Mystery of missing Middleton man persists
20 years after disappearance, police remain stumped
It’s been 20 years since Glenn “Lenny” Hustin Jr. of Middleton was last seen and his disappearance remains a mystery to this day.
Although the Michigan State Police and other local law enforcement agencies conducted a lengthy and thorough investigation, authorities remain stumped.
Hustin, who was 30 at the time, was last seen on Feb. 5, 2001.
Police followed up on numerous leads and tips but none proved fruitful.
A week after his disappearance Hustin was due to testify as a witness in a court case that involved his employer and landlord Roger Eugene Brown of Perrinton.
At the time, Brown owned the Fulton Country Corners gas station and convenience store on M-57, along with several rental properties in the area.
Hustin, who was described as mentally challenged, had allegedly saw Brown steal a rifle and bow from another tenant’s apartment, and also witnessed Brown assault a child.
Brown was charged with larceny of a firearm and assault. However, the larceny charge was later dismissed after Hustin vanished because he was the prosecution’s only witness and the case could not proceed without his testimony.
Had Brown been convicted he could have faced up to five years in prison. He did plead guilty to the assault charge and was fined.
Hustin often rode a bicycle and the last time he was seen he had ridden it to work and parked it at the side of the building. The bike also went missing. It was found in Ithaca on Feb. 20, but there was no trace of Hustin.
Police also searched Hustin’s apartment, which was undisturbed with his clean laundry folded by the front door. Government assistant checks and income tax refunds were never cashed, and there was no activity on his bank account or Social Security number.
Several rumors were followed up on by police. One was that Hustin went to Florida but that was later determined to be unfounded.
Another was that Brown had moved Hustin to Kentucky, where his son lived, to keep him quiet. Authorities there checked that out too but did not find Hustin.
Tips also came in giving possible locations where Hustin’s body might be buried. But after extensive searches nothing was found.
Hustin’s case was part of a segment on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” about 15 years ago but even that did nothing to help solve the mystery.
Investigators sent details of Hustin to every police agency in the United
States and posted it on the National Law Enforcement Information Network. It’s been picked up by a number of missing person websites.
Hustin’s DNA profile was also entered in the national data bank run by the University of Texas, and billboards with his photo were placed throughout the area.
MSP Detective Sgt. Steve Benn was the lead investigator and remained on the case until retiring three or four years ago.
As time passed, leads and tips regarding Hustin’s possible whereabouts slowed to nothing.
In a 2011 interview with the Morning Sun, the 10th anniversary of Hustin’s disappearance, Benn admitted it was one of his most frustrating cases and still kept him up at night.
“I’ve gotten a scattering of tips but none fruitful,” Benn said at the time.
Neither he nor his successor, MSP Detective Ed Doyle, were able to solve the puzzle
Now that Doyle is also retired the case has been turned over to MSP Detective Sgt. Pete Fimbinger.
“I just took over two months ago,” he said. “I have binders and boxes (regarding the case) to go through. All missing person cases are considered actively open. We’re always looking for more information.”
Like his predecessors, Fimbinger is still looking for help from the public in solving the case.
Anyone who might have information can call him at the MSP Lakeview Post at 989-948-0673.
WASHINGTON » In the 1960s, the federal government marshaled its resources to fight a “War on Poverty.” More recently, however, we’ve been fighting what amounts to a “War on the Poor” — a sustained campaign of denial and neglect that we can begin to end by raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
The current figure of $7.25 — unchanged since 2009 — is so absurdly low that the country effectively has no federal minimum wage at all. As of May 1, when Virginia’s minimum wage rises, 29 states will mandate higher wage floors. Assuming a 40-hour workweek, a $7.25-per-hour rate adds up to $290 before taxes. Try stretching that to cover a week’s worth of food, housing, clothing and transportation for an individual, let alone a family. It can’t be done.
Nor is it realistic to expect workers to survive, much less thrive, on $10 an hour, as Sen. Mitt Romney, R-utah, proposes, or $11 an hour, which Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W. Va., would prefer. The richest country on Earth can surely afford to accept the following proposition: Anyone who works a full-time job should be able to afford at least a working-class life. At less than $15 an hour, that simply is not possible.
Republicans cite the principle of federalism in arguing that states and cities should be able to set their own minimum wage levels according to local conditions. Indeed, many states do impose higher minimum wages, and some cities, such as Seattle and the District of Columbia, are on a path to $15. But five states — Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana — have no minimum wage at all, meaning employers are bound only by the $7.25 federal standard. And Wyoming and Georgia bizarrely set their minimum wage at just $5.15; again, the federal rule applies to jobs covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Federal policy recognizes that the current minimum wage is not a living wage. We help low-wage workers survive with tax credits, food assistance, subsidized housing and other sorely needed programs. But why the reluctance to require employers to compensate an honest day’s work with an honest day’s pay?
Other important principles once championed by the Republican Party are being undermined by this hesitance: Self-reliance. Self-respect. The idea of work as its own reward. The notion of idleness as damaging to self and to society.
Setting a nationwide floor of $15 an hour would require many employers to fine-tune their business plans. The cost of a Big Mac might marginally rise.
Yes, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.4 million workers could lose their jobs, although many other economists argue that the impact on employment would be marginal or nonexistent. The CBO also estimates that the net impact would be to lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty.
Look beyond the fact that the federal poverty level — a family of four making a penny more than $26,500 annually is not considered poor — should really be called the federal penury level. And leave aside that a full-time, minimum-wage job would earn only $15,080 per year. Consider instead how seldom we even talk about poverty today, as though the poor have magically become invisible or ceased to exist.
Activists are trying to get us to pay attention. The Rev. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, has been holding virtual and socially distanced events across the country — including in Manchin’s home state — to argue that a $15 minimum wage is a vital component of any effective covid-19 relief package. “The truth of the matter is it will lift millions of people out of low wages and poverty,” he says, taking a more realistic view of where the poverty line should be drawn than the federal government does.
President Biden included the $15 wage in his proposed relief legislation. But it is unclear whether the Senate parliamentarian will rule that the boost can be approved through the arcane “reconciliation” process requiring only 51 votes — that is, if even 51 votes can be found given the stated opposition of Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Dariz.
But I fail to see the political downside of supporting the measure for any Democrats — or even for the few reasonable Republicans left in the Senate. Raising the minimum wage is a popular idea; a Vox poll this week showed that 62 percent of voters support the relief bill’s plan for a gradual increase to $15 by 2025. Some of the nation’s biggest employers have already made the move: Costco this week announced that it would raise its starting hourly wage to $16, outflanking major corporate rivals. Small-business owners would have four years to adjust and adapt.
And the moral calculus could not be clearer. A $15 minimum wage would cost employers. Growing inequality costs all of us even more.
The richest country on Earth can surely afford to accept the following proposition: Anyone who works a full-time job should be able to afford at least a working-class life. At less than $15 an hour, that simply is not possible.