MI MI - Sally Mercer, 31, Okemos, 27 February 1968

[Reader]

Nice guy huh? Would a nice guy basically threaten his neighbor? :snooty:

No, don't think so, curious1. He had also threatened his girlfriend before they married, after the wife's death, with a shotgun no less. She and other people/friends present ALL refused to testify against him. It looks like they were all afraid of him.

The hearing is still going on today but there was a little more news from yesterday:

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060627/NEWS01/606270337/1312

MASON - The day Sally Sue Mercer died, she told a friend that her husband had threatened to throw her and the couple's young daughter from the second story of their home rather than go through a divorce.
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For much of Monday's hearing, a video monitor displayed a black-and-white photograph of Sally Mercer's lifeless body lying on the floor - her eyes open, her left hand clenched in a fist over her chest.

Terry Pierce, a Meridian Township ambulance attendant and firefighter who responded to the couple's Okemos home in February 1968, testified Sally Mercer's body was in full rigor mortis when emergency workers arrived.

"It's burned in my mind," Pierce testified. "She was not responsive, and she was not moving."

Reading from a 1995 transcript of an interview he conducted with a sheriff's detective, Pierce said, "It looked like there was a struggle, and she froze in that position."
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But Sally Mercer had lethal levels of a powerful pain reliever in her body when she died, according to court transcripts released earlier this month. Testimony that led to Mercer's arrest also implied a now-deceased pathologist may have covered up the cause of death.

Bergstrom has produced documents from medical experts who said Sally Mercer died from a viral infection.

Several witnesses testified Monday that Sally did not show any sign of illness near the time of her death.
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Virginia McCorkle, a staff nurse at Lansing General Hospital who worked with Mercer, testified Monday that Sally Mercer came to her apartment several days before she was found dead. She brought photographs of a motel room that authorities say proved the affair.

McCorkle said Mercer told her that her husband had come home drunk, and she used keys she found in his pocket to enter the room and take pictures. Court records have referred to photographs that showed Charles Mercer's car in a motel parking lot next to Kelly's car.

 

[curious1]

Of course people are only going to see what they want to see. How many times do we hear....'He was such a nice man, I cannot believe that he would do this, they must be wrong.'

 

[Reader]

Agree, curious1, so many times it seems these are people that noone would have suspected of being violent, or don't want to suspect, but usually it is hidden behind closed doors. And this case was hidden because of what looks like a conspiracy between two doctors.

From the link below, Sally said she thought she would be killed that day. So sad that she just didn't take the children and leave if she had those fears. He had already threatened to throw her and the 2 year old out of the upstairs window!

This link has a lot of new information that came out in the hearing yesterday:
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060628/NEWS01/606280358

MASON - A pathologist's insistence in 1968 that Sally Sue Mercer died from polio stalled the criminal investigation into the 31-year-old Okemos woman's death, according to court testimony Tuesday.

Dr. Charles Black - who years earlier had been fired as chief pathologist at Sparrow Hospital - made his ruling despite several bruises and scratches on Sally Mercer's body.
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Donald Reisig, who was the Ing-ham County prosecutor at the time of Sally Mercer's death, testified he could not issue charges in the case because Black insisted polio was the cause of death.

Reisig said he confronted Black about his conclusions.

"My gut reaction was that a person does not walk across the room and drop down dead from bulbar polio," he said.

But Black stuck to his ruling, Reisig said, supporting his claim by saying he was aware of other polio deaths in Michigan.
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"You were disappointed," Bergstrom said.

"Yes," Bennehoff answered.

"You believe a miscarriage of justice occurred."

"Yes."
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Reisig on Tuesday also testified that Black was a friend of Charles Mercer's father as well as Dorwin Hoffmeyer - the elected coroner for Ingham County, who also directed the funeral home where Sally Mercer's autopsy took place.

But Reisig admitted he never charged Black with any crimes, despite being concerned about the relationship between the doctors, as well as Black's work in several cases.

"Incompetence isn't a crime," Reisig said.
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On the day she died, Sally Mercer mailed a letter saying her husband might kill her, Bennehoff said.

