Cops Have Few Clues in 10-year-old Murder
By Robert A. Waters
On Saturday afternoon, July 30, 2016, Ally Brueger got ready for her daily 10-mile jog. A registered nurse, she had recently broken up with her boyfriend and moved back in with her parents at their home in Rose Township, Michigan. Her jog took her along a rural, wooded trail next to Fish Lake Road.Although she stood only 4 feet, 9 inches tall, Ally kept herself in tip-top condition. On that day, a resident near the trail heard four or five blasts from a shotgun. He called 9-1-1 and told dispatchers, "There's a girl laying in my yard that just got shot a couple of times. Laying face down, she's bleeding all over the place. I gotta get out there and see if I can help her." The homeowner ran outside and attempted to stop Ally's bleeding until paramedics arrived.
By the time EMTs got her to the hospital, Ally was dead. A single gunshot had pierced her lower back, causing massive bleeding.
The Good Samaritan, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Crime Watch Daily, "I was trying to keep her from bleeding to death." At some point, she stopped breathing, and the man said he screamed at her and "she started breathing again."
Michigan State Police Lieutenant Michael Shaw commented on Ally's wound. "The shot hit her in the small part of her back and just happens to hit the wrong blood vessel and she bleeds out."
There were no witnesses, and by the time cops arrived, the shooter had vanished. Several residents did tell investigators they heard gunshots, but nobody saw the shooter. Some said they saw a white sedan in the area, but there were no surveillance videos or other physical evidence.
The Michigan State Police, in charge of the investigation, immediately focused on Ally's parents, Franz and Nikki Brueger and her ex-boyfriend, Wes Sutherland. The parents were eliminated after a longer than usual investigation.
Investigators said Wes Sutherland failed a polygraph and he quickly rose to the top of the suspect list.**
Nikki told reporters that Ally "was our only child. She was my best friend. Ally was a very considerate, thoughtful, generous, kind person. She was totally dedicated to her nursing, her work. While nursing was her profession, writing was her passion." Nikki said Ally was studying to get her master's degree in writing.
The murder ruined the lives of her parents. "The circumstances of her murder are unrelenting to me, to Franz," Nikki said.
After nearly ten years, investigators still have little to go on. Shaw said, "There's so many different scenarios that are possible in this. Somebody drives by and for whatever reason, they get into it, and she's killed." In other words, maybe a deadly road rage scenario.
Another possibility, according to Shaw, is that she was intentionally "assassinated." Maybe "she knew who it was," he said. "Somebody that got mad at her at work, something to this effect."
Then there is the serial killer theory. "Someone travelling and doing it in different places," Shaw said.
The Lieutenant concluded, "She had to know who her killer was. It's just too weird. Everyone is in the game."
With no other suspect, Shaw goes back to Sutherland. Police always felt he lied to them. "We know that sometimes he's not absolutely truthful," Shaw said, "but maybe he's not absolutely truthful with everybody, and not just us."
Sutherland said he took two lie detector tests: "They said the first one was inconclusive, and then they said that I failed the second one. I don't believe I failed, I believe it was an intimidation tactic."
He also made the mistake of not having an alibi. "I was at home," he said. "Ally and I had actually worked the night before. And she was planning on coming over that morning."
Sutherland and Ally had a disagreement about marriage. He stated that she wanted to get married immediately, but said he wanted to wait until he graduated from college. He also admitted to being on a dating website, which caused friction between the two. But he said the two had reconciled days before her murder. "If anything," Sutherland said, "the breakup made us realize that we needed each other more than we realized."
In a more recent interview, Ally's mom made the following statement: "[We] fear potential witnesses may have discounted details they noticed the day of the murder by assuming the killer was someone close to Ally. The shooter was a stranger. Ally did not know who pulled the trigger. It really changes the scenario from what [investigators] said in 2016--to calm the public, in my estimation. It maligned her character because when that happened, people would say, 'oh what kind of girl was this--who did she hang around with?' They didn't know she was an RN. They didn't know she never drank, didn't do drugs."
There is a reward of $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of the killer. If you have information, please call the Michigan State Police at 1-855-MICHTIP.
**NOTE: Cops have no evidence that Sutherland killed Ally. If they did, he would have been arrested by now. Polygraphs are not really lie detector tests. The fact that some cops sincerely believe they are infallible is scary. Sutherland said he thinks cops lied to him about "failing" the test in an attempt to get him to confess. That is likely. Investigators do it all the time, and, according to the courts, lying to suspects is legal.
Check out one of my stories about what happens when cops rely on polygraphs.
http://kidnappingmurderandmayhem.blogspot.com/2012/08/would-you-take-polygraph.html
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