Monday, April 14, 2008

Victims' dads advocate for tough lawsOne whose son was murdered opposes early releases; another wants parole policies followed.

Gary Heinlein / Detroit News Lansing Bureau

Larry Mentink and Raymond Berels have a special interest in any effort to reform Michigan's tough prison, probation and parole policies.

Both men lost cherished sons at the hands of murderers.

Mentink, who lives in the Jackson County community of Napoleon, sees no reason to go easier on inmates like the two who snuffed out the life of 19-year-old James in 1989, at a Jackson-area convenience store where the high school senior worked part time.

Berels, of Birmingham, only asks that the state not release another parole violator like Patrick Selepak, who killed his son and daughter-in-law, Scott and Melissa Berels, and a Flint-area man in a brutal spree.

Theirs are two of the stories that haunt policymakers looking for ways to control prison spending.

James Mentink was gunned down while at work on the night of June 17, 1989.

"He was shot six times, point-blank, with an automatic rifle," recalled the still-grieving father, who now works as a victim's advocate.

"It was the night before Father's Day. He never saw his senior picture, never saw his high school diploma."

Two men are serving life sentences for the slaying.

To salve his sorrow, Mentink raised more than $17,000 to erect a black marble monument that sits in a Jackson park. It has 40 silver plaques bearing the names of Jackson County murder victims and will gain five or six names this year. He joins other crime victims in monthly talks to first-time offenders at a new county jail, recounting the painful story of James' death.

When corrections leaders and Gov. Jennifer Granholm last spring proposed the release of as many as 5,500 elderly, sick or lower-level state inmates, it was "like a punch in the stomach" for Mentink.

The 52-year-old locksmith protested the now-defunct plan at a public hearing in Jackson -- even though there's no chance his son's killers would have been among those freed from prison. He uncompromisingly opposes more lenient sentencing policies to ease the state prison bed crunch.

"That's taking chances with human lives," Mentink said. "Do they want us to end up being one of the biggest crime states in the nation?"

Scott Berels and his pregnant wife, Melissa, both 27, were killed in their Macomb County home by Selepak and companion Samantha Bachynski on Feb. 15, 2006; six days later, they killed Winfield Frederick Johnson, whom they had met in a Flint bar.

Selepak, a 27-year-old ex-convict, had been returned to prison the prior November on a parole violation charge, after a former girlfriend accused him of assault. But he mistakenly was released again in January 2006.

"You can pass all the laws you want and if nobody pays attention to them, the people of Michigan are going to pay the price," said Berels, a retired federal treasury agent. "It cost my son's life."

Larry Mentink erected a marble monument in a Jackson park in memory of his son James, 19, and other area murder victims. (Dale G. Young / The Detroit News)