Justice for Kara Wilhelm

Kara had been talking online to Michael Andrew Gray of St. Clair Shores, formerly of Grosse Pointe Farms, in the weeks before they met. He had been briefly dating her best friend the year before. He was 19, a strong young man with dark good looks. He stood close to six feet tall. Kara was 18, a petite young woman who stood barely five feet tall. Her most striking feature was her sky blue eyes. She changed hair styles often and was most comfortable in a hoodie and basketball shorts. They met for the first time on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend 2010. Kara would graduate from Grosse Pointe North a week later. They grew enamored of each other and were quickly inseparable. By the following Memorial Day, Kara was dead and Michael was a suspect in her death, but not at first.

Kara was the fourth child, the baby, born to me and my husband. We lived in our funeral home for the first four years of her life. We lived in Grosse Pointe Farms for ten years and then settled in Grosse Pointe Woods in 2004. She was a sensitive, loving girl who loved insects and animals. She got away from the insects but still thoroughly loved animals. She had a ferret, guinea pigs and three cats. She was a bit of a tomboy but not because of sports. Her favorite activities included playing video games, hanging with her family and the internet. She was our only lefty and very creative. She was always drawing, sculpting, writing and taking photographs. Some of her subjects could be a little dark but she loved Disney movies and Anime too. In many ways she was a late bloomer and a little bit of a loner. She was never one to have flocks of friends or go to parties; there would be just a few close friends. One of the reasons Kara stuck so close to home was her brother Kurt, a year older than her, was profoundly autistic.

It is my observation that because of having an autistic brother Kara tended to pick friends, boyfriends and internet friends who were a little bit “broken” too. Kara’s older siblings went to college, married and had kids and were out of the house by the time Kara turned 10. I was very close to Kara. She could be extremely shy and I would support her. We had our private jokes and we laughed long and hard. She shared many of her thoughts and hopes with me. She wanted to be an occupational therapist or someone who used art to help special needs children. She wanted a family and children some day. All along it was Kurt, Kara and me doing everything together (my husband was working). We included whatever boyfriend or friend wanted to tag along. For the most part it worked.

The summer of 2010 was one of our best summers. Kurt was becoming much more manageable, Kara was happy and my husband and I were able to go on an enjoyable trip by ourselves. By the end of August Kara started college at M.C.C.C . That is when the trouble started.

Kara texted Michael some cool fact she had learned in her class. He texted back “So you think you’re smarter than me.” It went downhill from there. He started to get jealous and controlling. He accused her of cheating constantly. By the end of October I started to intervene. I would tell her he will not stop. One day they argued on the porch(I was within ear shot) he insisted she cheated, she said no, he said again you cheated, no she said. Then she told him to leave. She screamed at him as he walked away down the street. A few minutes later, he would lie down in his tub at his home and slit his wrists. He would be hospitalized many times thereafter.

There were a few more times that Michael tried to make contact and he called her names when she rejected him, but she held her ground. We had watched a Lifetime movie shortly after the breakup. It was about an abusive boyfriend. At one point a character in the film listed 12 examples of an abusive boyfriend. She checked off 11 of the 12 examples. The only example she didn’t check off was physical abuse. How many of you are foolishly hanging on because the only thing that hasn’t occurred yet is a slap? Sometimes number 12 is the only time there is physical abuse but you are dead and it’s too late. But I digress. Kara had a nice new boyfriend and they dated two months (she rebounded too quickly perhaps) but that ended on January 9, 2011. Michael had written a few favorable comments on an art site that Kara displayed art. She went to him that very day, smitten again.

My husband and I were not happy that she had gotten back together with Michael. I relented one day when they started looking for jobs on the internet. He was on medication and seemed to be a changed person. Soon Kara landed her first job, a courtesy clerk, at Kroger. He landed a job at a different Kroger. Kara continued to go to work, school and hang out with Michael at our house (having them at my house gave me a little control too). Things started to fall apart around the beginning of April. Michael lost his job.

