Troy Brake has not seen Danny Butts, the friend whose home he and girlfriend Tarah VanDyke said he was visiting the night of the Zimmer and Brown murders, since April 2008, Butts said Friday in his testimony at Brake’s trial.
Brake is on trial in Ottawa County’s 20th Circuit Court in connection with the slayings of MSU student Katherine A. Brown, 18; her boyfriend Jeremy Zimmer, 20; his mother Sharmaine Zimmer, 53; and his brother Tyler Zimmer, 17, who were found dead in the Zimmer home Sept. 29, 2008.
Brake spent the two hours from 9:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at Butts’ home and returned home smelling like smoke and carrying an unfamiliar figurine, VanDyke said at Friday’s trial. VanDyke determined Brake had attended a bonfire with Butts, who gave him the statue, she said.
Prosecutor Ronald Frantz challenged her testimony, saying she knew the story Brake has told her was “Bologna.”
“You knew he was making up a story and wasn’t telling the truth,” he said.
VanDyke then said she assumed Brake wasn’t visiting Butts and that it was “some girl.”
“I have trust issues,” she told Frantz.
Butts said in his testimony that he has not had contact with Brake outside of MySpace since April 2008, and has never owned a statue such as the one VanDyke described.
The statue, a male dressed in a blue military uniform and holding a flag, disappeared after spending a week on the Brake’s mantle, VanDyke said.
“About a week later, he said he felt weird about taking the statue and wanted to return it,” she said.
Mary Sue Melissa Sue Kruithof, neighbor to Brake and VanDyke until August 2008, said in her testimony that she threw away a 10 to 12-inch statue wearing a Marine uniform and holding a flag into a Dumpster outside the apartment complex around Sept. 18, 2008.
Dumpsters were emptied once or twice a week, Kruithof said, so it was unlikely the figurine could have still been in the Dumpster on Sept. 28. She had only spoken to Brake on one occasion, she said, and felt like she was dragged into a case she knows nothing about.
On the Monday before she was killed, Sharmaine Zimmer had told friends about the new Precious Moments figurine she was getting from a friend, said Dawn Prescott, a friend of Sharmaine Zimmer.
The statue was bigger than the others, she said, and was dressed in a blue military-like uniform. Brake’s attorney Paul McDonagh confirmed that Prescott has been questioned by police about the statue and that the description of the statue came from what she remembered Sharmaine saying.
The trial is expected to last three weeks.
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