"She thought she was going to be killed that day," Bennehoff testified. He said Sally Mercer sent an envelope to a friend with instructions to forward a note and several photographs to police if she was found dead.
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DeFay worked at Lansing General Hospital with Charles Mercer and Michelle Kelly, a nurse who police say later admitted to an affair with the doctor.

DeFay also said Sally Mercer was afraid of her husband and that her husband was abusive.

 

[concernedperson]

Reader, this is so sad to me. The woman was asking for help and no one helped.They did everything to cover it up and treat her as if she didn't matter.

I am so glad there is some justice being sought now. I hope the jury has eyes wide open and aren't related to any of these dumb f--ks.

 

[Reader]

Reader, this is so sad to me. The woman was asking for help and no one helped.They did everything to cover it up and treat her as if she didn't matter.

I am so glad there is some justice being sought now. I hope the jury has eyes wide open and aren't related to any of these dumb f--ks.

Agree, I think that should be the first question the prosecutor asks, are you related to the defendent, the coroner or the funeral home owner! It's hard to imagine that 3 people were involved and none of them fell out over the years and told.

It's sad to me too, concernedperson, to think she was possibly murdered by her husband and he has used his status in the community, and friends, to hide this all these years.

The daughters seem to be supporting their father now but I wonder what they really think, after learning all this information at the hearing. It has to have turned their world upside down. The one that was the 2 year old, I read was at the hearing hugging him, and she was the one he threatened to kill!

 

[concernedperson]

Agree, I think that should be the first question the prosecutor asks, are you related to the defendent, the coroner or the funeral home owner! It's hard to imagine that 3 people were involved and none of them fell out over the years and told.

It's sad to me too, concernedperson, to think she was possibly murdered by her husband and he has used his status in the community, and friends, to hide this all these years.

The daughters seem to be supporting their father now but I wonder what they really think, after learning all this information at the hearing. It has to have turned their world upside down. The one that was the 2 year old, I read was at the hearing hugging him, and she was the one he threatened to kill!

I don't want to go into a long thing about dysfunction (too tired). I understand it although I hate it. It happens. It takes a mindset to crawl away and stay away. But, it is hard to do.

Most people will say it isn't true and there is some mistake. You have to understand you will be alone after making such statements. The two year old will face realizations much later...and it will be like a rock has fallen on her head.I hope she has a strong support system like WS that is unbiased and will walk her through. It is scary to be alone and easier to accept an untruth.

 

[Reader]

I don't want to go into a long thing about dysfunction (too tired). I understand it although I hate it. It happens. It takes a mindset to crawl away and stay away. But, it is hard to do.

Most people will say it isn't true and there is some mistake. You have to understand you will be alone after making such statements. The two year old will face realizations much later...and it will be like a rock has fallen on her head.I hope she has a strong support system like WS that is unbiased and will walk her through. It is scary to be alone and easier to accept an untruth.

Thank you, concernedperson. Also, the girls lost their mother early so their father was really their only security growing up.

Another thought that is chilling: these girls, especially the 2 year old, probably don't remember a lot about their real mother. And they were raised by their father and his new wife, who admitted to having the affair, and who was probably one of the motivations for the murder of their mother. What a web!

 

[Reader]

Prime example of how NOT to investigate:

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060628/NEWS06/606280446/1008

MASON -- There's the mystery of what happened to Sally Mercer when she suddenly died Feb. 27, 1968, and then there's the mystery of what happened to stop the original criminal investigation about a week later.

Former Ingham County Prosecutor Donald Reisig testified Tuesday that the investigation stalled because he couldn't get around what he said was an incompetent medical expert and the cozy coroner's system of 38 years ago.

But a former sheriff's detective testified that Reisig pulled the plug on the investigation even as early leads were being chased down.
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The hearing to determine if Mercer, now 72, will stand trial was adjourned until early August, when five or six more days of testimony are expected before 55th District Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina.

Authorities allege that Mercer hid the killing with a faulty diagnosis of bulbar polio.

Reisig testified that the investigation was stymied by the determination of a Lansing pathologist, Dr. Charles Black, that polio killed Sally Mercer.
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But Evan Bennehoff, a retired sheriff's detective, testified later Tuesday that Reisig told him and other investigators to "cease and desist" about a week into the case. Bennehoff said the order came in a meeting with the prosecutor, Black, Hoffmeyer and a lawyer representing Mercer Jr.