Michael had stopped taking his medications because they weren’t available because of some bureaucratic snafu. The accusations started again. Kara’s phone went missing. She told me that Michael might be schizophrenic. In spite of this she continued to see him. At some point I felt she would have to come to the right decision, but it would be her decision, not mine. One day she asked me what the word “concede” meant. I asked her what sentence was it used in. She said it was a text from Michael saying she should concede that she was cheating.

Kara told me Michael and his sister had been adopted by Sylvia Gray (I am not sure if there used to be a husband too) when he was five and his sister was six. They were allegedly abused by their birth father. They lived in Grosse Pointe Farms. Both Michael and his sister were going to Grosse Pointe South when their world fell apart again. They had been living in a hoard house with over 40 cats and other animals. This story was splashed across metro Detroit newspapers. Their house would be demolished. The three of them relocated to St. Clair Shores, a few blocks from the Grosse Pointe Woods’ border. Apparently Michael did well in his St. Clair Shores’ high school until the fall of his senior year. He had a breakdown and was hospitalized for the first time. He would never finish high school even though he was really smart. He went back to night school several times to finish the last few credits but he never did finish.

Several times during the last months of her life Kara would ask me why, why, why does he do these things. My reply was always “He is mentally ill and will never change.” He kind of reminded me of that old fable/song where the snake asks to be taken across the river, promising not to bite. On the other side, after being bitten, you ask the snake why and he replies, “You knew I was a snake.”

Michael’s mother threatened to kick him out of her house constantly. He paid her $25 a month for room and board. When he lost his job Kara would give him $25 to placate his mother. He also didn’t tell his mother he had lost his job until mid May after Kara wouldn’t give him any more money.

There were many times when the two of them hanging out here were quite normal. I usually fed him as well as my daughter and he was very polite as well as grateful to me. The doubts would hit him when he went home. They would get along very well and then a few hours later he would be accusatory all over again. There were a few erratic moments that I personally witnessed. In early May I was doing laundry on the second floor all alone. I looked up and he was in the hall with me by Kara’s closed door (she was at school). I exclaimed “You scared me, Kara’s not here.” He wanted to open her door but didn’t. Another time in early May, Kara came to me saying she was scared. I opened the front door and there Michael stood. I said, “Go home.” He complied. It was 3 a.m. Things really started to fall apart the third week of May.

One time it crossed my mind that he could kill her, especially if they were breaking up. There would be reports in the news of suicidal men who killed their partners before taking their own lives. I dismissed the thought: people don’t get killed in the Grosse Pointes. In person when he would get angry at Kara, he walked away. When I pondered whether to go to the convention my reasoning was if he was at our home with Kara he would have nothing to be jealous of. I thought he would be Kurt and Kara’s protector. I didn’t see him as a threat, although in hindsight all the red flags were there. Please listen to your intuition.

The St. Joan Fair arrives every spring like clockwork, the week before the Memorial Day weekend. This was a big social event for all the kids and teenagers of Grosse Pointe. Kara had an online friendship with one of the workers from the carnival, who also liked the band Insane Clown Posse, or ICP for short. She had hung out with him the previous year while the fair was in town, ironically the day before she met Michael. She introduced Michael to Matthew but Michael forbade her from visiting with him again. They got into a big fight and stopped speaking for a day. We all attended her nephew’s birthday party that Saturday afternoon. Michael was not there. Kara told her sister-in-law that she was thinking of breaking up with Michael. Later that night Kara hung out with her friend from the fair. I texted her at midnight and she texted back that she was hanging out with her friend Matthew and would soon return. The next day, Sunday, she went back to the fair and returned with a huge stuffed tiger and was wearing an ICP cap. She realized that she needed to return the cap and went back to the fair to return it. During her absence Michael showed up at the house asking for Kara. I told him she wasn’t there (he didn’t have cell service depending on his mother’s whim). She showed up a few minutes later. When I told her what happened her face went ashen. She was absolutely terrified. I couldn’t understand why she was so upset. I thought he was passive and weak, not a threat at all. I was so wrong. They did meet again and seemed to have made up by Sunday night, May 22nd. All seemed well.

