Lingering Doubts

By Patrick Sullivan | March 25, 2017

Ivan Lee Bechtol was mostly a good kid, by all accounts, who’d drifted into the dangerous world of cocaine and alcohol by the time he was 19. That’s when things fell apart.

Bechtol partied at a friend’s house into the morning of Sept. 3, 2001. He got a ride from someone he said he didn’t know well but who lived close to his home near Manistee Lake, near M–72 between Kalkaska and Grayling. The two guys made a stop along the way and barged into a house looking for the other man’s estranged girlfriend.

The events of that early morning and the following day would land Bechtol in prison for life. Kalkaska County’s prosecutor insisted Bechtol helped his companion, then–29–year–old William Cron, plan and execute the tragic murder of Jamie Moran.

Now, 16 years later, with Bechtol’s appeals seemingly exhausted, a cadre of supporters still insist Bechtol was wrongfully convicted, and they are fighting against the odds for justice.

Mastermind or Sap?
The story is complicated. Let’s start with the day Bechtol last walked free: Oct. 6, 2001. That day, police arrested Bechtol, out on bond on home invasion charges, for drunk driving. He’s been behind bars ever since.

Once in jail, one of two things happened. Bechtol either confided to a fellow inmate that he’d participated in a murder, or that inmate lied and said Bechtol had made such a confession, even though Bechtol never said anything. That’s the essence of Bechtol’s case.

Ivan Bechtol might be a bloodthirsty criminal who helped plan the horrible murder of a cute, vivacious 20–year–old, or he might be a hapless sap who got swept into a case in which a prosecutor’s desire for a conviction was more important than the truth.

Either way, Bechtol is serving life in prison for conspiring to murder Moran. She was found on Sept. 4, 2001, drowned in a car parked in three feet of water where Torch Lake and Torch River meet.

There is no question about who actually kidnapped and murdered Moran: William Cron, a degenerate drug dealer and sex criminal who was convicted in an Antrim County courtroom and is serving life without the possibility of parole.

Months after Cron’s conviction, Bechtol, whose name was barely mentioned during Cron’s trial, was tried for Moran’s death and convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and attempted kidnapping in Kalkaska County.

Today, Bechtol’s supporters say his case is reminiscent of the one against Jamie Lee Peterson, a Kalkaska man who was tried by Prosecutor Brian Donnelly on the basis of a false confession and later exonerated. Donnelly died in 2012 of heart failure while cross country skiing.

Bechtol’s mother, Linda Barrett, said she fights every day for a sliver of hope that the injustice she believes befell her son will someday be undone.

Home Invasion at First Light
For a moment, let’s set aside the plight of Bechtol and look at the horrible fate of Jamie Moran.

Moran met Cron at a vulnerable time in her life. Under his influence, she became hooked on cocaine, according to testimony in Cron’s trial.

She lived with Cron in a trailer in South Boardman in the summer of 2001. Drugs and the living arrangement gave Cron control over Moran, and he proposed to her that summer from the stage at Streeter’s in Traverse City. Put on the spot in front of a crowd, Moran said yes. Cron continued to exert control, even when Moran decided to break up with him because he’d been accused of child sexual assault.

Even after Moran left Cron, she returned to him for cocaine. She was partying with friend Ira Henke at a campsite on the evening of Sept. 2, 2001, when she left for a couple of hours to meet Cron; she returned with three grams of cocaine she said Cron “fronted” her, meaning she was supposed to sell some of it to pay him back.

According to testimony, Moran decided that since Cron owed her money, she wasn’t going to pay him back.

As night turned to morning, Cron, who was drinking and doing cocaine, decided he needed to see Moran. He searched for her at the campsite and found her at Ira Henke’s house in the woods three miles from the Village of Kalkaska. Bechtol was a passenger in Cron’s car when Cron arrived at the two–bedroom trailer at 6:30am.

At that point, Moran and Henke were asleep. Henke heard a dog bark at 6:30am, less than an hour after he fell asleep, and got up to check out the disturbance.

