LEANN

Who was Leann Fletcher? Down-to-earth, unpretentious, pretty, gregarious, a bit spoiled as the youngest of five kids, she had been the center of the Misener family since she came home from the hospital 29 years before she died, passionate in her likes and dislikes, sexy and uninhibited—she would cause her sister-in-law to blush and her mother-in-law to cover her ears when regaling them with stories of her apparently rich sex life with Mick—and, above all, a great mother, according to everyone who knew her.

Her life centered around Hannah. When she made cookies, Hannah got to make them, too, hands-on, who-cares-about-a-mess, let's-have-fun Hannah. Leann came from a large, happy family and wanted a large family herself.

She was always a good kid, say her parents, never any real trouble, if you don't count her penchant for long-haired rock-and-roll musicians in high school. She was unassuming, happy when she was a phone solicitor, happier when she was a nail technician. She didn't aspire to be much of anything except the Leann her family and friends knew and loved.

She was artistic, a prolific writer of poems, a lover of ceramics and porcelain who sold her creations at craft fairs around metropolitan Detroit, a gourmet cook, a talent for stained glass.

Most of all, she had a talent for making friends.

At Mick's trial, her oldest sister, Lindy, would grow her hair out to look like Leann's. "I wanted that jury to know I'm her sister." When Leann was little, "she was my baby," says Lindy, and when she was grown, "she was my best friend."

Jeni Hughes, who considered Leann her best friend almost since the day they met at a job in 1992, describes her as "a happy person. She got excited about everything. The smallest thing that would happen, she'd get excited about it." A year before her death, Leann went bowling with Jeni. She'd never been bowling before, and had so much fun, next thing Jeni knew, Leann had them joining a league. "Every time she bowled a strike, she got so excited. It was refreshing to

see, she got so into it." At the end of the fall league, Leann got a patch for most- improved bowler.

An irrepressible but harmless flirt, Leann flirted with husbands, fathers, brothers and friends' sons. No one took it wrong. Men and boys had crushes on her, her friends admit. At family gatherings, she'd be out there tossing horseshoes with the guys or playing air hockey. When the action got slow, she'd round everyone up into the Misener family living room and get them singing songs or playing games.

She was, everyone acknowledges, madly in love with Mick, through good times and bad, from the time they met at Halloween of 1990 through their several separations and right up until the minute she died. When Mick asked to come back the last time, in a letter professing his love and regrets at Easter of 1999, Leann wavered briefly.

"What do you think I should do?" she asked Lindy. "What do you want, Leann?"

"I want Hannah to grow up the way I did, with both of her parents. And I still love him."

"Then I'm behind you. Give it a shot," said Lindy, who vividly remembers the first time she and others in the family met Mick, a week or two after that fateful party at Michigan State. "He was everything she wanted. Leann had dated some people we didn't care for, so when Mick walked in, we were like, 'Yeah!' He was clean-cut, short hair, successful. This soon-to-be-graduating guy from Michigan State."

"She loved him. Without a doubt," says Hughes. "I asked her once what the attraction was and she said, 'I don't know what it is, but I am so attracted to him.' It was just one of those things."

Jeni and Leann shared a love of animals. One night Leann called her, all excited. She'd found an injured bird and brought it into the house, fearful a cat would get it. She told Jeni to race over, help her figure out what to do. They ended up getting out the Yellow Pages and calling all over town before they found a vet who'd take the bird in for the night. It took them 40 minutes to drive there, each way.

"Leann said prayers over road kill," says Lindy.

"Three hundred people were at her funeral, and every person there thought Leann was their best friend," said Lindy. "Her clientele? They came in droves to tell you what an impact she had on their lives. Young girls. Old women. One woman came in a motorized wheelchair. We didn't know her. And she didn't know Leann. Leann did her daughter's nails and Leann had given her daughter some advice that turned her life around."

The woman would later come to trial nearly every day, a woman who had never met Leann but felt she had to be there to pay her back.

Leann's funeral was delayed because of the investigation and the need for an autopsy. The first day of viewing at the Price Funeral Home in Troy was scheduled for Thursday. Wednesday night, says Lindy, "I prayed to God that if

—if—I walked in there and it didn't look like my sister, if it did not look like my sister, 'Please, God, give me the strength to make her look like her.' I knew she wouldn't let me lie there not looking good. 'Please, God, please, God, give me the strength.'"

Lindy got to the funeral home an hour before viewing was to begin. She walked in, took a look and freaked. It didn't look like Leann, the make-up was all wrong. The hair was wrong.

Lindy got her make-up and hair gear. The funeral director was adamant. No. Lindy was more adamant. Yes. "The funeral director was grabbing stuff out of my hand, saying 'What do you want us to do?' And I was, 'No! this is my sister and you will let me do this for her.'"

Lindy re-did Leann's hair and make-up, ordering her hands to be calm, her heart to slow down. "She would have done it for me."

*

Kim McGowan, the co-owner of the Incognito salon where Leann worked, in the northern Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, had to shut down for the day when Gloria Misener called to tell her what happened.

When she reopened the next day, she had a bucket on the front counter, by the cash register, to collect money for Hannah, next to a framed poem titled

"Remember Me" that one of Leann's clients brought in.

