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In 1992 in a small town in Michigan, a woman decided to go for a walk in the woods with her five dogs.
So she and her animals left the house she was staying in and marched across the backyard into the nearby forest, and they began walking.
A few hours later, one of those five dogs suddenly came bounding out of the forest back towards the house, all by itself.
When the woman's family noticed the animal, they knew something was wrong, so they rushed into the woods to see what was going on.
What they would find out there was horrific.
And it would become one of the most sensational crime stories to ever come out of Michigan's remote and mysterious Upper Peninsula.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast, because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
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Okay, let's get into today's story.
It begins here.
From the director of It comes It.
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35-year-old Judy Moilanen checked one more time that her three-year-old daughter was safely buckled into her car seat, and then, with a sigh of relief, Judy climbed into the passenger seat of the van and nodded to her husband Bruce, who was at the wheel, letting him know that they were now ready to go.
The car engine was already on and the inside of the vehicle was nice and warm, and in another minute they had backed down the driveway of their neat brick ranch house directly onto US Route 41.
It was Thanksgiving Day, November 26th 1992, and even now, hours before they would sit down to the traditional turkey dinner and prayer of gratitude, Judy was already feeling a little unaccustomed rush of happiness as she and Bruce headed west along 41 towards Judy's parents' house where they would spend the holiday weekend.
Just two days ago, Judy had wondered if this trip would even be possible.
Here in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula, Thanksgiving is almost overshadowed by the state's two week long deer hunting season that spans the last two weeks of November.
It's a time when the biggest fashion trend is blaze orange, and even visitors to the little town of Harvey, where the Moylanans lived, were more likely to ask each other did you get your buck yet?
Than they were to just wave and say hello.
And on the first day of hunting season, Bruce had managed to bring home a male deer with a good-sized rack of antlers.
But on the drive back to their house after he was finished hunting, Bruce had hit another deer that was crossing the road and that collision had totaled the Moilanen's Subaru station wagon.
And it wasn't until the day just before Thanksgiving that the couple had been able to find and place a down payment on a replacement vehicle large enough to carry all of their luggage as well as their four dogs.
Unlike Judy's job as an assistant hospital administrator at nearby Marquette General Hospital, Bruce's side gig as a dog trainer meant that the family required a car that could accommodate several dog crates as well as three passengers, and the tan Chevrolet van was definitely comfortable as well as roomy.
Within just a few minutes of starting their two and a half hour drive, Elise had already dropped off to sleep.
And with Bruce focused on how their new vehicle handled, Judy had a rare opportunity to just sit there and let her mind wander.
Day to day, Judy's work was very demanding and she put in long hours.
Even coupled with his dog training business and freelance work as an insurance claim adjuster, Bruce's main job as an instrument technician for Marquette General Hospital did not bring in as much money as Judy's regular paycheck.
Not that Judy looked or acted the part of the traditional family breadwinner.
Compared to her husband, who was 6 feet tall, broad-shouldered and 180 pounds, Judy was just 5 foot 4 inches tall, with short curly, light brown hair and a quiet but practical manner.
But behind Judy's oversized glasses, her eyes sparkled when she smiled.
And she smiled a lot, just as she was quick to laugh at other people's jokes.
And although Judy never sought out the social spotlight in fact that kind of attention would have just made her feel uncomfortable Her ability to listen and respond in ways that made others around her shine meant that people just really loved Judy and liked being around her.
And there had always been more to Judy than met the eye.
She adored her parents and her two brothers, and she was looking forward to spending the upcoming weekend chatting comfortably inside the snug family home with her mom and sister-in-law, while Elise played with her cousins.
But, like her younger brothers, Judy was also an outdoors person.
Ever since she could walk, the woods in the back of her parents' home had been Judy's playground.
And growing up in Ontonagon, with a population of just 2000 people and a business district that did not have one single stoplight, there had been plenty of woods, as well as fields and streams, to explore.
And so during that time, Judy had become very comfortable outdoors.
She had also become skilled at handling firearms.
So, in addition to enjoying plenty of time in the kitchen and in front of the fireplace, Judy was also looking forward to getting out in the forest with Bruce and her dad and brothers to do some hunting of their own.
Hunting wasn't the only outdoor sport that Judy was really good at.
She was also an excellent skier.
In fact, it was that passion that had brought her and Bruce together back in 1974, when Judy was 17 and Bruce, who lived in a town even smaller than Ontonoggin, was 20.
But good as Judy was on skis, Bruce was even better.
And at Porcupine Mountain, located right on the edge of Lake Superior.
