Post by Scumhunter on Feb 2, 2018 1:02:07 GMT -5
(Above: Eddie Hollman (second from left) with father and two older brothers. Photo Credit: pressandguide.com)
From The Dearborn Press & Guide website:
Having an unsolved murder is a rarity in a quiet bedroom community like Dearborn Heights.
But the 26-year-old case of Eddie Hollman’s death is one police never have been able to solve.
That might be changing now as detectives recently decided to reinvestigate the homicide in hopes that someone will come forward with information.
In the early morning hours of May 3, 1992, Hollman was strangled in the basement of the family’s house in the 20400 block of Williamsburg.
The murder took place while his parents, Ted and Gina Hollman, attended Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Dearborn. Police said the 21-year-old was strangled with a pair of his own sweatpants by someone who entered the residence after his parents left for church at about 6:45 a.m.
When they returned to the red brick house in the River Oaks subdivision about 50 minutes later, Gina Hollman found her son lying on the basement carpet with the pair of pants tied around his neck. According to police, he had been struck in the back of the head before being strangled.
His murder has never been solved and still haunts his family as well as the detectives who worked on the case nearly three decades ago.
Life since her son’s murder has been difficult, Gina Hollman said. “You have to go on living, but it’s never the same,” she said. “You’ve got a void there.”
He had survived several other life-threatening situations before, according to his mother, including spinal meningitis at 8 months old and a dangerous car accident.
The youngest of four children, Eddie was the only child of Gina and her second husband,Ted. She has three children from a previous marriage.
“My husband got cancer and passed away, and this was his only child,” Gina Hollman said. “It was extremely difficult for him. We didn’t want to talk too much about it then.
“We were involved in doing things with the police and we did a lot of investigating ourselves, but it didn’t prove to do much good.”
Victim was all-American boy
A 1988 Dearborn High School graduate, Eddie was an athlete who played on the football team and earned a varsity letter in wrestling. He also had artistic talent and earned honors in art competitions.
“He was just a nice guy,” his mother said. “He didn’t have any enemies. He enjoyed his friends and he loved hockey.”
His mother said he had a lifelong fascination with flying and so, after attending Henry Ford Community College for a year, he transferred to Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, Okla., to pursue a career in aviation.
He graduated in 1991, earning his commercial pilot’s license, and continued his education at Trade Winds Aviation in association with Oakland Community College, where he was working toward his goal of becoming a flight instructor.
“He just loved flying and was taking everybody flying,” she said. “He framed his license and was very proud of it.”
She said she’s hopeful that time will work in their favor and spur someone to come forward with valuable information.
“You want somebody to talk,” she said. “Someone knows something. It sure would be good if we could get some justice.”
At the time, police detectives interviewed hundreds of people — some of whom took lie detector tests — and brought in a criminal psychologist to provide a profile of the murderer.
The report stated that the killer was a “sexually inadequate person with strong unresolved power” who needs to dominate others. The suspect is either bisexual or homosexual and the victim represented everything the suspect would like to be.”
Police believe the crime was committed by someone who knew the family and possibly lived in the area. They also determined that it wasn’t planned ahead of time and was not drug related. Because he was strangled with his own sweatpants, police believe it may have been an impulsive act.
The weapon used to hit Hollman in the head was taken out of the house, police said, and scant other physical evidence was found.
Case still haunts detective
Det. Lt. Jim Izeluk and Det. Sgt. Robert Niemczewski were the original investigators on the case. Izeluk, who retired in 1999 as detective captain in charge of investigations after 26 years with the department, was the first detective on the scene that day.
He recalled initially thinking that Hollman’s death was a hanging, but soon found that couldn’t be true.
“The thing that sticks out to me was that when we rolled him over, we saw a pant leg around his neck so we looked around to see how he could’ve hung himself,” Izeluk said. “But there was no way in the world this guy hung himself.”
The detectives combed the basement for clues, including checking for fingerprints and taking the carpet to check for evidence, but didn’t find any leads. “There was no other actual physical evidence found,” he said.
Izeluk said the medical examiner came to the scene that day, which was unusual.
“I talked to her about what I saw, and she came out and took a look,” he said. “They usually don’t have time to do that. “She said no way was it a suicide, and ruled it as a homicide right there. That’s just something you don’t see.”
Two local psychics also were brought to police by Hollman’s former fiancee, Mara Edwards, who officers questioned at the time but never charged.
“He was at a party the night before, and Sgt. Niemczewski interviewed all the people from the party and talked to his ex-girlfriend at length,” Izeluk said. “We went after everything we could possibly go after and nothing came of it.”
The couple had had a stormy relationship, according to Gina Hollman, and had broken up about a month before the murder. Edwards had lived with the Hollmans for roughly a year during high school.
