August 3 1989

August 3 1989

Drowning/Murder of Four Children

Bryan (8), Kathryn (4), Melissa (2), Emily (8 mo.)

It is a murder case that was heartbreaking and horrifying.  Twenty five years ago, in one of the most talked about tragedies in Detroit history, 28-year-old Lawrence J. DeLisle of Lincoln Park drove his speeding Ford LTD station wagon down a dead end street in Wyandotte, catapulting the car into the deep, dark water of the Detroit River.

It was just after 9 p.m. on Aug. 3,1989. DeLisle and his wife Suzanne were able to get out of the car through the open windows, and surface and survive.  Their four children tragically drowned inside the car, 30 feet underwater:  8-year-old Bryan, 4-year-old Kathryn,  2-year-old Melissa and 8-month-old Emily.

DeLisle told police he had a leg cramp that forced his foot down on the gas pedal, and that the accelerator stuck, causing the vehicle to careen down Eureka Road into the river.

The car itself had a haunting history.  DeLisle’s father had committed suicide in that vehicle less than two years before at Elizabeth Park in Trenton.  There were still blood stains from the shooting inside the car.

Police didn’t buy DeLisle’s leg cramp/stuck accelerator story.   Investigators questioned him, gave him a lengthy lie detector test, and claimed they had gotten an official confession from him.  Several days after the drownings, DeLisle was charged with 4 counts of 1st degree murder in the deaths of his children, and one count of attempting to murder his wife.

The case caused a frenzy in the local community and attracted national and international attention. There were stories in Time magazine and The New York Times. People wondered, how could an “average Joe,” a typical dad, with a  good job at a local tire store, and a nice home in Downriver Detroit do this to his own kids.  People openly speculated that DeLisle’s wife was in on it.

Angry anonymous callers phoned the DeLisle home, threatening to blow up their Austin Street house.

When the case went to trial the following June, Wayne county Prosecutor Kevin Simowski argued that DeLisle was a troubled man, drowning in debt, feeling burdened by life and by his wife and kids.  Simowski argued that DeLisle deliberately planned the crash and fully intended to die along with the rest of his family that August night.

Defense attorney Frank Eaman claimed the car was defective, and that DeLisle was NOT guilty.  Eaman also told reporters that the only reason DeLisle “confessed” to the crime was because police wore him down with an eight hour interrogation (with no attorney present)  and basically brainwashed him and gave him a “kind of nervous breakdown.”

Eaman also argued that DeLisle could not possibly get a fair trial in Metro Detroit because of sensational media coverage by reporters “stalking” the DeLisle family.

The trial judge Robert Colombo Jr. did suppress the confession, however Colombo rejected the idea of moving the case out of town.

The trial lasted 8 days in downtown Detroit with more than two dozen witnesses called to testify.  The jury deliberated almost nine hours over two and a half days.  The jury found DeLisle guilty on all counts.

DeLisle and his wife both wept when the verdicts were announced.

Numerous appeals were filed.  Attorneys claimed the jury was poisoned by pretrial publicity about the “confession” and that the case should have been moved.  The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to  hear it.

Lawrence DeLisle is doing life in prison with no chance of parole in Coldwater, Mich.

He still maintains his innocence, and says he still grieves over the death of his children.

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By Christy Strawser, CBS Detroit

DETROIT (CBS Detroit) When he was initially contacted by WWJ’s Roberta Jasina to tell his story on the 25th anniversary of the night his four children met a watery death in the Detroit River, Lawrence DeLisle declined to offer any details.

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From his prison cell, he wrote Jasina a letter saying basically no one would believe his side of the story anyway so there was no point in telling it.

Then he changed his mind.

DeLisle, 53, issued a shocker when he wrote Jasina another letter, this one a lengthy, detailed account of why he’s, in his words, innocent of the crime of which he was convicted in one of the highest profile cases in Midwest history. She had sent him a list of questions, and he answered every one.