 

[Reader]

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060712/NEWS01/607120369/0/special

MASON - The attorney for an Okemos doctor charged in the 1968 death of his wife said Tuesday witness testimony will help show Sally Sue Mercer died from a viral infection.

During a hearing in 55th District Court, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ruled Dr. Charles William Mercer's attorney, Chris Bergstrom, could conduct video-recorded interviews with three witnesses in order to preserve their testimony.

What those witnesses have to say will be crucial for his case, Bergstrom said, adding that their health and age are concerns.

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During Tuesday's hearing, Bergstrom said Dr. John Pudliner told police in 1995 that he examined Sally Mercer for a meningitis-like illness either the day before or the day of her death.

Deposition request

In asking to be able to conduct the video deposition, Bergstrom said: "I don't know how much longer Dr. Pudliner is going to be with us, so it is imperative we take his deposition."

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Contradictory testimony

But several witnesses testified during the first two days of Charles Mercer's preliminary hearing that Sally did not show any sign of illness near the time of her death.

The preliminary hearing, which resumes Aug. 8, will determine if there is enough evidence for the case to advance to trial.

 

[Reader]

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060808/NEWS01/608080356/0/special

Neighbor testifies Mercer's wife was dead on the scene
Midday update
By Kevin Grasha
Lansing State Journal

Sally Sue Mercer was found dead in her bedroom with her 2-year-old daughter, Sara, sitting on her back, a neighbor testified this morning as the preliminary hearing for Dr. Charles William Mercer continued.

The 72-year-old Okemos surgeon is charged with open murder in the 1968 death of his wife, who was originally declared to have died of polio.

Testimony will continue Wednesday.

A neighbor of the Mercer's at the time, Agatha Kateley, testified via live video from Fort Collins, Colo. this morning.


http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060809/NEWS01/608090377

MASON - District Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ruled this morning that a letter Sally Sue Mercer mailed the day she died - that said her husband might kill her, according to court testimony - was not admissible.

That decision came during the fourth day of a preliminary hearing for Dr. Charles William Mercer, who is charged with killing his wife in 1968.

The hearing will determine if the murder case against the 72-year-old Okemos surgeon advances to trial.

Assistant Prosecutor Eric Matwiejczyk said he would appeal the judge's decision.

 

[Reader]

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060810/NEWS01/608100347/0/special

MASON - Testimony about a letter Sally Sue Mercer mailed the day she died - saying her husband might kill her - is inadmissible in court, District Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ruled Wednesday.

Aquilina said testimony about the note is irrelevant because it would be hearsay. The note, such as other evidence in the 38-year-old case, has either been lost or destroyed.
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Also Wednesday, Bennehoff took the stand for a second time. He described in detail a conversation he overheard in 1968 before Sally Mercer's autopsy.

Bennehoff, who was instructed by his captain to attend Sally Mercer's Feb. 28 autopsy, said he overheard the pathologist tell Charles Mercer's father: "Don't worry, Bill. We're not going to find anything."

Dr. Charles Black's determination Sally Mercer died from polio stalled the criminal investigation into her death, a former prosecutor has testified. Other testimony has implied Black, who was friends with Mercer's father, might have covered up the cause of death.

 

[Reader]

This preliminary hearing is really being drawn out. It is now continued until Sept. 11. Here is some of the last testimony:

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060816/NEWS01/608160346/0/special

In the days after Sally Sue Mercer's death in 1968, investigators wanted to examine her body for the presence of barbiturates and the poison strychnine, a retired toxicologist testified Tuesday.

Dr. S. David Kutob, who tested Mercer's blood 38 years ago, testified via video from Asheville, N.C. He said tests of Sally Sue Mercer's blood showed it contained unusually high levels of aspirin.
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Kutob said police specifically asked him to test for poison and other drugs.

A 2003 autopsy of Sally Mercer's exhumed remains revealed she had lethal levels of the powerful pain reliever propoxyphene in her body, according to court transcripts.

