Indeed.
She has conflicting feelings…she is VERY glad she never has to see Doug again, but also extremely upset about what happened to Lonnie.
We were all hoping it was a case of Lonnie (the wife, aka Alana) dying of natural causes and Doug simply not being able to deal with her death.
I would still be worried shitless.
I tried to ask the police to watch Mrs. Plant’s place of work after the guy tried to rob her there and was caught, guy would never return my call.
chiroptera: Who’s going to play you when this is made for ID Channel?
Yikes. Very sad ending.
Good call on lending your neighbour a dog while she was feeling unsafe. No matter how sweet and harmless, having a dog around can make you feel so much better & safer. I hope your neighbour feels safe now this good-for-nothing is off the streets and that her cats will help cheer her up!
Details slowly leaking out, now.
Johnny LA - LOL I have no idea. But Cher could probably play my neighbor’s part.
**
gracer,** thanks! The dog in particular is a registered therapy dog, in addition to being really fucking noisy when she thinks something’s amiss. Which could be a squirrel, or someone pulling into the neighbor’s driveway a block away, or a meowing cat outside, or, wind, or bugs.
If I may read between the lines given the information in the articles provided:
They first entered the house because it was an emergent situation as reported by the family.
They entered and did what searching they were able to do but could not go further due to the house falling apart around them.
They realized that a cursory search of the house could not be completed and any further search would involve more personnel, equipment and time. Possibly removing or damaging the house further in the process. The time needed to do such a search and the scope goes well beyond what would be allowed under the circumstances. A search warrant was needed.
They probably had a good idea she was dead already.
Search warrants are a pain in the ass and are not as quick as it is on TV.
For the probable cause needed for the search warrant they needed to show she just wanted to get away for a few days. Hence the search of her financial and other records. Each probably requiring another search warrant. Which takes time.
So bottom line, it took time to organize the personnel and equipment needed to safely make the search and it took time to get the warrants to legally do it. If they believed that she probably was dead in there the last thing anyone wanted was for any evidence to be tainted by a bad search. So the house was secured until a safe and legal search could happen.
That’s my educated guess anyway.
Your neighbor is super lucky that the police came to her house when they did. I doubt Doug would have hesitated to kill her, too, if she’d confronted him about the missing money.
Thanks again for the explainer, Loach. That all makes sense. I appreciate your input since this is all so close to home. Detectives are keeping Lonnie’s two daughters informed as the case progresses, and they relay what they know to my neighbor, which is why I’ve included some details in the thread that aren’t being reported.
An interesting twist: apparently Lonnie’s son is currently being held in the county jail as well, on something completely unrelated. If prisoners are all kept in the same general population, does that mean that her son is going to possibly run into his mother’s murderer? Or are prisoners kept in separate areas due to severity of crime, where they are in the sentencing process, and so on?
Merneith, that’s what my neighbor is thinking, too. She is still very scared and sad about this whole thing, even though it’s likely Doug will be incarcerated for the rest of his life for this.
This news story goes into more detail, including video of Doug being incomprehensibleand appearing quite out of it in court. (For those that watch the video, where it sounds as if he is requesting lethal injection, Michigan does not have the death penalty.)
On a related tangent, it appears that many of the players in this whole sad story are/were mentally ill or mentally unstable and have not received help for various reasons. Including Doug, his wife, my neighbor and possibly other family members. This editorial published a couple of days ago makes a strong case for an overhaul of the mental health system in Michigan.