The Murder Game (Michigan, Notorious USA)

by Katherine Ramsland

  In the weeks that followed, Graham moved on to several others, leaving a washcloth in the room as her “calling card.” In one version of the story, they had targeted at least twenty different people, including other aides.

  However, it proved too complicated to select the right patients in a way that minimized risk and also spelled the word, so they selected those who would be easy to kill without discovery. No longer playing the game, their new motive was to have leverage with each other so they would be bonded “forever.” With each killing, they added one more day to “forever,” so that after the third murder they might sign a love letter, “forever and three days.”

  Acting as sentry, Wood watched as Graham attempted to smother elderly women, but some struggled so hard she had to back off. Oddly enough, none complained, and in fact most of the patients liked these two women. In many respects, they were good at this job.

  To relive the crimes, Graham took jewelry, personal keepsakes, and socks of the victims. She and Wood placed these souvenirs at home on a special shelf. In a morbid postscript, they sometimes washed down the bodies as part of the postmortem routine, and handling their deceased victims further excited them.

  Then they grew bolder. They told colleagues what they were doing, because the confessions added to their heightened sexual drive, but their accounts were dismissed. No one could believe that a person who entered healthcare would actively kill a patient. Wood, in particular, was known to lie and play mind games, so few associates took her seriously.

  Graham then pressured Wood to take a more active role: Wood would have to kill one of the patients herself. She balked, which angered Graham. She took up with another woman and returned to Texas. From there, she wrote disturbing letters about wanting to smash the faces of babies in her care at another facility.

  Wood told all of this to her ex-husband. It took him a year, but Ken eventually notified the police. After an investigation, both women were arrested. Wood turned state's witness against her former lover for a sentence of 20 to 40 years, with the possibility of parole. Graham, too, testified, but the most telling witness was Graham’s current lover, who admitted that Graham had confessed six murders to her. Former colleagues also described the things these women had said, including seeing their “souvenir shelf.”

  On September 20, 1989, the jury convicted Graham of five counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. She drew six life sentences, with no possibility of parole. In media accounts, Wood’s role was downplayed to “occasional lookout,” and the case remains controversial over whether there were more than five murders. There was speculation, especially after a psychological evaluation of Graham, that even if Graham committed the murders, Wood had been the ultimate mastermind. The entire story is in Lowell Cauffiel’s true crime book, Forever and Five Days.

  VENGEANCE

  EMPLOYEES IN THE POSTAL FACILITY AT ROYAL OAK thought they heard shots, but it was difficult to tell. Then they heard screams. It was the age of “going postal,” when disgruntled post office workers like Oklahoma’s Patrick Sherill were seeking revenge for being fired or laid off. This time, on a cold November 14, 1991, it was close to home for Michiganders.

  Thomas McIlvane, 31, walked into the postal service center with blood on his mind and a sawed-off .22 Ruger semiautomatic carbine. He’d been fired a year earlier and the former Marine and champion kickboxer had threatened to come back and make someone pay if he wasn’t reinstated. He’d said that he’d make Patrick Sherill’s assault, in which 14 people had died and 6 were wounded, look like a picnic.

  His threats only ensured that firing him was the right decision. He had a short fuse. In fact, he’d been dishonorably discharged from the service for running over a car with a tank.

  More than 160 people worked at the regional service center. Given news stories of half a dozen post office shootings over the past five years, it’s no surprise that some of them started jumping out of second-story windows to escape. They’d expected this from “Tommy.” Several were injured. Others barricaded themselves in their offices and hoped for the best.

  In a spree that lasted about six minutes, McIlvane killed four and wounded five before turning the gun on himself. He didn’t die right away, however, so he was transported to an area hospital. He remained in a coma for a day before he expired.

  Officials acknowledged that they’d known about his threats but had been helpless to do anything, short of closing the facility. This wasn’t an option. Employees had been warned to keep him from entering should he show up. But he’d arrived with a coat draped over his weapon.

  McIlvane’s assault surprised no one who knew him. He’d been fired for fighting with customers on his route and having disputes with his manager. Being a martial arts expert made him more than a little scary. One supervisor had asked for extra security, which was denied. This man was among the dead. The other three fatalities were also supervisors, including a woman.

  PUPPY LOVE REJECTED

  IN LANSING, ROSE LARNER, 18, HAD BEEN dating John Kehoe, but was also friends with Bill Brown. The three of them became inseparable. Rose was happy, but Kehoe eventually tired of her and told her to get lost. Rose was devastated. Then in December 1993, she vanished.

  That evening, she’d told her mother she was going to a friend’s house. When she failed to come home, her mother called the friend. Rose had never shown up. She was considered somewhat wild, so the police believed she might have run away. Her mother was certain that something had happened to her.

  After two weeks with no sign of Rose, the police undertook a search for her. Kehoe admitted that he’d spoken to her on the night she disappeared, but he’d been with another girl. He had an alibi. Bill Brown didn’t help them with information, either. Nor did any of Rose’s friends.

  The case went cold. More than two years went by. Rose seemed to be gone for good. Rose’s mother kept the case alive, and the Michigan State Police revisited the files. They decided that Kehoe was still a key suspect, since he’d been heard saying nasty things to and about Rose. He’d also been in the drug business with Bill Brown, and they’d been together on the night Rose vanished. Investigators decided to pressure Brown.

  He resisted at first. He insisted he knew nothing. But finally, with the threat of problems over his suspected drug deals, he told investigators that Kehoe had killed Rose that night. She’d been bugging Kehoe. He’d wanted to get rid of her.

  Together Kehoe and Brown had lured her to the car with the promise that they would all have sex, but then they took her to the home of Kehoe’s grandparents, who were away. They all showered together, but Rose refused to participate in a sexual menáge á trois. So Kehoe strangled her in the shower stall and slit her throat. Once she was dead, he proceeded to cut her body into pieces.

