82-year-old arrested in ’75 murder
The man was arrested on charges in the 1975 disappearance of his wife.
An 82-year-old Michigan man has been arrested on murder charges in the 1975 disappearance of his wife from Sturgeon Bay.
According to a new criminal complaint, Richard Gale Pierce, of Cheboygan, was the last person who saw his wife, Carol Jean Pierce, 35, in September 1975. The complaint says he “had motive and opportunity to end her life, and benefitted from her demise in numerous ways.”
While the 19-page complaint details Carol Jean’s prior marriages, her time with Pierce as he served in the U.S. Coast Guard, others’ impressions of their relationship, and their plans to move to Cheboygan upon his retirement, it cites no new evidence in the case, but the accretion of years of sometimes inconsistent statements by Pierce to others about Carol Jean’s disappearance.
Carol Jean’s remains were never found, and no activity was ever found associated with her accounts or Social Security number. She and Pierce were legally divorced in 1977.
Though Pierce was clearly a suspect for decades, the last investigative efforts in the case appeared to have been in 2010, according to the complaint, until the Wisconsin Cold Case Review Team of the Wisconsin Association of Homicide Investigators discussed it last month.
The arrest was announced Thursday by the Department of Justice and Sturgeon Bay Police, which were assisted by authorities in Michigan
“With no answers as to ‘why’ for years, perhaps some ‘answers’ will begin to be offered to the Fillion family members,” Sturgeon Bay Police Chief
Arleigh Porter said of Carol Jean’s family.
“While the pursuit of justice is often difficult, and in this case long overdue, investigators never gave up and hope to bring to light answers to family members on Carol Jean’s behalf.” According to the complaint: Pierce told fellow Coast Guard members that on Sept. 8, 1975, he returned to the couple’s trailer and found evidence his wife had left him and taken their savings. He only reported her missing 82 days later. He told police that she had left before and returned after a couple days.
The couple had married in 1966. It was her third marriage and his second. In 1973, he was assigned to the Coast Guard cutter Mesquite, stationed in Sturgeon Bay.
People who knew the couple later told investigators they seemed to argue a lot, that Carol Jean was “the suspicious type” and often the aggressor in arguments. Others recalled Carol Jean appearing beaten and physically abused. At least one former neighbor told investigators Carol Jean said she thought her husband was going to kill her.
But in letters to her mother in the months before she disappeared, Carol Jean seemed upbeat about her husband’s impending retirement and their planned move to Cheboygan. She was even trying to save $100 to buy him a Coast Guard ring as a surprise retirement gift.
She told her mother the couple had taken out a prepaid $25,000 life insurance policy; it was never collected.
Neighbors also recalled Carol Jean’s excitement about the move and said she would never have walked out on her husband as he claimed.
But Pierce’s shipmates got a different impression about his view of the marriage. One recalled Pierce commenting favorably when the ship captain’s wife died from a fall down their basement steps.
Several people told investigators Pierce didn’t seem very upset that his wife left him. He even invited her mother to his retirement party a couple weeks later, telling her he assumed Carol Jean was staying with her.
Pierce moved to Michigan that same month, met a woman at a bar the next month and married her in 1978. She is now deceased.
Her grandson told investigators in 2005 that one time after his grandmother gave instructions to Pierce about the placement of furniture, directions Pierce disagreed with, Pierce commented to him, “That’s why I got rid of my wife.”