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Hey there. I want to tell you about one of my personal favorite podcasts, The Fall Line. If you haven't listened to The Fall Line, I highly suggest checking it out. The Fall Line is a deep dive true crime podcast focused on missing people, unsolved homicides, and unidentified persons whose cases have gotten little, if any, media attention. You'll learn about John and Jane Doe cases across the country.
and unsolved serial homicides like the Atlanta Lovers Lane murders and the unmatched confessions of Samuel Little. They also cover missing persons cases that never made national news. You'll hear from the family members in cases like the unsolved homicide of 12-year-old Georgia Leah Moses from California and single mother and business owner Grace Chen, who was killed in Texas.
The Fall Line digs deep into cases, interviewing experts like forensic anthropologists, genealogists, DNA experts, and investigators closest to the crimes. If you are a fan of Murder, She Told, I guarantee you will love The Fall Line.
Through narrative storytelling, primary and archival research, and expert and family interviews, The Fall Line introduces listeners to victims and survivors they'd never heard of and explores the reasons why their cases were ignored in the first place.
Look for new releases from The Fall Line on Wednesdays, wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, you might hear a familiar voice on The Fall Line. Laura interviewed me in October about New England cold cases, and we may or may not have geeked out about research beforehand. Right now, I'm going to play you a clip from one of The Fall Line's recent episodes. It's from their deep dive into the unsolved homicide of Garnett Lennox, a loving father who was murdered in East Detroit in 2007.
If you find this clip compelling, be sure to check out their other releases, like a series focusing on the death of an indigenous mother found on a Montana reservation in 1998, the attempts to identify a recently immigrated teenager murdered in Florida in 1986, and interviews with some of true crime's most compelling experts and biggest advocates. I hope you enjoy. This is The Fall Line.
On May 12, 2007, Garnett Lennox's Pontiac Bonneville was discovered on a 13,000 block of Loretto Street in what the Fraser Clinton Township Chronicle described as, quote, Detroit's East Side. Garnett, who was 40, had been missing from his Clinton Township home for days. Per the Chronicle, his mother had filed a report with the Township Police Department on May 9th.
The Detroit News gave the date of the missing person's filing as May 8th. Clinton Township is a suburb of Detroit. It lies north of the city. Nearly 200 years ago, there were grand plans to make it the site of a canal that would carry travelers up and downstate. But, per the Historical Society, money ran out and Clinton Township became a sawmill town.
Nowadays, it's home to 100,000 or so people, citizens who rate their schools as above average, and it's run by leaders who describe the area as friendly to development. It's only 10 miles or so to Detroit. You cross a county line from Macomb to Wayne.
Whether Garnett Lennox took himself over that line and drove into the city in early May of 2007, we can't say. There are signs that point to him doing so, and signs that point to a very different conclusion. His family has heard rumors over the years, but he certainly didn't leave his car in East Detroit, on Loretto Street, not on his own volition at least.
His family had been looking for him in Clinton Township and making calls. His sons, who were living down in North Carolina with his ex-wife, they were waiting for news.
Clinton Township PD had been alerted, and according to a FOIA we received from that department, Garnett's mother stated that she initially had trouble filing a missing persons report for her son, but that she managed it after speaking with several local offices, both in Clinton Township and in Detroit.
Everyone, from his brothers to his roommate, noted that it was unusual for Garnett to be out all night without calling, much less to be gone for days. But no one was able to locate him. Ultimately, it was a report about Garnett's Pontiac that brought law enforcement out in the early afternoon of May 12th.
However, they weren't following up on a report of a missing man. According to the Fraser Clinton Township Chronicle, someone was concerned about the car. There was an odor, a caller reported, that was worrying. After investigating the scene, Detroit police told the Detroit News that they discovered a body in the trunk of the Pontiac. It was Garnett Lennox.
The Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office would later release the information that Garnett had been shot twice, and that they believed he'd been dead for at least three days. Based on what we could find, there was scanned coverage of Garnett's murder in local media. There were a few articles in Clinton Township area papers and in the Detroit News. We also found a letter to the editor written by Garnett's mother, Vernice.
One of Garnett's sons, Andrew, remembers that his grandmother appeared on the local evening news as well to talk about Garnett's murder. And, two months after Garnett was discovered, the Detroit Police Department appeared on another local broadcast seeking tips. Garnett's brothers also appeared on that news spot. You can still watch that one on YouTube. Garnett's brothers are dressed in suits, and they're standing near the spot where Garnett's car was discovered.
