Delayed Justice

Captain Roger VanLiere, Holland Police Department, retired, has died as a result of a bad fall. Captain VanLiere was one of the essential operatives in the investigation that solved the 1979 murder of Janet Chandler. This is what I wrote of him at his retirement in 2010:

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.”

As it turned out, there WAS a party that day for Roger. I was not there, but I did manage to get those donuts down to him for the day.

Here was the Holland Sentinel coverage at his retirement.

Yes, well done good and faithful servant. The world is much better for his having been in it.