Bruce's ability and job with the ski patrol conferred a lot of status on a young man whose mother had barely scraped up the money to put food on the table for their four children and whose father spent a lot of time at the local bars.
So at first glance, Judy and Bruce had been an unlikely couple.
Overcoming his difficult childhood, Bruce had grown into a cocky and outgoing young man who never hesitated to speak his mind.
Judy, on the other hand, came from a deeply religious, deeply conservative family whose morals and religious beliefs she shared.
Her parents, Dale and Mary Ann Blake, had been high school sweethearts whose first child Judy, had been born when Mary Ann was 21.
Together, and for the last 40 years the Blakes had owned and operated their own small automobile and oil business called Dale's Service.
And as the Blake family grew with the arrival of Judy's two brothers, Mary Ann had supplemented their income with her job at First National Bank in Ontonagon and then with the job she held now at Lake Superior Credit Union.
But when it came to Judy's social life, even without her parents' tendency to be overprotective of their only daughter, Judy herself preferred reading and arts and crafts to parties and dating, just as she would have chosen a good piece of pie and a cold glass of milk over a bottle of beer and a bowl of peanuts.
But when Judy and Bruce both wound up attending Northern Michigan University in Marquette at the same time, the attraction between them was irresistible.
And on June 24 1978, four years after meeting on the slopes of Porcupine Mountain, Bruce and Judy were married.
Afterward, the couple stayed in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but they moved 120 miles east to Harvey.
Once there, Judy established her career at the nearby Marquette General Hospital.
Bruce, who started out in healthcare as an emergency medical technician, eventually took the instrument technician job at Marquette General Hospital.
Along the way Bruce had established North County Claims Service, a small independent insurance business, and Big Creek Kennels.
And 11 years after exchanging their wedding vows, the couple had added to the ranks of the Blake and Moylanen families with the birth of their first and so far only child Elise, now napping soundly in the backseat of the 1987 Chevrolet van.
Just the thought of her daughter always made Judy smile.
And ever since Judy had suffered a serious concussion in a freak accident the year before, she had been reminded all over again about the importance of family and friends.
She knew how happy her own parents would be to have their adult children plus all six grandchildren together under one roof for this holiday weekend.
Not to mention the added excitement of four extra dogs, all Springer Spaniels.
Just like her parents' dogs Streak.
But even as Judy looked forward to the Blake family reunion and good food that now lay just two hours ahead of them in a hometown that she had always loved, she could not entirely ignore that sense of dread that had become so familiar to her, and it was just not a feeling that she had been able to share with her family or with Bruce.
He was handy around the house, great about taking care of Elise when Judy's work days stretched to 12 hours, and he was also a better cook than she was.
But discussing and exploring their innermost thoughts was not one of his strengths.
Looking over at her husband now, his big, familiar hands firmly on the wheel, Judy reminded herself that this was not the time to worry.
This was the time for her and Bruce to relax, take stock of their lives and blessings and spend time together over the long weekend.
And sure enough, after Thursday's wonderful Thanksgiving celebration, Judy and Bruce were able to put in two full days of hunting together while Elise enjoyed the attention of her grandmother and Mary Ann's own mother, Elise's great grandmother, Nimi.
So on Friday, while Judy's brothers headed for their deer camp about 16 miles south, Bruce and Judy decided to try their luck at a hunting spot even further away.
But at Dishnought Creek their attempts to drive deer out of cover were unsuccessful, and so were the hours they spent sitting quietly in small camouflage shacks called blinds.
So, by late afternoon, Judy was ready to call it a day.
The falling darkness and the sound of howling coyotes suddenly made her wish she was back at home, instead of growing stiff with cold in these unfamiliar woods.
But even as she stepped out of her blind to call out to Bruce, from behind her there was the sound of a gunshot.
Down a small hill and across the creek in front of her.
Bruce was so alarmed by the sudden noise he practically leapt out of his blind, hoping it was Judy who had fired at a deer.
Instead, he saw his wife approaching through the dark just carrying her flashlight, not her rifle.
The shot had been so close to where Judy was standing that the whole episode shook both of them.
It was a reminder of just how dangerous hunters could be, not just to the wildlife but to other hunters.
After that, Judy and Bruce abandoned their blinds and headed back to their van.
The next morning, which was Saturday, the couple felt much better, and so Bruce and Judy did not need any persuading to go hunting again, but this time they decided to go with other family members rather than striking out on their own again.
Especially with hunting season about to close, everyone knew there were bound to be some hunters out in the woods who were going to be shooting at anything just to get that last buck.