I shielded my husband from much of what was going on. He disliked Michael and barely tolerated him. My husband and I were supposed to go to a convention on Mackinac Island right before Memorial Day weekend. When Kara and Michael were fighting the previous weekend I was feeling that I couldn’t go to the convention, he might act out with no parental figures around. I relaxed though when on that Monday, May 23rd, they seemed to be happy and loving again. I remember having a conversation with Michael (while Kara was taking care of her new guinea pigs) about Kara’s childhood and her love of animals. I said she would make a great mom. He thanked me for talking to him. The next day was Tuesday, May 24th. Kara and Michael took Kurt to Mason’s playground at about 6:15. A worker from Mason said they couldn’t be there because of the after school program (except the sign said it was finished at 6:00). Kara stood up for her brother and would not leave. She could be so tough when standing up for others but when it came to herself… I remember telling her that Tuesday night that when we came back from our convention we were going to limit the amount of time he could be over our house. Early Wednesday morning my daughter woke me at 1 a.m. to look at her one guinea pig. She thought it was having trouble breathing. She was understandably nervous because one of her guinea pigs had died two weeks ago. We hung out and the guinea pig seemed fine. That would be the last time we ever hung out. She again woke me and said she was feeling nervous. I settled her down and went back to sleep. The next morning I sent Kurt off to school and my husband and I prepared to go on our trip. It took longer to get ready and we were running late. When my husband was in the other room Michael showed up at the front door. I told him to wait behind the garage that we would soon be gone. I went up to Kara, who was sleeping, and told her Michael was waiting outside. She came downstairs and we hugged. It is the last time we hugged. And then we went to our Mackinac Island convention. Something we had done every year for over twenty years. It was May 25th.

Kara and I texted a few times that Thursday, May 26th. When she had gotten Kurt on the bus with no problems, I relaxed. I didn’t contact Kara till Friday, May 27th, at 2:45 p.m. I called her at home and she answered. We made small talk and I asked her, “Are you and Michael getting along?” she answered in a sing song voice, “yes.” I interpreted the “yes” to mean she was getting sick of him. I didn’t detect that she was in danger. When I was ready to say goodbye I said in a very serious tone, “Kara I love you”. She said it back. It was the last time I talked to her.

On Saturday, May 28th, we headed back home from up north. We stopped in West Branch for about an hour, and ate a late lunch at Burger King. At 4 p.m. I texted Kara that we would be home around 6 , make sure Michael wasn’t there and would she like some Wendys. She did not text back. I called the home phone and it rang endlessly. Within a few minutes I was in full blown panic as we raced home from West Branch. All of my relatives who had keys were out of town that weekend too so I had no one to call. Your mind tries to come up with a reasonable explanation, like, maybe the electricity is out, maybe they are at the park but the terror builds anyway, my cell went dead after calling continuously for two hours.

We arrived at our house around 6 p.m. The front and back door were open. It was dark and musty (he was a smoker) and all three cats were hiding. I told my husband to wait at the bottom of the stairs with his phone ready. I went upstairs and glanced in Kara’s room. Then I saw Kurt watching his t.v. in his room. I walked down the hall to our room and it was empty. I saw a phone and it’s cradle laying in the middle of the hall. I went back to Kara’s room and said to myself, Kara doesn’t make the bed. I went to her bed and pulled back the cover. She was dead, her body was staged. She was on her back with her arms folded across her chest. Her face was almost a normal color but there was mottling of blood along the lowest point of her head. She didn’t smell. There was no mess. I touched only the edge of her arm, which was stiff from rigor mortis. Her eyes were partly opened, unseeing. She was wearing her ratty old Big Dog pajamas with her bare feet slightly open to the side. I was screaming, “She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead,” over and over again till I lost my voice. I peed myself. My husband came upstairs at this point. He called 911. I had noticed a picture of the joker next to her pillow. At the time, I thought it had fallen off her wall and I ripped it up into little pieces. Months later I would realize its significance.

