Erik Cross was a 16-year-old boy from Vicksburg Michigan. In 1983 Erik was brutally murdered after walking home from a party. Erik's family and friends are still waiting for justice to be served.
Erik Cross was a 16-year-old boy from Vicksburg Michigan. In 1983 Erik was brutally murdered after walking home from a party. Erik's family and friends are still waiting for justice to be served.
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the
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case is closed on their end, but it's back in the hands of the county Sheriff Calendar County sheriff to get a couple of things that they need to finish the case. And then they let us know that if the mistake wasn't made by the Kalamazoo County prosecutor's office over the years that several years ago, this entire group of suspects would have been imprisoned, all
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of
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them. And they did say they actually have enough right now to go to court, to arrest, to prosecute. But they want to make sure that there's no issue when it comes to a jury making a decision. So this case is that close and again now or in year 37. On June 26 it will be 37 years since they murdered aircraft.
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Hello and welcome to Crime Belly. In today's episode, I will be discussing and 1983 murder case from Michigan. This case has had many twists and turns, and older remains open. There is great hope that it will be prosecuted in the very near future. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time talking to a lady involved with the case and her name is Missy Hatfield. You'll hear my interview with Missy threaded throughout this episode. It was Saturday, the 25th of June. The year was 1983. Electric Avenue, every breath you take and David Bowie's Let's Stands were all top of the Billboard charts at the Movies. Superman three Staying Alive and Star Wars. Return of the Jedi were playing for the summer crowds and in using events. Space Shuttle Challenge I's launched on its maiden voyage, Microsoft Word is released, and Ethiopia is facing large scale food shortages after years of civil war and drought. In Kalamazoo County, Michigan, in the town of Vicksburg, 16 year old Eric Cross was getting ready to attend the graduation party areas. Little Sister Jackie remembers watching him brush his hair as the song The Look of Love played on the radio. Neither Eric nor Jackie were aware that these would be their last few moments together. I'm sure that everyone listening has heard of a multitude of cold cases, which is still waiting to see closure. The families and friends of these victims have had their grief, anxiety and pain drawn out for years while they wait for justice and hopefully the answers that come with it. For Jackie, though, the weight would consume part of her childhood and stretch on for decades after that, Jackie's father had passed away in 2007 and now the legacy that was finding closure and justice for Eric was left to Jackie and her mother, Mary Lou. In 2010 Jackie had an idea. Why not set up a Facebook page for her brother? It would be a place for those who had known and loved area to share their happy memories off him. A place to be nostalgic can remember happier times. Eric's new Facebook page was saved, hundreds of follows, and soon the questions began. People who had grown up in the town of Vicksburg, Michigan, many of whom were now in their forties, was shocked. Eric's case is still unsolved. How is that possible? Everyone knew who did it. These adults looked back on their teenage memories from the summer of 1983. They remembered that after Eric's death, the whole town was about the talk. He certainly could not have gone back to Vicksburg High after the summer break and not heard all about Eric, the party and the group of teens who now walk the hallways as if nothing had happened, that dream as if nothing had happened at all. Eriks Tailing Cross, was born on the 25th of September 1966 in Flint, Michigan. Eric was the firstborn to Ted and Mary Lou Cross, and within four years Eric became a big brother to a sister named Jackie. The cross family was complete, and for the next 12 years that would contend their family. And it was a close one. You only need to look at family photos to see that there are pictures of shoe happiness on Christmas morning of holidays by the lake and of teenagers cuddling family pits. And perhaps the most telling photos are those that show Eric and Jackie being cheeky and hamming it up for the camera while a tolerant Ted looks on in the autumn of 1980 to Eric and his family had moved from Grand Blank, Michigan to Vicksburg, Michigan. Ted's job had been the reason for the move on the cross Family settled into a comfortable family home on a statewide Dr Eric started at Vicksburg High School is a sophomore Eric was described. It's friendly and outdoorsy teenager who just wanted to make new friends. He seemed bonded with another sophomore by the name of Bill Cook. Bill was dating a girl by the name of Mai Brit. Sporting and May British had an older brother named Brent, who was a senior. At the time of Eric's move, Brent scolding was dating a sophomore named Amber Thomas. As Eric and Bill started to spend more time together, Eric was exposed more and more to build circle of friends. Well, Amber was quite popular. Brent was saying. A someone tow, avoid rumor had it that he was a bully who could make your life difficult if you crossed him.
