Deputies head downstate in fatal fall investigation
Deputies head downstate in fatal fall investigation
By JOHN PEPIN, Journal Munising Bureau
MUNISING — With the family of Juanita Richardson making funeral arrangements, police in Alger County intend to turn their investigation into the 43-year-old secretary’s death in a fall from the Pictured Rocks cliffs south to downstate Missaukee County.
Alger County Sheriff David Cromell said Monday deputies plan to travel to the McBain area southeast of Cadillac this week to interview Richardson family members and law enforcement officials.
Additional interviews may be conducted, depending on what investigators discover.
“You know how that works, one thing leads to another,” Cromell said.
Richardson was killed last Thursday morning when she dropped nearly 200 feet to the sandstone shoreline along Lake Superior, southwest of Miners Castle at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
Her barefoot body was found face-down within a few feet of the lake’s crashing 3-foot waves that were pushed up by brisk winds.
Juanita’s husband Thomas David Richardson, 43, ran to a park visitor’s center a half-mile back up the Lakeshore Trail to report his wife’s death.
Thomas, who said he did not hear Juanita scream, told police she’d fallen from a ledge the pair called their “honeymoon spot,” when he had left Juanita briefly to go the bathroom.
Monday, the scene of the cliff-fall appeared much different than it had last Thursday morning, when Juanita died shortly before 11 a.m. on that blustery, rainy day. A tour boat packed with passengers skimmed the turquoise-colored waters below, and a bird sang from the sunlit trees above the grass-covered sandstone shelf where, according to police reports, the couple spent their last time together.
Cromell said a sheriff’s deputy attended an autopsy of Juanita’s body at Marquette General Hospital last Friday. Preliminary findings showed nothing in that examination alerting pathologists to foul play.
“There’s nothing that we’ve been told,” Cromell said. “And if they would have found something like that, they would have called us.”
The pathologist was expected to discuss the autopsy with Alger County Prosecutor Karen Bahrman.
After reporting his wife’s death, Thomas was questioned twice by police before he left the Munising area for home last Friday.
Monday, sheriff’s deputies met again with National Park Service staff from Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to continue compiling facts about the incident.
The detailed information gathered will be taken with deputies to Missaukee County during their interview trip this week.
Meanwhile, visitation and funeral services are set for Saturday morning for Juanita Richardson at the First Baptist Church of Cadillac.
Juanita was born in Cadillac and graduated from McBain Public High School, where she has worked as a secretary in the athletic department for the past 12 years.
She married Thomas in 1983 at the Cadillac Temple Hill Baptist Church.
An obituary for Juanita said “she enjoyed quilting, water gardening, landscaping, antiques and working on the couple’s log home over the past four years.” The couple’s previous home, situated on 70 acres of family property along the Clam River, burned a few years ago.
The Richardsons have two daughters and a son.
The cliff-fall death is the first of its kind in the 40-year history of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
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