And by the time Judy woke up on Sunday morning, her only regret of the weekend was that her four-day holiday was just hours from being over.
She and Bruce had both come back empty-handed from hunting the day before.
But better that, Judy thought, than just wounding a deer.
That's what had happened to her cousin Mike, who had asked Bruce to get up early that morning and go back into the woods to see if they could find this wounded deer and put it out of its misery.
As for Judy, while Bruce was out hunting, dropping in on some friends and running errands before their return trip that evening back to Harvey, Judy was content to stay home with her sisters-in-law, her mom and grandma Nimi.
After her mother had served up their traditional post-Thanksgiving lunch of turkey casserole, Judy was also glad to have the chance to give her mom a break.
So after everyone had finished eating, Judy urged her mother to take some time alone in her little office to relax and catch up on some bookkeeping for work, while Judy cleaned up and did the dishes.
By about 1.15pm, Judy had the kitchen and dining room all squared away.
Hanging the dish towel on its usual hook.
Judy glanced at her watch and decided that now was a good time for her to take the five dogs out for their afternoon walk.
Her younger brother Jerry, and his family, who lived four hours away in Wisconsin, were planning to leave on Tanagin by 230, so Judy had just about an hour before she needed to be back with the dogs.
As Judy pulled on her blacked-down jacket, her parent's dog Streak was practically dancing with excitement at the signs that he was about to go outside.
But it was the four much more obedient Moylanen dogs kenneled outside who really needed the exercise.
They were the ones with a long night of travel ahead.
Judy didn't bother with a leash.
This was 1992 and the Upper Peninsula, and dogs were free to run around.
A few minutes later, Judy called out a goodbye to her mom and opened the door to step out into the thick woods just beyond the edge of her parents' backyard.
As she did, she pulled her coat tighter around herself.
Not only was it already below freezing outside, but the air was so damp it felt even colder, and the afternoon clouds completely blocked the sun.
An hour later at 2.15 p.m., Jerry and his wife had their car all packed and ready to go.
The only thing they had left to do was to wait for Judy, so they could say their final goodbyes before heading home.
And that is when the Blakes looked out the back window of the kitchen and saw Streak come running out of the woods, tongue lolling and tail wagging.
Except that Streak was all alone.
Judy and the other four dogs were nowhere to be seen.
By 4pm, Judy's mother knew there was something wrong.
For the past hour and a half, Marianne had been telling herself that Streak, who was not nearly as well trained as Judy and Bruce's dogs, must have just decided it was time to go home, and Judy was probably still out in the woods, thinking Streak was out there too lost, or just wandering around.
But by 4.20, Marianne knew she was clutching at straws.
There was just no way that Judy would stay out this long walking the dogs or looking for Streak, and no way she would have missed saying goodbye to Jerry and his family.
So, with Bruce and Marianne's husband and her other son and his family all out of the house, Marianne decided to leave little Elise with her great-grandma Nimi and go find Judy herself.
And minutes later, Marianne was at the door putting on her coat and boots.
But Marianne's first attempt to find her daughter failed.
In fact, when Marianne had blown the dog whistle, she brought with her the sight of the four dogs running in her direction, and still no sign of Judy had only served to turn Marianne's sense of worry into outright fear.
And by the time she had managed to get the dogs back in their kennels and return to the woods, Mary Ann was on the verge of tears.
So she didn't hesitate when her neighbor, Bill Dorvanen, who had seen the older woman picking her way into the woods, offered to help with the search and, grabbing his flashlight, Bill now led the two of them deeper into the woods.
It was about 5 p.m., and the sun was just 10 minutes away from setting when Bill saw Judy's body.
Mary Ann's only daughter was right in front of them, lying across the trail on her left side, her eyes open and blank in the glare of the flashlight.
Judy's head was resting on a slight rise and her feet were partly submerged in a pool of icy water.
When Bill carefully turned Judy over onto her back, her arms fell to either side.
And a moment later both Bill and, behind him, Mary Ann could see that Judy's upper right chest was completely soaked in dark red blood.
It didn't take long for the local sheriff's deputy and emergency medical technicians who had responded to Bill's 911 call to confirm what Bill and a hysterical Marianne already knew that Judy was dead.
In fact, by the time those first responders had reached the scene, at about 520 pm, Judy's body was already showing signs of rigor mortis, a stiffening of her limbs that suggested Judy may have already been dead for as long as three and a half hours.
Before the medics removed Judy's body, Sheriff's Deputy Tom Cusino had done the best he could to gather any evidence of what might have happened to Judy.
