it wants. BlipTV is interested in episodic television and that isn’t us. We’re grateful that we’ve been able to pay to use that service for the last seven years, but things change. So, July 15, all our video will be non-functional until we are able to devote the several hundred hours to uploading all of it again to a different host service.  At this point we’re looking at Vimeo, but I need to make sure we can have a long run with that service.

Meanwhile, we are looking for more information, still, concerning Ann Maria McCorvey. We’ve come up with zip so far…no newspaper articles about her murder. Is it possible that we have a wrong death date? Perhaps. Or could this murder just have slipped through the cracks of the reporting system? Doesn’t seem likely. Newspapers then did a pretty thorough job of getting everything.

Too, we’ve been doing some groundwork on what might be the next case we investigate for a film. We thought we had one pretty well lined up and then it seemed to grow hot again…it was being worked. That’s the best of all outcomes; that something develops and investigators follow leads. We’re standing by.