"WOMEN SHOT"

John Heisler, a baby-faced nine-year veteran of the Hazel Park PD, was eating his lunch at the station when the call came in to 911. The jolting words, "woman shot," came over the station's PA system. Lunch would have to wait. Heisler is an evidence technician, so he grabbed his tools, including his camera, and raced to his car. Hazelwood is just four blocks from the station, and four minutes after Fletcher picked up the phone, Heisler was at the scene.

Lehman had got there seconds ahead of him and was approaching Fletcher, who was on the porch. "She's inside. She's inside," he said.

"What happened?" said Lehman.

"She shot herself. She's in the back bedroom."

Heisler noticed that Fletcher's belt buckle was undone. At that point, the officers didn't know who was in the house, if this had been a suicide or murder, if there was a shooter still alive in the house or if there were kids inside. As with all such calls—Hazel Park, a tiny city, didn't get many and in fact had no homicide detectives on its force, just an all-purpose detective bureau—this would be treated as a crime scene until proven otherwise.

Lehman entered the house. A third officer, William Hamel, just arriving at the scene, was told by Heisler to stay with Fletcher outside. Heisler followed Lehman inside and was hit with the acrid smell of gunpowder. Eerily, there was a large target splayed over the front room couch, a target with a crouching human figure aiming a gun at whoever would do the target shooting. There were five holes in the bullseye and it had been shot maybe 30 or 40 times. It was the same target the Fletchers had fired at minutes earlier.

The front room was to Heisler's right as he entered. To the left was the dining room and kitchen. An opened 30-pack of Busch Light was visible on the kitchen floor. The hallway went down the center of the house to two bedrooms

and a bathroom.

They entered the southwest bedroom. Here, the smell of gunpowder was even stronger. Lehman bent down, checked for a pulse at Leann's wrist and neck, found none. She was sprawled out on the floor, a massive amount of blood soaking into the beige carpet in a huge stain billowing out from her head. She was naked from the waist down, wearing white cotton socks, a beige bra and a red cotton tank top. Her eyes were half open, staring out, so lifelike it seemed surreal. Thick streaks of blood ran across her face and under her chin. Her right foot was under the bed, as was the toe of her left foot. She was lying at a 45- degree angle to the bed. Her legs were thighs down, with her torso rotated so she was on her right shoulder blade and chest, her stomach aiming up. A black Smith & Wesson.45 gun was lying near her right arm, aiming at and almost touching her wrist. There was a magazine with several bullets in it near the gun, and a single bullet lying next to it. There was a swath of blood on her left thigh and blood on both her hands.

The tiny bedroom was crammed with a computer stand, a computer tower on the floor next to the stand, and a large chest. There was gun paraphernalia scattered about, much of which Lehman would begin collecting in plastic bags. There was a gun safe, a gun cleaning kit, a loaded clip, spare bullets and a shell casing standing, incongruously, on its end on the carpet.

The computer stand, near her right hand, was splattered with blood. There were several kids' CDs on the stand—a Sesame Street Learning Series, Elmo's Preschool Deluxe and a Freddie Fish.

The four emergency medical technicians had arrived and were in the hallway awaiting orders. Heisler told two of them to enter the room. He was worried that if too many of them went in, they might contaminate the scene, disturb evidence. They checked for signs, too. They checked the carotid artery. One put his ear to her chest. They hooked up three wires from the cardiac monitor. It showed pulseless electrical activity, which meant she'd been dead only a few minutes. They put a pen-light to her eyes; they were fixed and dilated. They hooked up two electrodes, one to each side of her chest, part of a telemetry system to beam her lack of vital signs to a nearby hospital, where a doctor made the official

pronouncement of death.

The stain around her head continued to spread. The blood was mixed with a gelatin-like substance, brain fluid.

The paramedics left the room, gathered up their stuff and left the house. It was 1:20 p.m. The heat outside was oppressive, but it was a relief from the atmosphere inside, the smell of the blood mixing with the smell of the gunpowder, a smell that remains in the mind long after it's cleared the nostrils.