Even though it looked like a tragic hunting accident, law enforcement would still need to find out exactly what happened and who may have fired the stray bullet that had killed Judy.
But even though the deputy had made sure to take plenty of pictures of Judy's body and the surrounding area, all he could really see were scattered leaves and dog prints.
And he already knew from talking to the Blake's neighbor that one critical piece of evidence the original position of the victim's body had already been compromised when Bill had shifted Judy's body to check for signs of life.
Now, after taking Marianne to stay with another neighbor, Bill had rejoined the deputy and told him everything that Marianne had said about why she was out in the woods looking for her daughter in the first place, how Judy's walk with the dogs had lasted far too long and how Streak had come without Judy.
In answer to the deputy's questions, Bill said no, this was not an area where people generally went hunting.
It was too populated and too close to the eight or nine families, like the Blakes and Dorbinons, that lived right behind the woods on Cherry Lane.
Then, together with one of the ambulance drivers, all three men used flashlights to search for any sign of the bullet or bullets that had nearly ripped Judy's body in half.
It seemed likely that the shot had come from a rifle, a type of gun that ejects its spent shell casings after firing.
But after tramping around in the woods in the dark, the search did not turn up either a casing or a bullet.
And so, after marking the area for further investigation by 6pm, Deputy Cassino was ready to give the order for Judy's body to be removed from the scene, placed in the ambulance and transported to the county morgue that was located inside Marquette General Hospital.
Deputy Cusino already knew that the 12-person Ontonagon Sheriff's Department, which did not include crime scene techs, would have to get help from the state to investigate Judy's death.
And that call for assistance went out to State Police Sergeant Detective Bill Ball at about 640 pm, a little over five hours after Judy had left her parents' home to go walk the dogs.
After getting the message that a woman had been found dead out in back of Cherry Lane in Ontonagon, 67 miles to the south, the 21-year veteran investigator immediately hopped into his cruiser.
And an hour and a quarter later, Detective Ball was standing in the Ontonagon Sheriff's Department listening intently to Deputy Cassino summarize what law enforcement had found and done so far.
Detective Ball had a well-earned reputation for not making assumptions about the cases he worked on and for being tenacious about gathering the facts he felt he needed before reaching any conclusions.
So, after going to view Judy's body in the morgue, the investigator did not immediately agree with the deputy medical examiner's suggestion that, like most shootings in the Upper Peninsula during deer hunting season, this death was accidental.
And even if it turned out to be accidental Detective Ball, intended to find out how it had happened and whose bullet had actually killed Judy.
So, even though it was now pitch dark, Detective Ball, along with eight other members of local law enforcement, including the sheriff and deputy casino, headed back into the woods behind the Blake house where Judy's body had been found.
And this time using higher-powered flashlights.
The searchers found something that the deputy's earlier search had missed.
About 37 feet west of where Judy's body had been found.
The sheriff was standing under a maple tree and pointing upwards with his flashlight at a fresh horizontal scar in the tree bark.
Looking at that mark, both the sheriff and the detective knew they had just gotten their first potential break in the case.
Because if that slash on the tree had been made by the bullet that killed Judy, then maybe they could figure out the bullet's trajectory and find the bullet as well as a spent shell casing.
That would help them identify what kind of weapon killed Judy.
Detective Ball decided to order tracking dogs out at the scene for 9 am the next morning, but in the meantime, at about 1030 pm, the detective decided it was time to talk with the grieving family.
Deputy Cassino, who had informed the Blakes and Judy's husband at about 5 pm that Judy had been killed, now joined the detective and a few minutes later the two men were walking out of the woods towards the Blakes' home on Cherry Lane.
Looking up at the lighted windows of the house in front of him.
Detective Ball was already especially interested in one particular person Judy's husband Bruce.
Because in every case involving the death of a wife or husband, the first suspect is always the spouse.
A few minutes later, the investigators were seated at the Blake's kitchen table.
Judy's mother, Mary Ann, had been given a sedative to control her hysteria, so the investigators conducted their initial interview with only three family members.
Judy's father, Dale, her brother, David, who lived with his family in Ontonagon, and with Bruce.
According to Deputy Cassino, Bruce had been dumbfounded by the news of his wife's death, and one of his first questions to the deputy had been to ask if his wife had been wearing a blaze orange when she was found in the woods.
After being told no, Bruce had leaned his forehead against the hospital wall and gently pounded his fists into its hard surface.
Looking now at the stunned faces staring back at him from across the table.
Detective Ball kept his questions short and to the point.
