Remembering Ricky Holland

WILLIAMSTON – A cross still marks the place where Ricky Holland's bones were found.

It's along a country road in southern Ingham County, where trees give way to a grassy field. A holster with a toy gun hangs from the middle, a tiny stuffed bear flops over one of the arms, and an armed action figure stealthily crawls away on the other.

A weathered cowboy hat rests at the top.

Tim Holland called 911 and reported his 7-year-old adopted son as missing on July 2, 2005 — 10 years ago — sparking a massive search and one of the most riveting news stories in recent Michigan history. Tim and his wife, Lisa, begged the community to look for the boy.

"If somebody's seen him," Tim Holland said that weekend from his porch, "please tell the sheriff's department.

"Right now I feel numb. ... I feel like I have nothing left to give. All I have left is hope and prayer."

It was a sham. The Hollands knew Ricky's body was in a trash bag along the side of that road. They had killed him.

The search

The Hollands were newcomers to Williamston, but that Fourth of July weekend the town rallied to find Ricky.

The search began in the Hollands' neighborhood on Douglas Road and then ran along the Red Cedar River. It spread to the Hitchcock farm, which became the base for the search.

It was 80 degrees on Sunday, July 3, and even hotter the next day. Businesses and community organizations supplied food and refreshments that kept energy and spirits up.

"We were bound and determined that we were going to find that young man," said Jill Cutshaw, who is Williamston's postmaster. "We were just sure of it; we were very positive about it."

Off-duty police officers and firefighters, teenagers, families and senior citizens all came to help. Police dogs, dive teams, mounted units and two Civil Air Patrol helicopters kept up the search.

Ingham County Sheriff Gene Wriggelsworth said he found the community outreach "humbling."

"We had to have the Red Cross out there and put up tents to feed people because there were so many volunteers there," he said. "You know, there's a lot of gratification when you see a community open up their arms for a 7-year-old like that."

Some of the volunteers weren't much older than Ricky. Cutshaw's daughter Alexis, now a student at Central Michigan University, was 9. The police worked with her to get into a child's mind.

"Where would you go next?" Alexis said she was asked.

"What would you do?"

"Could you climb out the window by yourself?"

"How would you get food?"

Ricky liked to climb pine trees," so Lexie climbed a lot of pine trees on the first day," her mother recalled.

Doubts surface

But something didn't seem right.

"As each day went by, the doubts, the suspicions grew," said Dan Hulbert, who aided in the search. "The more you heard about the Hollands, the more you thought, 'What are we all doing?'

"As time passed, the suspicions grew that little Ricky Holland was not alive."

Among the first to doubt the Hollands were two of their neighbors, Jim and Jackie Wheeler. The Wheelers also worked for the Ingham County Sheriff's Office's Mounted Division. He was a sergeant; she was a detective.

The Hollands didn't know that.

They hadn't met until Ricky was reported missing. The Sheriff's Office asked the Wheelers to visit the Hollands and offer their take.

Jim Wheeler dropped by and noticed Tim Holland had a limp. Holland, according to Wheeler, said he sprained an ankle while looking for his son along the Red Cedar River.

During a second visit Holland still had the limp, and Lisa began screaming at her husband, demanding that he get the kids ready so they could go out for breakfast.

"And right then I said, 'That's not the mother of a missing child,'" Wheeler recalled.

He suggested to county detectives that they examine the Hollands' trash bags "because that was my feeling, 15 minutes after we got there, that he went out of the house in a trash bag."

Suspicious behavior

Strange things kept coming out of Lisa Holland.

"She also commented about bringing the kids over to see our small animal place," Jackie Wheeler said. "She's real happy about it: 'When this is all over with we'd like to bring the rest of the kids over to see your animals. That'd be really fun for them.'"

Wheeler said the cold remark shocked her as a police officer, and even more as a mother.

Then there were the neighbors' stories. Some had found Ricky in their kitchens, either eating or going through the refrigerator.

The boy wasn't being mischievous, the Wheelers said. He was starving.

"In each case, whenever he was caught in somebody's house, he begged them not to tell his mother," Jim Wheeler said.

Jackie suspected the reason Lisa Holland would have been angry: "It wasn't that he was not where he was supposed to be, it was that he was eating."