He says, in the first time where he really breaks his silence, he didn’t intentionally kill his children. It was the fault of the car, he says, laying out an elaborate description of the things that he said went wrong with his station wagon that night, and claiming a police cover-up. His claims about the car hold with the story DeLisle told police after his children died — when he said a leg cramp and a stuck accelerator forced him to drive into the river.

See the complete letter HERE, which DeLisle says he wrote after anguishing for weeks about whether he wanted to recall the “painful memories.”

He was sentenced to life in prison after a high-profile trial following the night rescue divers pulled the lifeless bodies of Brian, 8, Melissa, 4, Kadie, 2, and eight-month-old Emily from the Detroit River. DeLisle and his wife had swum to safety.

A confession was allegedly made to police after a long interrogation; many disputed it was an actual confession and it was tossed out by the judge before trial. The media had already reported on it extensively, and several jurors said they knew about it before they served in his trial.

Now, DeLisle says emphatically he’s innocent. Who does he blame for his conviction? “The post-traumatic stress of losing my children allowed everything to spiral out of control,” he writes.

DeLisle adds that he’s getting through his time in jail “with the love and support of family and friends,” saying he’s made hundreds of friends in his time behind bars.

In the process of his long, well-reasoned, obviously time consuming letter where he answers every one of Jasina’s questions, DeLisle reveals some details about those family and friends that many have wondered about for years.

His wife, Sue, initially supported DeLisle, siding with his tale of the faulty car. Then she seemed to disappear from public view. What happened? “I could see Sue’s pain in her eyes during every visit and for each appeals process,” DeLisle explains in his letter. “Because I love her, I insisted she leave — she reluctantly did years later.”

They’ve been divorced nearly two decades, he adds, saying they’re no longer in contact because “our children looked too much like their father, which would be a constant daily reminder of the love we once shared.”

Throughout the letter, DeLisle claims innocence, and he does issue a statement to the people of metro Detroit, many of whom were riveted to trial coverage 25  years ago.

DeLisle comes out swinging in his own defense, writing, “I can’t swim and have a fear of deep water so the so-called lie detector test was a ruse perpetrated by police in order to instill ‘guilt by accusation’ … At trial, the state’s expert mechanic was primarily a bus inspector who couldn’t even start our vehicle for testing…”

He goes on to blame the state police, saying the arresting officer wrote “accelerator sticking” on the top of his note pad during a test ride with police and then “swore under oath he had no idea why he wrote that.” Those claims have been refuted by police and prosecutors many times, including in the in-depth report WWJ produced about the 25th anniversary of that tragic day. Jasina interviewed, for her special report on WWJ 950 and CBS Detroit, eyewitness, police, the judge, investigators and attorneys.

DeLisle says at one point Barbara Walters wanted to interview him, but the Michigan Department of Corrections wouldn’t allow it.

Fundamentally, what everyone wants to know then and now is — did he do it? And if so, why? This is as far as DeLisle will go in his discussion.

“I”ve always been hypercritical of myself, which is why I’ve always accepted responsibility for the accident, because that’s what it is — a tragic accident! I am a good and kind man who has always – always tried to be the best man, husband and father I could be.

“I’ve spent nearly half of my life wrongfully imprisoned. But you don’t know me, just like you don’t know the whole truth or I wouldn’t be here today.”

And he takes the opportunity of rare media interaction to give a message to the people who “rescued my wife and I that night, and to those who desperately tried to save our children.”

“You are forever in our hearts and prayers,” he writes. “Thank you and God bless.”

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WYANDOTTE (WWJ) Beverly Lake’s husband teased her about nosiness when she set up high-powered binoculars on a tripod and pointed it out the 11th floor window of their apartment. Her neighbor, nicknamed Hawkeye, one-upped her and put binoculars in every window.

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“My husband said ‘You two are the nosiest people on the face of the Earth, and he said, he made this horrible, dire prediction: ‘Someday, you’re going to witness a murder.’ And he was right,” Lake said.