He was just here to collect first impressions, find out when Judy was last seen and to find out where each of these people he was speaking to were earlier that afternoon.
By the time he left the house a half hour later, Detective Ball knew one thing for sure.
Every person at that table appeared to have a solid alibi for the four and a half hour window between the time Judy left the house to walk the dogs and the time when her body was discovered.
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On Tuesday, December 1st, one day after the end of Michigan's deer hunting season and two days after Judy's death, one of Michigan's biggest newspapers ran a story with the headline Deer Season Gets Safer.
In that article, which attributed four deaths and 25 injuries to hunting accidents in the 1992 season that had just come to an end, Judy's death was listed as a possible fifth accidental fatality, but one that was currently being investigated by local and state law enforcement.
Ontanagan's sheriff was quoted in the paper as appealing to anyone with information to please come forward.
And one day later, on Wednesday December 2nd, the day of Judy's funeral service in Ontanagan, Detective Ball received a phone call from the police department in Marquette, where Judy lived and worked.
An officer there was passing along information from an anonymous caller, information that made Detective Ball decide it was time to head for Marquette to take a closer look into Judy's work life as well as her personal life.
In the meantime, local officers were able to pinpoint the likely time of Judy's death to about 2 pm.
That's the time that several residents in the area had each heard a single gunshot coming from the woods behind Cherry Lane on November 29th.
Detective Ball also had officers check out other leads possible criminals who had recently been released from police custody, reports of unidentified or strange people in the area where Judy was found and reports of anyone in that area who was seen carrying firearms.
In addition, assuming now that Judy had been killed at around 2pm, Detective Ball ordered officers to double-check every alibi provided to them by Judy's husband father, brothers and cousins, along with the alibis of any other family member who was not actually inside of the Blake household when Judy was shot.
But it was Detective Ball's decision to call in an Ontanagan civilian to assist in the investigation that would eventually give police their first real breakthrough.
Armed with his metal detector.
42-year-old Dan Castle had earned a reputation among Ontonagon law enforcement for being able to recover hard-to-find evidence lost in the Upper Peninsula's dense forests.
Now, on Thursday December 3rd, Dan Castle was standing with Detective Voll and Deputy Cassino at the exact place behind Cherry Lane where Judy's body had been discovered.
A chemical wash applied to the blaze mark on the maple tree 37 feet away had revealed the presence of lead, a metal that is commonly found in bullets.
Dan, with a passion for finding buried treasure, had the difficult, if not impossible, assignment of finding the bullet that had passed through Judy's body and then ricocheted off of that tree five days earlier.
And while Dan was looking for that bullet, Detective Ball headed for Marquette County, where the Moilanans lived and worked.
If Judy's death had not been an accident, the detective needed to find out who might have wanted her dead and why.
It didn't take long for the state police investigator to realize that the anonymous caller had been right.
Judy's life and Judy's past were much more complicated than Bruce and her family had led them to believe.
Judy's coworkers and supervisors at the Marquette General Hospital would soon tell detectives why it had taken almost two weeks for the Moilanans to replace the station wagon Bruce had totaled on the first day of hunting season.
According to the rumor mill, Judy was facing some serious financial issues, and just scraping together 500 for a down payment on the five-year-old replacement van had been a big challenge.
It would also turn out that Judy had recently contacted several of her creditors to ask about restructuring her loans.
And when the bank turned down her application to refinance the couple's mortgage, Judy had mentioned to one of her coworkers that she and Bruce might be facing bankruptcy.
But, aside from learning about the Moilanen's financial problems, when it came to suspects in what could either be an accident or murder, the investigation seemed to be hitting one dead end after another.
None of the reports of other hunters or suspicious people in or near the place where Judy died had turned up any viable leads.
As for Judy's husband and other family members, police had not been able to find any hard evidence that would link any of them to Judy's death.
Not only had Judy's husband Bruce, prepared a list of people who could verify his whereabouts on November 29th, he had also willingly signed off on a consent to search form.
That form gave police permission to examine and inventory Bruce's collection of firearms, as well as examine Judy's various life insurance policies, the payoff from which could have provided a motive for Bruce to kill his wife.
It would not be until mid-December that the state police investigator would get a series of tips that together would break the case wide open.
The first of those tips came from Dan Castle up in Ontonagon.
For nine frustrating days.
All Dan had found in the woods behind Cherry Lane were bottle caps and old coins.
But on Sunday, December 13th, exactly two weeks after Judy was shot, Dan decided that, before giving up the search for the bullet, he would try a simple physics experiment to pinpoint exactly where the bullet might have come to Earth.
