Pictured Rocks death probed
Pictured Rocks death probed
By JOHN PEPIN
MUNISING – Police in Alger County were awaiting autopsy results and other findings Saturday as an investigation deepened into Thursday’s cliff-falling death of a downstate McBain woman.
Juanita Richardson, 43, was killed after plummeting almost 200 feet off the Pictured Rocks cliffs, about a half-mile southwest of Miners Castle.
Police said Richardson had been hiking with her husband Thomas Richardson, 44, when the incident occurred, shortly before 11 a.m.
“It’s still an ongoing investigation,” Alger County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Blank said Saturday.
Pathologists conducted an autopsy Friday at Marquette General Hospital in Marquette, while National Park Service rangers and county sheriff’s deputies were comparing and compiling notes.
Friday evening, they went to the cliffs.
“We walked in and that was our first chance to see the area,” said Blank, the lead investigator.
Investigators walked the cliffs looking for evidence and later used a boat to visit the shoreline where Juanita’s body was found to take photographs.
“She was approximately five feet from the water’s edge when she was found,” Blank said.
West of Miners Castle, down the Lakeshore Trail, Thomas said he had left a north-facing vista along the cliffs the couple knew as their “honeymoon spot” to go to the bathroom.
Thomas told police he came back and Juanita was missing from the ledge. He looked and saw her lying barefoot and face down on the sandstone shoreline along Lake Superior.
Police were told Thomas never heard his wife cry out.
“He never heard her at all,” Blank said.
Deputies recovered one of Juanita’s flip-flop type shoes hanging in a tree, just over the cliff face. They never found the other.
After being questioned at Munising Memorial Hospital Thursday, Thomas Richardson spent the night at a local motel. He was interviewed by sheriff’s deputies Friday in Munising.
Richardson made some telephone calls to clergy, funeral home and relatives before leaving town. Family members were planning on meeting him at the Mackinac Bridge to accompany him home.
The Richardsons have two daughters and a son.
Juanita worked as a secretary and athletic director at a school and Thomas is employed as driver for Federal Express. The couple, married for 21 years, lived in a crafted log home off Meyering Road, along the Clam River in Missaukee County.
Police say they expect to have more information available to them in the case early this week.
The Richardson cliff-fall is the first death of its kind in the 40-year history of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Other park deaths have been the result of drownings or snowmobile crashes.
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