People call and e-mail with questions about cases I’ve never heard of. This time is was about Ronald “Stoney” Burke. My source said he had been murdered in the mid to late 1980s, and his murder had never been solved. He perhaps lived on Columbia in Muskegon Heights. What do you know?
Pastor Chris Meehan of Coit Community Church on Lafayette NE, in Grand Rapids was kind enough to invite Captain Jeffrey Hertel, Carolyn Priester, organizer of Conquerors (www.conquerors-sg.org), and me to come before members of his congregation and others who are interested in stemming the tide of violence.
In the time Captain Hertel has been on the job Grand Rapids has witnessed 168 homicides, most of them solved. But enough remain open that he wonders what it will take for people to open up to the police and share what they know. In the cases where they do, solutions are rapidly forthcoming.
Carolyn founded Counquerors after her son, Lee, was killed. She told the story of her son’s  July 28, 2007, murder. Like many parents of children who are gone violently and too soon, she related the burden she carries. She blames herself in part; why did she chose that neighborhood to raise her son? Her heartbreak has informed all of her life.
She makes a compelling case for someone to come forward, someone who will not be intimidated. And assuredly someone knows what happened, and could identify the killer who pulled the trigger.
Carolyn not only mourns for her son but mourns, too, for the mother of the person who killed her son. This killing has destroyed at least two families.
For my part, the most important element I could offer is that there is hope. There is hope that people can change, can be better, can live more fully into justice and mercy, both. And with humility.
Hope is never false…there is no such thing as false hope. By its very nature hope is true. Hopes can be disappointed, dashed, unrealized, but hope is never false.
And in the cases where somebody knows something…that would be nearly all murders…there is the real and present hope that justice can and will be served.
Captain Hertel was also to share the success this week in solving the 1989 murder of Helen Tracy. Here’s the latest Grand Rapids Press account by John Agar.
In the end, the suspect confessed. The murder of 88-year-old Helen Tracy in 1989 finally has a solution.
Kent County Metro Cold Case Team has arrested Michael Wayne Newkirk, 60, Wednesday, in Grand Rapids. Newkirk admitted to sexually assaulting and killing Tracy at her residence, 60 Sutton St. SW on May 21, 1989.
The Kent Metro Cold Case Team has been working on the case since 2009. You can read the mLive story by John Agar here.