Beginning at the End
Beginning at the end… It seemed logical at the time because, the starting point was the brutal murder of a twenty-eight year old woman with no viable leads; her name was Charlene Johnson-Lane. Murdered in the duplex that used to stand on a modest lot on Walnut Street. She was found shirtless with multiple stab wounds in her abdomen. The police had contact with the confessed killer and they let him slip past their fingers. The last person to have owned the place was a seemingly sweet elderly woman, who is very socially conscious; maybe a little too much. But with this life and job, I tend to be a little suspicious of everyone. At this point the only things I know about Elsa (name changed for privacy/safety) is that she bought the house only a few months after Charlene was murdered.
Why would anyone purchase a house wherein someone was brutally murdered?
Second, Elsa is very politically and socially active, this could be a negative or a positive. She works with the NACW, and in 2011 she ran the voters booth at Rosewood Manor in Saginaw, Michigan. Upon visiting the website for NACW, the organization seems very positive, it seems as though their entire goal is to support and uplift women and children of minority races. It is eloquently written and professionally designed. Elsa is not an officer in the organization, however she is an active and vocal member. Now the next questions are:
was Charlene Johnson-Lane a member of NACW? Was she being protected from an abusive spouse? Did Elsa know Charlene? How well did Elsa know the owner of the house she purchased which was Charlene’s landlord, if at all?
Charlene Johnson-Lane On Sunday, February 12, 1978 a mysterious male caller claiming that he was the man who had stabbed a lovely young housewife to death contacted the Saginaw Police Department asking to speak to the shift commander. This confessor also contacted the Saginaw News.
This begs three questions: Why would anyone want to kill this young woman? Why would a confessed killer call specifically and request the Shift Commander? He wanted to turn himself in to the Shift Commander, a very specific commander, why? Why would same confessed killer call to reveal himself to the Saginaw News? Who was the reporter that was contacted? Upon realizing the Saginaw News had also received a call from the confessed murderer, the Saginaw Police Department immediately had a gag order issued, why? Who was the Shift Commander at that time? Did the killer know the Shift Commander? Okay, so that was actually eight questions. But you get the point…
As my team and I dig deeper into this case, each question opens so many more questions. Everything and everyone is connected but nothing seems to be connecting…at least not to the actual perpetrator of this crime.
When a person is found murdered in the home, the first person most people suspect is the spouse. It has been next to impossible to locate information on Charlene’s spouse, Chester A. Lane, a man twenty seven years her senior. Chester had relocated to Saginaw from Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Charlene was found partially clad, she had been stabbed multiple times in the abdominal area. The tool was a small butcher knife…
Who besides the landlord and Chester would have had easy access to Charlene’s duplex at 1616 Walnut Lane?
It would seem, since she was partially clad, found in her living room and killed with her own kitchen tool, it was definitely someone she knew.
Did Chester A. Lane kill his pretty young wife? And if not, where did he disappear to after her death? Why does Charlene’s grave marker only say beloved daughter…no mention of the fact that she was also a wife?
So much has changed in Saginaw since 1978, that finding information has been tedious, we’ve also been lied to on more than one occasion. Upon visiting Saginaw, I was only able to retrieve two articles from the Saginaw News. It seems the gag order shut them up quite effectively. Of course, when you’re an ever-growing media giant (now holding stock in Discovery Communications), you certainly don’t want to make any political enemies. With media and politics involved, my next questions were about the house and property.
The owner at the time Charlene was alive was a real estate broker and investor, many of his properties had switched hands, quite ambiguously through missions, churches and low income charities, low income bond sales and a few of them had found their way into the hands of the Natural Resources Department, Hemlock Semiconductor, Consumers Energy and many are connected to demolitions projects (all owned by one man, who not surprisingly turned out to be the best friend and frequent business associate of afore mentioned real estate investor).
Chasing property records was like a dog chasing its tail. Every question lead to a dead end. The tax assessor’s office told me the property had been seized due to nonpayment of taxes. Okay, that happens. What they couldn’t tell me was who it belongs to now…no one, not even the city of Saginaw seems to know who owns the now vacant lot, less than five minutes from the city police station.
So far everything is connected, but nothing is connecting. Why? We don’t know… yet.