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Since that's where I was bullied and picked on by Brent and shoved into the pot machines. And there was another situation where I witnessed it in first thing in the morning, I would I was coming out of one class in an upstairs hallway because we had four hallways, Um, maybe 102 103 104 100 hallways. So I was in the 200 hallway, which is the closest to the parking lot closest to the school office, Um, coming out of class after the end of the first hour and all of a sudden there's a fight in the hallway to the point where my I remember my teacher actually putting me pushing me, me and a couple of people back and said, Stay here or get back in the classroom because they were trying to keep us from getting hurt. And there were these boys rattling and somebody had jumped another guy. And after the three male teachers kind of pulled people off of each other, it was Brent on top of Eric again. And, you know, we're like, what just happened here? And, um, someone said, Well, Amber and Brent, Amber and Eric had this class together. They were walking out of the classroom and Brent was already in the hallway and he saw them just, you know, a couple of kids in a class talking and just joking about whatever. You know, something simple. It wasn't like this in deep conversation or something that he walked up on, Um, and there were other kids involved in the conversation. But that was enough to trigger Brent to attack Eric as usual, and he attacked him, and it took these other male teachers to pull him off of Eric, and that was another situation with bowling. And then there was another situation where, back in 1983 we had what was called a smoker's pit in like 85. They obviously band that removed that and you couldn't do that anymore. But in 1983 of the where the smoker's pit and what that was was, if you were in high school and you smoke, you could walk across the parking lot out past the tennis courts, and there was just this little tiny gravel area under the trees and you could smoke there and then come back to come back from lunch or whatever. But it was like lunchtime is the only time. Typically, people would be there, and Eric went to walk out there one day because his friend Bill, he was looking for him and and they said, Hey, you know he's out there. So he went out to the smoker's pit and there were a bunch of guys. They're always and Brent was one of them. And, um, when Eric walked up, Brent just started just harassing him and calling him a lot of derogatory words that people use to describe. Um, you know, nowadays, they wouldn't totally be unacceptable. Back then, they were just thrown around like anything else, and they were words that you would describe and someone from the LGBT community and, um, a couple of guys stepped in and said, You know what? Leave him alone. He's not hurting you. He just wants to come out and hang out with his friends. He's trying to make friends, and I was really proud after when I've talked to the guys that were actually involved in this situation because they took, they stood up for him and, ah, lot of people. A lot of guys did stand up to him to Brett about Eric because they're like he's the new kid leading Malone. He's just trying to fit in and find his niche. You know, these guys stop Brent from harassing him, but Bill Cook was whispering at that time, too, and building do anything
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when school finished in the summer holidays roll around. One of the main events for the students of Vicksburg High School was a graduation party that was being held on Saturday, June the 25th kids from far and wide wanted to attend that party. An age didn't seem to be much of a factor. The keg party was being held at the Lake House that was less animal from Eric's harm. Ted and Mary Lou had no idea that Eric had made plans to go. It was not something that they would have allowed being that Eric was only 16. That night, while others in the town of Vicksburg were winding down for the evening, a group of 300 plus teenagers was attending the much anticipated cake party. Toodle is must have seemed like a small price to pay for a night of alcohol and fun. The Knight rode on, and in the early morning hours of Sunday, the 26 Ted Cross was briefly rows from he sleep when he had the front door, Rachael still half asleep. Ted looked at the time when his alarm clock and realized that it must be Eric letting himself in the house. The next morning, Ted and Mary Lou were working around 5 a.m. to the sound of a car. The car was loud. It sounded like there was something wrong with the Mufleh, The car pulled into the driveway and reversed out before driving away. A short time later, the car was again Hood Driving back past the cross residence at around 5:30 a.m. Ted decided to go outside and collect his morning paper. As Ted walk towards the end of his driveway, he noticed something lying on the grass close to the road. It must have taken him a few seconds to comprehend that the object was Eriks Watch Nike sneaker. As Ted continued towards the road, he saw something truly horrendous and incomprehensible. Eric's body lay on the roadway, battered and unmoving. Ted raced inside, calling from Mary Lou to come and help merrily ran outside and saw his son before running back inside and getting a blanket to cover. Eric, a neighbor who worked at the local hospital, was called to help. The neighbor attempted to perform CPR on Eric, but he knew that his efforts were in vain. But for the sake of Ted and Mary Lou, he tried anyway. Police were cold from the Kalamazoo Sheriff's Department, which was a good half an hour away. Surprisingly, the police arrived quite quickly. In fact, there were already on their way when they received the frantic calls for help from Eric's parents and the neighbors. A mystery Cola had already notified the police to the presence of Eric's body on the road.
