Jeffrey McNamara
Just after midnight · Big Boy restaurant, Escanaba
the waiter
McNamara was working the overnight 11-to-7 shift when Kensu and Paul DeMars came in for carry-out orders: “a little after twelve, probably five after twelve.” He knew Kensu casually from around town, had no stake in the case, and identified him from the stand. Asked whether this is the person he saw that night: “Yes, it is.”
- Alibi witness 5 · McNamara (Tr. 1657–67)
Paul DeMars
Midnight to about 1:20–1:30 a.m. · Big Boy parking lot, Escanaba
the jump-start
Kensu called DeMars about midnight: his car was dead in the Big Boy lot. DeMars drove down and jump-started it: “his car just wouldn’t start. We had to play with it a while, and finally got it started.” They bought soups inside and ate them in DeMars’s car while the battery charged, and DeMars left him “approximately twenty after one, one-thirty … running into Wednesday.” He was cross-examined by the prosecutor himself and unmoved. Asked on redirect why he was saying it: “Honest to God’s truth.”
- Alibi witness 4 · DeMars (Tr. 1633–56)
Michelle Woodworth
Approximately 9:00 a.m. · Rock, Michigan
the alibi
She told his lawyer before trial and has sworn to it since 1999.
Her account is the only one that reaches the approximate time of the shooting itself. She was never called to testify; that failure is one of those addressed in the federal habeas ruling, and it is set out in full on the How This Happened page.
- Woodworth affidavit, Exhibit 27-A, 1999
- Woodworth affidavit, Exhibit 27-D, 2002
Kathleen Dyer
About noon · Chao’s Academy, the Tae Kwon Do school, Escanaba
the instructor
Dyer opened the school at 10:30 that morning and taught the 11-to-12 class. Coming out of the changing room after class, she found Kensu at the desk talking with the owner, John Manalli; while Manalli took a phone call, she and Kensu chatted, and she left “about ten after twelve.” Asked whether there was any doubt it was him: “There’s no doubt in my mind.”
She brought her class schedule to court to fix the date, and Dyer is one of the two witnesses the jury asked to re-hear during deliberations, read back against the state’s identification witness before the verdict.
Her student in that class, Mark Sherman, pins the date independently: he left at about 12:05 to eat before a 12:55 parent-teacher conference, and he later confirmed with his daughter’s teacher that the conference was that day, the 5th. Sherman did not see Kensu before he left, and said so plainly; the last time he’d seen him was the day before, Tuesday the 4th. Kensu appeared at the desk in the minutes between Sherman leaving at 12:05 and Dyer leaving at 12:10, having spoken with him. Sherman returns below as the witness who measured the trip: nine and a half to ten hours by car, including stops.
- Trial testimony, Vol. VIII (Dyer; Sherman), in Records, May 12, 1987
- The jury’s deliberation request read into the record under the foreperson’s signature; the readback; the verdict
John Manalli
Noon to about 1:45 p.m. · The school
the owner
Kensu came in soon after noon and stayed “about an hour and-a-half, hour and 45 minutes or so,” talking martial arts and demonstrating a kick in the jeans he was wearing.
Manalli is candid in the record: when detectives first approached him he was unsure of the date and said so; it was fixed by the school’s own schedule, since Dyer taught only Mondays and Wednesdays. His account of the visit was unshaken on cross.
- Alibi witness 3 · Manalli (Tr. 1594–1632)
Dash Diehl
3:00–3:30 p.m. · Downtown Escanaba
the street conversation
Kensu stopped on the street and talked with Diehl face to face; Amy Creten and Mike Olson were with Diehl, and Michelle Woodworth was with Kensu. The conversation had the texture of an ordinary afternoon: Diehl had just bought an orange juice, Kensu joked about it, and they talked about ski bindings at Manning’s.
Asked whether he was sure it was November 5: “Yeah.” Detectives interviewed him within days of the murder.
- Alibi witness 6 · Diehl (Tr. 1668–90)
Amy Creten
3:00–3:30 p.m. · Downtown Escanaba
sworn separately
Creten swore to the same encounter on her own details, and they match Diehl’s: Main Street in front of the Treasure Chest, between three and three-thirty, a conversation of “ten to fifteen minutes” on the way to Manning’s for Diehl’s ski bindings.
She recalled the big gold car Kensu was driving and Michelle beside him. Two witnesses, examined separately, one street corner, one time of day.
- Alibi witness 7 · Creten (Tr. 1691–1704)
Michael Birkholz
Close to 5:30 p.m. · M&B Auto Parts, Escanaba
the parts counter
A man came in about a red car with problems sitting in the K Mart lot, “close to closing. We close at 5:30.”
Birkholz’s register receipts carry the chronology forward: a fuel pump sold the next day fitting a ’76 Mercury Marquis (Def. Exh. J), for the same broken-down car sworn to at the midnight jump-start.
Asked to identify the defendant as that man: “I don’t really know”; he serves about a hundred customers a day. This entry is the car’s chronology, not an identification.
- Alibi witness 8 · Birkholz, with Def. Exh. J (Tr. 1705–09)
Patrick Kennedy
That evening · K Mart, Escanaba
the parking lot
Back from the supper break he took between 4:00 and 5:00, Kennedy was asked by a man for permission to leave a car in the lot, which he remembered because most people simply leave their cars. The car was still there, in the dark, when he left work.
K Mart’s own paper dates the chronology: a register receipt from November 5 (Def. Exh. K) and billing records (Def. Exh. L).