So trading his metal detector for a slingshot and a pocket full of marbles.
Dan stood in the exact location where Judy's body had been found and stooped to what he guessed would have been a point level with Judy's chest where the bullet likely entered her body.
Once in this position, Dan fired marble after marble at the blaze mark on the maple tree, and each time the marble ricocheted off the blaze he made a careful note of where the marble landed.
Once he had a cluster of marbles all in the same general area, Dan pocketed his slingshot and again took up his metal detector.
And sure enough, in that area, where the marbles had clustered just 77 feet away from the maple tree and buried under a two-inch layer of snow, Dan discovered a fresh bullet lying on top of the dead leaves that blanketed the ground.
Dan grabbed his radio and an hour later, Detective Ball was standing in the woods with Dan, both of them looking down at this critical new piece of evidence.
And when the Marquette State Police Crime Lab ballistics expert arrived for work the next morning, Detective Ball was there waiting, sealed evidence bag in hand.
And before the day was out, Detective Ball had two more important pieces of information.
Crime tech experts had confirmed the 30 caliber bullet that Dan had recovered had in fact killed Judy.
Embedded inside the bullet were not only traces of wood from the maple tree, but also fibers from the jacket and shirt that Judy had been wearing the day she was shot.
The analysis also showed that Judy's death was no accident.
According to the ballistics expert, the bullet was still rising as it passed through Judy's body before ricocheting off the maple tree, which meant it had been fired not from some great distance away, but at close range, and by someone who had put the sights of their guns squarely on Judy's chest.
And by the end of that day, the lab had also provided Detective Ball with a list of guns that could have fired a 30 caliber bullet and left distinctive markings that matched the ones they found on this particular bullet.
On the same day that Dan Castle had discovered the bullet that killed Judy, Detective Ball received a final tip from a hospital administrator at Portage Hospital in Hancock Michigan, about two hours north of Marquette General Hospital, where Judy also had a job in hospital administration.
36-year-old Gail Lampinen wanted to talk with police about a person who she claimed had been stalking her and who also might have a connection to Judy's death.
Two weeks later, Detective Ball would hear a similar story about the same stalker from another hospital employee, Judy's good childhood friend, Leanne Wysocki, who was employed as a nurse at Marquette General Hospital.
But it wasn't until Gail opened a box of sweaters that this stalker had given her as a gift that the police were able to connect all this information together to finally uncover the identity of the person who killed Judy Moylanen, and what they discovered would become one of the most sensational crime stories to ever come out of Michigan's remote and mysterious Upper Peninsula.
Based on Detective Ball's investigation into the information provided by these two women, Here is a recreation of what happened to Judy Moylanen on the last day of her life, Sunday afternoon, November 29th 1992.
After spending the morning inside the house helping her mother prepare the traditional Sunday after Thanksgiving lunch of turkey casserole and then washing up the dishes afterward, Judy was glad for the chance to get outside and take all five dogs for a walk in the woods that she loved.
Even though Streak was not as well trained as the Moylanen's dogs, Judy figured he would stay with the pack as they walked.
And if he didn't, Judy knew there was only one place Streak would go, and that was home to her parents' house.
As Judy let her dogs out of their kennels behind the house, she pulled her black down coat a little tighter around her.
Even after the scare she and Bruce had had when they were out hunting on Friday at Dishnah Creek, when that bullet from behind them had come so close to where Judy stood near her hunting blind Judy still hadn't bothered to put on a blaze orange safety vest for this walk with the dogs.
Unlike Dishnaw Creek, the woods she now stepped into were too close to the houses on Cherry Lane to attract any hunters.
And so, as Judy and the dogs stepped into the woods, the bright pink of her shirt collar was quickly swallowed up among the trees.
But to Judy's killer it wouldn't have mattered if the 35-year-old mother was wearing an entire outfit of blaze orange.
Because the murderer was not hiding in the woods that afternoon to hunt.
The murderer, who was maybe just 50 yards from the path Judy was most likely to follow, was there to kill.
And at this distance, hitting Judy was going to be an easy shot.
And when it was all over, the murderer was confident that it would look like just another tragic deer hunting accident.
Stray bullets had been known to travel so far in these woods that the hunters who fired them would have no idea that they might have struck a human and not a deer.
And besides, Judy already appeared to be a very accident-prone person.
She had a five-inch-long scar on her head from a concussion that happened a year earlier, and after that there had been a fire in the Moilanen house.
That could have done some serious damage if the smell of smoke hadn't caused Judy to wake up and put the fire out.
