Delayed Justice

Ana Maria MCorvey went missing in Detroit June 21, 1981. Her body was found June 26 in the trunk of her car. According to her sister, she had been stabbed multiple times with an ice-pick and her purse was never found.

Ann Maria Calvey was born in Scotland, Nov. 17, 1948.  She married John Preston McCorvey in England Sept. 2, 1971. McCorvey had left the U.S. Air Force after 20 years of service and the couple returned to John’s hometown, Detroit, in 1972. Evidently John died in 1989. He may have moved to Oakland County and been remarried.

We do not know where she worked. We do not know any motive for the crime. We do not know, we do not know…. Do  you?

We have an associate researcher in Detroit who is going to try to find out more. Anything you can add will be greatly appreciated.

Readers of this site will note that I’ve not been posting a lot during the past year or a little more. There was a reason: I was hard at work on a great, fat book and I needed to work at it quietly.

The book is reveals the shady dealings at the Michigan Supreme Court, often through the memos of the offending justices. My co-author is Chief Justice Elizabeth A. Weaver (retired).

You can read about the book here.

And you can read a story that appeared in today’s Detroit News here. There has been a fair amount of news about the book and there will be more.

The allegedly conservative justices of the Michigan Supreme Court have their spin machine in action.  My favorite comes in the form of a comment from Dan Pero that showed up as a response comment on the News site. Pero was Governor John Engler’s chief of staff, and his wife, Colleen Pero, was Justice Cliff Taylor’s campaign director when he went down to defeat in 2008. They both are mentioned in the book as tied with the established interests. Colleen now serves Governor Rick Snyder.  Here’s what Dan wrote:

Ms. Weaver is wrong. And she’s no saint. She’s a bitter woman living in a parallel universe. The men and women on our Supreme Court of both parties, now and then, are people of integrity. They may have different views of the law, and we may not agree with some of their decisions, but Ms. Weaver is taking the readers on a fantasy ride. When one reads this trashy pulp fiction, consider the author. Her own colleagues determined unanimously that she was no longer fit to be Chief Justice and voted to replace her. She slunk off the Court after being censured for violating Court rules and secretly recording private deliberations. Since that rebuke, she has carried out bitter, personal attacks on the justices. Her book continues this sleazy assault. Ms. Weaver best look in the mirror when speaking of ethical lapses. She played fast and loose with tax laws when her home was remodeled. And when most of Michigan was hurting from the recession, she clung to her taxpayer funded car and $60,000 a year personal office. If she believed any of the ethics charges she is making up now truly existed then, she had an obligation to make them public with supporting evidence. Of course, she didn’t. And doesn’t. She’s a liar and a fraud who should slink from public view. Her dime store novel is best suited for the bottom of bird cages. Ms. Weaver. We don’t need her.

Mind you that Dan has not seen a copy of the book, has no idea what’s in it. This screed is his reflex, and a faulty one at that. Mr. Pero is mildly amusing, but he is in error on every point he attempts. I assure you that Justice weaver does not lie. She is not a fraud. She consistently has tried to alert the citizens of Michigan to the abuses at the court. This book was, she said, her final obligation to the people of Michigan.

There will be some time dealing with the launching of the book.

There is also a new film: The Road to Andersonville: Michigan Native American Sharpshooters in the Civil War. That film premiered April 10 at Central Michigan University and we’ll be touring that about as well.  The website should be up soon.

And I hope to return to work on delayed justice cases in the near future. There is much to be done.

And there is much that has happened.

Word has come from Jim Chandler, the father of the murdered Janet Chandler, that Carl Paiva, the lead assailant in the rape, beating , strangulation, and murder, is dead. Paiva, 61, died in prison. We’ll share more when we know it.

Requiscat in pace, Janet.

Peg McNichol reports for the Holland Sentinel. She followed the arrest in the Brink murders and she has compiled a list of unsolved homicides for Ottawa County. It’s worth the time to survey her results contained in stories published today.

Heres “Trust key to cracking Holland-area cold cases.”

And here’s “What’s next? Ottawa has six unsolved killings.”

The Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department today released news that 50-year-old Ryan Mark Wyngarden was arrested Friday for the murder of his sister and brother-in-law, Gail and Rick Brink, in November of 1987.

Here are some local links to Channel 8, Channel 13, and will link it to the Grand Rapids Press as soon as we get a story.

The department is not releasing much information just yet–and who can blame them–but to our most recent knowledge the cold case was under the supervision of Venus Repper and Dave Blakely and they were working the case hard, especially since 2011.

Ryan Wyngarden was, by his own admission to me, involved in drugs and drug dealing at the time of the murder. He would call periodically to urge me to make a film about the case. He may have been seeking information instead. There will be much more about this in the days ahead.  After all, an arrest is not a conviction or a admission of guilt.