Murdered while parents attended Mass
Eddie Hollman had been at a party in Dearborn the night before his death, and was still intoxicated when he returned home at about 4 a.m., according to police. His blood alcohol level was above the legal limit when his body was discovered.
He decided to sleep on the couch in the finished basement — something he often did when he’d been out late, his mother said. He and Edwards had talked on the phone several times within an hour of his death — once at about 4:05 a.m. and again at 4:33.
When his mother found him at about 10:10 a.m. that morning, he was discolored and not breathing.
“He was laying on the floor like he was watching TV and that surprised me,” his mother said. “I was going to cover him up, and I could see that his mouth was open and his face was kind of blue.”
She immediately ran upstairs to call 911. “You could tell that he was moved,” she said. “When somebody does that — an injury to the face and neck — it’s very personal.”
His mother also noticed that things had been straightened up in the basement.
“It was so cleaned up in the basement,” she said. “We were only gone an hour … and that just makes me think they obviously knew we were at Mass.”
Investigators talked to many of Eddie Hollman’s friends from the party the night before as well as more friends who had been at a party he’d attended that Friday at Central Michigan University. Some were hesitant to talk, possibly because marijuana had been at the parties.
“The witnesses were telling us different things about what was going on, and several took the Fifth Amendment,” Izeluk said. “Something went on and they didn’t want to tell us about it. I don’t know if drugs were the issue or not, but we told them we weren’t doing a drug case — this was a homicide investigation.”
Case featured on true crimes podcast
Nina Innsted, host of the “Already Gone” podcast focusing on true crimes, featured the Hollman case in a Jan. 29 episode and said she believes the crime can be solved.
“People obviously know what happened to Eddie, and I just want them to feel a little nervous,” Innsted said. “This looks really solvable if people would come forward.”
She said she’s been able to track down about six people from the party who still live in the metropolitan Detroit area.
“The interesting thing is that there was a phone call made between 9:30 and 10 a.m. saying ‘Did you hear Eddie Holman died?’ by people that shouldn't have known that Eddie was dead,” Innsted said. Just who made and received the call has not been made public.
“There was one person involved that knew Eddie had been killed before I even found him,” Gina Hollman said. “He was taken in to be questioned … but nothing came of it.”
Ted and Gina Hollman hired an attorney and a private investigator to look into the case.
Richard Walter, a forensic psychologist for the Michigan prison system and co-founder of the Vidocq Society, an exclusive group of experts in solving criminal cold cases, developed a theory of the crime.
“The first thing he said was that he was strangled by a woman,” Gina Hollman said.
But a lack of people willing to talk to police didn’t make an arrest possible.
Family pursues justice, has to let go
Gina and Ted Hollman installed a one-man grand jury through Parents of Murdered Children, a national organization that provides support and assistance to survivors of homicide victims.
“Getting involved with them was a good thing,” she said. “There were so many people going through what we were.”
There were several days of testimony, but many of the partygoers took the Fifth Amendment and no one was prosecuted.
“We got to the point that there wasn’t much else we could do, but we never stopped trying,” his mother said. “But there were so many things going on that just didn’t seem to jibe. And it’s kind of heartbreaking because of the fact that there was obviously people who were not contacted, like the neighbors in back when the person came in the back door.”
Eventually, Gina and Ted Hollman had to stop pursuing the case for the sake of their other children.
“After 10 years, it was just running our lives, and our kids could see that,” she said. “We had to start doing things with the other kids … and we decided we had to put it on the back burner.”
Gina Hollman now lives in Novi, but carries the memory of her son with her at all times. "It doesn't seem like it's been 26 years," she said. "I keep a box of his things in the basement here."
Izeluk said he can’t blame the family for being upset with police that the killing was never solved.
“I know Gina was upset with us,” he said. “If it was my kid, I’d feel the same way.”
The murder is Izeluk’s only unsolved case from his time with the department.
“It still haunts me to this day,” he said. “I think about if we missed anything or did anything wrong, but I really don’t think so.”
Because it’s been so long, Izeluk said he hopes time and maturity may influence one of Eddie Hollman’s friends to come forward with helpful details in the case.
“They’re not kids anymore; they’re grown adults now, probably with kids of their own,” he said. “I would hope they know how his mother feels now,and hopefully that will shake somebody up and we can get some answers now.”
Det. Sgt. Shaun Pawlus is handling the case for the Dearborn Heights Police Department. Anyone with information is asked to call 313-277-6770.
www.pressandguide.com/news/cold-case-dearborn-heights-police-reinvestigate-unsolved-murder-of-/article_d655b289-73db-5d54-b614-e05d6f0c4fc6.html
Thoughts?
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