He found someone in the trailer and at first hoped it was a roommate but quickly discovered Cron, who demanded to know where Moran was.

That led to a fight. The facts about that fight are not disputed. Cron cut two phone cords to thwart calls to 911, Henke at one point got Cron in a headlock and Bechtol entered the trailer after the commotion ensued and interrupted the fight, causing Henke to release Cron. Cron and Bechtol fled before police arrived.

A Horrific Murder
What’s more critical is what happened the next day, Tues., Sept. 4. Bechtol was arrested for the prior day’s home invasion that morning and spent most of the day in jail, but Cron avoided capture and remained free to menace Moran, who spent the day at her job at a salon on South Airport Road in Traverse City. She changed her cell phone number that morning, but somehow Cron obtained the new number.

Cron’s calls scared Moran and the staff at the salon where she worked. They called the police, who searched the area but found no sign of Cron. Moran and a friend made a plan to call Cron, arrange a meeting and then call the police to arrest him.

According to testimony at Cron’s trial, he might have been waiting for Moran in her trunk, dressed in a disguise purchased that afternoon. When Moran left for home that evening, a friend followed her to the intersection of Hammond and Three Mile to make sure she wasn’t followed. Then Moran headed home, seemingly alone.

The last anyone heard from Moran was when that friend called her 10 minutes later and heard yelling and screaming.

A passerby found Moran dead in Torch Lake at 7am the next day. Among the evidence recovered by police were two letters written in Moran’s handwriting clearing Cron of involvement in the sex assault and home invasion cases he faced. It was a horrible, dramatic murder that dominated headlines and newscasts for several days, until it was chased from the front pages a few days later, on Sept. 11.

Lingering Questions
Bechtol’s mother recently received a rare piece of good news. Originally, it was believed Bechtol had been sentenced to life without parole, but that was an error. Bechtol will be eligible for parole in 2029, when he is 47 years old. In prison, Bechtol is a model inmate who tutors other prisoners in building trades.

Barrett has been intimate with her son’s case from the day she posted bail for him in the home invasion case, hours before Moran disappeared. Many things about the case don’t make sense to Barrett, but the biggest thing is the jail house snitch who testified that Bechtol admitted to him that he (Bechtol) was part of a plot to murder Moran. That was the only evidence connecting Bechtol to the murder, and it never made sense to Barrett.

Not long after the trial, the snitch, Danny Davis, recanted his testimony and claimed he’d been threatened by Donnelly to testify against Bechtol or face more charges in a criminal sexual conduct case.

Courts are typically unswayed by claims of recanted testimony; judges consider such claims unreliable, and in this case, Davis had passed a polygraph before he’d testified.

Nonetheless, other details don’t add up for Barrett. She believes her son’s role in the home invasion was exaggerated at his trial, and she doesn’t understand how the motive for the murder could be different in her son’s trial (in which Moran was murdered because she was going to turn the two of them in for drugs) from the motive in Cron’s trial (in which she was murdered in a crime of passion).

Investigators said Davis brought information to them that they didn’t previously know and that they were able to corroborate, but it’s never been clear what, if anything, Davis knew about the case that he couldn’t have read in a newspaper or learned from inmates in the jail. The lead investigator in the case, Michigan State Police Det./Sgt. Richard Simpson, didn’t return a message seeking comment.

Barrett believes Donnelly became angry when it was determined that the murder happened in Antrim County and the case would be prosecuted there; she believes he desperately wanted to charge someone for the death of Moran. She also believes he resolved to charge her son with conspiracy and then set out to find a way to do it.

“On Sept. 30 of 2001, Brian Donnelly made up a list of charges against my son that included conspiracy to commit murder,” she said. “Now, this was way before Danny Davis came forward. It’s just kind of weird that he already had all these charges in mind. He just needed someone to make it happen, and that was Danny Davis.”

Same Story; Different Light
Bechtol’s role in the Sept. 3 home invasion is also described differently over the course of the two trials, another fact Bechtol’s supporters point to as proof that Donnelly was at best attempting to mold the evidence to fit his case.

