eventually Duke left her to call 911. Upon police arrival Duke was detained and then released, but was later brought back to the Grand Rapids Police Department in order to straighten out the exact window of his arrival to the home. At some point this line of questioning turned into an interrogation, and even though Duke did not have legal counsel present, he was questioned for over seventy-two hours. When the detectives in charge of the investigation were finished, they had a confession on the table and a suspect in custody.
This confession came despite the fact that Duke was given next to no food during the interrogation, was suffering badly from opioid withdrawal, and was still grieving Mandy. Duke was recorded on both video and audio for the duration of the interrogation, and the detectives in charge of this case broke several Michigan statutes regarding the length of time that a suspect may be questioned without counsel present. Despite these issues, Duke was formally charged, arraigned, and brought to trial later that year.
Seeing the tops of more pictures, Betty scrolled to the bottom of the page, and then gasped. There were three more pictures of Duke—one of him on stage holding a guitar, a shot of him smoking a cigarette and smiling under falling snow, and one of him holding his fists up in a mock fighting pose—but Betty ignored all of those because there was another picture, a moment captured in time of a skinny and scared-looking girl with bright orange hair.
Mandy Reasoner.
Mandy had a ring in her nose and was wearing a QueersT-shirt and black jeans. She had what looked like track marks on her arms and a bright bruise on her neck.
All of those things were insignificant to Betty, however, because the girl in the picture was a dead ringer for June.
Betty found it nearly impossible to take her eyes from the shot of Mandy, June’s impossible doppelg ä nger. The similarities were so striking—the shape of their noses, the corners of their mouths, their hairlines. Betty back-clicked and then began to pore over the rest of the website, ignoring the words now, entirely focused on the pictures.
There were lots of shots of Duke and Mandy on the page about the trial. In some they were together, but most of the time they were separate and alone, and it was easy for Betty to imagine that whichever was missing from the frame was likely the one holding the camera. The last of these shots, an awful image taken by a police photographer of a half-naked Mandy covered in stab wounds, was bad enough to make Betty tear up, but the words at the end of the paragraph chilled her to the bone. “I hope he rots in hell” was the quote from the victim’s sister—and the name next to it snapped the final piece of the puzzle into place.
Claire Derricks.
“Mandy was June’s aunt,” said Betty to no one at all, and then her hands dropped off the keyboard and mouse as though they could burn her.
June’s aunt was killed .
The thought kept repeating until it began making some sort of impossible sense to her, and then she moved on to the next.
How could we not have known about this?
Andrea had worked a great deal with the police department over many years. Surely she had to have known all about this. Betty supposed there was no reason for Andrea to share these sordid details with her daughter, but the issue had to have come up between the moms once the dead girl’s niece became Betty’s best friend. Even so, Betty guessed it wasn’t surprising that they’d never broached the subject with her, particularly since June herself didn’t seem to know anything about it.
That was the amazing part, now that she thought about it: How had June never heard of it? Even if her mom and dad chose to keep it from her, wasn’t it pretty incredible that no one in the community at large had brought it up with her? Maybe not, though. A random junkie girl’s death had probably never been front-page news. Still, especially with the
This confession came despite the fact that Duke was given next to no food during the interrogation, was suffering badly from opioid withdrawal, and was still grieving Mandy. Duke was recorded on both video and audio for the duration of the interrogation, and the detectives in charge of this case broke several Michigan statutes regarding the length of time that a suspect may be questioned without counsel present. Despite these issues, Duke was formally charged, arraigned, and brought to trial later that year.
Seeing the tops of more pictures, Betty scrolled to the bottom of the page, and then gasped. There were three more pictures of Duke—one of him on stage holding a guitar, a shot of him smoking a cigarette and smiling under falling snow, and one of him holding his fists up in a mock fighting pose—but Betty ignored all of those because there was another picture, a moment captured in time of a skinny and scared-looking girl with bright orange hair.
Mandy Reasoner.
Mandy had a ring in her nose and was wearing a QueersT-shirt and black jeans. She had what looked like track marks on her arms and a bright bruise on her neck.
All of those things were insignificant to Betty, however, because the girl in the picture was a dead ringer for June.
Betty found it nearly impossible to take her eyes from the shot of Mandy, June’s impossible doppelg ä nger. The similarities were so striking—the shape of their noses, the corners of their mouths, their hairlines. Betty back-clicked and then began to pore over the rest of the website, ignoring the words now, entirely focused on the pictures.
There were lots of shots of Duke and Mandy on the page about the trial. In some they were together, but most of the time they were separate and alone, and it was easy for Betty to imagine that whichever was missing from the frame was likely the one holding the camera. The last of these shots, an awful image taken by a police photographer of a half-naked Mandy covered in stab wounds, was bad enough to make Betty tear up, but the words at the end of the paragraph chilled her to the bone. “I hope he rots in hell” was the quote from the victim’s sister—and the name next to it snapped the final piece of the puzzle into place.
Claire Derricks.
“Mandy was June’s aunt,” said Betty to no one at all, and then her hands dropped off the keyboard and mouse as though they could burn her.
June’s aunt was killed .
The thought kept repeating until it began making some sort of impossible sense to her, and then she moved on to the next.
How could we not have known about this?
Andrea had worked a great deal with the police department over many years. Surely she had to have known all about this. Betty supposed there was no reason for Andrea to share these sordid details with her daughter, but the issue had to have come up between the moms once the dead girl’s niece became Betty’s best friend. Even so, Betty guessed it wasn’t surprising that they’d never broached the subject with her, particularly since June herself didn’t seem to know anything about it.
That was the amazing part, now that she thought about it: How had June never heard of it? Even if her mom and dad chose to keep it from her, wasn’t it pretty incredible that no one in the community at large had brought it up with her? Maybe not, though. A random junkie girl’s death had probably never been front-page news. Still, especially with the