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..

Last week I and First Lt. Cameron Henke of the Michigan State Police sat down with Patrick Center of WGVU to do his show Newsmakers.  Lt. Henke is the officer in charge of the entire team — city, county, state — that is working full time to investigate the murder of Shannon Marie Siders.  That young Newaygo woman was abducted July 18, 1989. That program is scheduled to be broadcast at 8:30 p.m., Friday night, March 30, on the Create Channel (136 in my Charter listings) at 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning, April 1, the day after what would have been her 41st birthday.  (HD WGVU-TV is 785 on my Charter channel.)

We talked about the background of the investigation and the film in the half hour show.  I had asked Patrick to invite Lt. Henke for a couple of reasons. The first was I didn’t want to be giving out what I might know of what the police are doing; that really was up to him what he wanted or was willing to reveal and to keep quite about what he thinks needs to be held close.  Secondarily, I thought it might really be good for people to see somebody up the chain of command, somebody in addition to the rest of the cold case team who is completely committed to solving this crime.  Does Lt. Cam Henke think his team will solve this?  Watch and learn.

Our film, Into the Dark, will be broadcast on WGVU-TV the next day (night, really), midnight April 2.

I am very grateful to WGVU for seeing its way clear to carry the film.  Let’s face it: a filmmaker without an outlet has an uphill battle all that way.  …Not that you are a hobbyist, necessarily, but if your films have no place to shine they will not do much good in the here and now.  (The ‘Later” is always another matter.)

The goal is to motivate the one person who know what the police need to know to make that call.  I suppose it may seem off that in broadcasting this story we really are narrowcasting…send it out to the many in hopes of reaching one person or a small group.  It’s a message within a message.

So, for our intended audience, here are two numbers: 517.241.3130 and 231.873.3584, extension 222.  The first will link you to a dedicated tip line just for this case.  The second will connect you to Det. Sgt. Scott Rios of the Michigan State Police.  He heads up the cold case team.

Today marks the 74th anniversary of the beating death of Mina Dekker.  She was 19 years old, a young woman with plans and spunk, a dutiful daughter and a good friend.  And someone went to her workplace on the  third floor of the Judd Bulding, 64 Ionia, Grand Rapids, and beat her so hard with a hammer that a piece of her skull flew across the room.  She was still alive when she was found but died a short time later at the hospital.

It’s possible that she would still be alive today had her life not been taken.

We’re chronicled as much of this story as we are able.  The long-form interviews with her brother, police, even her best friend are all there, as are newspaper accounts.

Certainly somebody knew something, and it’s possible somebody still does.  But her younger brother Adrian doesn’t  know.  He doesn’t know who killed his sister and why, and he would very much like to.  It would take a miracle for that knowledge to come to him, but we believe in them.

WGVU TV is willing to take on Into the Dark for broadcast.  The time scheduled for the show is midnight April 2.  That means it’s overnight from Sunday to Monday at the very start of Monday morning.  That also means it’s two days after Shannon Sider’s 41st birthday.

There is much to be done in the meantime.  First is the need for the as-delivered script so that it can be used for closed captioning.  That’s well in hand now.

Then there is searching out underwriting.  This is a challenge for me.

Underwriting or not, the film will show, and I am grateful to WGVU.