It was very disturbing to learn that the man from Monroe, Michigan requested the photo of Laurie's gravesite, just six or so months after her killer had moved to that area. It was more disturbing to learn that after having been informed of this request by a city employee at the cemetery, LPD did nothing to investigate the reason behind this mans interest. I learned of this almost two years later, in April of 1996.
Soon after, I went down to talk with two detectives and asked if they might check this guy out. I told them I was certain that he wasn't an old classmate of Laurie's, as he had told the lady that sent him the picture, and because he lived within miles of where her known killer had recently moved to,(100 or so miles from Lansing), it was hard to believe that this was coincidental. I told the detectives that I had met with the captain back in 1990. I also told them that I not only knew the identity of Laurie's killer, but his social security number, date of birth, and of course, his most recent known address near Monroe. I did not tell them how I acquired this information but they were cordial nonetheless. They told me that they would check him out and get back to me within a couple weeks.
They never did.
After a few weeks I tried to reach them but my messages were ignored. Then, a few months later on July 6th, 1996, one of the detectives, Dan O'Brien, approached me in a Lansing restaurant. The first thing I said to him was why hadn't he gotten back with me about this man in Monroe? What he said shocked me. "We've been waiting for you to call us back with his social security number and date of birth." That was pretty disturbing, but then it got worse. O'Brien continued with, "I can't believe your family didn't have **** whacked years ago."
From that moment on, my life has been one long struggle. To have a detective say this to me just goes against everything I've ever believed in. The struggle between your conscience and sense of whats right, against loss of all hope that justice will prevail unless you, and you alone, seek vengence for you sister's murder. Every single day I've struggled with the notion that I'm a coward for not taking the law into my own hands.
I returned to Lansing after twenty years, out of a deep sense of concern for my parents well being. I've been living a nightmare ever since. I finally left Lansing this spring, and after a few months in Ann Arbor, I came out to Colorado on the invitation of an old friend. I arrived here in Boulder just three days before the JonBenet Ramsey case returned to national headlines with the faux admissions of John Karr, and was reminded of yet another irony surrounding Laurie's murder. My grandfather, Joe Planck, was a lawyer in Lansing his entire career. During a brief period in the 1950's, he brought into his small practice a bright young lawyer named James Ramsey, John's father, and JonBenet's grandfather.
It appears that the horrible acts against the grandaughters of those two, long ago Lansing law partners, will never be explained.
But however faint, hope still flickers.
