Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Danielle Rossi, SCSO custodian of records, testified that she had reviewed Michael King’s jail records and found them devoid of disciplinary reports. King had been a good boy behind bars.

  During cross-examination, Rossi admitted that for King’s entire jail time he’d been in solitary confinement, locked away from other prisoners, so opportunities to have discipline problems were limited.

  On redirect, Rossi said that although he didn’t have contact with other prisoners, King did have contact with guards, so opportunities to misbehave did exist.

  Rossi was replaced on the stand by Deputy John Lima, who worked for the SCSO as a correctional deputy, providing supervision for prisoners.

  He testified that Michael King had had opportunities to interact with other prisoners during his time in jail, and that there were no problems. Deputy Lima had firsthand knowledge of King’s behavior and would characterize it as “good.” There was no cross-examination.

  The defense had gotten in a solid day of witnesses, and Judge Deno Economou sent everyone home for the day, ordering them to return at nine-thirty on Wednesday morning.

  Outside the courtroom, Rick Goff was asked what he thought of the defense’s expert witnesses. He responded that he was going to be nice, so he called it “crap,” although he claimed that wasn’t the first word that popped into his head.

  Asked specifically about Dr. Joseph Wu, Goff commented, “He looked like a paid witness.”

  CHAPTER 21

  SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

  Wednesday’s first witness was Jim King, the defendant’s oldest brother. He was forty-five years old, married to Carrie, worked as a mechanic and as a maintenance manager, had two kids, one grandchild, and had served in the U.S. Navy for three years. His three younger brothers were, in order: Gary, also a military veteran who was forty-three, Mike, thirty-eight, and Rodney, thirty-six. Their parents were Patsy and James King. His parents remained home in Michigan, as their dad had recently had open-heart surgery and was unable to travel. Jim admitted that he had no firsthand knowledge of Mike’s childhood accident, but he’d certainly heard all about it. His other brothers would be more helpful with that because they were there when it happened. Sure, he had heard about the chain saw and bow-and-arrow incidents as well.

  Carolyn Schlemmer asked, “Do you remember Michael having nosebleeds?”

  “All the time,” Jim said. He remembered his mother tried to take Mike to the doctor for his nosebleeds, but Mike ran out of the doctor’s office, terrified of doctors. He couldn’t swallow pills—in fact, none of the King brothers could. He had never seen Mike use alcohol or drugs.

  “I show you now defense exhibit E. Do you recognize it?”

  “Yes, it’s a photo of us at our parents’ place taken sometime in the 1980s. It’s all of us kids on the steps.” Jim ID’d another photo, which showed Michael as a baby.

  Did Jim recall Mike’s marriage breaking up? He did. Mike had gotten custody of his son, Matt. Jim recalled that in late 2007, Mike left Florida and came to Michigan. It was Christmastime, late 2007 or early 2008, just before Matt’s birthday. He wanted to get some stuff straightened out, but the economy in Michigan was horrible. Mike spent all of his time looking for work, but there was nothing. He was facing foreclosure on his Florida home. During this period, Jim remembered Mike being quiet and sad. Eventually, in January, Mike left Matt behind with Jim and his wife and returned to Florida alone to look for a job and try to get back on his feet. Mike said he’d come back and get Matt when he could.

  The witness testified that Matt was now thirteen, that he and his wife had official custody of him, were raising him, and that the boy was doing fine. The boy stayed with him in Michigan because he didn’t want to go to a new school.

  Back in 2008, on Matt’s birthday, that January, Mike called his son and also talked to Jim, thanking him for looking after the boy.

  Jim explained that there was quite an age difference between him and his siblings. When they were growing up, the age difference was more dramatic. He was usually doing his own thing rather than hanging out with his baby brothers. He worked after school and didn’t even see his brothers that much. After school, he went directly into the navy. When he got out of the military, he immediately went to trade school, worked full-time, got married, and had kids. He’d been busy. There were things about Mike’s childhood that his brother Rodney would know far better than he.

  Lon Arend cross-examined: “Let me clarify a few things. When you say your brother Rodney will remember the accident better than you, you are referring to someone who was five years old when it happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you were all boys, you used to talk about Mike’s accident?”

  “Yes.”

  “Joke about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what way was it funny?”

  “You know, like saying, you were okay till someone dropped you on your head. It was just a funny thing to say.”

  “You don’t recall Mike having troubles in school?”

  “No.”

  “And you said you’ve heard about the chain saw and bow-and-arrow incidents as well.”

  “Yes.”

  “When was the first time you heard about the chain saw and bow-and-arrow incidents?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  Arend paused a beat, and let that sink in. He then said, “When he returned to Michigan for Christmas, 2007, did you notice any change in his behavior?”

  “Just that he seemed depressed.”

  “Was there a change in his appearance?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t seen him in so long.”

  Jim said Mike was appropriately grateful for Jim and his wife taking care of Matt, and that Mike understood the importance for the boy to have a stable home.

