HOLLAND (AP) – Five more people have been arrested in the 1979 slaying of a hotel clerk, bringing the total number of suspects in the case to six, Michigan’s attorney general said yesterday.
Among those in custody is a woman who was the victim’s roommate and boss at the Blue Mill Inn at the time of the killing, Mike Cox said during a news conference at the Holland police department.
The five suspects were arrested Monday and Tuesday in Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin. They are accused in the strangulation killing of Janet Chandler, a 23-year-old Hope College student who disappeared Jan. 31, 1979, while working the night shift at the hotel desk.
In February, Robert Lynch, 66, of Three Oaks, was the first person to be arrested and charged in connection with the killing. At the time, authorities said other arrests were possible.
“It has always been the mission of all parties involved in this investigation to ensure that the family of Janet Chandler sees justice. That day is now coming closer,” Cox said.
The victim’s parents attended the news conference but declined to speak to reporters.
Authorities said Chandler was kidnapped from the hotel by the six suspects and taken to a house where she was beaten, raped and strangled. A snowplow driver discovered her body a day later about 35 miles south of Holland in a wooded turnaround on Interstate 196.
Holland police Chief John A. Kruithoff said all five were taken into custody in their hometowns. Like Lynch, the five new suspects were arrested on warrants charging each of them with three counts of first-degree murder.
Each suspect is charged with premeditated murder and committing a murder during the commission of two other felonies, which in this case included kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct.
If convicted, each faces a mandatory life prison sentence with no possibility of parole.
While authorities declined to rule out the possibility of more arrests, Kruithoff said they were “confident we have identified those responsible for Janet’s death.”
The five men, including Lynch, were working as security guards for the same company at the time of the killing and were in Holland because they were on assignment at a local labor strike. Lynch, Nelson, Parker and Williams were temporarily residing at the Blue Mill Inn, while Paiva lived in a corporate guest house near the site of the strike.
Swank worked as a night-shift supervisor at the hotel and is accused of “enticing and encouraging the men to do what they did,” Cox said.
Chandler was assaulted and slain at the guest house, then her body was dumped near the highway, police said.
Cox’s Office of Special Investigations, created in 2003 to investigate and prosecute public corruption and cold-case homicides, is handling the case and jointly filed charges with the Ottawa County prosecutor’s office.
Interest in Chandler’s slaying was renewed after a Hope College class produced a documentary film about the case that aired on a Grand Rapids television station in January 2004.
The arrests stemmed largely from evidence uncovered by a cold-case investigative team made up of detectives from Michigan State Police and the Holland police.
Asked whether Lynch, who goes on trial in January, implicated the others after his arrest, Kruithoff said, “He was talking to us.”
As for a motive, Ottawa County Prosecutor Ron Frantz would say only that each suspect had “a common drive to brutalize Janet Chandler.”