![]() ![]() MacNeil asked a jury during a closing argument, “Have you ever had a thought, “Thank God she didn’t know me?” She skims over some of the most telling testimony: Debra Parmentier’s intricate and bizarre descriptions of a drug-dealing, gun-running conspiracy in Gaylord the depths of manipulation by Parmentier on men who came into her circle and the convoluted attempts to give credence to her testimony. With so many documents, errors may be inevitable, but Link disappoints by mixing facts, making erroneous assumptions, confusing names and inserting characters with no frame of reference, as well as allowing word errors to riddle the last few chapters of the book, as if she, too, was weary of the long case, even years after the fact. She names a cast of characters, but fails to draw us into the courtroom to see and hear how this drama unfolded, affecting the lives of everyone it touched. In sifting through the documents, Link pulls together facts, but leaves us with limited understanding of how they connect. From that moment, the case would grab headlines for 10 years until the men imprisoned for the crime were cleared. 8 1986, the frozen body of Tobias, an oilfield worker, was found in the back of his pickup truck parked behind the Gaylord Fire Hall. In that way, it misses the mark because it leaves so much untold. Those sources shine light into the dark recesses of the convoluted case, but they illuminate more questions than answers.īecause Link, by her own admission, had no cooperation from anyone on the prosecution’s side of the case, the book can do little to balance that but compile the observations of neutral parties privy to the case long before it piqued Link’s interest. The book draws on sources beyond the trial itself - primarily the notes, observations and recordings of the attorneys and their investigators - and stitches them into a patchwork in an effort to show the twisted case as it unfolded. Link communicates that deftly: the prosecutor’s vendetta the judicial irregularities the police failures the bizarre life of the “star” witness the defense’s frustrations. ![]() ![]() Seen through the lenses of time and distance, the case emerges as a bizarre travesty of justice. “Wicked Takes the Witness Stand: A Tale of Murder and Twisted Deceit in Northern Michigan” peels back time and the opaque layers of confusion that made the Jerry Tobias murder the subject of Gaylord Herald Times headlines for 10 years.Īuthor Mardi Link sifted through endless tomes of courtroom transcripts and stacks of back issues of the Herald Times to recreate the cases of the five men convicted of the 1986 death of the 31-year-old Gaylord man.
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