The day before Lawrence DeLisle drove his station wagon into the Detroit River 25 years ago, killing his four children, Lake told WWJ’s Roberta Jasina she saw this:

“We were looking down and we saw a car, an old station wagon,” Lake recalled. “It came to the foot of Eureka (at the Detroit River) and sat there awhile and then I saw it back up and made a U-turn through our driveway and leave. My dad looked down and said, made a comment, and said ‘Oh, I guess that’s a family.’ We didn’t think anything more about it until the following evening.”

The next night, she said the same car did the same thing. A third time, about 20 minutes later, it happened again, but this time the car was roaring and crashed right through the Detroit River barrier. The DeLisles were under water.

Lake made the 911 call.

Lake“I heard Suzanne scream soon as the car went into the river,” Lake said to Jasina. “She screamed ‘My baby’s in the car.'” Lake later saw the children emerge from the dark depths of the Detroit River in the arms of rescue divers, one by one.

“I remember how cute little boy’s knees are and I saw his legs hanging there, just limp,” Lake said about the. She stayed awake that night, hoping it was all just a bad dream.

That moment when the car sat at the river the night before the DeLisle children drowned loomed large over the fate of the father.

“We saw something that was carefully planned,” Lake said, describing the next day’s crash into the water as the most deliberate act she’s ever seen.

When WWJ’s Roberta Jasina asked Robert Colombo, now chief judge of Wayne County Circuit Court, if he thinks Lawrence DeLisle is guilty — he answers quickly. And the moment Lake eye spied out the window helps to shape his opinion.

“Yes,” says Colombo, who presided over the trial, about DeLisle’s guilt. “The fact that he had been there the day before and had driven around the area, the fact that he was there that day and made the approach to the river a couple of times, the fact that he accelerated the car … The fact that he had tried to blow up his family eight years before …”

DeLisle’s claim a leg cramp forced him to slam on the accelerator was “unbelievable,” the judge added. There was evidence he steered between street poles so they wouldn’t stop the car on its way into the water.

“This was the saddest case I ever tried,” Colombo said.

DeLisle defenders point to a disputed confession and an allegedly tainted jury as evidence of innocence, but Colombo says justice was served.

“There is no such thing as a perfect trial, but it was a fair trial and justice was done,” Colombo said.

Lake agrees DeLisle got the sentence he deserves — life behind bars. But she’s serving a sentence of her own, a cage of memories she can’t shake. It took Lake years to recover from images of the soft blonde baby in the pink sleeper and the little boy with sweet knees.

“Even now I think about how old they’d be, and how old that boy would be and what his life would be like,” Lake said. “That night is indelibly etched in my memory.”

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By Christy Strawser

WYANDOTTE (WWJ) The media got in front of it first with screaming headlines about a jailhouse confession — and that’s the basis of the reason Jim Mitzelfeld, a former federal prosecutor and Detroit News reporter, thinks Lawrence DeLisle didn’t get a fair trial.

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Mitzelfeld, who now works as investigative counsel in the NASA Office of Inspector General, covered the story 25 years ago when DeLisle was accused of intentionally driving into the Detroit River with his wife and four children. Only the adults emerged from the car; the kids, trapped in their seats, drowned in 30 feet of water. DeLisle, 28 years old at the time, said a foot cramp caused him to stomp on the accelerator, and claimed it stuck.

The story was “really tragic,” Mitzelfeld told WWJ’s Roberta Jasina in an exclusive interview.

This is how it went down: The case was investigated by Wyandotte police and about four days after the incident, DeLisle was arrested and charged with murder. Not too long afterward, police issued a statement to the media suggesting DeLisle had confessed to intentionally driving into the river and killing his children.

Stories about his alleged deed piled on top of each other, story after story consumed local media, and the public couldn’t get enough. Why did he do it? How could he do it? What did the wife believe?