  And Matt was doing well. He was happy, and got straight A’s in school.

  To Jim’s knowledge, Mike was never treated in a hospital, had no anger issues, and had no history of mental illness. This last answer spawned a sustained objection from the defense on the grounds that it called for a conclusion in a field in which the witness was not an expert.

  “Let me put it this way,” Arend said. “Did you ever see anything in your brother’s behavior that led you to believe he might do something like this?”

  “No.”

  “Is it hard for you to believe that Mike would do something like this?”

  “Yes.”

  On redirect, Carolyn Schlemmer asked if there was any doubt in Jim King’s mind that the accident was real. Jim said no doubt whatsoever.

  On recross, Arend made Jim admit that he’d never noticed any scars on Mike’s face or head consistent with the accident, as it had been described to him. He had no way of knowing what was causing Mike’s nosebleeds. He had no reason to connect the nosebleeds with the accident, and he didn’t know if Mike’s nosebleeds were unusually severe. Jim admitted that when he said he’d heard about the chain saw and bow-and-arrow incidents, he didn’t mean he’d heard about them when they occurred. Rather, he’d heard about them in the recent past, during what he thought were unnecessarily intense interrogations by a detective on this case.

  Looking back on it, Karen Fraivillig felt sorry for Michael King’s parents and brothers. They were a somewhat desultory clan and their minds were boggled. How could their child and their brother do something this horrible? They were just trying to explain the inexplicable—and they came up with this accident. Of course, it couldn’t have happened the way they said. It was preposterous. Mass times velocity squared—that was the formula. If what they said was true, little Michael King’s head would have been applesauce.

  Next on the witness stand was Kerry King, Jim’s wife—the defendant’s sister-in-law. She testified that she’d started dating Jim when she was fifteen years old, so she’d known Mike King for a long time—twenty-seven years. She knew that in early 2008 he was on the verge of losing his home and declaring bankruptcy for the s
econd time. He’d been living with a woman named Jennifer Robb, but they had had a fight. A depressed Mike came to Michigan. Kerry went into some detail regarding Mike’s job search while in Michigan. He wasn’t only looking for plumbing jobs, but for anything that would pay his bills. He joined an employment agency called Michigan Works, but they couldn’t do anything to help him. He tried retail jobs, Walmart, and all that sort of thing—but there was nothing. She remembered that Christmas. They’d gotten Guitar Hero that year and everyone, but Mike, was having fun with that. He wouldn’t play. He only wanted to watch. Kerry thought that Jennifer splitting up with Mike was only part of the problem. She believed Mike was still hurting from the breakup with his wife, and he was upset that Matt’s mother had not called the boy to wish him a merry Christmas. Mike’s ex-wife, Kerry recalled, left him for a man she’d met on the Internet. Kerry recalled the severe nosebleeds Mike had. He would bleed profusely and afterward he would have to lie down for a couple of days to recover. She’d never seen anyone else have nosebleeds like that.

  “Did Mike remember to call Matt on his birthday in January?”

  “Yes.”

  Like her husband before her, Kerry King was cross-examined by Lon Arend. She repeated that she’d known Mike for a long time. She knew him to be a good plumber, who kept an updated résumé during his job search. He was concerned about his son, concerned about Matt being troubled about his mother. He had helped his son get counseling when the boy blamed himself for his mom not being around. Arend’s questions portrayed Mike King as a guy who, in contrast to the defense’s portrayal, had his act together.

  On redirect, Carolyn Schlemmer wanted to know if Matt knew about his dad’s current legal difficulties. He did, and was quite upset about it. He grieved for his father.

  Schlemmer’s point was that although Michael King might have taken steps to help his son in the past, he’d done the boy no favors when he raped and murdered Denise Lee.

  Jennifer Robb took the witness stand and told the jury that she was thirty-three years old, had two kids—a girl, six, and a boy, thirteen—and was currently unemployed. She had known Michael King for two and a half years, and it was a fair characterization to refer to him as her exboyfriend.

  “We’ve seen photos of Mike’s home on Sardinia. There is no furniture—”

  “I have it.”

  Carolyn Schlemmer directed the witness’s attention to Thanksgiving, 2007, when she broke up with Mike. She recalled feeling that something was wrong with Mike right from the moment he woke up that day.

  “He acted differently from normal?”

  “Yes, he was distant. Cold and dazed. He didn’t talk. He was very quiet. He was flat.”

  “Did he have a blank stare?”

  “Yes.”

  Usually, she explained, he would get up and get ready. But on this day, he woke up but just sat on the bed. She spoke to him, but it was as if he didn’t hear. “He acted like he was someplace else,” Jennifer said.

  “Prior to that Thanksgiving, had you ever heard Mike complain about headaches?”

  “Yes. Bad ones. His head would really, really hurt. He said that he felt a freight train inside his head. He would have to lie down. He didn’t like to take pills, so he never took anything for it.”

  “Did he have any other complaints regarding his head?”

