By JESSICA SIEFF
Niles Daily Star

For the detectives who devote their time to cases such as finding the killer of husband and wife John and Carolyn Tarwacki, found dead in their home on Carberry in Niles Township a month ago, such investigations are what they hold on to day and night.

Some of them will say for themselves they spend almost every moment going over aspects of the case in their minds, turning pieces of evidence over and over again to determine a motive, a killer and a matter of justice.

And until that case is solved, they will never let go.

“We never give up on them,” Lt. John Slenk said. “We just put the case back on the shelf and say, we’ll be patient.”

Slenk is in Niles to help investigate the Tarwacki double homicide, the facts of which continue to elude detectives and – along with Detective Fabian Suarez – he’s doing so with more than just an intention to catch a killer but with determination to keep the case from getting cold.

In hot cases, time is of the essence. Suarez said investigators do what they can within minutes of being called to a crime scene to saturate that scene with eyes, search for evidence and develop elements of their investigation.

In a cold case, however, “we’re not on time constraints,” Suarez said.

“Time has gone by and a lot of times time is going to be your ally,” he said. “You might have relationships with people … friendships change, divorces happen.”

For criminals who think they’ve gotten away with the perfect crime, Suarez and Slenk are waiting patiently for their day to come.

They have spearheaded and worked countless cold cases throughout the area. Such chases are rated in solvability on a scale of one to five, one being the least likely to be solved, re-interviewing countless relatives, witnesses and friends and former friends. They’ve studied every piece of evidence, an element to investigations that detectives don’t have the luxury of finding when it comes to cold cases.

In a cold case, catching a killer comes down to good old-fashioned police work.

“Once you lose that (evidence) there isn’t any more,” Slenk said. “Most cold cases are solved with just what we’re doing now, talking, talking, talking.”

“You track down an ex-wife and five minutes later she’s telling you about a confession,” Suarez added. “All the ones I’ve been involved in were just old-fashioned police work.”

Whereas active investigations are a delicate balance of releasing and protecting information to use against suspects while informing the public, cold cases allow investigators to use their information in a much different way.

“With a cold case investigation we generally let the world know we’re coming,” Slenk said, adding that investigators will make an effort to work closer with media outlets.

“We want to spike the conscious of the bad guy,” he said. “People will start to change their lifestyle.
“With a hot case like we’re investigating right now, some information we have to hold close to the vest, and the reason for that is the bad guy knows what he did. He knows who he killed first, who he killed second and if we tell the world that, when we sit that guy down to interview him, we can’t use that, I don’t know if he’s telling me what he heard in the media or if he’s telling me what he knows.”

When it comes to cold cases, Slenk and Suarez say circumstances change.

There are three prominent cold cases that haunt Niles to this day. Suarez and Slenk are plenty familiar with each of them.

In each, the detectives say they are well aware of their criminal – but their hands are tied should not enough hard evidence surface for some prosecutors to feel comfortable enough to try that suspect in court.

The case is sometimes weighed against the risk of double jeopardy.

“Sometimes knowing who did it and proving who did it are two different things,” Slenk said.

Still the detectives are both incredibly patient and confident in their findings and in the matter of time, time when another piece of evidence will turn up, a story will change or someone will come forward.
And it is in their patient wait for the truth and their determination to bring that truth to light that justice for the victims of cases that have gone cold lives on.

“The only thing I can promise them is that we’re going to work this; we’re going to turn over every rock we possibly can,” Suarez said.

It’s that same determination that is guiding the investigators working around the clock to catch the killer of John and Carolyn Tarwacki.

“We know one person did this act,” Slenk said. “We know that. But that one person knows exactly what he brought to that scene what he didn’t bring to that scene, how he killed these people and I want him to tell me how he did that, ultimately.

“At this post, this case isn’t going to become cold for quite a while,” he added. “Because we’re not going to let it. We’re not going to let it happen.”

Gone but not forgotten
The Michigan State Police Department is currently overseeing the investigations of three cold cases from the Niles area.