Later, they put a sunflower plaque out in front of the store in honor of Leann and her favorite flower. As a nail technician, Leann, who worked in the shop three days a week, did manicures, pedicures, paraffin dips for those with joint or arthritis trouble, and free-hand artwork on customers' nails. Doing nothing but holding a customer's hand or feet every time they come in requires someone comfortable with intimate contact, and able to put the client at ease.

"You have to have a certain persona, and Leann had it," said McGowan. "Leann possessed a deep passion for people. The people she did, she was very close with. You get closer than a psychiatrist. She had that rapport with people. They trusted her. They could tell her anything.

"She made everyone feel as if they were her best friends. She knew everybody. She had some kind of connection with people all over the place. When she smiled at you, you knew you were smiled at. Everyone just fell in love with her. I've met a lot of people, but I've never met anyone with quite that connection.

"People would meet her one time and be touched by her. After it happened, we'd have people come in off the street and we didn't know who the hell they were, and they'd come in and drop money in the bucket for Hannah. It was after she passed away that we found out how many people she had touched."

One old woman would come in, everybody thought she was a bitch, wouldn't want to work on her. Leann'd start her pedicure, they'd get to talking about the woman's dead husband, and pretty soon Leann and the woman would be crying away together, best friends.

"My boys were in love with her," said McGowan. "She was my oldest son's first love. Nicholas is 14 and he adored her. And she knew it, too. She'd flirt with him. He was just crushed."

*

Lisa Rodela met Leann at a dental supply company, where they handled phone orders. It was about the time she went up to MSU and met Mick. In 1994, Lisa's daughter, Elizabeth, then three, was diagnosed with leukemia. The daughter

spent a month in the hospital during treatment, with Lisa at her side much of the time. Compounding the family's troubles was the fact they'd just moved into a new home and had only begun furnishing it when Elizabeth was diagnosed.

Leann got their boss to commit the company to match whatever funds Leann could raise. By the end of the month, the Rodelas had a new washer and drier and a month's payment on the mortgage. Moreover, Leann would come over after work and make dinner for Lisa's husband and son.

"She was our angel," said Rodela.

The day of the shooting, Leann called her at 10:20 a.m. to firm up plans for a get-together Thursday night. Lisa was at a sales meeting and could only talk a minute. "She said, 'I've some great news for you. Great news.'" But she wouldn't say what it was. Lisa had to get back to her meeting and hung up. "I always told her I loved her. 'I love you. I love you.' And I didn't tell her that day. I'll never forgive myself."

*

Lori Mayes, another of Leann's sisters, had a birthday party for two of her kids, Adam and Jessie, a couple of weeks before the shooting. Leann brought 200 water balloons, then sat there patiently filling them one by one. The kids at the party kept trying to grab them and Leann kept fighting them off until they were all filled. Then, it was a free-for-all grab-all. The kids bombarded her; the wetter she got, the harder she laughed. The harder they all laughed.

Later, the kids were starting to get on Lori's nerves, as a pile of kids aged five to eight will tend to do. "I was getting frustrated with all the games—the kids were like animals—I was getting ready to quit doing it and Leann took over. She said to them, 'This is what we're going to do.' She loved kids."

When Lori finally got around to taking the party photographs to be developed, then going back to get them, Leann was dead. She never saw the shots of herself, shirt soaking wet, hair bedraggled, huge smile across her face. Lori's oldest child, Jessie, 13 at the time, was so grief-stricken at Leann's death he later had to go into counseling.

Lori said that for months after the shooting, she'd be sitting there thinking,

"Oh, I gotta call Leann.' Forgetting I couldn't. I'd be getting the phone, getting ready to call her. I think I was in shock a long time. For months and months. I remember going through Christmas and I couldn't put up all the decorations. I put up some for the kids, but that was about it. I feel like I sat on my couch looking at her picture in a fog for like eight months."

More than a year after the shooting, Lori's daughter, Shannon, who had just turned 13, had to write an essay for school on one of her heroes. Her choice? Leann. Shannon turned six the day Leann was married. Leann called Shannon up to the front of the church, in front of everybody, and gave her a Cabbage Patch doll so she'd feel special, too.

*

The Miseners and their kids are big on cookouts and bonfires. Whenever they have a bonfire, now, they roast some octadogs in honor of Leann. Octadogs? It was something she learned in Girl Scouts. You take a hotdog and make two deep slits perpendicular to each other at each end, moving in toward the center of the hotdog. When the hotdog heats up over the fire, the four splits at each end curl up, forming an eight-ended treat. An octadog.

For one of their recent anniversaries, Leann wrote them a poem, then had it framed. The first stanza reads:

What can we say about our mom and dad? How can we think of the phrase?

Simple words can't describe what we're feeling inside. We love you in so many ways.

A second poem sits in another frame in their family room, part of a collage of photos.

I wish I could recapture all the memories we've had And put them in a bottle for the times when I'm sad, For all it takes is just one thought of my family

To quickly make me realize I'm as happy as can be.

I know I can be unmanageable, stubborn and selfish, too, But my family will always come first in my life.

And don't ever forget, I love you.