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There was an actual phone call to the county sheriff's office before the cause. All started coming in, so someone had seen that called it in. Back then, you didn't you didn't way, didn't have 911 I don't think we just had to call the actual sheriff's office in Kalamazoo and we're on Victor. That's like 40 minutes away, 30 minutes away at least. Um so they had a call early. They said, There's a boy that's been dumped So someone took the time to call. And then all of a sudden, here comes a bunch of calls because then it was like all the neighbors calling for help. Someone knows, either. Maybe the core crew decided to turn it into the sheriff so that his body was found
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for over 100 meters. There was blood and tissue trail down the road in dispersed with the scattered collection of shoes, clothing and even a wallet amongst all the carnage with plastic copper pots, including paces of a broken tail light. Incredibly, through all of this shop and grief that must have been consuming Ted Cross, he had the foresight to request something that was way ahead of his time, something that could have repercussions decades later. And what about that car? The one with a loud muscle? Ah, that have been heard outside at 5 a.m. Was that vehicle involved in the hit and run? And if it wasn't, why had the car's occupants not gotten out to assist Eric? Even in the predawn darkness that could hardly of Miss Team all he scattered belongings. But regardless of what had happened, the end result was that a young, vibrant, healthy 16 year old boy had lost his life, his family had been torn apart and the village of Vicksburg would be left to speculate. We know that Eric made it home. His father heard him attempting to let himself in via the front door. The question is, how did Eric arrive harm and end up dead on the side of the road outside his Harmer? In the hours later, Eric was close enough to his sister that he could easily have tapped on her bedroom window and have been led inside with his parents being on the wiser. If in his drunken state, he was bold enough to try the front door and alert his parents, surely the back door would have been his next option. There is a story which Jackie shed on a bloke page created for Eric. The story went, the Jackie and her parents had gone away overnight, leaving 16 year old Eric at home alone upon their return. Eric was nowhere to be found, but there was a nosh. The nerd informed his family that he had run away from home because he had been involved in a small fender bender in his father's car, the car that he wasn't meant to be driving. Jack, you remembered feeling sad and a great sense of loss that her brother had left well, her parents worried about what to do next. Jackie looked out of the window and into the back, out in front of the empty fields where Eric would often write. His dirt bike was a tent. The tent was an unusual, but the sight of Eric's dog sniffing around it certainly waas Jackie snuck outside and found Eric hiding in the tent. Being the good sister that she was and wanting to show allegiance to her, big brother, Jackie went back. Inside the house, Mary Lou noticed that Jackie's mood had drastically improved, but still Jackie kept silent when their parents finally discovered the truth. I think that relief was a dominant emotion and everything else probably same pretty insignificant. This happened about a month before Eric died. To me, this anecdote shows that Eric knew that he could trust his sister if he had have needed to knock on her window that night. Even in his inebriated state, he must have known that Jackie would have covered for him. This story also highlights the fact that Eric was so young and still just a kid. When police started to piece together a timeline, it was confirmed that a man delivering papers in the early hours of Sunday morning had not seen Eric's body or his belongings as he did his rounds. This narrow down the time frame in which Eric's body could have been present on the roadway, a neighbor of the cross family had a very interesting title to tell the neighbor reported that he had seen a car drive past his house at around the time that Ted and Mary Lou had a work into the sound for the car with the loud Mufleh. As he stood in his yard, he saw a dark car with a loud muffler drive past in the car. He saw two males and a female sitting between them in the front seat. As they went by, he heard a voice. It sounded like a famous scream or my God, I think he's sameness. Police soon realized that their first assessment of a hit and run was incorrect. They now believe that Eric had most likely being tied to the back of a car and dragged behind it before being run over to make it look like a hit and run, thus concealing the initial crime. After an autopsy was performed on Eric's body, the results only confirmed that Eric's death had been no accident. Upon examination, his body was found to be covered in lacerations, including a large, gaping wound in the middle of his lower back. Eric's wrists and torso had been tied with rope. He's skin was marked with striations, and