And whatever the risks, once this was done, once the killer had gotten rid of Judy, the killer would then be able to concentrate on two other women, Gail Lampinen and Leanne Wysocki.
The first time Judy passed by the killer's hideout, the killer only raised their rifle and aimed, placing the sights on Judy's chest but not pulling the trigger.
This trail led to a field where the dogs could run, and then Judy would pass this way again on her way back to her parents' house.
Better to wait, so anyone back at the house wouldn't connect the sound of a shot to Judy just having left for her walk.
Sure enough, a few minutes after 2pm the killer could hear Judy and the dogs once again approaching the killer's hiding place.
This time, when the killer leveled their sights on the side of Judy's chest, they pulled the trigger.
The gunshot seemed to echo like a bolt of thunder through the quiet woods, and one of the dogs immediately broke from the pack and ran in the direction of the Blake house on Cherry Lane.
Even as the killer ran through the woods to the nearby empty lot where they had parked their vehicle.
The killer knew they'd been lucky.
Instead of giving chase, the other four dogs just stayed right where they were.
As the medical examiner's report would later show, the single bullet that killed Judy entered her body just under her right armpit, before exiting through her left rear shoulder, ricocheting off the maple tree 37 feet away and landing in the sodden leaves where Dan Castle would discover it 14 days later.
On its way through the soft tissues of Judy's chest cavity, the bullet basically tore off the top of Judy's heart.
After the bullet had struck and killed Judy, she fell on her side at a right angle to the trail, her head on a slight rise and her feet in a pool of icy water.
All four of her dogs would stay close to her body for another two hours.
That's when Judy's mother would also walk into the woods looking for Judy and blow the dog whistle that finally called the dogs home.
There was nothing Judy's killer could do to retrieve the bullet they had fired.
But the killer had made sure to collect the spent shell casing before leaving the woods.
Later, the killer would use a torch to destroy the gun and shell casing before disposing of the weapon in the nearby Ford River.
On December 13th, 14 days after Judy's murder, Gail Lampinen decided to open the five boxes that had been left on her doorstep the day before.
Happily married, Gail had already confided to her husband about the unwanted attention she had been receiving at work and now apparently, at home.
But looking down at the pile of cardboard boxes at her feet, Gail was forced to admit that unwanted attention was an understatement.
This looked more like the behavior of a full-blown stalker.
Taking the first box into her bedroom, Gail opened it and looked inside.
Neatly folded and packed.
She saw a collection of women's sweaters in various styles and colors, But as Gail took each sweater out of the box, she realized they were not new sweaters.
And a moment later, she pulled out a piece of yellow-lined notepaper.
It was a letter addressed to her, dated six months earlier, and it was signed by Judy Moylanen, a woman, as Gail well knew, who was now dead.
Gail had hardly finished reading the note before her hand was on the telephone.
And a few minutes later she was connected to Detective Ball's office, where she left a detailed message for the investigator.
The letter may have been signed by Judy Moilanen, but there was no doubt in Gail's mind who the real author was.
It was the same man who had left those boxes, the same man who had been sending her suggestive cards and notes, stopping by her office and showing up unannounced at the Lampinen house.
It was, in fact, the same man who had been bragging to her just a few days ago that before long he'd be quitting his job as a technician at Marquette General Hospital thanks to a financial windfall that was about to make him a very wealthy man.
And when Detective Ball returned to his office and called Gale back, he could practically hear the last few pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
It would take months to prove their case, But Detective Ball and his team of investigators now had the bullet, the gun, the motive and the evidence they needed to bring Bruce Moilanen, Judy's husband and killer, to justice.
It would turn out the Moilanen's financial problems could all be traced to Bruce's poor money management, bad business decisions and potentially fraudulent activity involving his insurance company.
North County Claims Service.
But Judy had only recently become aware of just how bad their money situation was.
It was only when the couple's application to refinance their home was turned down that Judy had called the bank and realized that, because of Bruce's money mismanagement, The family was facing possible bankruptcy and legal action.
And as Judy confided to a close friend.
Over the following weeks Judy was learning more and more things about Bruce that made her scared and unhappy.
Meanwhile, when Judy confronted Bruce about their precarious financial situation, Bruce became convinced that Judy would divorce him and take half of all of his assets.
To Bruce, a much better option was to kill his wife and make it look like an accident.
And while Bruce had insisted to police that the payout on Judy's insurance policies could hardly amount to more than $40,000, when police had searched Bruce's house in mid-December, they realized he was lying.
While no single insurance policy on Judy was worth a fortune, Bruce had made sure he had taken out multiple policies on his wife.
