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Post by Helen Dagner on Aug 1, 2012 18:56:46 GMT -5
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Post by Helen Dagner on Aug 1, 2012 19:04:20 GMT -5
Lawyers for Oakland County and the state of Michigan urged a federal judge today to dismiss a $100 million lawsuit filed by the mother of victim of the Oakland County Child Killer.
“Long on rhetoric, short on facts,†Deputy Oakland County Corporation Counsel Keith Lerminiaux told U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood during a 75-minute court hearing in Detroit.
Lerminiaux told Hood that Deborah Jarvis, of Petoskey, has offered no evidence to support her claim that Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper, Sheriff Michael Bouchard and their top assistants obstructed efforts by the victims’ families to find out who killed their children so the families could sue the killers.
Both Lerminiaux and Assistant Michigan Attorney General Joseph Froehlich, who represents three state police investigators named in Jarvis’ suit, said Jarvis should have sued in state court decades ago to get answers to her questions. They said she waited too long to file the suit in federal court.
“She didn’t just sit around for 36 years,†countered Jarvis’ lawyer, Paul Hughes of Detroit. He said Jarvis wrongly placed her faith in law enforcement officials to find the killer.
Hughes said there has been an active effort by authorities to conceal information from the families.
Jarvis sued in April. She’s trying to force Oakland County and the state police, whose investigators head up a child killer task force, to turn over the investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice for an independent probe.
Lerminiaux said Hood has no authority to order that.
Hood gave no indication when she might rule on the county and state dismissal requests.
Jarvis’ daughter, Kristine Mihelich, 10, of Berkley, disappeared in January 1977, after leaving a local party store where she had gone to buy a teen magazine. Her body was found 19 days later along a dead-end lane in Franklin. She had been smothered.
The child killer murdered three other children in 1976-'77, according to authorities. They never solved the case.
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Post by Helen Dagner on Aug 2, 2012 10:27:58 GMT -5
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