Kutob said because of the technology limitations at the time, he could not have detected propoxyphene.
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The hearing, which will determine if the case advances to trial, is expected to continue Sept. 11.

 

[Reader]

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060909/NEWS01/609090330

District Judge Rosemarie Aquilina on Friday ruled prosecutors can't use comments Mercer allegedly made while performing surgery 11 years later about the use of a drug as a means of committing a perfect crime.

Assistant prosecutor Eric Matwiejczyk argued the statement was relevant, given the nature of the alleged crime. "Most people don't have wives who died suspicious deaths," he said. "We all know that criminals make a lot of stupid statements."
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Aquilina also barred testimony of a conversation overheard by former Ingham County Sheriff's Detective Evan Bennehoff shortly before Sally Mercer's first autopsy in 1968.

Bennehoff said he heard pathologist Dr. Charles Black assure Mercer's father "we're not going to find anything."
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Matwiejczyk said he plans to appeal Aquilina's rulings.

The preliminary hearing, which determines whether there is enough evidence to advance the case to trial, is scheduled to resume Monday.

 

[Reader]

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060911/NEWS01/609110343

MASON - Dr. Charles William Mercer's second wife testified Monday she thought his first wife's death was "unusual" but never thought he may have caused it.
---------------------------------
Michelle Mercer, who is no longer married to Mercer but acknowledged she had been having an affair with him for two years before Sally Mercer's death, said Sally Mercer seemed to be a young, healthy mother of two when she died.
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Michelle Mercer also said Sally Mercer knew of her affair with Mercer and came to her home to talk about it, but said the meeting was not confrontational.

The preliminary examination is to resume at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

 

[Peter Hamilton]

Reader,thanks for the updates

 

[Reader]

Reader,thanks for the updates

You're welcome.

Here is a later version of the link above with a little more information:

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060912/NEWS01/609120337

"Michelle Mercer admitted she and the doctor were involved in an affair that predated Sally Mercer's death by about two years. They were married in October 1969 and divorced in 1989.

Although Michelle said Mercer could sometimes be brutal, she said their divorce was amicable."
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About seven years before their divorce, she said, she gave her sister a box of information, but she rejected Matwiejczyk's characterization of it as an "If I Die" box.

Michelle testified she was addicted to Demerol, a pain-reliever, for about two years and that, during that time, Mercer sometimes injected her with the drug against her will.

 

[Reader]

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060913/NEWS01/609130358

More than a year before Sally Sue Mercer's death in 1968, she made several tearful phone calls to the husband of the woman with whom Dr. Charles William Mercer was having an affair.

Robert Kelly, a retired Lansing firefighter, said Sally Mercer called him at the fire station several times to talk about how his wife, Michelle, was "fooling around" with her husband.

"She'd start talking about it, and she'd be crying," Kelly testified Tuesday at a preliminary hearing in 55th District Court in Mason.
----------------------------
The day Sally Mercer died, she told a friend that her husband had threatened to throw her and the couple's young daughter from the second story of their home rather than go through a divorce, according to earlier court testimony.

 

[Reader]

These are the only 2 articles I've found since the last post. I have no idea why the preliminary hearing is so spaced out and taking so long. Maybe it is hard to get the witnesses together since this happened so long ago.

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061005/NEWS01/610050362/0/special

MASON - In the days and weeks after his wife's death, Dr. Charles William Mercer told several of his wife's friends that she died from polio, according to court testimony Wednesday.

Two of the friends said Mercer - charged with murder in Sally Sue Mercer's 1968 death - gave slightly varying explanations as to how his wife may have contracted the disease.

Diane Brown, 69, of Missoula, Mont., said Charles Mercer told her he may have brought the disease home on his clothing from the hospital where he worked. Carol Smith, 71, of Shelbyville, Ill., said the doctor told her he might have contracted "a light case of polio" and passed the disease to his wife.
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Jo Ellen Tamen, 70, a bridesmaid at the Mercers' wedding, said she spoke to Charles Mercer at Sally's funeral in her hometown, Shelbyville, Ill.

When Tamen asked Charles Mercer how his wife could have contracted polio, he said Sally hadn't taken the vaccine his father had given them, she testified.

