Detroit News Editorial Page Editor Comments on Widlak Case
Widlak case doesn’t fit into neat box
From The Detroit News
Nolan Finlay
Suicide is the hardest way to lose a loved one. Nobody wants to think that the person they cherish was in so much pain he took his own life. So it would be easy to dismiss the resistance of the wife and children of David Widlak to accepting that his death might have been a suicide as the desperate response of a family avoiding reality.
Widlak is the Grosse Pointer who went missing Sept. 19 from the Mount Clemens bank he headed and whose body was discovered a month later floating in Lake St. Clair. His wife, Anne, children and step-children reject the finding by Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel and coroner Daniel Spitz that his death was likely a suicide.
Widlak’s body had a bullet hole in the back of the neck, and his handgun was found in the water nearby. His Community Bank was troubled — which small bank isn’t today? — and the sheriff says that some of the things Widlak did on the day he died, including deleting computer files and the history of his GPS unit, suggest a man trying to erase his life.
It adds up to suicide. But then it doesn’t.
I knew Dave Widlak, not well, and certainly not well enough to say whether he was suicidal. Besides, I’ve had enough experience with that disease to understand that sometimes people surprise you. But something about this case has bothered me from the beginning, and it’s not just the evidence. Put the facts on a scale and it could tip either way.
My uneasiness stems from Hackel’s determination from Day One to make the Widlak case about anything except murder. The day of the disappearance, the sheriff appeared convinced that Widlak was a walk-away, a troubled man looking to escape. The fact that he left his car in the parking lot, and that his office was in disarray, didn’t affect that opinion.
When the body was found in the lake four miles away from the office, Hackel spoke right away about how fit Widlak was and that walking that distance wouldn’t be beyond his capability. Why someone would walk four miles and out into a chilly lake to kill himself, well, who knows?
Then there’s the botched autopsy. Spitz missed the bullet and bullet hole when he examined the body and ruled cause of death as inconclusive. I guess that could happen to anyone.
In the interest of disclosure, when I heard Spitz’s ruling I suggested to the family that they get an independent autopsy. They requested one, and just moments before it was to be cremated, the body was sent to Oakland County Medical Examiner Ljubisa Dragovic. And how about that? He not only found the bullet hole, but sent the family a note saying Widlak was killed execution style.
Rather than spur Hackel in a new direction, namely looking for a murderer, the revelations seemed to annoy him. I have no idea why he appeared so unenthusiastic about the Widlak case. Maybe he saw it as a distraction to his campaign for Macomb County executive, a job he won in November and will assume next week. But Hackel appeared to have come to his conclusion about what happened to Widlak right away, and then shaped the investigation to fit.
The family has hired private investigators to pursue a case the Sheriff’s Office clearly wants shed of. They have no choice. Widlak’s death doesn’t yet fit into the neat box Hackel has tried to cram it in to.
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