MI- Ruling gives state most of child-killer Dean Metcalfe's pension

9-20-2009 Michigan:

MUSKEGON COUNTY -- A Muskegon judge has awarded most of child-murderer Dean Catlin Metcalfe's pension money to the state, to reimburse taxpayers for some of the cost of keeping Metcalfe in prison until he dies.

The Sept. 3 order by 14th Circuit Judge James M. Graves Jr. ends a lawsuit by the state treasurer seeking the bulk of the killer's past and future pension checks from CMS Energy. Metcalfe gets a $263 monthly check deposited into his prison account from CMS, formerly Consumers Power, where he worked as a mechanical repairman.

Graves' order gives the state 90 percent of the assets already in Metcalfe's prison account, including past pension proceeds, but excluding wages from his prison job. The judge also ordered the warden of Metcalfe's prison to give the state treasurer 70 percent of Metcalfe's future pension checks.

The state estimated the cost of Metcalfe's incarceration at nearly $360,000 as of March 2009, when the lawsuit was filed. It costs Michigan an estimated $32,000 to $33,000 per year to house an inmate in a state prison.

Metcalfe's pension checks amount to $3,156 per year.

Earlier, Graves ruled that the estate of Metcalfe's murder victim, Andre Bosse, has no legal right to the pension money. That ruling was not disputed by the victim's mother, Linda Bosse, whose attorney conceded the state's argument that a December 1997 judgment awarding all of Metcalfe's assets to the victim's estate was no longer in effect because more than 10 years had passed without its being enforced.

Metcalfe, now 56, kidnapped, molested and shot 11-year-old Andre Bosse in June 1997. Massive searches for her body were mounted in Muskegon, Oceana and Lapeer counties, all without success. Her remains were finally discovered in March 2002 in a wooded area of Lapeer County.

Metcalfe is serving a term of life without chance of parole for first-degree murder, as well as lesser terms for first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a person younger than 13 and possessing a firearm while committing those felonies. He is lodged at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia. ..Source..