"I took mine, but evidently Sally didn't," Charles Mercer told Tamen, according to her testimony. Brown also testified Mercer told her about a full cup of polio vaccine he found after his wife's death.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061006/NEWS01/610060390

The Okemos surgeon charged in his wife's 1968 death told investigators he had been taking the pain reliever that decades later was found in lethal levels in his wife's body, according to testimony Friday.

Dr. Charles William Mercer said at a November 2004 hearing he had been taking Darvon for about a week before his wife's death because he had been experiencing severe headaches.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

[Reader]

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061007/NEWS01/610070335/0/special

Dr. Charles William Mercer said at a November 2004 hearing he had been taking "a Darvon-65 compound" for severe headaches about a week before his wife's death.

He said the drug was kept in a medicine chest at the couple's home.

Mercer said he was bed-ridden for a week, lost 21 pounds and suffered from fevers as high as 105 degrees because of a flu-like illness - but he was "not very much aware" of his wife's health in the days before her death.

"I thought she was acting a little funny, to be honest with you," he said, according to excerpts of transcripts read aloud by Michigan State Police Detective Sgt. Tim Coolidge.
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A 2003 autopsy of Sally Mercer's exhumed remains revealed lethal levels of propoxyphene - the generic name for Darvon - in her body, according to court transcripts. Tests showed the drug likely was injected or given intravenously, the transcripts say. A doctor testified in August that the drug could not have been detected in 1968 because of technology limitations.
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Both Charles Mercer's attorney, Chris Bergstrom, and Assistant Prosecutor Eric Matwie-jczyk focused on statements Mercer made about visits by two doctors to the couple's house around the time of Sally Mercer's death.

But Charles Mercer could not give a definitive answer about when the doctors were there.
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He said he received a phone call from the hospital's switchboard operator, telling him to rush home for an emergency.

He said he arrived at their Okemos house at about 5 p.m. and found his wife dead.

That contradicted what one of Sally Mercer's friends recalled him saying shortly after her death, according to testimony earlier this week.

Diane Brown, 69, of Missoula, Mont., said Charles Mercer told her Sally had died in the middle of the night - that he woke up and found his wife's body on the floor.

Charles Mercer also was questioned in 2004 about autopsy photographs showing several bruises on his wife's arms.

"I don't know how it happened," he said, adding that he didn't recall ever seeing the injuries in 1968.
*************************
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061011/NEWS01/610110367

MASON - A doctor who conducted a second autopsy on Sally Mercer 35 years after her death concluded she likely was the victim of a homicide.

Dr. Stephen Cohle of Grand Rapids said the original autopsy report concluding that she died of bulbar polio did not take into account bruising on her arms and head, which he said likely occurred within a few hours of her death.
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"The conclusion in the original autopsy that bulbar polio was the cause of death was inconsistent with the information I was given that she was apparently healthy on the day she died," Cohle said.

He testified that a person who died of bulbar polio would likely have been paralyzed for quite a while before her death.

 

[Reader]

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061012/NEWS01/610120335/0/special

MASON - The death of Sally Mercer in 1968 likely was the result of a homicide and not bulbar polio, a doctor who did a second autopsy on her 35 years after her death testified Wednesday.

Dr. Stephen Cohle, a Grand Rapids forensic pathologist, said if Sally Mercer did have polio - which he doubted - it was not severe enough to cause her death.
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"She was not paralyzed or severely ill," Cohle said. "There was no evidence of bulbar polio clinically."

He said a person so ill with the disease that it could be fatal would have been paralyzed or incapacitated for at least several days before death. Previous testimony showed Mercer, then 31, appeared healthy up until she died.

Cohle also noted bruises on Mercer's right arm and at least six separate bruises on her head that he said probably were incurred within a few hours before she died.

"The arm bruises may be defensive in nature or may have been caused when she was grasped forcefully while resisting," he said.
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Cohle concluded Mercer likely died of a lethal overdose of a pain-relief drug. He said that conclusion was the result of tests done by a toxicology laboratory and not based on his own tests.

Prosecuting attorney Eric Matwiejczyk has theorized Mercer was either injected with the drug or forced to swallow it.