Patrick Sullivan

Features Patrick Sullivan Walter Sbresny is waiting to learn whether he can use a medical marijuana defense at trial.

Part one of a two-part story. Next week, the Express will look at the case of Archie Kiel, who is appealing a 2010 marijuana conviction, and the efforts of Kiel and Sbresny to make Kalkaska County more hospitable for medical marijuana patients through a grassroots political effort.

Features Patrick Sullivan How a cigarette butt led police to a group of burglars suspected of selling weapons to Detroit gang. The first person to notice something awry was neighbor Philip Halbritter, who suspected trouble the day before a burglary even took place.

Features Patrick Sullivan

The last time Ernest Hemingway came to Northern Michigan, as far as anyone knows, was in 1947, when he visited a friend in Petoskey and checked on his cottage on Walloon Lake, on his way from Florida to Idaho.

That visit was commemorated in a small news item in the Sept. 27 edition of the Petoskey Evening News, which was reprinted in Michael Federspiel’s book, Picturing Hemingway’s Michigan.

Features Patrick Sullivan

A cancer patient whose eviction from her federally subsidized apartment around Christmas of 2009 was halted amid an outcry faces homelessness again.

Lori Montroy, 52, said she has been in a panic since she got an eviction notice last month at the apartment where she has lived since 2008.

Features Patrick Sullivan A couple of years ago, the economy looked grim and prospects for the annual boat show in TC looked dead in the water. Who was going to buy a new boat in the middle of an economic meltdown?

'It was ’09 when, at least from our perspective, the industry hit bottom," said Andrew MacDonald, whose company Blue Water Promotions has run the Traverse City Boat Show for seven years. "It was very tough, it was almost panic, and we haven’t seen anything close to that since."

Features Patrick Sullivan Prosecutors say couple endangered an infant and a four-year-old in a bid to get away from the cops.  They were a couple of desperadoes, at least as described in court files: Running from police at a hundred miles per hour, along rural highways and through quiet villages, he unwilling to go back to prison, and she willing to do whatever it took to help him.

Features Patrick Sullivan First off, he made sure he didn’t have all sorts of electronics on standby all of the time around his house. He also believes in using a timer on his water heater and he uses an outdoor wood heater to heat water during the winter, since that is already heating his house.

Features Patrick Sullivan

He left to go to college and law school and begin a career and when he decided to move back to his hometown in the mid- 1990s, he was worried about what he was getting himself into. Would this be the same backward place he remembered from his youth? Or was Northern Michigan somehow getting more progressive?

Soon after he moved back there was a news story about a cross burning in Grawn and Ringsmuth thought his worst fears about coming home were coming true...

Features Patrick Sullivan The mystery of Adamczyk’s disappearance is almost rivaled by the mysteriousness of the legal case into his death. Police and prosecutors have said little about the case, though recent filings in Manistee County Circuit Court shed some light on what’s going on in the investigation.

Features Patrick Sullivan

It’s been almost five months since someone took a saw to an orchard in Garfield Township and wasted 428 cherry trees.  The search for the culprit or culprits has gone cold, despite a $10,000 reward in the case.  Three other cases of orchard or vineyard vandalism have also gone unsolved in Leelanau County.  In two of those cases, 15 cherry trees were cut at one orchard and 22 at another. At a vineyard, someone destroyed 161 grapevines.

What’s partly stymied investigators is how strange these acts of vandalism are...

Features Patrick Sullivan Opponents say this wetlands complex is exactly what is supposed to be protected under the Wetland Protection Act, and the developer and state shouldn’t be allowed to get away with flouting the law. They say the project could ruin habitat for several protected species and threaten a wetland complex that is crucial to the health of Green Lake.

Features Patrick Sullivan When Alward’s daughter told her she’d been repeatedly left unsupervised at the motel during an extended summer visit with her father, Alward said she was terrified. When she feared her daughter was alone again on Aug. 22, Alward drove to Gaylord, called the girl and then called police.

Features Patrick Sullivan They say it’s too soon in the process to be debating whether to sell the former Bech’s Mustard Factory to Short’s. First the village has to decide whether to sell the property at all, or to go ahead with plans started in September to build boat slips and a park at the site.

Features Patrick Sullivan It is a struggle to make any money as an organic farmer in Northern Michigan, he says, as entrepreneurs in the industry face a bewildering patchwork of township and county regulation. Add in taxes and consumers who may talk up organic food, but who are unwilling to pay a premium for it, and organic farming begins to look like a recipe for bankruptcy.

Features Patrick Sullivan As Christopher Hildreth and Gary Ellis prowled from one bar to another, it looked to some like the pair was desperate for a fight. Shane Marquette was out that night, too, making his way from bar to bar, and though he said he was not looking for a fight, he found one.