"HOW MUCH MY LIFE WAS ABOUT TO BE CHANGED

Monday, August 16, dawned, already a scorcher. Newcomers to Michigan, especially those from the south, are shocked to find how hot and humid it can be that far north. The state is surrounded by the Great Lakes and is filled with thousands of lakes, creeks, rivers and streams. Close your eyes in the summer months and you might as well be in the Everglades, or the Mississippi Delta, the air's that heavy and wet. This day would be no exception.

The sun rises early here and sets late, and in between it bakes down on the morass of concrete highways and freeways that snake throughout southeastern Michigan and down, too, upon the acres of blacktop parking lots at the malls and shopping centers that replaced the wetlands and cornfields of a generation or two ago. The sun bakes from above and the cement and blacktop bake from below.

"Ozone action" days are declared, meaning no one is supposed to fill their gas tanks or cut their lawns between sunrise and sunset, though no one pays attention.

Cops on traffic patrol worry about road rage.

Mick Fletcher slipped out of bed, took a shower, put on one of his conservative dark business suits and headed out at 8:55 for his 9 a.m. pre-trial in Warren's 37th District Court. He left the court at 10 for his office in nearby Center Line, then stopped at the Rite Aid drug store across the street to pick up a can of Coke and a Hallmark greeting card for Leann. When she had told him she was pregnant, his first words were that he hoped it was a boy. She'd taken it the wrong way.

Leann was on the phone to Lindy when Mick pulled in the driveway about 10:30. Leann was feeling kind of punk, a little morning sickness she thought, and was lying on the couch. She and Lindy made plans to go for a walk, after the

trip to the shooting range. Mick had to go back to the office later, and Leann had to pick up Hannah at her parents'. Lindy said she'd meet her there, and she and Lindy and Hannah—maybe Jack and Gloria, too—could go for a walk on the trails at a park near the Miseners'.

Leann heard Mick pull in, told Lindy she'd have to go. She hadn't realized the time; she'd planned to be dressed and up off the couch before he got back. She didn't want him thinking that's all she did all day, lie around and talk on the phone.

They hadn't broken off the call when Mick came in. He handed her the card. She was thrilled, bragged about it to her sister, then hung up so she could open it and read it, then she stuck it in her purse to read again later. To show Lindy and her mom. Whatever had caused it, he was a changed man since Easter, better than she'd ever hoped for.

The printing on the front of the card said:

My Love,

When I met you, I had no idea

how much my life

was about to be changed …

but then, how could I have known?

A love like ours happens once in a lifetime.

You were a miracle to me,

the one who was everything I had ever dreamed of,

the one I thought existed only in my imagination.

And when you came into my life,

I realized that what I

had always thought

was happiness

couldn't compare to the joy loving you brought me."

Inside, Mick had written:

Leann,

I might not always tell you, but you mean the world to me.

I love you so much, sweetheart; and girl or boy, so long as they are a part of you, our children will all be beautiful.

I love you!

The Fletchers drove separate cars to Leann's parents', so Mick could just drop her off there later. Leann stopped for gas along the way at a Citgo. When they got there, Jack and Gloria both walked outside to greet them as they pulled into the driveway, then all five of them walked back inside.

Leann and Mick were inside just a minute or two. They said they'd be gone for an hour. Mick would drop Leann off and go back to work. Leann said she'd made plans to go to the park with Lindy and Hannah. Jack and Gloria had just started exercising, and they asked if they could go, too. As they were leaving, Gloria pulled her daughter aside, just outside the house and said, "How come you guys are going to the firing range?"

"Mick wants to teach me how to shoot, in case I ever need to use the gun.

And he's been so good lately, I want to keep him happy."

Then, joking, Gloria said, "Mick didn't take out an extra insurance policy on you, did he?"

Leann rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, Mom, he's not going to shoot me." Those were the last words Gloria would ever hear her daughter speak.

It was 11:50 a.m. when Mick and Leann got into the Dakota truck and left for the Double Action firing range a five-minute drive away.

*

The Double Action range is off Dequindre, the same main north–south road the Miseners live near. It looks like any of the myriad other low-slung, cookie-cutter

buildings that line Dequindre—engineering firms, small manufacturing facilities making auto parts, medical offices.

Inside, the action was sparse, but still deafening. Most of the alleys were vacant. Paul Yaeck, the head of security at St. John Hospital, was there with a couple of other men testing new firearms.

They noticed the young couple at the far end of the range. Yaeck knows his weapons, and knew that Leann was using a .45, a big, powerful gun for a fairly small woman. Heck, a big gun for anybody, for that matter. It has a terrific recoil, and it seemed clear to him that Leann was neither proficient, nor comfortable firing it.

About 12:15, maybe 12:20, the young couple stopped shooting. They were calling it quits a little early. An employee who just happened to be watching thought it was kind of cute, endearing even, that the woman bent over and picked up her spent cartridges. A rookie, obviously, who didn't know it was okay to leave your cartridges where they lay.

Instead of heading north the two or three miles to the Miseners', the Dakota turned south. The couple, Mick would tell police later, had decided to take advantage of Hannah's absence and race home for a quickie. It is about 15 minutes from the Double Action in Sterling Heights to the house on Hazelwood Avenue. So that would have gotten them there about 12:30, 12:35.

Much of what happened next is disputed. Leann went to the bathroom, removed her blue shorts and underpants, washed her hands and returned to the small bedroom.

At some point very soon, the Smith & Wesson boomed out with a roar made deafening by the closeness of the wet-plaster walls. Leann was shot in the right ear, her brain stem severed, death a certainty even before gravity could exert its tug. A mist of high-velocity blood, an aerosolized spray of red, shot out her right ear the instant the bullet went in. Blood poured out her nostrils. She fell to the carpet and soon a pool of thick red had formed around her.

At 12:48 p.m., Mick Fletcher called 911 at the Hazel Park police station. His wife, he said between gasps of hysterics and a high, keening whine, had shot herself. He'd gone to the bathroom. He was in there when the gun went off. He

came out. His wife was shot. His honey was dead. The dispatcher told him to stay on the the line, not to touch anything. Mick called out to his his wife, got hysterical. The dispatcher tried to calm him down. He told him again not to touch anything. "I'm not, I can't even be in there," said Mick, who had walked outside with the cell phone. He lit a cigarette and stayed on the phone with the dispatcher.

Months later, in his only media interview, Fletcher, wearing the bright orange jumpsuit of an Oakland County prisoner, would tell ABC's "20/20 Downtown": "I thought I'd see Leann standing there staring at a hole in the wall. When I came out and saw that, it's almost like it didn't even register."

At 12:52, Hazel Park Police Officer Ronald Lehman pulled up in front of the house. Fletcher was on the porch. The storm door was still closing behind him. Lehman was the first of many city and state police who would visit the Hazelwood house that day.