Apartment Choice

On Aug. 9, 2007, Lansing police discovered the beaten body of 46-year-old Debra Renfors in her apartment in the 1000 block of North Washington Street . Renfors was the third woman to be bludgeoned to death in the city in two weeks, and a grim reality was beginning to set in. Det. Sgt. Joey Dionise confronted Captain Ray Hall , giving voice to a fear that had been bubbling for days. “Captain,” Dionise said, ”We have a serial killer. Years later, Hall still remembers the “sinking feeling” that accompanied that moment. Ten years ago this month, Lansing was in the grip of a killer who preyed on single women, using whatever was convenient to murder them, and, in some instances, sexually assaulting them. Before police caught him, he had killed five women in just over four weeks. A sixth woman would survive. Matthew Emmanuel Macon , then 27, was eventually convicted of two of the murders, and the assault of the surviving victim. When detectives got Macon in an interview room, it would take ...

Angie Friesen didn’t think much of it when her sixth-grade daughter, Annelise, told her she’d hit her elbow on a desk at school. It wasn’t until about a week later, when Annelise complained of pain from her elbow down to her hand, that the mother of four took her daughter to the family doctor for an X-ray. Nothing was broken. The pain continued . Within a few months, it had spread to Annelise’s shoulder blade. Another X-ray and a nerve study revealed no damage. Finally, a pediatrician gave a diagnosis. “I hate to even say the word,” Friesen remembers the doctor saying. He suspected her daughter had a condition called CRPS , or complex regional pain syndrome . In adults, the condition can be devastating, with burning pain that spreads, discoloration of a limb and the loss of function. Friesen’s pediatrician apparently didn ’t know it at the time, but children with CRPS often respond well to...