“There was a great hew and cry among the population,” Mitzelfeld said, describing the public mood at the time of the incident, adding many wondered how “two parents could let their children die in such a tragic way.”

Eight months later, the media, including Mitzelfeld, was allowed to listen to the 12 or so hours of the DeLisle interrogation, and the veteran reporter was left with the feeling it wasn’t as clear cut as the police claimed. “It wasn’t clear at all that he had confessed,” Mitzelfeld said. “He was interviewed shortly after he lost all of his children and made statement that could be interpreted many different ways.

“This was a distraught man.”

(Photo: courtesy NASA Office of Inspector General.)
Jim Mitzelfeld in his office.(Photo: courtesy NASA Office of Inspector General.)

His lawyer won his motion the suppress the confession during DeLisle’s trial. The court ruled it was an “involuntary statement” that couldn’t be used against him at trial, Mitzelfeld said.

At the conclusion of the trial, the jury deliberated eight hours before finding him guilty. “But the case still raises a lot of questions in my mind,” Mitzelfeld said.

Despite the fact he covered many dramatic, horror-filled stories, Mitzelfeld told Jasina this one had a lasting impact on him. “I think about this case all the time. It had all the elements of a tragedy that would linger forever,” he said.

It’s something he’s never forgotten. In fact, it helped change the course of his own life. Mitzelfeld said this one, and several other cases, convinced him to go to law school and start a new career. He became a federal prosecutor, saying “I’m sure this case had something to do with it.”

Does he think DeLisle did it on purpose? Not necessarily. As evidence, Mitzelfeld says DeLisle’s wife Suzanne, the only surviving witness, said he did not do this intentionally. “How many women would forgive their husband for intentionally killing their children?” Mitzelfeld asked.

“If she doesn’t hold him responsible, how can the rest of us?” he asked Jasina.

He added her story of the leg cramp and the stuck accelerator, “as freaky and bizarre” as it sounds, is no more difficult to fathom than a wife forgiving her husband for intentionally killing her children.

As for whether DeLisle got a fair trial, Mitzelfeld added Judge Robert Colombo at sentencing said he had serious questions about whether the proceedings had been fair. Five members of the jury said they were aware DeLisle had confessed even though the confession had been tossed out before trial, Mitzelfeld said.

Colombo told Jasina as part of this 25-year anniversary special report he now believes the verdict was fair. Mitzelfeld isn’t convinced.

“I don’t think it was fair at the end of the day,” Mitzelfeld said, adding no jurors should have been allowed to serve in the trial if they knew about the confession from media reports.

He thinks this shouldn’t necessarily be the end of the story for DeLisle.

“If I was governor, I think what I think I would do is seriously consider taking another look at this case,” he said. “If I could have two of the best lawyers come into my office and investigate the facts and have each of them argue one side and then the other and make a decision, I would. But I really think that if you look at the legal opinions that considered this case, there were some serious reservations.

“Two members of the Michigan Supreme Court believed he didn’t get a fair trial. I think it’s worth taking another look at.”

DeLisle has exhausted his appeals, so any change would have to come from the governor. If he was governor, Mitzelfeld said he would decide “enough is enough,” and let DeLisle go after the 25 years time he’s already served.

“I think the one thing that sticks out is there’s no question Larry DeLisle was responsible for his children dying … because he was driving the car, which wound up in the river, and his children didn’t survive. So there’s no question, morally or even legally, that he’s probably at a minimum responsible. So the question is ‘how responsible is he? And what punishment is appropriate. And anytime, I think, you have parents accused of killing their children, you know, it’s so hard for anyone else to fathom that, the emotions run so high.

“But this is the only case I can think of, or even heard of, where there was some ambiguity as to whether the parent charged with killing their children did it intentionally. That just doesn’t happen very often.”

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By Christy Strawser
WYANDOTTE (WWJ) Daniel Galeski was on call as a Wyandotte police officer the night Lawrence DeLisle plunged his car into the Detroit River 25 years ago, killing his four small children.