For instance, in his written statement to police given the morning of the break–in, Henke wrote that he’d grappled with Cron and gotten him into a hold after Cron destroyed one telephone.

“After rolling around for a minute, I subdued him,” Henke wrote. “His friend [Bechtol] came in and told me to let him go. After I did, Bill ran back to my room, grabbed the phone from Jamie and ripped it out of the wall. He then ran out of the house and left.”

Bechtol’s supporters note that as time went on, Henke added detail after detail to that account.

At Cron’s April 2002 trial, Henke downplayed Bechtol’s role in the home invasion under questioning from Antrim County Prosecutor Charles Koop: “I believe he was outside my door, but I’m not really sure. I wasn’t really so worried about him.”

Later, at Bechtol’s trial, Henke gave a different account of the same encounter. Henke said he was surprised by Bechtol and that Bechtol’s presence made him question whether he could handle the situation. He said Bechtol told him, “You better let him [Cron] go.” Henke added, “He [Bechtol] was trying to be intimidating. It was in a threatening manner.”

It’s hard to say whether Henke was merely adding information to his original account of what happened or if he’d changed the character of what happened to suit Donnelly’s needs.

One point Henke made in Bechtol’s trial seems to prove that Bechtol at least made Moran’s murder possible, if unwittingly – had Bechtol not appeared, Henke testified that he would have been able to hold down Cron until police arrived. Had Cron been arrested, he wouldn’t have been free to stalk, kidnap and murder Moron the following day. Whether that adds up to conspiracy to commit murder is another question.

Unreliable Witness
Gerald Chefalo, who defended Cron in his murder trial, doesn’t believe Bechtol took part in a plan to kill Moran.

“He really wasn’t an important player in my case at all, so I was really surprised that he was prosecuted as a conspirator,” Chefalo said.

Koop, who died unexpectedly in 2013, thoroughly prosecuted Cron, and Bechtol’s name barely came up.

“Charlie Koop was one of the best prosecutors I’ve ever seen, just an amazing prosecutor who really, really put a case together against Bill Cron that was very challenging to handle,” Chefalo said. “Do I think there were other people that knew what was going on? Sure, sure. Do I think it was this Bechtol kid? Probably not. He wouldn’t be the one that Cron would necessarily confide in. There were other individuals that I think knew exactly what was going on.”

Chefalo agrees with Bechtol’s defenders that the evidence against him for murder conspiracy doesn’t add up, but he parts with them on how he believes the miscarriage of justice occurred.

Chefalo doesn’t believe Donnelly and the investigators could have or would have coerced Davis into giving false testimony. Chefalo believes Davis saw an opportunity to help himself in his own case and hatched the plot to frame Bechtol on his own. What’s more, Bechtol gave Davis an opening, Chefalo said, because Bechtol lied to police about little things when questioned about drugs, making them suspicious.

Chefalo also happened to run across Davis in an unrelated case and got to know him a bit. His conclusion was that Davis would have been a completely unreliable witness.

While Chefalo said he cannot believe Donnelly would have set Bechtol up, he also cannot believe Donnelly based a prosecution on the word of Davis.

“Boy, oh boy, I wouldn’t want to rest my case on him,” Chefalo said.

John Bornschein, an on–again, off–again paralegal who helps people who are getting out of prison, was asked to help Davis when he got out of prison in 2008.

Bornschein said Davis was strange from the beginning. He sensed that Davis, with whom he became friends, was delusional and slow when they met at a nondescript restaurant in Kalkaska for coffee just after he was released.

“He came in [wearing] a tuxedo shirt because he thought it was a formal meeting,” Bornschein recalled.

Eventually, Bornschein got to know Davis quite well, and Davis even lived with him for a while.

Bornschein said Davis had low self-esteem and would say things to please other people or to make himself look good. For instance, he exaggerated his military record.

“If you ask him about his past, he was a Navy Seal,” Bornschein said. “The fact was, he was a cook on an aircraft carrier.”

Bornschein said that while he believes Davis lied in his testimony against Bechtol, he doesn’t believe Davis was smart enough to invent the story that Donnelly got him out of jail late at night and threatened him to testify against Bechtol.