Heisler began snapping Polaroids of everything he could think of—the bullet casing, what appeared to be the entry wound in her right ear, the furniture, the blood stain on the bed, the godawful bloody carpet. He filled his evidence bags. He'd be busy for two hours.

While Heisler did his work, Lehman went back outside and talked to Fletcher, who had been taken to the yard next door to keep out of the way of the comings and goings.

Other cops began arriving.

Soon, a van from Classic Removal Service pulled up. The company has contracts with various funeral homes, as well as the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office, for the removal of dead bodies. The driver went in, wrapped Leann in a sheet, then put her into a plastic body bag and zipped it shut. He wheeled her out of the house, down the steps and into the van, to take her to the ME for Tuesday morning's autopsy.

The driver didn't think anything of it, but when he wrapped her in the sheet, Leann's hands weren't bagged. One of the police officers at the scene should have put plastic bags over her hands to preserve such potential evidence as blood patterns and gunpowder. But, inexplicably, one of the ranking cops who had arrived in the meantime—later, no one seemed to remember who it was— ordered that her hands not be bagged.

The missing bags would play a bigger part in the months-away defense of Michael Fletcher than anyone could have imagined watching the Classic Removal Service van pull away. It was 2 p.m.

*

In the meantime, Hamel walked Fletcher to the yard next door, to keep out of the way. "Oh my God, this can't be happening!" said Fletcher, who was crying. Hamel asked him to sit down on the porch.

Hamel asked what had happened and Mick recounted the recent events. They'd gone to the gun range, then returned home "to play around," said Fletcher. He told Hamel he'd gone into the bathroom to take a pee before putting the gun away. While he was in there, he heard a gunshot, came out and found Leann on the floor. He wasn't sure, he might have moved his wife's arm. Fletcher kept interrupting his narrative with sobs and several times said: "Oh my God, what am I going to tell my daughter?" and, "This can't be happening!"

Hamel later wrote in his report that Fletcher appeared somewhat orderly. He was wearing a long-sleeve green dress shirt tucked into his pants, a multi- colored tie, dark dress pants, black socks and no shoes. He even noticed that Fletcher's top shirt button was undone and his tie loosened around the neck.

Sgt. Dennis Welch, known as Muggs, the first detective on the scene, arrived about 1:10. He'd been on the road on the way back from another crime scene, heard the call and raced over. Welch kept an eye on the scene for a couple of minutes, making sure nothing was disturbed, either by his own men or by the paramedics. Soon, Lt. Daniel Smick arrived. He headed up the detective bureau and relieved Welch.

Welch then asked if Fletcher would come with him back to the station to make a statement. "He gave the appearance of being very upset about the fact his wife was shot," Welch would say later. "Very upset. He was crying. Very, very upset. Nothing I would have thought unusual. I brought him to the station, calmed him down a bit and began the interview."

First, Welch retrieved a pair of Fletcher's shoes from the house. Fletcher cried the four blocks back to the station. "I can't believe this is happening," he said. "How can I tell my daughter? Everything was going so good, I can't believe this."

When they got out of the car, Welch had to physically help him walk into the station and down the stairs to the interview room.

"Can I get you anything to make you more comfortable?" Welch asked.

"I'm fine," said Fletcher, who started to cry again and said: "I'm not fine."

Welch brought him a glass of water and some tissues, then asked him if he felt up to making a statement. In movies and TV, that's the point detectives turn on the tape recorder or the video camera. In real life, standard operating procedure is to do neither. Welch took brief notes in his own version of shorthand during the interview, the briefer the better so as to keep the flow going. Real-life detectives want to keep the subject talking. Later, they make a hand-written narrative report of their interpretation of what was said. Fletcher was not warned of his rights. Miranda wasn't mentioned. Though other cops had already decided he was a killer, he wasn't officially a suspect. Under recent Supreme Court rulings, Miranda rights need to be read only when there is a constraint on a subject's departure. Fletcher was free to terminate the interview at any time. Besides, he was a defense attorney. If he didn't know his rights, it wasn't Welch's obligation to make sure he did. The interview began at 1:30 p.m. and finished about 2:30.