Hidden in an attic crawlspace in the Moylanen house, Detective Ball had found a whole packet of those policies.
And in the event of an accidental death, when the payout doubled like a deer hunting fatality.
When you added all the policies together, Bruce stood to walk away from Judy's death with a total of more than 300000, an amount that would be worth 637000 in 2022.
The Moylanans' paperwork also revealed that, in addition to a financial motive for wanting Judy dead, Bruce did in fact own a rifle that could have fired the fatal bullet that Dan Castle recovered.
Listed as one of Bruce's assets on a loan application was a Remington 300 Savage, one of the weapons that the state crime lab said could have caused the distinctive riflings on the bullet that killed Judy.
As for Bruce's alibi, he lied about that too.
And once police interviewed every person on Bruce's list, they realized Bruce could not account for where he was between 145 and 245 on the afternoon that Judy was killed.
But even though recent financial problems may have pushed Bruce and Judy to the breaking point, serious problems in the marriage had shown up at least two years earlier.
That's when Bruce met Gail Lampinen at Portage Hospital when he was making a delivery there.
Known throughout the hospitals in the area as an aggressive and awkward flirt.
Bruce seemed to have fallen especially hard for Gail, even though she and her husband did their best to discourage Bruce from visiting and calling Gail.
And once Judy was dead, Bruce launched an all-out romantic assault on Gail, one so obvious it prompted that first anonymous tip to police in Marquette, in which the caller reported that Bruce was stalking a hospital employee.
As for the letter Gail had found enclosed with the boxes of sweaters Bruce had dropped off at the Lampinen house Bruce, writing as Judy, told Gail that the couple had grown apart and would soon be getting a divorce, and that Bruce would need Gail's help in finding a new partner, a woman exactly like Gail herself.
But even without the handwriting analysis that confirmed Bruce was the author of the so-called sweater letter, it was the postscript at the end of the note that convinced Gail that Bruce had written the letter as a way of speaking directly to her.
Quote, PS, don't tell the prospects, but believe it or not, Bruce is incredible in the sack.
Not that Gale was the only target of Bruce's unwanted advances.
The day after Judy's funeral, Bruce also started hitting on Judy's best childhood friend, Leanne Wysocki, a nurse at Marquette General Hospital, even going so far as to suggest that she might want to move in with him and three-year-old Elise.
And, as Leanne reported to Detective Ball in late December, Bruce had told Leanne details about the shooting that had not been made public and that only Judy's killer would know, like exactly how the bullet had entered Judy's body just when her arm was swinging back, and how it was the perfect timing of that shot that resulted in the massive internal injuries that killed his wife.
It would also turn out that Bruce may have made two earlier attempts on Judy's life.
Back in 1991, so a year before Judy was killed, he apparently pushed an 85-pound chimney block off the roof of their house onto Judy's head.
If the block had not glanced off of her head, Judy likely would have died, rather than sustaining a severe concussion that put her in the hospital for three days with no memory of what had happened to her and a five-inch gash on her scalp.
A few months after that, Judy woke up one morning and found the house full of smoke.
It would turn out that, before leaving to go hunting, while Judy and Elise were still both asleep, Bruce had dropped live embers from the wood stove onto a pile of dry firewood in the basement.
But despite the growing mountain of circumstantial evidence against him, it wasn't until Bruce failed a lie detector test and police showed him a copy of the sweater letter that he had written to Gail that Judy's husband finally confessed to killing his wife.
On April 23 1993, five months after Judy's death, Bruce told investigators and later Judy's own brother David, that Bruce just couldn't take it anymore and suddenly went nuts.
He told Detective Ball that, in addition to threatening him with divorce, Judy had been a tyrant whose long work days forced Bruce to do more than his fair share of the cooking and childcare.
As for the timing of Judy's murder, Bruce said that it was just a lucky guess that Judy would go out that afternoon to walk the dogs.
He said that the first time Judy had passed him on the path in the woods that he just couldn't bring himself to shoot her.
And then on her return trip, he said he aimed the rifle once and then lowered it and then raised it one more time, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.
On December 15th, 1993, Bruce Moylanen was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder.
He would later be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The only time Bruce showed any emotion during his trial was when Gail Lampinen took the stand to testify against him, at which point Bruce began to sob uncontrollably.
Judy's brother David Blake and his wife Yvonne adopted and raised the Moylanen's little girl Elise.
Judy's mother, Marianne Blake, died at the age of 71 on November 29, 2007 exactly 15 years to the day that her only daughter was murdered.
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