I ran out of our house and sank to my knees on the driveway. My neighbor asked me what was wrong and I told her. She also called the police. Another neighbor gave me a bottle of water. I called my son and told him Kara was dead. He wanted to talk to my neighbor, who confirmed it. My son called his sister and gave her the bad news. When the police arrived I heard someone from upstairs say “D.O.A.” Our nightmare had officially begun.

I noticed that all the home phones were unplugged and Kara’s phone was thrown in the hall. I also noticed that Michael’s clothes/suitcase were there as well as his coat, keys and laptop. I looked in her purse and saw that her bank card was missing. Soon I was talking to Detective A. Chalut, the head detective for Grosse Pointe Woods. I probably came off a little detached initially, shock will do that to you, and I didn’t cry that first day at all. Stoically, I answered Detective Chalut’s questions to the best of my ability. I told him about Kara’s missing bank card. I gave him a copy of Michael’s social security card and state i.d. Detective Chalut told me she died around 6 a.m. By about 10 p.m. the coroner came to take her body away. Other than finding my daughter dead, the second worst thing was seeing her taken out my front door in a body bag. They said don’t look, but I did, such a searing, painful memory. We had no idea why or how our beautiful daughter died. The coming months did little to answer that question.

The first thing that the police had to do was locate Michael. The first thing that we had to do was plan a funeral. Having grown up in the business didn’t make it any easier. There was a candlelight vigil at Grosse Pointe North. We had to get through the first days and weeks one day at a time. The day before Kara’s funeral I got a letter from her bank saying fraud was suspected. $400 had been withdrawn from her account on May 28th. I called the police to inform them but they already knew. They also had picked up Michael on the morning of May 29th. They didn’t want to talk to us until after Kara’s funeral, June 4th.

My relationship with Detective Chalut at times could be frustrating or enlightening. He was very secretive and contradictory at times and on other occasions he was very forthcoming. Detective Chalut said he talked to the state police and the FBI. The other professionals that I would deal with were Dr. F Diaz, medical examiner, and prosecutor M. Reynolds.

Michael was picked up on Sunday morning, May 29th, hiding in the garage of his friend. The friend’s mother had called the St. Clair Shore’s police. The Grosse Pointe Police picked him up. At that time he was interviewed for 1 ½ hours. At first, he denied being at our house. After the detective grilled him about how sad Kara’s parents would be, he broke down and cried while admitting that he was there. He said he found her dead. He denied having anything to do with her death. I understand that he lied about many things but I have not seen the tape. What I do know now, is he was out of our house and at his own house by 8 a.m. on that Saturday morning that Kara died. Soon he left his house in such an erratic state that his mother called the St. Clair Shores Police to find him. After he was picked up by the Woods police and interviewed, they let him go. He promptly checked into the psych ward.

About a month later, in the early morning, I found a package on my porch. It was a plastic bag that had a burn mark on the edge of it. A silver #1 mom bracelet was inside. This package was meant for me. Inside was a candy tin mint coffin. Inside it was divided in four parts: the upper two quadrants had white dead moths in them. On each side of the bottom quadrants was a paper. One paper was a cross with the number 33 on it, next to it were the numbers 52,72. The other cross was upside down with the number 23 in it. The numbers 64, 62 were next to it. The upside down cross had a spade on it and the other cross had a heart on it. This was from Michael. How did I know? In the weeks before Kara died, some of the things she gave him would appear on the front porch having been left in the middle of the night. The card symbols were from the “joker”. It was bizarre and no one knew what the numbers meant. His facebook handle was “Glazgow smile”. Glazgow smile is the split grin of someone who has had a knife pulled upward on their face from the corners of their mouth. The joker had a “Glazgow smile”. Recently Michael has gone back on facebook. His profile picture is a skeleton with crosses and spades. His new moniker is Glazgow.deadend.smile.

