Delayed Justice

Ottawa County Sheriff’s Detective Jeremy Baum continues to look for someone by name in connection with the July 26, 1977 murder of Deb Polinsky. Baum has been seeking Bev Schippers since December of last year. In a Holland Sentinel article posted yesterday at the paper’s website (and printed today) reporter Audra Gamble lays out the latest efforts to find Schippers in hopes that will lead to Polinsky’s murderer. Baum also seeks party-goers … “people that attended the Hoffman (Ken) parties on 152nd just through the woods from Deb’s. There were a couple parties the weekend Deb was murdered.”

Of course, anyone with any information is asked to contact Detective Baum at jbaum@miottawa.org.

Today I received an email from Angie Spade, Jessica Phelps’ cousin and the keeper of her public memory. The 21st anniversary of her abduction and murder is coming up July 1, and this reminder is well warranted.

The We Remember page includes this:

On July 1, 1997, Jessica Phelps wandered out of her home in Flint, Genesee County, MI.  Her body was found in an Atlas Township culvert on  April 2, 1998.

Here are some accounts from last year’s 20th anniversary:

Cousin hopes Facebook can help solve 1997 killing of 4-year-old Jessica Phelps

A WNEM news story

And here is the Justice for Jessica Phelps Facebook page.

Somebody knows what happened to Jessica. Now, how do you reach that person?

One central database? Would that speed the search for and identification of missing children. That’s the case Michigan State Police Detective Sgt. Sarah Krebs of the Michigan State Police is making in her attempt to have the Michigan legislature move a bill that would require state agencies to work through the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). This is from an mlive story by Brad Devereaux:

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.