Davis moved away from Michigan a couple years ago. He could not be reached for comment.

A Juror’s Doubt
Juror Diane Waclawski said she had doubts about the case during the trial but felt pressured to convict. She said she doubted Davis’ testimony from the beginning, and now that she knows Davis has recanted, she believes Bechtol was wrongfully convicted. Davis appeared to be lying from the minute he took the stand, she said.

“When I went into the courtroom, I definitely felt that he was lying, and I also felt that it was a trumped–up charge,” she said.

But she questioned her gut instinct because she didn’t understand why a witness would lie in a murder trial. On top of that, when the jury went into deliberations and she expressed her concern, another juror berated her and told her she had to find Bechtol guilty.

“He was really nasty about it, you know? [He said,] ‘We’ve got to go ahead and vote,’ and I was really upset about it,” she said. “I let him know that I didn’t feel it was right, that he was pressuring us into making a decision.” Waclawski said the man was apologetic the next day.

Linda Barrett later learned that juror might not have been impartial – Bechtol’s uncle, Fred Bechtol, signed an affidavit claiming he’d been in a dispute with the man years earlier over a fishing spot. Fred Bechtol said he’d spit on the future juror, who then promised to one day get revenge.

Finally, Waclawski decided to vote to convict based on Davis’ testimony.

“It was totally Davis’s testimony; that was the only reason,” she said.

Stalwart Supporters
Ann Kirtley retired as a Kalkaska Public Schools counselor in 2000, the same year Bechtol graduated from high school.

She didn’t know Bechtol well back then, but she does now. She’s devoted years to advocating for Bechtol and Peterson, who today lives quietly in a small cabin in Kalkaska.

“I’ve wasted my whole retirement years on these two cases, and if I don’t get Ivan out I don’t know what [I’ll do],” she said. “I’ve spent my children’s inheritance at the copy shop in the last few years.”

Kirtley said Bechtol never got in trouble at school, so she only saw him when it was time to make schedules. She heard about the murder case and was surprised but didn’t follow it closely. Later, she ran into Barrett and agreed to take a look at the case. She’s been obsessed ever since.

“There’s no testimony in that court case whatsoever that says Ivan Bechtol was there. There’s only the jail snitch’s word,” she said. “I’ve asked questions. There’s nothing that I’ve read. I’ve read the whole case. There’s nothing that says Ivan was anywhere near it.”

Kalkaska criminal defense attorney Robert Carey tangled with Donnelly all 18 years that Donnelly served as Kalkaska County prosecutor. Carey is a harsh critic of Donnelly, and he believes Donnelly recklessly prosecuted Bechtol the same way he said Donnelly recklessly prosecuted Peterson, who was Carey’s client.

“He was looking for a way to get another murder trial in Kalkaska,” Carey said. “He kept reading the police report and came up with a conspiracy case, and then he got Danny Davis to make it work. Guilt or innocence had nothing to do with it.”

Carey admits that he doesn’t know that much about the facts of the Bechtol case. He said he just knows how Donnelly prosecuted cases. Carey said he believes Donnelly was “evil.” He also said he and Donnelly considered each other enemies and hated each other.

A Father’s Certainty
For Jamie Moran’s father, there is no doubt about Bechtol’s guilt in the death of his daughter.

“I was there,” Moran said of Bechtel’s trial. “I just know our case and I know it well, and I know his involvement more than most people.”

Moran said the jury heard the evidence and decided Bechtol was guilty, and that should be the end of it.

“They heard all the evidence, and they agreed with all the evidence that he was guilty,” Moran said. “No one was pressured; it would have been a hung jury if that was the case.”

Moran doesn’t agree that Bechtol was put away solely on the word of a jailhouse snitch. Moran believes the evidence shows that Bechtel knew what was going on, that he could have prevented his daughter’s murder and that he did nothing to help her.

“There was a lot of evidence there; there were a lot of other people,” Moran said. “He knew all about it from the beginning to the end. He was involved, and the evidence showed that.”