When the first call came in, Galeski said it sounded like a routine traffic accident. Then he learned the car was in the water.

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“Then I found out, the divers when they arrived, said there were some fisherman who said they had seen the car catapult into the water,” Galeski recalled during an exclusive interview with WWJ’s Roberta Jasina about the 25th anniversary of the DeLisle incident.

Eventually, the boat put down an anchor and hooked on something. It was the DeLisle station wagon, with its lights still on, buried under at least 30 feet of water.

It was so dark down there, rescuers had to feel their way around to find the doors and windows of the car, Galeski said. Then they started pulling up small bodies, one by one. “The children were limp, not breathing,” Galeski said, adding first responders tried to do mouth to mouth resuscitation.

“None of them responded,” he said.

The city came together in support of the children, rallying at a level that Galeski found shocking. He said today people still come up to him at least once a week and bring up the DeLisle case.

When he started the investigation, Galeski said he started first assumed it was a tragic accident, perhaps a wrong turn. DeLisle told him a story first about a leg cramp, later about his foot slipping, and somewhere in there was talk about a stuck accelerator, Galeski said.

The parents expressed plans to leave for a Florida vacation when they were released from the hospital.

But while DeLisle was in the hospital, nothing was found wrong with his leg, Galeski said, and a mechanical appraisal of the car found nothing amiss there either.

Galeski interviewed wife Suzanne DeLisle, who explained away the fact she survived by saying she was in pitch black when she got out of the car and thought if she could get out of the water, she could get help for her family. Eyewitnesses said she reached of the surface of the water screaming for her babies; her husband emerged without a word.

Then other relatives told the cop Lawrence DeLisle had issues, and had once tried to set their house on fire, he recalled.

“I immediately set up a polygraph,” Galeski said, telling Jasina that DeLisle was willing.

Then something happened that legal analysts, the media, cops and the public have talked about for decades. DeLisle allegedly confessed.

Galeski disputes the timing of the alleged 12-hour interrogation that led to the confession, the length of which was used regularly as evidence a tired DeLisle was just giving in when he seemed to say he meant to drive into the river. It took an hour each way to get to the polygraph and back and they took an hour-long break for lunch, Galeski said. The confession was tossed out before the trial by Judge Robert Colombo, who didn’t find it credible, but police had already outlined it for the media, hungry for details of the horrific incident.

The defense attorney says DeLisle was brainwashed into confession by a “hypnotic technique” during the questioning. Galeski finds that ridiculous. “Yeah, yeah, he was brainwashed, I’m an expert at that,” Galeski said sarcastically to Jasina.

In his assessment, Galeski thinks DeLisle meant to kill himself and the children, that “something snapped,” and he ended up saving himself. He said DeLisle was troubled, upset that he made $450 a week at the tire shop where he worked and his wife would quickly blow through much of it on “garbage stuff.” “He was pressured by her,” Galeski said. The parents had gotten into a tiff at a pharmacy right before the deadly crash when she spent money on a big haul of candy, he added.

In hindsight, would he change anything about the investigation? “Not really, I thought I was very thorough,” Galeski said. “I don’t think I errored in any of my investigations.”

The lead investigator in the Lawrence DeLisle trial, as he was 25 years ago. (Photo: Roberta Jasina/WWJ)
The lead investigator in the Lawrence DeLisle trial, as he was 25 years ago. (Photo: Roberta Jasina/WWJ)

He added defense attorney Frank Eaman accused him of many things — and none of them were correct.  Galeski said, “To try to turn it around and make you at fault, you know, that was terrible.”

Did it hurt him, Jasina asked? “No, it pissed me off,” he said, adding, “I felt like, screw you.”

Galeski concedes, through, that had it been a bench trial with just a judge instead of a jury, DeLisle would probably have been found not guilty. Judge Colombo, who now stands by the verdict, said at sentencing he wasn’t sure the verdict was fair, Galeski recalled.

