Delayed Justice

In late March of 2004 Netha Speet went down to her dock on Pigeon Lake on Michigan’s west coast to examine the white thing floating next to it. She hesitated to get too close once she determined it was nothing she’d ever encountered before.

The Ottawa County Sheriff’s office verified for her it was a woman whose badly decomposed body had floated from…somewhere. Det. Dave Blakely and Det. Venus Repper took the case to Kent County Chief Medical Examiner Steve Cohle. Dr. Cohle could not specify a cause of death and so the investigators were treating it like a homicide. They asked for help and we set out to tell the story. Along the way they also involved Michigan State University Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Norm Sauer and Grand Rapids Forensic Odontologist Dr. Roger Erbaugh. Midway through our story telling, the body—given the appellation of Diane—was identified as that of Barbara Biehn, formerly of Racine, WI. She had walked into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan a few days before Christmas 2003, according to Racine Police Department Investigator Mark Sorensen. And then her body had floated either across or along the shores of Lake Michigan. In the 18 months officers worked to identify her they involved State Police reconstructionist Matt Churchill and Det. Sgt. Dave Eddy in the drive to give her a name and to allow her to go home. The case turns out not have been a homicide, but a suicide (a self murder) but the story of the work of the officers to give the family of this unknown woman is well worth telling. The director of photography is Phil Blauw and the editor is Jeff Gural. This film runs 54 minutes.

In late March of 2004 Netha Speet went down to her dock on Pigeon Lake on Michigan’s west coast to examine the white thing floating next to it. She hesitated to get too close once she determined it was nothing she’d ever encountered before.

The Ottawa County Sheriff’s office verified for her it was a woman whose badly decomposed body had floated from…somewhere. Det. Dave Blakely and Det. Venus Repper took the case to Kent County Chief Medical Examiner Steve Cohle. Dr. Cohle could not specify a cause of death and so the investigators were treating it like a homicide. They asked for help and we set out to tell the story. Along the way they also involved Michigan State University Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Norm Sauer and Grand Rapids Forensic Odontologist Dr. Roger Erbaugh. Midway through our story telling, the body—given the appellation of Diane—was identified as that of Barbara Biehn, formerly of Racine, WI. She had walked into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan a few days before Christmas 2003, according to Racine Police Department Investigator Mark Sorensen. And then her body had floated either across or along the shores of Lake Michigan. In the 18 months officers worked to identify her they involved State Police reconstructionist Matt Churchill and Det. Sgt. Dave Eddy in the drive to give her a name and to allow her to go home. The case turns out not have been a homicide, but a suicide (a self murder) but the story of the work of the officers to give the family of this unknown woman is well worth telling. The director of photography is Phil Blauw and the editor is Jeff Gural. This film runs 54 minutes.