Judge's plea can't win killer's release from prison
The door key wasn't on the ledge that night, so Robert Townsend sat and waited for his roommate. That's when he met his neighbor, Clara Hannula. He would kill her a few hours later.
It was late December 1967 when she walked by in the hallway. They lived separately in the two apartments on the top floor of a house at 529 Lansing Ave. He had lived there a week. A job installing tile and carpet brought him to Jackson that year, a few months after his 18th birthday.
Hannula needed help carrying groceries into her apartment, and Townsend obliged. They cordially drank beers together before he left. Later that night, she asked him back for another round -- a fateful invitation that he accepted.
That's how Townsend recalls his last night of legal freedom.
Today he sits, crippled and diabetic, in Cell B-34 at the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility on Elm Avenue.
At least one man thinks Townsend has served enough time: Gordon Britten, the now-retired judge who sentenced him to life in prison in 1967.
Sentences stiffen
When Britten sentenced Townsend on a second-degree murder charge, life sentences were served out less frequently. Given Townsend's youth and lack of prior offenses, Britten expected Townsend to serve about 10 years.
But since that time, the parole board has become stricter, according to new analysis by Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, a Lansing-based citizens watchdog group.
The group examined records of lifers sent to prison between 1945 and 1979. Of those eligible in the 1970s, about 11.7 percent a year were set free. Between 1999 and 2005, less than 0.5 percent of eligible lifers were granted parole.
While Townsend believes he was a victim of the system, others feel strongly he should remain behind bars.
"He committed quite a heinous crime, a female brutally murdered in her own home," said Leo Lalonde, a prison spokesman.
Hannula's granddaughter, Terri Andrews of Durand, knows little of Clara's life but still doesn't think her grandmother's killer should go free.
"If he murdered someone, he shouldn't be able to do as he pleases," Andrews said.
Britten, retired from the Circuit Court bench since 1992, received a letter from Townsend in late 2001.
Townsend wrote. "The main question I am asking here is, 'When you sentenced me, did you expect me to do over 34 years on this second-degree sentence?' "
A week later, Britten wrote back, asking Townsend about the circumstances of the crime.
Townsend, who until then had proclaimed his innocence, decided to confess to Britten what happened the night of the murder.
The men began to correspond, and Britten sympathized with Townsend, who led a troubled life growing up on a farm in Gladwin.
Townsend recalls being a constant victim of teasing because of his small body, volcano-red hair, powder-white skin and stutter. School officials expelled him repeatedly. He was nicknamed "Red," a color that matched his hair and temper.
Before he finished high school he enlisted in the Army in 1966. He faced a court-martial after a disciplinary issue, then reached an agreement to leave the Army.
He worked at a gas station in Lansing before he arrived in Jackson in September 1967.
A spirited woman
At 5 feet, Clara Hannula would stand on a chair to discipline her two daughters, Janice and Patricia, and thromp them on the head with a frying pan, a relative recalls.
She married Ernest Hannula in Genesee County in 1952, when Janice and Patricia, born of a previous marriage, were young.
Today, her closest living relatives are two grandchildren.
A niece, Bonnie Hannula of Flint, recalls taking trips from Flint to Jackson with Clara. They would stop at bars along the way to watch Clara dance to polka music. Bonnie also remembers Clara cooking "the best spaghetti."
Ernest and Clara divorced in October 1967. Clara, a nurse's aide at Mercy Hospital for 17 years, moved into the apartment on Lansing Avenue.
After she and Townsend's initial meeting in December 1967, where he helped her with the groceries, he went to dinner with friends. When he returned home that evening, Hannula appeared in Townsend's doorway and invited him over, he recalls.
Once inside, Townsend said the 49-year-old woman tried to kiss him and grab him, eventually cornering him in the kitchen, he said. Scared, he grabbed a paring knife and stabbed her six times in the chest.
Townsend ran a few blocks away and met a friend, Terry Schuler, at a diner.
"I just killed a woman," Townsend told him. "I'll show you the body."
They went to the apartment and saw Hannula dead on the floor in her white nightgown.
The duo then went to Schuler's house on Waterloo Street. Schuler went inside and told his father Townsend had just killed a woman. The father called police.
Officers opened Hannula's apartment door and found her body. A few hours later, officers walked into Keys Bar at Ganson and N. Jackson streets and found Schuler and Townsend sitting in a booth.
Schuler leaped up and walked quickly toward the officers. He pointed to Townsend.
Open-and-shut case
A jury deliberated for 2 hours and 45 minutes and found Townsend guilty of second-degree murder.
Early in his sentence, he found trouble fighting other inmates, he said. And he filed court appeals liberally. Britten rejected Townsend's request for a new trial and four resentencing requests.
Townsend's first parole request, in 1978, was denied. He has been turned down every five years since. After his hearing in 1998, Townsend turned to Britten.
Britten wrote to the parole board and the director of the prison system. He said Townsend should be released because he was no longer a threat to society. Townsend was crippled when two prisoners attacked him and struck him in the knees with metal pipes, he said. He still walks with a cane.
"I was a Circuit judge for 26 years here in Jackson and I have never requested a parole hearing for any of the hundreds I have sentenced other than for Robert "Red" Townsend," Britten wrote.
Britten even wrote to former Gov. John Engler.
Most of the letters were written in 2002, the year before Townsend's scheduled parole hearing. The parole board took the letters and deposited them in Townsend's file.
A life of regret
Townsend turned 57 in September. His red hair is lighter now and peeling back from his forehead. He wears prison-issue eyeglasses that he dyed brown with tanning oil. He is exempt from work detail because of his health.
Townsend, in his time alone, thinks back to the decisions he should have made. He says his life sentence is approaching a death sentence.
The only thing that keeps him going is 2008, when he will be eligible for parole again.
"It's probably more cruel and unusual punishment than if I had a death sentence," he said. "You live on, for what?"
Of course, that rings hollow with Hannula's relatives.
"He stopped my grandmother's life," Andrews said.