“We presented a good case even though he (Eaman) tried to cloud it and manufacture things … That was something we had to deal with,” Galeski said.

Did DeLisle get what he deserved? Galeski thinks one life sentence would have been enough.

And then there’s this: “I have moments where I say ‘Well, maybe, and this is just me talking, maybe it was an accident.’ But you know you start thinking and putting it together, when he told me about the gas pedal, the cramp, that’s manufactured, and I believe it he did it on purpose.”

Galeski kept the infamous car almost all these years, thinking it could play a role in some future court proceeding. He said it was just very recently disposed of, after decades in police storage.

Meanwhile, DeLisle claimed innocence in a letter to Jasina, and his appeals attorney still thinks he has a solid chance of having his sentence commuted by the governor — who has never publicly addressed the case.

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By Christy Strawser

WYANDOTTE (WWJ) Attorney Frank Eaman represented Lawrence DeLisle in court, presenting a flashy, dramatic case that Judge Robert Colombo remembers 25 years later as one of the best courtroom performances he’s ever seen.

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Eaman also made enemies of local police by blaming them for what he thought were bad interrogation techniques that caused a confession. The confession was tossed out before trial, but it already existed in the minds of jurors.  “But all the jurors had read the confession in the papers, so it didn’t really matter that it was out of evidence,” Eaman said to WWJ’s Roberta Jasina for a special report on the 25th anniversary of a crime that riveted the nation.

He adds he wishes in hindsight he had lost the motion to suppress the confession, so jurors could have seen how it was extracted.

Eaman thinks the interrogation is what planted the idea in DeLisle’s head that he intentionally drove his station wagon into the Detroit River, killing his four children. Eaman still thinks the gas pedal stuck, causing DeLisle to careen into the water, a notion rejected by police, the judge, and jury.

What about the seven seconds the car was careening toward the water without any application of brakes, the moment DeLisle allegedly steered between poles to head straight to the water? “If you’ve never been in in that situation before, you don’t know what to do,” Eaman said.

(Photo: Roberta Jasina, WWJ)
Attorney Frank Eaman at the time of the DeLisle trial. (Photo: Roberta Jasina, WWJ)

“They broke him down, essentially, and gave him what you could call a nervous breakdown by those interrogation techniques,” Eaman said. He says those tactics erased DeLisle’s real memory and implanted a new idea into his head, one that held him responsible for the deaths of his children, three daughters and a son.

“When the police tested the car, the first thing that happened was the accelerator stuck,” Eaman said. The police say the accelerator problem DeLisle claimed — when he said a leg cramp caused him to stomp on the accelerator — couldn’t be replicated.

Eaman blames the police, and he blames the judge for failing to move the venue to an area where jurors hadn’t already read media reports about the confession.

But he doesn’t seem to blame DeLisle. “I feel very bad for those children who died, and shouldn’t have died at such a young age … I happen to know Larry DeLisle feels bad about that, and he always has,” Eaman said, adding his client didn’t have a chance to grieve until he went to prison.

How’s DeLisle in prison? Eaman said he’s “adjusted” to prison life, but he’s been in prison a long time. “I would hope that after, as long as he’s served in prison … that somebody would take another look at this case,” Eaman said.

He says the whole case “sticks in his craw” as the only high-profile case he ever lost.

Peter Van Houk, the attorney who took DeLisle’s appeals all the way to the Supreme Court, where they refused to hear it, said he thought the conviction would be overturned somewhere along the way. The fact five jurors said they knew about the confession was solid grounds for appeal, Van Houk said.

In the realm of reality, following the exhaustion of all the appeals, would the Michigan governor commute his sentence? “I think it is a situation where there is some possibility (of a pardon),” Van Houk said.

“If he wants to seek that, I would certainly assist him,” Van Houk said about DeLisle, adding, “I think he has a decent chance of it.”

