Downtown: Fletcher Murder Case

Nov. 20, 2000 -- — 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.”

“I told her in no uncertain terms that I loved my wife and I want to try to do the things that I should have done all along,” said Michael. “And see if that made a difference in our relationship. And it did.”

But according to Chrzanowski, she and Fletcher rekindled their relationship four months later.

“He said he had been trying, but things weren’t going to get better,” said Chrzanowski. “He didn’t see himself staying with her. That even if he was doing everything she wanted him to do, that it wasn’t going to be the love that two people should have.”

Fletcher’s attorneys argued that having an affair does not mean a man will commit murder. Prosecutors countered that when Fletcher learned about his wife’s pregnancy, he became desperate to keep the news from Chrzanowski. The judge, he feared, would break off their relationship if she learned the truth.

A Trip to the Shooting Range

The night before the shooting, the Fletchers took Leann’s parents out to dinner to celebrate her pregnancy. Later that night, Fletcher and Chrzanowski met in secret.

“We had relations that night,” recalled Chrzanowski on the stand. “And he told me that he loved me.”

The following morning, Fletcher and Leann went to a gun range as they had planned, while Leann’s parents watched Hannah. The prosecution argued that after returning home, Fletcher came up behind his wife, aimed his pistol at her head, and fired the single shot that killed her.

The 911 call Fletcher made within moments of the shooting turned out to be a crucial piece of evidence.

“It just bothered everyone that he never called her by name,” one juror said after the trial, referring to the tape of Fletcher’s phone call.

Another juror was also struck by the fact that Fletcher referred to his wife by pet names during what was supposed to be a frantic call.

“If something happened to one of my family members, I would imagine I would be screaming their name,” said the juror. “He didn’t do that. He called her ‘honey’ and ‘sweetheart.’”

Other jurors said they felt that in the 911 call, Fletcher seemed to make sure that he included information that would exonerate him, such as his daughter’s whereabouts and that he and Leann had just returned from the firing range.

“Basically it seemed like the whole defense was on the tape,” said a juror.

Fletcher denied he rehearsed the call. “I defy anyone to tell me how they would act if you came in and found somebody you love in that condition,” he said.

He said that he was holding his dying wife, calling her “honey,” and “looking for any movement in her eyes.”

The jurors’ decision to convict him of second-degree murder, not first, indicated they believed he had not planned the shooting, finding not that he had planned it, but that he saw the gun lying in their room and seized the moment.

What About the Judge?Fletcher insists he is innocent.

“I wasn’t a very good husband. I should have been better and there’s nothing I can do to make that up,” he said, but added: “I didn’t kill my wife. I could never do anything like that. Never in a million years.”

He does not say that Leann Fletcher committed suicide. “I believe whatever happened was truly an accident,” Fletcher said. “In my mind, she reached over … she had no reason to know the gun was loaded and she just wasn’t looking at what she was doing.”

Fletcher is now behind bars. As for Chrzanowski, she has been suspended while the Michigan state tenure committee determines whether she committed judicial misconduct by misleading the police about her relationship with Fletcher. They are also looking into whether the judge should be punished for assigning cases to her lover without disclosing their relationship.