They say that they don't want another family to have to experience this kind of grief. They want Garnett's killer caught. You see, their family had already been through this once. Facing it again, only 16 years later, was excruciating. Garnett's cousin, Bernice Gray, she disappeared on December 26, 1991.
Per the Detroit News, Bernice had begun her day as usual. She'd left early in the morning to drop off her daughter at a babysitter's, and then headed into work. But Bernice had never arrived. Maybe, as her stepfather Sandy Ulmer told the Detroit News, that wouldn't have raised immediate flags for another 23-year-old. But Bernice's employer had called their home soon after she failed to show, worried about her.
Sandy told reporters, quote, She works full-time, goes to school, and cares for her daughter. Bernice is very dependable. As soon as the family received the call, Sandy and Bernice's mother, Jean, and other members of the family gathered together, and they began to search. Sandy said, quote, We searched all the streets, around the babysitters, and also the parking lots in Southfield, and we found nothing.
The paper mentioned that Bernice's father and her boyfriend were also aiding in search efforts, but there was no sign of Bernice's car, which the Detroit News described as a 1987 Pontiac. There wouldn't be a sign of it.
not for five days. The Detroit News reported that Bernice's car was found, quote, on Eastland in Detroit. Her keys were still in the ignition. And there was, quote, a large amount of blood on the front seat. And per law enforcement, there were also bullet shell casings.
Bernice's family was faced with a missing persons case that had taken the most tragic possible turn. And, as Detroit News noted in early January of 1992, there seemed to already be some sense of where the investigation might be headed.
Reporters noted that Bernice's friends were coming forward with stories about her relationship with her boyfriend, saying that he'd proposed and that Bernice had not accepted. There was even the possibility that they'd actually broken up a few weeks prior to her disappearance. Though investigators searched for Bernice, her body was never recovered.
The Gray and Ulmer families were faced with another crisis while the search for her was still ongoing. Their temporary custody of her daughter was in question. Bernice's boyfriend, Robert Pan, wanted their child, but by that point, he was a named suspect in the case, though he had not been formally charged.
Bernice and her cousin Garnett, they came from a large, extended family with deep roots in Michigan and in Canada. Some of Bernice and Garnett's family were or are enrolled members of the Sioux St. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians, which, according to the tribe's official website, quote, is a federally recognized Native American tribe in what is now known as Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Some family did not maintain formal ties but were culturally aware of their relationship to the tribe and their extended relations. This information became vital in the custody dispute that arose concerning Bernice's child. According to both legal records and UPI reports, Bernice's mother, Jean, sought to have the custody hearing for her grandchild moved to the tribal court.
Per the UPI, in October of 1992, almost a year after her death, Bernice and her daughter were enrolled in the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians. Then, in December of the same year, then-Tribal Registrar Linda Smith testified at an initial hearing as to Bernice's great-grandfather's enrollment in the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians and the successive enrollment of Bernice and her daughter.
Bernice's parents were successful. The court ruled that, indeed, Bernice's daughter's case fell under the Indian Child Welfare Act and the case was moved to tribal court. Bernice's parents were granted custody of her daughter, but it would be years before Bernice's case went to court.
Further forensic examination of her car found that, quote, brain matter was evident and that, per Detroit News, police believed that she had died of a bullet wound to the head. But investigators still weren't able to proceed with an arrest.
Meanwhile, Robert Pan was arrested for unrelated violent crimes in the interim. The Detroit Free Press reported that he was, quote, held on $350,000 bond on charges that he tried to beat a St. Clair Shores man to death in June of 1992, about six months after Bernice was last seen.
The Detroit News wrote in November of 1994 that he was charged with the assault of his current girlfriend outside a club they'd both been at. In 1997, Robert was sentenced to six years in prison for beating his wife, a different woman than the girlfriend he'd assaulted in 1994. Per the Detroit Free Press, he'd attacked his wife in April of 1996 and left her badly beaten in her car.
It's plain that, based on media reports, people were reminded of Bernice's death. Robert was described during his trial for domestic abuse as the prime suspect in Bernice's murder. And three years later, it seemed that law enforcement finally felt they had enough to move forward. The Detroit Free Press reported in 2000 that Robert Pan was formally charged in the murder of Bernice Gray.
prosecutors decided to move forward, quote, after realizing that they wouldn't find the body and that further delay would hurt the case. And they were successful. Robert Pan was convicted in January 2001. It had been just over nine years since Bernice dropped her daughter off and never returned.
And now, in 2007, her family, the Lennox branch, and by extension, all of them, were facing it all again with Garnett Lennox. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. She's the self-proclaimed bingo queen of Manila, and I know better to interrupt her on bingo night, even to pick up cash.
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