Asked whether the defendant was the man: “It’s possible. I can’t be sure.” Asked whether six feet and 200 pounds fit the man he saw: “No.” This entry is the car’s chronology on his own sworn terms, not an identification.
- Alibi witness 9 · Kennedy, with Def. Exhs. K and L (Tr. 1719–21)
Paul DeMars
6:30 p.m. · Escanaba
again
DeMars saw Kensu again at 6:30 that evening and stopped to talk with him; Kensu left right before DeMars’s 7:00 religious class began.
Asked whether he was sure he actually saw him that day: “Positive. Absolutely.”
The same witness brackets the day: the man he left at a dead car at 1:20 in the morning was standing in front of him again at 6:30 that night.
- Alibi witness 4 · DeMars (Tr. 1633–56)
Scott Macklem is killed
8:55–9:00 a.m. · Port Huron
a witness glimpses a man leaving the lot
Shortly before 9:00 a.m. on November 5, 1986, Scott Macklem was shot once, at close range, with a 12-gauge shotgun, next to his car in a parking lot at St. Clair County Community College. He died of that wound.
No one saw the shooting. A student in the lot heard the blast and saw a car "driving at a steady speed, not swerving or anything, just going normal speed." He got a look at the driver, and about ten minutes later wrote down a plate number; it did not trace to Kensu. He has consistently described the car as a smaller, lighter-colored car, possibly tan, yellow or white; under police hypnosis that same day, within three hours of the shooting, he described a light tan, foreign, newer hatchback. No car was ever identified or recovered.
- The day-of report
- Gobeyn direct and cross · the plate recall “882 DHH,” “approximately ten minutes later,” “more or less an afterthought,” “came back the wrong plate number” (archive PDF pp. 163–165, 169, 178, 193, 196–204)
- Green · the Buick and the plate certification (Tr. 1056–58; archive PDF pp. 209–210)
- Hypnosis session transcript, in Records, Nov. 5, 1986
Michelle Woodworth says she was threatened
Supplementary evidence · The investigation
her documented account
Michelle Woodworth was Kensu’s fiancee and his primary alibi witness. Her complaint to police records that she was told she could be jailed for withholding information.
In a later affidavit she describes being threatened with perjury charges, and with the loss of her newborn child, in connection with her account of November 5.
These are her documented allegations, sworn by her. They have not been established as findings of prosecutorial misconduct by any court, and are presented here as a witness account, not as an adjudicated fact.
- Woodworth affidavit, habeas Exhibit 27-A, June 7, 1999
- Woodworth affidavit, habeas Exhibit 27-D, Sept. 12, 2002
She was never called to testify
Supplementary evidence · The 1987 trial
the defense failure
Michelle Woodworth’s account was the only one that reached the approximate time of the shooting itself. She had been in communication with defense attorney David Dean before trial and expected to testify.
She was never subpoenaed and never called. The jury that convicted Kensu never heard from her.
This is among the failures addressed in the federal habeas ruling, and it is set out in full on the How This Happened page.
- Federal habeas opinion, in Records, 2010
- Welser 2008 report, habeas exhibit ECF 27-4, in Records, 2008
What the day proves
End of day · Nine witnesses, 450 miles away
the conclusion
The federal courts, reviewing this record, counted “nine witnesses who testified they saw Freeman hundreds of miles away in Escanaba, Michigan, on the day of the murder.”
The sworn drive is nine and a half to ten hours each way. To arrive in Port Huron by car by the time of the witness sightings, it is not possible to be seen by the 2 alibi witnesses at and after midnight in Escanaba. To arrive back in Escanaba by car after the murder, it is not possible to be seen by the seven sightings by the other witnesses through the rest of the day.
The measure comes from Mark Sherman, who made the drive from Escanaba for this trial: route through the Mackinac Bridge, “including our stops and everything … close to, I’d say nine and-a-half to ten hours.” The 2019 federal opinion, describing the trial record: testimony established that if the jury accepted the alibi witnesses, Freeman “could not have made the drive to commit the murder.”
Driving was impossible. That is why the prosecution proposed a plane.
- Alibi witness 2 · Sherman (Tr. 1563–93)
- 2019 federal opinion, in Records, 2019
A “suspicious man” sighted
8:00 a.m. · Port Huron, 450 miles away
near a different parking lot
At 8:01 a.m., a man pulling into the Andrew Murphy lot at St Claire County Community College noticed a stranger: “a green fatigue coat,” a dark pull-down hat “folded up very neatly on his head,” a bearing he described as military, “very neat.” The man made eye contact, walked south along the arena, found no way through, then turned west toward Erie Street and out of view. Minutes later, between 8:05 and 8:10, a college secretary driving past the firehall saw a man in a jacket and trousers and “a navy blue watch cap” walking north on the lot sidewalk. He was clean shaven. She did not see his face closely, and neither witness saw where he went.
This is the whole record of the sighting: two brief looks at a stranger, an hour before the shooting, near a different lot from the one where Scott Macklem died. No one saw this man with a weapon, near the victim, or at the scene. At trial, the prosecution presented the stranger as Kensu, and the first witness identified him in the courtroom six months later, his own lawyer adding only, “to the best of his knowledge.” Both witnesses that morning had described a clean-shaven man.
- PHPD witness statement (Krueger, Nov. 5, 1986) and PHPD supplemental report, Det. Hudson (Kuz), Nov. 6, 1986, in Records, 1986
- Krueger · the in-court identification and its qualifier, Dean’s “to the best of his knowledge,” the court’s reflection (p. 1127; archive PDF pp. 57–58)