DeLisle still sends him a Christmas card every year, the only client who still does that, Van Houk said.

The Christmas cards have hung on as long as public fascination with the case. So why does the DeLisle incident still resonate so much with people? Plenty of unimaginable crimes, stories of death and destruction, innocents lost too soon, have happened since then that barely outlasted a 24 hour news cycle.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kevin Simowski, who won the conviction against Delisle, sees it this way: “I think most people remember the DeLisle trial. I think he was a desperate guy, This wasn’t the stereotypical killer, and a bad guy with a long criminal history. It was a guy who went to work every day and lived downriver and had a family.

Kevin Simowski at the time of trial. (Photo: Roberta Jasina/WWJ) 
Prosecutor Kevin Simowski at the time of the DeLisle trial. (Photo: Roberta Jasina/WWJ)

“It was a hot night and the kids were acting up and the baby was crying, I think he hit the breaking point.”

Eaman has a different perspective on the slippery facts of the case. “Here, they got the confession that they needed to support their theory,” Eaman said about the police, adding their immediate working theory was DeLisle wanted to kill his family because of financial pressures.

“If you ever watch the videotape of the State Police interrogation in Lansing, it’s unbelievable what they did in that tape,” Eaman said, adding the police used a hypnotic technique that even reeled him in. He said he started watching the tape, and couldn’t stop until 3 a.m.

“I got hypnotized myself in that when I started watching the tape, I couldn’t stop,” Eaman said.


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By Roberta Jasina
WYANDOTTE (WWJ) Sunday, August 3, 2014, marks 25 years since Lawrence DeLisle drove the family station wagon into the Detroit River at the foot of Eureka Road.

Although DeLisle and his wife survived, their four innocent little children drowned. Divers found the kids floating inside the submerged vehicle 30 feet below the surface. Sundown. Zero visibility.  Fast current.  Horrible.

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Reporters were standing there that night on Eureka, watching the men in boats. Watching the heroes diving. Watching the little limp bodies being brought up.

The next day we stood there again, waiting for the big old car to be dragged to the surface.

Covering the DeLisle case was one of my first major assignments at WWJ.  The story sickened me.  I was a brand new mom, with an eight month old son at home.  I had a million disturbing questions.

I wondered what it must have been like for those kids under water.  It must have been so scary careening down the street, and so dark and silent in the water.

How in God’s name could this happen?

I wondered why DeLisle didn’t scream when he surfaced.  Why didn’t he try to save those kids.

Then a few days later came his “confession” and the murder charges which seemed to whip the community and the media into a frenzy.

It was a frenzy.

People wanted to know what kind of monster could do that to his own kids?   Was it premeditated?  Was it supposed to be a family murder-suicide.  Was he insane?  Was his wife in on it?  Was there insurance money?  People threatened to bomb the DeLisle house.  They screamed obscenities at his wife.  They yelled that Lawrence DeLisle should be drowned.

Every day for nearly one year, it seemed there was something new and something ugly in this real life nightmare being played out in Metro Detroit.

The car driven into the river?  We learned DeLisle’s Dad had committed suicide in that vehicle about 2 years before the drownings.  He’d shot himself in what reporters dubbed “The Death Car.”  His bloodstains were still inside.

We learned the DeLisles were deeply in debt.

The confession?  A judge eventually said, forget it, ignore it because the police didn’t play fair.

There was a lot of dirt dug up in this case.  And the dirt made headlines.  There was a lot of anger.

It took almost a year to get to trial.  It was like being on a bad roller-coaster for months.

The actual courtroom action went quickly the following June.  Eight days of testimony and arguments.  The jury deliberated for nine hours.

Nearly 50 deputies were called in for the verdict, just in case of a riot.

Some reporters thought he was guilty.  Others guessed he was innocent.  As for me, I truly didn’t know.  I’d half expected a hung jury.  The defense only needed one juror to doubt and hold out.