"I'm a lawyer. I know you've got a job to do and I want to cooperate," said Fletcher. But he needed a cigarette first. Smoking in public buildings in Michigan is illegal, so Welch walked him back outside. Fletcher lit up and Welch went back in the building. When he came out a couple of minutes later, Fletcher was kneeling on the ground with his head down, crying. Welch knelt down next to him, helped him to his feet and they went back inside to the interview room.

In the office, Fletcher told them about the card he'd bought because he had felt bad for saying he really wanted a boy. He broke down again in tears, then resumed.

When they got back from the firing range, Leann carried in the gun case and he carried in the target and ammunition bag. Leann set the gun case down on the bed and went into the bathroom. He loaded the gun's clip with Federal ammunition, then picked up the second clip. He'd gotten an automatic loader for Christmas but never got it to work correctly, so he began loading the bullets into it by hand. He got two or three bullets into it before Leann came out of the bathroom. He handed the clip and ammunition to her and asked her to finish

loading the clip.

(This would later be very important at trial. The prosecution would ask, and the jury would consider it damning, why Fletcher would hand a clip he was having trouble loading to his wife, an inexperienced shooter who didn't like guns. But according to Welch's written report, Fletcher never said he was having trouble loading the gun; he said he was loading it by hand because the automatic loader didn't work properly. Cleyman's written report, though, said Fletcher was having trouble with the second clip.)

Fletcher went into the bathroom, ran some water and splashed his face, undid his belt and heard a gunshot. He thought he'd see Leann standing there with a hole in the wall but instead she was lying on the floor.

Fletcher began sobbing, again. When he calmed down, he resumed.

He'd grabbed her right arm and rolled her over and could see she was bleeding from a wound on the right side of her head. At that point he freaked, grabbed the cell phone and called 911, then waited for police to arrive.

Welch asked him if he would give a written statement and he agreed. Then he asked him if there was anyone he wanted to call.

Fletcher told him he wanted to call Jack and Gloria Misener, Leann's parents, but didn't know what to say.

*

About the time Welch was finishing his first go-round with Fletcher, Lehman returned to the station and hand-printed a four-page report. It was sparse, to the point, understated the way Sgt. Friday might have done it. He said when he arrived at the scene, "Michael was shaking but was not crying." Lehman described his participation in the events in the bedroom, then told of his brief interview with Fletcher afterward.

"Officer asked Michael what happened and he stated he and Leann just got home from Double Action shooting range on Dequindre, where they were both shooting. Michael stated that the gun they both used at Double Action was the same gun that was next to her on the floor. Michael also stated this was the first time he had taken Leann shooting. Both subjects arrived at location in listed

Dakota. (Officer found Leann's purse in the truck.) Michael then stated he and Leann were going to have sex in the southwest bedroom.

"Leann began taking off her clothes and Michael went into the bathroom and closed the door." For some reason, Lehman thought that particularly significant and underlined the words "closed the door." "Michael states he heard a loud bang and went back into the bedroom and saw Leann on the floor bleeding. Michael stated he moved her slightly but could not say what part of her body he touched, or if he moved her before or after he called 911. Officer observed a small amount of blood on each of Michael's hands.

"Neighbors near the location said they did not know Michael and Leann very well and never saw or heard about any problems."

Lehman's report—and testimony about it at subsequent court proceedings— would be used by prosecutors to imply that the Fletcher whom Lehman encountered was far calmer than the Fletcher heard over the 911 line, that his hysterics on the phone had been mere theatrics.

It would also be used by the defense. He noted blood on Fletcher's hands. The prosecution would later claim in court that Fletcher had washed blood off his hands, and Cleyman would testify that the lack of blood on Fletcher convinced him on first sight that he was a murderer. It was a theme that would run throughout the case—there was and would be two ways of looking at nearly everything.

And what Lehman described in his report on August 16 as "a small amount of blood" would be described in his testimony, at Fletcher's pre-trial hearing to decide if he should be bound over for trial, as "just small specks" of blood. The word "specks" was important. By then, the prosecution had claimed to have found tiny dots of high-velocity blood mist on the shirt Fletcher wore at the time of the shooting, blood that could only come from being at close range when Leann was shot. Specks of blood on Fletcher's hands would fit that scenario.

