Abe Rubinfeld didn't exorcise the rumored ghost at the Van Dusen mansion, but he did make it disappear.All it took was fixing the steam trap in the 1922 home in the Palmer Woods neighborhood of Detroit. The steam heat made a lot of noise, he said, and sounded like somebody was walking across the…
weapon that investigators had been looking for. one was inoperable. the other 9 millimeter handgun was test-fired into a tank of water. that bullet was microscopically compared to the 9 millimeter slug found in the van dusens jeep. analyst erica henderson carefully examined the distinctive marks called lands and grooves made when each bullet goes through the barrel of the gun. when you look down the barrel of a firearm, you will see the ridges and valleys. these ridges and valleys, once a bullet is fired, will be imparted on the bullet. so the bullet will also have these ridges and valleys. the test bullet and the one from the crime scene were turned repeatedly as henderson checked and rechecked the markings. but the results showed that henry sullivan s gun was not the murder weapon.
and i said did they have an accident? and i said are you sure? several times, i asked him if he were sure. and then he told me that they had been found and that they had been murdered. and i just i don t even remember after that. investigators had two crime scenes, the jeep and the area where the bodies were found. based on the evidence and the location of the bodies, investigators think that the killer was someone the van dusens knew. we felt that there probably was a third party involved in the vehicle with them. richard van dusen is forced out of the car at gunpoint and we feel he is certainly killed outside of the car. karla van dusen is shot while seated in the car. it looked like karla saw what was happening, turned her head, lifted her left hand, and the bullet went through the
sullivan said, you know, i lose my i.d.s all the time. in fact, i just lost one a couple of weeks before you came to interview me. the driver s license was dusted for fingerprints. none were found. police also looked for fingerprints inside the van dusens jeep, especially on the seatbelt. after having applied ninhydrin to the seatbelt and allowing it to dry completely, i reexamined the seatbelt for the presence of fingerprints and found none. but the killer left behind one piece of evidence. a 9 millimeter bullet found on the floor of the victim s jeep. when investigators searched henry sullivan s apartment, they found a 9 millimeter pistol. investigators found that sullivan was in possession of two 9 millimeter pistols, and that matched with the murder
delivered the car, but deparvine didn t have the money. so he asked the van dusens to follow him to his friend s home to get the money. phone records indicate karla called her mother at 6:37 to say she was driving behind the man who bought their truck. although no one knows why, they apparently left the pickup truck at the one location, and all three got into the jeep on their way to get the money. as deparvine led the van dusens to the deserted road, they may have realized that there was no friend, that there was no money, and that this was a setup. deparvine used a 9 millimeter weapon to order richard out of