Janice Kay Sanders
Janice Kay Sanders disappeared one summer night in 1975.
She worked at Pete’s Patio and that’s the last place she was seen, leaving after her shift was finished in the evening hours of July 20.

According to the Michigan State Police, who have posted facts about the Sanders case online. Her ex-boyfriend Jerry Liebertowski reportedly last saw the Niles woman alive.

Sanders was just 25 years old when she disappeared.

A car registered in her name was later found in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn on South 11th Street and police never made any arrests in the case, but Slenk and Suarez point to additional information that surfaced about Liebertowski who had been charged with the murder of another woman, 24-year-old Janeice Langs of Elkhart, who disappeared in November 1973.

A lack of evidence led to his acquittal in Langs’ death after he claimed to have been too afraid to come forward to police and admit he’d seen another woman bury Langs alive.

According to The Charley Project, which collects information on missing persons, Liebertowski was subsequently charged with the murder of Sanders as well. Her wallet was reportedly found hidden in the foundation of his home, along with a pill bottle belonging to Langs.

But again, lack of evidence kept Liebertowski from being prosecuted in Sanders’ death, though both Suarez and Slenk say he’s suspected in her disappearance.

Roxanne Leigh Wood
In old newspaper clippings, her face trapped in time, the photo of Roxanne Wood is haunting in the smile spread across her face, her slightly feathered hair and eyes looking off into an uncertain future.
Wood was just 31 years old when she was found dead, laying in a pool of blood in her kitchen on Tam-O-Shanter Drive in Niles in the early morning hours of Feb. 20, 1987.

Police would find following their investigation of the scene that Wood had received blunt force trauma to the head. She’d been hit with a pan with such force the handle had reportedly broken off and her throat was slit with what could have been a filet knife.

Wood’s case is particularly haunting now, with the investigation of the Tarwacki double homicide ongoing and bearing some similarities.

She was found by her husband, who according to multiple reports at the time, had been seen with her hours before at an area bowling alley. The two had driven in separate cars and Wood left for home around midnight, her husband Terry following almost an hour later.

When police were called to the scene, they told reporters that by the evidence of Wood’s wounds, the killer was someone who had been extremely angry, a sentiment that has been echoed more than once in the description of the circumstances of the Tarwackis’ deaths.

Neighbors at the time reported hearing nothing including no sounds of barking coming from the Woods’ dog, which had been kept outside and often barked easily, another echo to the Tarwacki case, as the matter of their 200-pound mastiff dog being no deterrent to the killer has also piqued the interest of investigators.
Detectives and police converged on the Wood house. They combed the bottom of Brandywine Creek in search of a murder weapon. Terry Wood even offered a reward for information.

Wood would later tell the South Bend Tribune in an article seven years after finding his wife’s body in the home he continued to live in that he felt frustrated with police and their insistence in fingering him as a suspect in her killing.

To this day police consider him a person of interest. Wood’s case was reopened in April 2001.

She was described as a loving person, a good friend, caring and generous.

Shirley Pullen
For these detectives, the cases that lay before them aren’t always a matter of jurisdiction. Where someone has been wronged, there is justice to be served.

That was the case with 69-year-old Shirley Pullen, whose case was transferred to the Michigan State Police by the Niles Township Police Department and later officially reopened.

Pullen disappeared one New Year’s Eve in 1986, she was not reported missing until Jan. 12, 1987 and to this day, with no remains or body found, she is classified as a missing person.

The investigation into Pullen’s disappearance revealed that she’d been heard arguing with two men on the last night she was seen. Inside her mobile home, police found a half-eaten sandwich on the kitchen table, a cigarette burned down to its filter sitting in an ashtray and all of her belongings seemingly intact.

Detectives later discovered a Michiana man had been extorting money from Pullen, who was described as slightly senile in reports at the time.

Her body has never been found. Investigators consider the case open and active and have developed their prime suspects.