Downtown: Fletcher Murder Case

Nov. 20 -- — Michael Fletcher says he was in the bathroom of his suburban Detroit home when he heard a gunshot go off in the bedroom.

There, he says, he found his 29-year-old wife, Leann, covered in blood.

“My wife … she just shot herself in the head,” he said in an emotional phone call to the 911 emergency line on Aug. 16, 1999.

Three days later, the 31-year-old Fletcher — the only other person in the house that day — was charged with murder in the death of his pregnant wife, Leann.

He denied any involvement in the shooting, but a jury convicted of him of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

A Dilemma

How did a six-year marriage end in murder? Just four days before her death, Fletcher had learned his wife was pregnant. The Fletchers already had a 3-year-old daughter, Hannah, but prosecutors say Michael apparently felt the new pregnancy would threaten his affair with a prominent district court judge.

Fletcher had been involved for a year and a half with Judge Susan Chrzanowski, 33.Not only was she his lover, prosecutors say, but she gave Fletcher, an attorney, business by assigning him cases she was presiding over.

Fletcher and Chrzanowski both insisted he had no plans to leave his wife.

“I told Susan I loved my wife,” he said. “Never at any time did I tell Susan that I was going to divorce my wife and be with her.”

Chrzanowski said that while Fletcher told her he loved her, he had also told her he would not leave his wife and daughter. “His responsibility was to his family,” she testified at his trial.

But in January 1999, eight months before Leann was killed, Fletcher filed for divorce. Two months later, he changed his mind, and he told Chrzanowski he was going back to his wife for good.

“Truly, he wanted to repair his marriage,” said Chrzanowski. “That was his goal and he made that very clear to me.”