Lesson from a murder trial: Kids need dads

Strangulation, gunshots, burials, drugs, desperate flights from police. Two days of disturbing testimony in a disturbing murder trial.

But what I can’t stop thinking about is the dads.

Yesterday, a jury heard from the alleged sidekick of the man accused of killing a woman and a girl in Alpena in 2021. The floor was all Josh Wirgau’s during the second day of testimony, and he told his story with a straight face and earnest voice, with the occasional self-effacing giggle lending him a boyish innocence.

I'm pretty sure he lied.

Not all of it. I believe much of what he related about the incidents surrounding the deaths of Abby Hill and Brynn Bills. And the prosecution will prove he told the truth, at least in part. But I can’t believe even the prosecutor believes Wirgau’s description of the moment of Abby’s death.

Josh, Brad Srebnik, and Abby are in the woods. Josh turns his back on the other two. He hears Abby scream, then hears an immediate gunshot. Josh turns to find Abby on the ground at Brad’s feet and Brad standing with his right arm outstretched, still holding the just-fired gun.

The medical examiner says the bullet that killed Abby entered the back of her head, as though she were executed, not just killed. For Josh’s story to be right, Abby would have had to scream while her back was to her killer, an arm’s length away from him, not running away, with the gun against her head.

It makes no sense.

In exchange for his testimony, the prosecution promised Josh a sentence of 15 to 30 years. If he lies, that promise goes away. I’m curious to see how that plays out. If the state doesn't nix the plea deal after what appears to be a blatant lie, they go back on their word and do the residents of Alpena County a grave injustice. If they admit he lied, that opens the rest of his testimony to scrutiny, and their case weakens.

I’ll leave that to larger minds than mine to figure out.

What my mind keeps turning over is the dads.

Monday’s witnesses included the now-14-year-old who may have been the last person to see Brynn before the 17-year-old was driven to where police say she was killed.

Brynn had been living in the girl’s house on and off for some time, and the girl, then 12, thought of Brynn as a sister. On the stand, she coolly schooled the prosecutor on the intricacies of social media. She talked about Brynn’s meth habit. She described the night Brynn left and never came back.

Through it all she stayed calm, impressively poised for a preteen.

She only broke down once ― when she had to tell the jury she’d seen Brynn smoking meth with her dad.

After her testimony, the girl met her dad in the parking lot as he was escorted into the courthouse in handcuffs. He’s been in prison for coming up on a year after he threw her a birthday party where her friends used and abused substances kids shouldn’t have.

The girl could hate her dad for introducing her to a life she shouldn’t see. But I don’t think she does.

I think she cried on the stand because she needs her dad to be a good man.

Though he has a long history of crying when he gets in trouble, according to old police records, Josh kept a straight face through all of his hours of testimony. All the way until he described the night he decided to turn himself in and called his dad for a ride to the police station. When he got in his dad’s truck, “I got in trouble,” Josh said, his face crumbling.

From all reports, Josh’s dad is a decent man whose heart has to have broken repeatedly throughout the last two years. That night, knowing police wanted his son in connection with a missing girl believed to have been murdered, the father must have been overwhelmed with sorrow and disappointment. I can only imagine what Josh heard when he got into that truck.

With all that he saw and did, his tears on the stand say the part of the story that hurt him the most was disappointing his dad.

So many dads in this story. The dad known to police as violent and dangerous, still wanted by his daughter as she fled from police alongside her alleged killer. The dad whose criminal charge for forgery police announced the week of his daughter’s alleged murderer’s trial. The dad who sits behind Brad at every court hearing.

We need our dads. We need to believe in them, and we need them to believe in us. We need them to stand up strong and lead us down the right path. We don’t need them to be perfect, but we need them to try to do what’s right and show us they care.

Love your kids, dads. They need you more than you know.

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It’s now Wednesday morning, and Josh is back on the stand. He just answered a question about his kids, who he said are 4 and 9. They’ve got a tough row to hoe, those kids, with their father incarcerated and splashed on the front page of the paper. So do all the other kids tied to this murder trial. There’s a lot of them. I hope they are surrounded by people who are giving them the support and mental health help they must need.

Lots of kids grow up without good dads.

The rest of us need to fill that gap.

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According to attorneys, today’s witnesses will include a man who requested a transfer into Brad’s jail cell and then said Brad confessed to killing Abby, a woman affiliated with a biker club associated with violent crime, and Josh’s dad.

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Photo credit for the father/child hand pic: Image by drobotdean on Freepik.