Tag Archives: murder

Kent County solved cold case featured on Dateline

3-bottom, City of Kentwood, City of Wyoming, , , , ,
Kent County Sheriff Lt. E.J. Johnson and Detective Sgt. Bill Marks with Dateline’s Andrea Canning. (Kent County Sherrif)

By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org

On Aug. 5, 2006, Forrest DeMaagd and his wife had stopped at his daughter’s house in Rockford to check on her after she failed to meet with a friend. Knowing that she was recovering from surgery to donate a kidney, they went upstairs only to find Renee Pagel stabbed to death in her bed. Fourteen  years later, the Kent County Sheriff’s Department and Prosecutor’s Office would announce the arrest of her Pagel’s estranged husband.

 

This Friday, the memory of Renee Pagel and the passion of her friends to get justice for her will be the focus of Dateline. The show is set to air at 9 p.m. on NBC affiliate, WOOD TV, which is channel 8 in Grand Rapids.

“Renee Pagel’s murder was heartbreaking to so many people in the community because so many people knew and loved her,” said Susan Samples, an Target 8investigative reporter, during the Dateline interview. “I mean she touched so many lives. She was a nurse, a nurse practitioner, a teacher.

Target 8 investigative reporter Susan Samples was interviewed for the Dateline show on the Renee Pagel murder. (Dateline)

“Her friends would not give up. They were not going to let the news media forget about Renee. No matter who the reporters were in the newsroom, they were going to hear about Renee Pagel’s murder and they were going to remind people about it.”

A mother of three, a nurse practitioner at Forest View Hospital, and a health instructor at Kent ISD’s Kent Career Tech Center, Pagel was known for her compassion. She had just donated her kidney to a student’s father only a few days before her murder and was in a weaken state. At the same time, her divorce with husband Mike Pagel was about to be finalized.

According to officers, the scene was strange as there was no sign of any trouble outside or inside the house. The only struggle was contained to the bedroom said Kent County Sheriff Lt. E.J. Johnson who along with Detective Sgt. Bill Marks were instrumental in helping to solve the mystery.

“For a crime like this to take place in Courtland Township, even in Kent County is very rare,” said Kent County Deputy Michael Allen in the Dateline program. “The feeling of walking into that home and into the bedroom was an eerie feeling. You could sense that something evil had taken place that night.”

The case left law enforcement stumped as the key suspect, Mike Pagel, had a solid alibi, he was at a sleepover with his children, and there was no murder weapon.

 

The murder may have gone unsolved for years if it had not been the dedication of Pagel’s friends, specifically Chris Crandle. Crandle put up the Facebook page Justice for Renee, to keep the investigation going in hopes of an arrest. It was Mike Pagel’s brother, Charles also known as “Bo,” who finally came forward, telling police that some years earlier, Mike had confessed to him some killing his wife and threw the murder weapon in a river in Saginaw County.

Through an effort to drag the river using a magnet, law enforcement found the murder weapon among car parts, bullets, and a Christmas tree stand. Mike Pagel was arrested in February 2020 and sentenced in October to 25 to 50 years in prison, which means he will not be eligible for parole until he is 80.

 

WOOD TV did a half hour special, “Secrets Kept, Secrets Revealed,” on the case in January. On April 30, Oxygen presented the Pagel story in its “An Unexpected Killer” series. 

Book Review: Isadore’s Secret

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6518631Isadore’s Secret
by Mardi Link
I have been familiar with the story of the missing nun from Leelanau County for years and was anxiously awaiting Mardi Link’s second true-crime book last summer. I was lucky to be able to read it in Leelanau County, not far from the scene of the murder: the small community of Isadore, where the Holy Rosary Catholic Church is the predominant presence in the landscape.
“Isadore’s Secret” is the story of Sister Janina, a young Felician nun who mysteriously disappeared one summer day in 1907, and the cover-up and controversy that followed when her decayed remains were found ten years later in the basement of the very church she served. The story is interwoven with the parish priests, the bishops, the townspeople, the local sheriff and the suspect housekeeper in a tale of secrets, scandal and intrigue.
Mardi Link has captured the flavor of the small Polish rural community in the early 1900s and the historically accurate background gives depth to the story. Link has done extensive research on the case, carefully constructing the story with original research using church records and other documents, newspaper accounts, and interviews with family members of those involved. The resulting tale would
seem to be the basis for a great crime novel, but Link’s book is pure non-fiction.
Link’s gripping account of the despicable crime, the sins of omission of the Catholic Church, and the insight into Sister Janina’s convent life makes for a great Halloween read.