White Cloud
Murder charges against 2 brothers in reopened case
WHITE CLOUD, Mich. (AP) — Two brothers were charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the death of a young western Michigan woman whose body was discovered in a national forest in 1989, three months after she disappeared.
Matthew Jones, 44, of Grant and Paul Jones, 42, of Newaygo were arrested and charged in Newaygo County, north of Grand Rapids. The death of Shannon Siders, 18, of Newaygo was given more attention by state and local investigators starting in 2011.
“This case remained open for many years, but Shannon Siders was never forgotten and law enforcement’s resolve to hold those accountable for her death never diminished,” county prosecutor Robert Springstead said in a statement.
The Jones brothers appeared in court and were ordered to jail without bond. It wasn’t immediately known if they have lawyers.
Siders disappeared in July 1989. A hunter that fall found her body in the Manistee National Forest.
The body was exhumed from a cemetery in 2012 as part of the investigation.
“I’ve always been kind of suspicious,” Siders’ father, Robert Siders, told The Muskegon Chronicle. “The names do not surprise me. She knew them in the circle of friends she hung around with. One of them, I had passed many times in a party store.”
A statement announcing the charges from Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office didn’t indicate why police finally settled on the Jones brothers.
Ionia
Escaped inmate will represent himself at trial
IONIA, Mich. (AP) — A convicted murderer who escaped from a Michigan prison will represent himself at trial on escape, carjacking and kidnapping charges.
Ionia County Judge David Hoort granted Michael Elliot’s request during a court hearing Tuesday. A trial date wasn’t set. Attorney Randy Norton will serve as stand-by counsel.
Elliot was captured Feb. 3 in LaPorte County, Indiana. It was a day after he escaped from a prison in Ionia, 35 miles east of Grand Rapids.
The 41-year-old Elliot is serving a no-parole life sentence for first-degree murder in the fatal shootings of four people in Gladwin County in 1993.
Grand Rapids
Judge issues 5-year sentence in missing man case
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A medical researcher has been sentenced to five years in prison in the case of a western Michigan man who disappeared in 2007.
Raogo Ouedraogo (RAH’-go qua-DRAH’-go) was a researcher at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia when he was arrested in 2009. He was convicted of conspiracy for a plot with a college pal to kidnap a 66-year-old Ionia County retiree, Donald Dietz.
Judge Janet Neff sentenced Ouedraogo in Grand Rapids federal court on Tuesday. He’ll get credit for 31 months spent in jail. The judge had thrown out the 2011 jury verdict, but an appeals court last year reinstated convictions on two charges.
Dietz is presumed dead. Co-defendant Rami Saba is serving a 32-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors say the motive was money. Ouedraogo told the judge he’s “completely innocent.”
Detroit
Groups announce redevelopment project in the city
DETROIT (AP) — A plan to spur economic growth in a northwest Detroit neighborhood was announced Tuesday during the 2014 Clinton Global Initiative America meeting in Denver.
The Motor City Project will highlight using available resources like manpower, vacant land and empty buildings to make the area attractive to potential and current residents seeking to start their own businesses.
It also will help new arrivals work through cumbersome city codes and other red tape to operate home- and neighborhood-based businesses, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Greg Lindsay told The Associated Press.
Lindsay said zoning rules in many U.S. cities make it difficult for entrepreneurs to operate out of their homes or garages, but such “microenterprises” have been successful in poorer countries.
He pointed to the practice of salvaging wood, countertops and other materials from abandoned houses in Detroit and selling it to retrofit homes.
“That’s what happens every day in places like Nairobi,” Lindsay said. “They are starved for resources. People realize everything they have is an asset.”
The Detroit neighborhood chosen is a mix of homes and small manufacturing. It is anchored by Focus: HOPE, a social and economic services agency.
As part of the project, a so-called Resilience Center will be created to attract “urban homesteaders and migrants from other neighborhoods, cities and countries to relocate to the area,” the World Policy Institute said in a release.
Staff also will work with entrepreneurs to find funding and other support for their ventures.
“We want to create this pop-up community center where we would bring in new arrivals and help them acclimate to their conditions,” Lindsay said.
The two-year project is in the design and development phase and is starting with in-kind contributions. It hopes to expand with partners from the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative. The initiative was established in 2005 by former President Bill Clinton.