That still angers Wriggelsworth. He said Ricky once told a surprised neighbor, "My mom doesn't feed me. I don't think she loves me very much."

"Can you imagine that?" Wriggelsworth said. "I mean that just punches anybody right in the gut. Who does that to a 7-year-old?"

The investigation

The police suspected Tim and Lisa Holland from the beginning. Roy Holliday, then a sheriff's detective lieutenant and leader of the police investigation, said they came across as "people trying to hide a big secret."

Then-sheriff's Detective Paul Nieusma, who like Holliday is now retired, said the Hollands appeared normal, but lacked emotion. Especially for parents of a missing child.

The Michigan State Police and other law enforcement agencies joined in. Wriggelsworth called it a "dream team of investigators."

Holliday and Nieusma didn't get too involved with the community search. They and other investigators interviewed neighbors, teachers and caseworkers; handled the paperwork; drafted search warrants; and oversaw surveillance of the Hollands.

There were leads. The wrapper from a type of candy Ricky liked led nowhere. Same with supposed sightings. Each one had to be checked.

Holliday heard about the neighbors' refrigerators, and Ricky's former teachers in Jackson County spoke of lunch bags containing only carrot sticks.

"It seemed like food was being withheld as either torture or punishment," Holliday said.

As the ring tightened, the Hollands began blaming each other. Lisa supposedly hit Ricky in the head with a tack hammer. When he died a week later — after receiving no medical care — Tim hid the body.

Finally, on Jan. 27, 2006, Tim Holland led police to Ricky's remains.

"It was a cold day," Nieusma said. "There was a sense of relief, but the work didn't end then by any means."

Holliday said the veteran investigators — no strangers to horrific crimes — tried to remain professional.

"I did see an officer take a knee in the middle of the road."

On Feb. 7, Lisa and Tim Holland were charged with Ricky's murder.

The trial

In September, Tim Holland pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He got 30 to 60 years in prison.

"You knew he was being tortured, and you did nothing. You did nothing," Paula Manderfield, the Ingham County Circuit judge who delivered the sentence, told him.

Lisa went to trial; Tim would testify against her.

The case drew news media from Lansing, Detroit, Grand Rapids and Saginaw. The courtroom couldn't accommodate them all, so most would follow testimony on a television set up on another floor.

Manderfield considers it one of the toughest cases ever to come before her.

"I think it was traumatic for everyone involved," said Manderfield, who now is an attorney in private practice.

The court had to hear questions such as "Was he suffocated?" and "Was he dead when he was put in the garbage bag?" she said. Then there were the photos of Ricky's remains.

"It was a traumatic trial just hearing the gruesome details," Manderfield said.

The case was so tough on the jurors, she said, that they formed a support group and met after the trial.

Mike Ferency, an assistant county prosecutor at the time, tried the case. He said at least two things made it a difficult one to prosecute.

First, he said, people in "hot water" in a case such as homicide usually do their best to avoid the consequences. They lie, obscure, become difficult to find, even run away. Tim and Lisa Holland weren't like that.

"The level of deflection that the Hollands adopted was unique," Ferency said. "They were on the radio. They were on television. They were in the community, all looking for a missing Ricky. And this went on for months."

Another challenge was the time line. In most homicides, Ferency said, they're short. In this case, investigators required doctor and school records dating back to when Ricky started kindergarten in the early 2000s.

"In terms of preparing the case, we had years of background, years of disparate facts to put together and try to make it part of Ricky's history," Ferency said.

Most of those facts came from Jackson County, where the Hollands lived before coming to Williamston. That posed yet another problem.

Manderfield ruled that though the abuse constituted criminal activity in Jackson County, it could be prosecuted in Ingham County as part of the death and disappearance of Ricky Holland.

"And that was a very, very important legal issue to be decided," Ferency said.

On Oct. 27, a jury found Lisa Holland guilty of first-degree felony murder and first-degree child abuse.

She was sentenced to life in prison.

Manderfield still is bothered by reports that during the investigation the Hollands buried their dog in their back yard. There even was a funeral.

"I think they got what they deserved," she said. "I remember commenting at (her) sentencing: "You buried your dog, but you threw away your child."

Contact Curt Smith at (517) 377-1226 or csmith@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter@CurtSmithLSJ.