In early July 2011, the medical examiner called us at home. He had no idea how Kara had died. Her toxicity report was totally negative. She had suffusion of the face and a white mark to the chin but other than that everything was normal. Her death was listed as “undeterminable.” He asked if we wanted him to perform more tests and we said yes. Nothing came of those tests either.

In late July our daughter’s case took a dramatic turn when an anonymous person from Henry Ford Hospital called. He/she claimed that the police should investigate Kara’s death, providing a specific medical record number from one of Michael’s psychiatric stays. A subpoena was served on the hospital for the medical record. They were turned down, citing doctor/patient privilege. Phone and facebook records were subpoenaed (and granted). They also forensically searched both Kara and Michael’s laptops.

In late December 2011, prosecutor Reynolds called us. He was investigating Kara’s death. He came to our home in early 2012 and talked to us for four hours. He had asked us whether we thought Michael was schizophrenic. At the time I said no but I have since changed my mind. He claimed that he took care of the hard cases and had a good record of prosecuting them. He gave us his number and left. When I called him a week later with some information he basically blew me off. We never talked again except when my call went through and he quickly got off the phone.

Michael moved to Chesterfield Township in the spring of 2012. Perhaps his mother finally kicked him out. He received disability funds.

The police decided to prosecute Michael for the theft of Kara’s money. Michael had stolen $400 from an ATM on Mack, located between our homes. He took this money on Saturday, May 28, 2011, the day Kara died. To this day I don’t know the exact time he took that money but I will assume it was after Kara died. The judge at Michael’s sentencing wanted to know the answer to that too but no one had that answer. When Michael was first picked up in June 2012, he was unrecognizable. He had gained 40 pounds on the various medications he was taking. They initially charged him with the theft of her money and identity theft. He pled guilty to the theft. His actual sentencing was a joke. He missed the first date in court in early October 2012 because he was in the psych ward again. Two weeks later he made his appearance under threat of jailing.

When it was time to read the victim’s statement this is what I said:

“Our daughter Kara died on a Saturday morning, May 28, 2011, while you were staying with her and her brother. You say you found her dead, but did you call 911? No, you posed her with a picture of the joker and covered her. Did you call someone to watch Kurt, Kara’s severely autistic brother? No, you left him for what turned out to be 10 hours alone, while you helped yourself to Kara’s bankcard and $400 from an atm. Did you go home because you were freaked out? No, you were hiding in a friend’s garage. What kind of person behaves like this? Certainly a coward but what else are you? You are a person who left a grieving mom a package with a #1 mom bracelet and a candy coffin with two dead moths in it with numbers. You are a person who wrote on his facebook:” I put your body in a hole, fifty feet underground, I’ll be walking here on earth while you’re nowhere to be found (an icp lyric).” And your poem “Dead end”: “I did it. It’s done and no I’m not scared.” What did you do Michael? Did you get tired of Kara’s supposed cheating? Again? And silence her? That would make you a monster. You will probably get probation today but that will not be the end of it for you. You need to tell us what you did instead of leaving clues or you will never have peace.

Michael’s “Dead End” poem ended with a cryptic; “Eye’ll see you in hell.” He deliberately spelled I’ll wrong because it was a specific reference to Kara, who liked to use “eyes” in her art. The package I received on my porch also had a burn mark on it indicating hell too.

Judge Grohner gave him probation, apologizing for not knowing the circumstances surrounding the theft. He asked if there was an investigation and other questions which I answered. He fined Michael including missing pay for my husband. He was to pay that within a week or risk jail time. He paid that money, but it went to the bank first, erroneously. To my knowledge he hasn’t paid a dime in restitution since. In October 2015, he will be off probation with a totally clean record because of his youth.