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.