  Brown said he’d been horrified and the whole thing made him ill, but Kehoe had forced him to help clean up the scene. They’d worked on it for hours, trying to remove every trace of Rose’s blood. Then they’d taken Rose’s parts to a cabin belonging to Kehoe’s family and burned them in a campfire ring. As they’d driven away they’d spread her ashes along the highway. Brown had feared that Kehoe would murder him if he told anyone about what they’d done, so he’d kept quiet.

  Investigators believed Brown was telling the truth, but they needed evidence to confirm it. The murder had taken place more than two years earlier. They went to the grandparents’ and sprayed the rooms with luminol, which picked up blood on a carpet that suggested a ring the size of the bottom of a bucket. However, there was not enough to perform the type of DNA tests they used at that time. Kehoe and Brown had done a thorough cleanup job, and it looked as if the case was going to stall once more. But then an observant officer noticed a small darkish spot on the printed wallpaper that was not part of its intricate pattern. It was the right color for dried blood.

  Technicians performed a test on it to determine if it was indeed blood. The test results were positive. So it was blood,
but its origin had not yet been determined. They managed to extract enough of the substance for DNA analysis. Again, they stalled, because they needed DNA from Rose herself for comparison. More investigation turned up a report once filed by Rose for a sexual assault. She’d had her blood tested, so a sample was available. Testing indicated that the odds were one in more than 700 million against the blood spatter on the wallpaper being from anyone but Rose Larner.

  Investigators also checked the basement sump-pump where the young men had dumped bloody water and went through the ashes in the fire pit where they’d burned Rose’s remains. With ultraviolet light, scientists analyzed fragments from both locations that appeared to be bone. A few small fragments proved to be human, specifically from someone fairly young. Against all odds, they had found evidence to corroborate Brown’s story.

  In 1996, police arrested John Kehoe. Although he tried to finger Brown as the killer during his trial, he was convicted of first-degree murder. He received a life sentence.

  FATAL ATTRACTION

  SCOTT AMADURE FIRST SAW JON SCHMITZ in Bloomfield Hills, a suburb of Detroit. He managed to get onto a popular talk show, The Jenny Jones Show, where people find out the identity of a secret admirer. Schmitz was also invited onto the show and he believed he knew who his admirer might be – a woman who lived in his apartment building. He’d recently broken up a serious relationship and he was ready to start over with someone new. He’d spent a lot of money to dress to impress before flying to the Chicago taping on March 6, 1995.

  To Schmitz’s surprise, even though the woman from his building was there, the person revealed to be his admirer was male – Scott Amadure. Schmitz was reportedly mortified, but he kept his cool. “I’m not interested,” he said.

  He hadn’t realized that the show was actually “Secret Crushes on People of the Same Sex.” He would later say that a show staff person had assured him that his secret admirer was female. Had he understood the nature of the show, he’d never have agreed to appear. But he rode out the experience.

  All three went home on the same flight and Schmitz volunteered to provide rides home. They stopped at a bar and Schmitz left on his own. Apparently, Amadure pulled a prank by stealing a construction light and putting it inside Schmitz’s car. Somehow the light, and a suggestive but unsigned note, set Schmitz off. Now that they were off the show, he wasn’t going to take this humiliation lying down.

  He purchased a shotgun and ammunition, calmly telling the clerk that he was going hunting. On the morning of March 9, Schmitz went to Amadure’s trailer and shot him twice in the chest, killing him. He turned himself in and confessed.

  The spotlight was on The Jenny Jones Show. Oakland County Prosecutor Richard Thompson insisted that the staff had ambushed Schmitz. "They seem to follow the rule that anything goes in the pursuit of ratings,” he said. “As a result, one man is left dead, and another faces life in prison without parole."

  For an interview with People, Jones insisted, “We have no responsibility whatsoever because [Schmitz] was not misled. All the guests knew that it could be a man or a woman—it's very clear that he did know. This was not an ambush show."

  In 1996, Schmitz was found guilty of second-degree murder and given a 25-50-year sentence. The conviction was overturned and he received a second trial. The result was the same.

  Amadure’s family sued Telepictures, The Jenny Jones Show, and Warner Brothers (who owned the show) in 1999 in civil court. They argued that The Jenny Jones Show producers, in their quest for ratings and advertising money, were negligent. They’d put the unstable Schmitz on the show and humiliated him in front of a national audience. Thus, they’d caused him to kill Scott. The jury gave the family a huge award, but the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned the verdict. The Michigan Supreme Court later declined to hear the case. The looming damper on the talk show industry had been quashed.

  AS YOU CAN SEE, MICHIGAN has a wide variety of murders, some of which remain unsolved. Perhaps a Cold Case squad will put an ending to those stories one of these days, like the Rose Larner case or the deer hunter murders. It takes persistent investigators, of which Michigan certainly has its share.

  DON’T MISS BODIES OF EVIDENCE, NOTORIOUS USA’S FIRST BOX SET and New York Times bestselling collection about the criminals from our neck of the woods (the Pacific Northwest). Also check out Unnatural Causes, a box set that covers the crimes of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. Like all of our collections, Bodies of Evidence and Unnatural Causes, are available as an e-book on most formats, as well as in paperback and as an audio book.

  If there’s a notorious case from YOUR town you’d like us to write about, contact:

  Gregg@GreggOlsen.com

  Photo Archive

  Mugshots for Catherine Wood and Gwendolyn Graham

  Larry Ranes mugshot

  Danny Ranes mugshot

  Henry Lee Lucas about the age when he killed his mother.

  Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck mugshots

  Raymond (J.R.) Duvall mugshot

  Donald (Coco) Duvall mugshot