calls about michael george maybe having a girlfriend. when did you learn about a shop assistant named rene. two days later. we started to receive phone calls from people advising us that we might want to look at his relationship with his employee named rene. cozy, check it out. yes. it was barb george who met and befriended rene at their children s school and brought her to work at the comic store. she had five children and needed the money. her floundering marriage ended in divorce three weeks before barb s murder. not long before she remembers dropping in at the comic shop along with her brother joe. they saw michael and rene canoodling. you look around at the world
that he was napping at his mother s house. the phone call story meant george was lying and was certain he talked to the store owner at the shop and the brief conversation must have taken place a few minutes before barb was killed. the embarrassing thing about the nugget of a clue is that mike told the same story to the police in 1990, the day after the murder. what looked like a case breaker in 2007 had simply slipped through the cracks back when. they had it in the case file all along. there it was. a record of his july 14th phone call to the police. he stated he called comic world around 5:30 and talked with the owner, michael george. that is the piece that was missing. it was a piece that had flaws as evidence. there were no existing phone logs to corroborate the story or pin down the time he said that
birthday party. by then police were all over the scene. he told us who he was, identified himself, and wanted to know what happened in his store. lead detective donald steckman, then of clinton township p.d. testified that michael said his wife was working at comics world. i advised him there had been an incident at the store and his wife had been injured. did he ask you about her condition? no. did he ask you about how it happened? no. steckman told the husband that then lieutenant donald brook would be driving him to the hospital where he could find out about his wife. the former lieutenant testified that michael started chatting without prompting. he made a statement that i thought was noteworthy. what was that statement? something must have fell or dropped on her in the back room. why is that statement interesting to you? because i never told him that mrs. george was in the back room of the store. he knows things he shouldn t
that time and, therefore, could not be the killer. but according to prosecutors, michael george wasn t napping on the couch at all. they contended he d returned to comics world and sneaked into the storage room with a gun when barb left to order pizza for his birthday party and about what time was that? between 5:00 and 5:30. that s the timeframe when this witness, a friend of bausch s, came to the store. it was locked, and she had to wait for barb to return from the pizza place. if she was not in the store at 5:30, she couldn t have answered the phone. if someone answered the phone, it would have to be someone other than her. correct. prosecutors questioned the one witness who could identify who answered the phone. michael renaud. yes, sir. mike renaud. in 1990 a decade before his disabling accident, renaud was married, had a young daughter, and was holding down two jobs. were you also attending school? yes.
please be seated. please be seated. barb s sister and two brothers seemed to share a gasp of relief. he took away my oldest sister. she didn t get to see me get married. she didn t get to see my son being born. she ll never get to see him do anything. i mean, he took a part of me away. across the room the convicted man s younger daughter, one of barb s two children, collapsed into her stepmother s arms, renee. michael george would go on weeping for a full two minutes. i didn t do this! but lieutenant craig keith, the cold case detective who rediscovered the crucial evidence, was unmoved by george s tears. mike showed no emotion back in 1990, and now he cries, and my impression of that is mike is crying for himself. it was devastating. it was just devastating.