Nothing was going to bring back those kids.

Then came the decision. Guilty of first degree murder and attempted murder.  Life in prison, no parole.  Period.  Goodbye.

The whole case was just damn disturbing.  Those gorgeous kids.  The ugly Death Car. The dad who didn’t dive.  The mob scenes. The yelling and swearing.

And it really bothered me that the DeLisles looked so normal.  They looked average.  Not evil.  They seemed nice like you and me.  And that scared me.  And it still does.

All these years later, DeLisle says he is innocent.

And sometimes I wonder, did the jury get it right?  Was it premeditated murder?  Should the trial have been moved out of Detroit.

Another ride on that rotten roller coaster.

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DETROIT (AP) A man convicted of murdering his four children by driving the family station wagon into a river was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday by a judge who suggested he might have preferred conviction on lesser charges.

Lawrence DeLisle was convicted by a jury of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, the last because his wife, Suzanne, also was in the car.

Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Colombo Jr. said he had no choice but to impose five life terms, to be served concurrently. He said the evidence proved beyond doubt the act was premeditated, but suggested he would have preferred conviction of lesser charges.

”I don’t know if the defendant is guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted,” the judge said. The jury could have convicted DeLisle of second- degree murder, negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter.

Witnesses testified DeLisle had complained that his family was a financial burden and once, several years ago, left the house with a candle burning by a leaky gas dryer.

Frank Eaman, DeLisle’s court-appointed lawyer, said he would seek a new trial and, if that motion was rejected, would ask the Michigan Court of Appeals to overturn the convictions.

DeLisle was accused of deliberately driving his station wagon into the Detroit River on Aug 3, 1989. Supported by testimony from his wife, DeLisle claimed a leg cramp and a faulty accelerator left him unable to control the car as it raced down a dead-end street and through a barricade at the river’s edge.

Jurors deliberated three days before convicting DeLisle on June 21 of four counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder.

DeLisle read a brief statement again proclaiming his innocence.

”A father’s job is to protect his children, and I failed,” he told Colombo. ”I panicked. I froze. That is my guilt, not murder.”

Suzanne DeLisle told Colombo she believed her husband was innocent. As the survivor of an attempted murder, she was allowed to address the judge under Michigan’s victims’-rights law.

”The police weren’t there. I was,” said Mrs. DeLisle, who along with her husband was rescued by passing boaters after their car plunged into the river. ”I know Larry is innocent. … We will be together again.”

Judge Colombo said he questioned his earlier rulings denying a change of venue in the highly publicized case. The jury ”may have been subconsciously influenced by what they already knew about the case through the media,” he said.

Deputies returned DeLisle to the Wayne County Jail, where he would stay until being transferred, probably Thursday, to the State Prison of Southern Michigan near Jackson, sheriff’s spokeswoman Nancy Mouradian said.

Mrs. DeLisle, confronted outside the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice by a swarm of reporters and photographers, shouted ”Leave me alone, enough is enough,’ as two companions led her to a waiting car.

Eaman told reporters he would ask for a new trial within six weeks. He said he was surprised by the candor expressed by Colombo before the sentencing and was encouraged by the doubts raised by the judge.

”I don’t think this case is over by a long shot,” Eaman said.

Wayne County Prosecutor John O’Hair said he couldn’t fault Colombo for expressing anxiety over the case. But he also said that most key rulings on evidence and the jury-screening process were heavily weighted in DeLisle’s favor.

”From all reports I’ve had on the trial, I believe the record made in the case is virtually unimpeachable,” O’Hair said. ”I believe we have had as fair a trial as is possible in the criminal justice system.”

The children, Bryan, 8; Melissa, 4; Kathryn, 2; and Emily, 8 months, drowned as the family station wagon sank in 27 feet of water.

He had complained that his family was a financial burden and at once, several years ago, left the house with a candle burning by a leaky gas dryer.