This website is intended to deal with murder, brutality, corruption and hatred—all falling under what we call acts of injustice. We tell the stories of open and unsolved homicides–what are called “cold” cases. We also memorialize those whose lives have been taken from them in hope that somebody will come forward to tell the truth. So far our efforts center on Michigan.
That’s the way Jim Fairbanks put it when we made our first film, Who Killed Janet Chandler? Detective Fairbanks (retired) was the lead investigator on the law enforcement team in 1979. What he had to say then still applies today. For nearly every unsolved homicide there is somebody out there who could solve it if she or he would come forward and make a contact.
To call an unsolved homicide a “cold” case is chilling in its own right. Yes, these unsolved cases grow “cold” because there are no new leads; they more or less drop off the social and cultural radar. But they are NEVER “cold” to the family members and friends, they are never forgotten or out of mind. And there is always the hope that justice, however delayed, will be served.
We invite you to visit the We Remember part of this site, a place where families and friends of those whose murders remain unsolved contact us and can help to post details of the victims’ lives and the resultant investigations.
We also invite your view of what we are calling a Primary Documentary Investigation as we tell the story of the murder of Mina Dekker.
Our hope in all the cases we chronicle is that somebody who knows something will say something.
The sentencing for Christopher Wayne McMillan in relation to the 2002 murder of Roberto Caraballo “has been adjourned without a new date.”
The reasons could be many, including that because Dineane Ducharme, Mr. Caraballo’s step-daughter, has chosen to go to trial for her alleged part in his death, that Mr. McMillan will need to be on hand to testify. Providing truthful testimony was a part of his lesser, second-degree murder charge. He has been promised a sentence of 15 years for his complicity in the crime, the coverup and the treatment of Mr. Caraballo’s body. Ms. Ducharme now faces first degree charges, a mandatory life without parole if she is convicted. …Unless she seeks a plea.
Ms. Ducharme’s mother, Beverly McCallum, is still being sought for her role as the alleged mastermind and primary actor in the May 7, 2002 murder.
On a sidenote, January 11th will be Mr. Caraballo’s birthday.
Here is yesterday’s testimony of forensic pathologist Dr. Stephen Cohle and the ruling of District Court Judge Julie Reinke that defendant Dineane Ducharme is bound over for trial in Eaton County. This testimony includes graphic evidence from 11:30 to 22:03 and is not intended for children or others who will be aggrieved by it. But the photos admitted into evidence illustrate just what his murderers did to Roberto Caraballo.
Today I spent watching forensic pathologist Dr. Stephen Cohle give his expert testimony and recollections of the Jack in the Box case. The defendant, Dineane Ducharme, was bound over for trial, so the prosecutor made his case. Tomorrow I will post Dr. Cohle’s testimony and show the graphic evidence admitted, both of which helped lead to the judgement of the court. Ducharme is bound over for trial in circuit court…and unless she takes a good look at the witnesses arrayed against her and sues for a plea that might result in life as opposed to a lesser sentence. But that’s tomorrow.
Imagine that in 1974, as a 17-year-old, you gave birth to a child in circumstances that dictated (even against your wishes) that giving that little girl up for adoption was the best plan, or at least the plan pushed by your mother. Imagine you surrendered the child when she was nine months old in 1975.
Imagine more than 35 years go by, but not a day without longing for news of your child.
Then imagine you are contacted in 2010 by law enforcement officials from the state where you surrendered her–Virginia–who contact you to ask you for a DNA sample to test against a body that had been discovered, and that, further, your daughter disappeared and has been missing for more than 20 years. Imagine the young girl she was…only 14 when she was last seen March 11, 1989.
Imagine that you also learn some of the history, that your daughter had been adopted when she was two years old, in 1976, by a couple then living in Virginia. And imagine that you learn that subsequently she and her family moved to west Michigan and that her adoptive father had been arrested there and charged with the attempted murder of another young woman. He served five years of a ten-year sentence but was reunited with his family some three years before your daughter vanished.
Imagine that you learn that nine years after your daughter vanished that this man was convicted of another crime, Breaking and Entering with the Intent to Commit a Felony. And the felony was directed against another young woman.
Imagine that you piece together a series of crimes against other young women where the perpetrator COULD HAVE BEEN your daughter’s adoptive father.
It wouldn’t take much from that point to imagine that just maybe this man had killed your daughter and disposed of her body. Law enforcement workers might even think it likely, but without some kind of proof, there would have been nothing they could have done.
Imagine you ask for help from all and sundry to get the word out and that you have age-progression portraits painted just in case she is out there, somewhere, and someone recognizes her. And you post them. And you network with Missing in Michigan, pay for a billboard along a highway, offer a reward.
And a few years pass. And keep imagining that you have lost your daughter twice; once when you give her up to adoption trusting that she would have a bright future, and the second time when you learned she was missing and investigators thought her likely dead. Still, you don’t give up; you start a facebook page calling out the man, challenging him to take a lie detector test, to own up to what you believe he has done to your daughter.
And all this imagining weighs on you until….
…Until, better than imagining, you learn that this man has been arrested for a murder, a murder in Virginia in 1980, when the adoptive father had returned to that state to fulfill a two-week Naval Reserve commitment.
And here is THAT story in the Holland Sentinel and and updated “supposing” account from Fox 17.
There is a lot more that will come out in the near future about that man, Dennis Bowman. Of course law enforcement is looking hard at the case, especially because now there might be some leverage to induce him to talk. Maybe. And you hope.
You, of course, are Cathy Terkanian, and this is your facebook page about the daughter you knew as Alexis Miranda Badger, renamed by Dennis Bowman and his wife, Brenda Joy Engweiler-Bowman, as Aundria Bowman.
Cathy Terkanian contacted me in 2013. I wasn’t able to offer much help, but I gave what I could during the next couple of years, in particular linking them with a wonderful private investigator. And Alexis/Aundria has long been up at our We Remember node on this website.
Cathy still hopes for her daughter to be found, alive and well. But she can imagine the alternative.
I hope you never have to imagine what has been the reality for Cathy. But perhaps you can imagine what it might be like for her to have answers. Pray for that. Work for that.
First up after Christopher McMilland was blueberry farmer Gord deVries. It was he who on May 8, 2002, found the badly burned body of an unknown murder victim, identified in 2015 first as Juan Cintron and subsequently as Roberto Caraballo. He attested that the body had not been there on his farm on May 7.
Note that this video again makes use of a graphic image of Roberto’s badly burned body. That was included as a referent to allow deVries to attest to what he saw.
Next up was Courtney Davis, who testified that defendant Dineane Ducharme had voluntarily elicited this specific statement: “We killed him.” It is that language that proves slippery to nail down.