he had multiple leg fractures. It was also believed that Eric may have sustained a severe baiting. Police needed to find out what had occurred at that keg party on Kimble Lake Drive. Perhaps understandably, a lot of the partygoers did not want to come forward. Most of the attendees had been under age, and the prospect of being exposed to law enforcement and the wrath of their parents was not a pleasant prospect. But as is often the case, the truth will out. The difficulty for law enforcement was that the truth was heavily into mingled with ruma speculation and outright lies. Tales of hood surfing and guns used to commit murder in a dentist office were intertwined with talk of a reputed town bully and an altercation that was said to have occurred between human Eric at that party on the lake. It is human nature to talk, though recollection and auto gossip intertwined to form a strange mixture of truth and fiction. It would be up to the police to separate the two. What we do know is that Eric attended the party that not before leaving around 1 a.m. He drank a lot of beyond, became extremely intoxicated. We also know that when Eric left the party, he was saying by multiple witnesses to be heading in the direction of his family Harm. Witnesses recalled that Eric was stumbling and falling as he walked a times leaning against the cars of party goers, which lined the neighboring roads. It wasn't a long walk Paps only 15 minutes at a steady pace, but in his inebriated state, it would have taken Eric a lot longer. The rural area was sparsely dotted with her arms, and he's so often the case on country roads straight lots were few and far between. At times, a full moon would have been all that let Eriks path home. There were other witnesses, people who were leaving the party and heading to their cars. Some of them noticed Eric as he walked by the local corner store. Monde pause was a small gas station and convenience store situated only a few minutes walk from Eric's home. In the early morning of June 26 Mon Pas was well and truly closed, but still two cars were observed to be parked it Juan Carlos yellow, while the other was a doc medium size sedan a nullification between Eric and a person belonging to one of those two vehicles that seem to occur after that. We know that Eric made it home briefly before disappearing from his front yard. You may be wondering about the boy named Bill Cook, who Eric had befriended at school. Well, Bill was at the party that not, but this far is Ted and Mary Lee crossed with consent. Eric was safe at Bill's house, attending a prayer range sleepover. The next day, Ted was going to be taking Eric and Bill tow a boat show over three hours away in Detroit. The boys were meant to be mating Ted at the Cross family Harm the next morning. So what happened? Why did Eric leave the party line? Why didn't he stay with Bill when he was meant to be sleeping at his friend's house? That not well. According to Bill, he was with Erica the keg party. At some point, Bill went for a swim with a girl, leaving Eric alone in the lawn chair. When he returned from his swimming, the like Eric was gone on the face of things, you could hardly blame Bill. We have to remember that we're talking about 1983. Bill would have had no way to reach Harry, get that time of night. So it would be quite logical to assume that Eric had decided to head home and sleep in his own bed. The only reasonable thing that Bill could have done was wait until the next morning and either call Eric or turn up at the cross family home to the prayer range Detroit outing the next day. Bill did neither of those things. It's interesting to note that Bill didn't go home that night. Instead, he stayed at the scolding family home. It was perhaps a touch ironic that instead of spending the night with the boy, he proclaimed to be his best friend. Bill instead spent the Nash at the harm of Eric's bully, Brent May Bridge and Amba. We're role at the party. Along with Bill and Eric. Multiple people were talking about the fact that the altercation at the party was between Eric and Brent. It was said that Brent and possibly Eric had been ejected from the party when other boys had to step in and split them up. It was also said that Amber and Eric had been flushing at the keg party. Brent's Boldin was known to have a volatile temperament and had taken issue with Eric talking to Amber in the past. Could this be the reason for the driveway education that the party goes have witnessed?
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Yeah. He was telling other kids and stuff. Yeah, because kids new like there was some kind of an accident. Somebody got hurt. Nobody knew literally. What happened Except for Bill Cook. Well, how does Bill Cook know that? How did Bill Cook Not think to call Eric and say, hey, air, you okay? Did you make a home, right? He didn't call and check on a friend. He didn't call and say, Hey, are we still going to the boat show? Are you mad at me? Because I did. Jenna. He didn't make a call. How coming in mega cough Because he already knew what happened. He knew Eric wasn't home. He knew Eric wasn't gonna go anywhere that day because he knew he was dead.