  “He said he heard a buzzing. He would wake up with a ringing in his ears.” She added that it seemed to her as if his symptoms got worse leading up to the Thanksgiving when they broke up. He began to wake up in the middle of the night with the severe ringing.

  “Was it constant?”

  “No, it came and went—but it was happening more in the middle of the night.”

  “Describe the progression.”

  “It was getting worse.”

  “Did you see Mike after you broke up?”

  “Yes, twice.”

  “Was he depressed?”

  “Yes, really sad—and cold. He wasn’t the same.” He’d been a mischievous risk taker when he was normal, popping wheelies on a motorcycle and jumping out of trees—but all of that personality was dulling out. He was beaten down by life. Even before they broke up, she saw a steady increase in his paranoia as well: He thought he was being followed, that people were breaking and entering the house. He screwed the windows shut and put new bolts on the doors.

  On cross-examination, Lon Arend asked Jennifer Robb to describe in detail the day she broke up with Michael King, the trip to Michigan for Thanksgiving, her mother being ill, and her being worried. King, meanwhile, was in no way cooperative, obsessing over a pair of pants, refusing to get in the truck, refusing to help with the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner, to eat or to help clean up afterward. That evening, he yelled at her for the first time in front of her parents. She told him to get the bleep out of her life.

  She felt his personality change was significant, clear evidence that something was wrong with him. She didn’t fear him, but she did feel he’d gone off kilter.

  “The Michael King you knew wouldn’t have done those things, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was the best man you ever had?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was never violent or threatening with you in any way?”

  “No.”

  “He was great with your kids?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he act when he had his severe headaches?”

  “He heard buzzing in his head—asked me sometimes if I could hear it.”

  “So, at the time you left him, you felt there was something seriously wrong with him—his headaches, paranoia, depression, bizarre behavior?”

  “Yes.”

  Arend paused, letting that sink in; then he moved forward in the chronology of the witness’s testimony: “After the abduction of Denise Lee, two detectives drove to your house. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell the detectives that King was showing signs of mental instability?”

  “No, they were still looking for her at the time, and the focus was on that. The questions were more along the line of how I met him.”

  “Now, at some point in your relationship, isn’t it true that you were the aggressor?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There were times when you would be physical with Michael King?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You struck him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And at those times, he never struck you back. He walked away?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was never violent with you, was he, Ms. Robb?”

  “No.”

  “What would he usually say to you after you hit him?”

  “He’d ask me, ‘Why’d you do that?’”

  On the surface, Arend’s cross-examination might have seemed supportive of the defense’s case, but the jury picked up on the subtleties. Sure, Michael King was showing signs of stress, but it wasn’t so much that he was sick. It was more that he was a jerk, a guy whose pressure cooker had no release valve—a guy ready to blow. “Thank you, ma’am,” Arend said.

  There were no questions on redirect, and Judge Economou declared a long lunch break. He suggested the jurors go outside and take a walk, get some fresh air. There was some business the court needed to attend to before they could proceed.

  Judge Economou didn’t like the look in the defendant’s eyes, hadn’t for a while. It wasn’t that he saw evil in those eyes; rather, he saw nothing at all. Michael King was inanimate, dulled, devoid of emotion—to the point where the judge wondered if he was still cognizant of his trial’s significance, that his life was on the line. So the judge ordered that two court-appointed doctors examine King to determine if he was still competent to stand trial. As it turned out, the doctors were available that afternoon.

  The defendant, of course, had been examined before the trial began and had been judged competent, but that might have changed. Although it was rare, cases existed
in which a defendant was competent before a trial began but—because of stress or whatever—became incompetent. More common were malingering defendants who faked incompetence to stop their own trial.

  This turn of events made Denise Lee’s loved ones anxious. They wondered what would happen if King proved incompetent. Would they lose their chance to hear him condemned to death? Their stress only grew as the examination process took longer than expected. Court did not resume until Friday morning.

  CHAPTER 22

  SEPTEMBER 4, 2009

  With the jury out, Dr. Ed Regnier testified regarding the defendant’s competence. The court officially recognized him as an expert. Dr. Regnier said he’d seen Michael King in jail the previous day for more than two hours, and had performed on him a clinical review. King answered all questions and was cooperative. Dr. Regnier reviewed reports submitted by Dr. Kenneth Visser and Dr. Michael P. Gamache. Taking all of that into consideration, Regnier declared the defendant competent to proceed. King understood what was going on around him and appreciated the gravity of his predicament. He even understood the rules of court, and distinguished the guilt and the penalty phase of the trial.

  None of that should be taken as an indication that Michael King was a mentally well person. During the previous day’s exam, he also demonstrated paranoia and confusion. He experienced difficulty, for example, recalling the events of his life in chronological order. Twice during the exam, Dr. Regnier recalled, King was overcome with emotions. He required a pause in the questioning in order for him to regain his composure. He said he was overcome with grief, although it was possible that he only grieved over his own dilemma.