After finishing his report, Lehman returned to the Hazelwood house. He would stand guard outside till he was relieved at 9:30, making sure the house was secure.

*

At 3:30, Fletcher wrote his statement. In just less than one lined page, he wrote about his morning at court, stopping for a card, dropping off Hannah, going to the gun range, "then decided to go home together for 'personal time.' She carried gun case into house. I carried target and ammo bag. Laid target on couch, took ammo into room, sat on bed by gun case. She went into bathroom. I completed loading one clip, placed in gun and rounded chamber. Removed clip & replaced round in clip (uncertain). Placed 2 or 3 rounds in 2nd clip. She came into room (half-dressed), and I asked her to finish loading 2nd clip. (The 1st clip was put in gun.)

"I went into bathroom, undid pants & heard explosion. Ran back into room, saw her face down in front of computer. I held her right arm and rolled her back. Uncertain as to remainder."

If he had racked and chambered a bullet as he claimed, and left the safety off, it would have left the Smith & Wesson in single-action position. Cocked, it would be easier to fire than if it had been left uncocked, in double-action position, which required a certain pull on the trigger to cock it and a further pull to fire.

*

Detective Tom Cleyman had been on the Hazel Park police force since 1989, making him something of a veteran on the youthful force. Blond, ruddy faced, he looks a bit like a stouter, shorter version of Nick Nolte, and he would joke after the trial that he wanted Nolte to play him in the made-forTV movie everyone seemed to think was inevitable. Hazel Park boasted many good athletes in its ranks, and in his 20s, Cleyman had been a fierce softball player. He was in the detective bureau when the 911 call came in. He had to go to the Michigan State Police crime lab in nearby Sterling Heights on unrelated business and returned to the station a little before 2. He and Sgt. Larry Dale Hendricks—L. D. to everybody, whose youthful, unlined face didn't seem to go with the chew of tobacco often wedged behind his lip, and whose dark hair was combed straight

back from his forehead, tooth marks from his comb clearly defined—were about to head over to the scene. "We're small. We don't have a major crimes unit," Hendricks would say later. "When we get something like this, we basically drop everything. We do what we can and if we feel there's something we can't handle, we'll call an outside agency."

(The defense would later claim the inexperienced Hazel Park police were incapable of handling the scene from the start and should have called in county sheriffs, an allegation the Hazel Park police would angrily deny.)

A bit later, Welch walked Fletcher in from one of his smoking breaks and passed Cleyman. Cleyman eyed him suspiciously. He was too clean. No blood. This is a murderer, he told himself. He killed his wife. He would later testify in court that upon seeing Fletcher, he was "stone-cold certain" the lawyer was also a murderer. That quick assessment would be a key factor at the trial. Cleyman might not have made so much of Fletcher's blood-free appearance, but a couple of nights earlier, the detective had been watching the History Channel on cable, a show on the Kennedy assassination, and the image of Jackie all bloody in her pink outfit was fresh in his mind. How come Fletcher wasn't bloody Cleyman wondered. How come he hadn't cradled his spouse?

Many months later, after the trial, in an interview for this book, Cleyman would say: "When I saw him dressed like that, in a tie and suit and no blood, I said instantly that he was guilty."

*

As Cleyman and Hendricks pulled up to the curb, Leann's shrouded body was coming down the sidewalk on a gurney. It rolled past, then they entered the house.

"The crime scene bothered me right off the bat," Cleyman would say later. "The scene seemed staged to us," said Hendricks. "No way would the gun

have fallen to within a foot diameter of her right hand if she'd shot herself."

Hendricks made sure the scene was properly secured, gave Heisler some instructions and then he and Cleyman went back to the station, where they would be busy much of the afternoon conducting interviews.

After Heisler finished his work, police continued to secure the scene, awaiting a search warrant. It was issued at 4:17 p.m., and called for "evidence of a fatal shooting … weapons and ammunition, spent casings, blood and/or any objects which appear to have blood stains on them, including a computer."

They thought they had a routine murder. Not that murder was routine for Hazel Park, but a routine murder, nonetheless. What they'd find with the search warrant was about to turn it into a soap opera.