The Murder of Maggie Hume

Book excerpt: One brutal murder. Two possible suspects. And a “fascinating . . . puzzling case” that divided a Michigan community (Lansing State Journal). In the summer of 1982, the body of twenty-year-old Maggie Hume was found under a pile of blankets in the closet of her apartment. A Catholic school girl and daughter of a local football coach, Maggie had been raped and strangled. It was the only active murder investigation in Battle Creek, Michigan, suggesting the case would be an easy victory for authorities. Plus, they already had two persons of interest on watch. Maggie’s neighbor, Michael Ronning, confessed to the crime. Yet it was Maggie’s boyfriend, Jay Carter, who failed the polygraph, and whose account of his whereabouts on the night of the murder kept changing. Unfortunately, the Calhoun County Prosecutor’s Office and Battle Creek Police Department couldn’t agree on whom to charge. And the city soon took sides. Cracking open three decades of never-before-seen evidence, this real-life whodunit exposes the dark secrets and tragic infighting that turned the murder of Maggie Hume into an unwinnable contest of wills, egos, politics, and the law—a contest that, to this day, isn’t over.