Carol Ege

This case bothers me, a lot. It is a case in which the only apparent evidence against the defendant were eye witnesses that even the appeals court did not believe were very reliable. There were two trials and while the first trial had a bit more evidence, that was thrown out by the courts and a new trial was ordered. This is one of those cases where I feel as if I must be missing something because not only was the defendant convicted once, but twice. I am not going sit here and tell you that Carol Ege did not have a motive to kill Cindy Thompson or even that she may have liked to have seen her dead, or at the very least, out of her life. Two men say that Ege offered them $350 to kill Cindy Thompson but they claim hey did not go through with it and prosecutors had no evidence she convinced anyone else to do it. In fact, they argue that Carol Ege could not find anyone else so she did it herself, and yet there seemed to be no trace of her at the crime scene.

On the morning of February 22, 1984 the body of twenty-six year old Cindy Thompson was found in her Pontiac Michigan home. She had not only been beaten with what was likely a hammer, she had stabbed repeatedly and she had even been disemboweled. For those unfamiliar with this term basically it means her insides were now on the outside as her intestines were exposed. Although Cindy was seven months pregnant I found little information as to how the remains of the fetus were found. Her body had been found by Mark Davis, the father of the child she was carrying. He had gone to her home around five that morning.

Davis was and is an interesting character in this story. While he was the father of Cindy's child, he also lived with Carol Ege and allegedly had so for nearly a decade. It was this fact that prosecutors would say was the motive behind the murder. The case would remain unsolved for nearly ten years.

Of course there had been rumors early on that Carol Ege had more than a few issues with Cindy Thompson but investigators did not feel that they had enough evidence to even think about charging Carol. Then in 1993 a forensic odontologist named Allan Warnick was put on the case. It had been alleged that a mark on Cindy's cheek was a bite mark despite the fact that the medical examiner had said that it was caused by “livor mortis” or the pooling of blood after death. Cindy's body would be exhumed (for a second time. The first was a year after her death) so that Warnick could examine the area but the body was found to be too decomposed for the examination. Instead he relied on autopsy photos. Warnick would claim there was a “3.5 million to one probability” that the “bite mark” was made by Carol Ege. Investigators believed that this was enough to finally arrest Carol for the murder of Cindy Thompson.

Her trial would begin in December of 1993. As is often the case when a defendant has been given more than one trial, it is hard to determine sometimes who said what at what trial. What I can say is that Dr. Allan Warnick did testify at the first trial and not the second. A neighbor also testified in the first trial that she believed she had “heard” Cindy's car and then a second car arrive home but that the second car left a few minutes later. There was no indication that the neighbor testified to seeing the car or the person or even if they knew for sure the first car was Cindy.

Investigators would find no sign of forced entry, nor would they find any hairs, fibers, blood or even fingerprints consistent with Carol Ege. They did find some fingerprints belonging to Mark Davis, but they were dismissed considering it was known that he had often been in the home. It would be believed that some of the injuries to Cindy had been caused by a hammer of some sort. Whether a ball peen hammer had been found at Carol's home back in 1984 or at the time of her arrest at her Florida home in 1993 is unclear but prosecutors would point to this as being a “possible” murder weapon and to be fair I cannot tell you if this testimony was presented in the first or second trial.

Mark Davis would testify also. He would claim that he had drank for many hours before he went to Cindy's home on the morning that he found her body. He would say that he did not believe that Carol was involved. She had stated that she had been at home all night and Davis would proclaim this too.

The jury, seemingly largely relying on Allan Warnick's bite mark testimony would find Carol Ege guilty of murder. She would be given a mandatory life without parole sentence. In 1996 her conviction was upheld by the courts but it seems rather reluctantly. The courts noted, “This is a troubling case. The crime is horrific. The initial investigation was deficient. The defendant was not charged until nine years after the murder. There were others who were logical suspects.” It seems that the court could not find anything necessarily wrong with the trial itself but it also seems by their comments that they would have overturned the conviction in a heartbeat if they had. The appeals court cannot simply overturn a conviction because they did not think there was enough evidence, that is up to the trial judge if asked. This is why so often you hear a defense attorney stand up and ask the judge for a direct verdict or a dismissal after the prosecution has presented their case. It is rarely granted. Generally when a case has gotten that far judges realistically believe that it should be seen through until the end which is a verdict from a jury. But, once that jury verdict comes in it really cannot be reversed. Sure, an appeals court can determine that the jury had not received all of the evidence, or heard more than they should have and then overturn a conviction, but they cannot just simply say that the verdict was wrong.

But, by 2005 the conviction was overturned. This is because by this time there had seemingly been several issues involving Dr. Allan Warnick. The appeals court simply stated that the “bite mark evidence was unreliable.” Research later stated that not only was the science behind bite marks in question but it seems that Warnick himself was too and “number of cases” involving his testimony were found to be flawed. They also stated that many of the witnesses, while they could not dispute their testimony, were not reliable as they had admitted to drinking heavily and using drugs.

Carol Ege would go back on trial in October 2007. This time the prosecution did not have the bite “evidence” they once had and only had the word of others about how Carol felt about Cindy and of things she had allegedly stated. Although I saw nothing that stated a definite time of death the defense would claim that not only did Davis' presence coincide with the time of death but that his friend had not backed up his alibi in saying they had been together the night before. They also likely pointed out that while the phone had apparently been pulled apart from the receiver inside the home there had not been forced entry, at least none that the investigators could find. What were the odds that Cindy would have let Carol Ege into her home willingly? The defense also had the fact that there was no evidence what so ever of Carol Ege found inside Cindy's home and yet there were plenty of fibers, hair, blood and fingerprints, none of which pointed to Carol.

After five hours of deliberations the jury found Carol Ege once again guilty of first degree murder. And, once again she was given the mandatory sentence of life without parole.

I have to say, this case scares me a bit. How many times have any of us said “I could just kill....” or have we been so angry that we said things that we would never follow through on? There is not a doubt in my mind that Carol Ege was angry with Cindy Thompson. I do not even doubt that she may have said she wished her dead or in some off handed way said she would never have the child, as someone claims she said. In fairness, she had every right to be angry. Her boyfriend of a decade had obviously cheated on her and got another girl pregnant. Now, I agree that too many women in that situation put more blame on the woman than on the man, the one who actually betrayed them, but that is neither here nor there. I am just saying that Carol had every right to be mad, hurt and whatever other feeling she may have had. She may have even offered those two men $350 to kill her. Another man testified that she offered him $500. However, keep in mind what the appeals court said about the witnesses that testified. In fact, the man she allegedly offered $500 to was the ex-husband of a woman that was apparently staying with Carol and Mark Davis at the time of the murder. He admitted that he had an extreme dislike for Carol and later he even said he was not sure if it had been Carol or his ex-wife who allegedly tried to hire him to kill Cindy Thompson. There is a saying that investigators and prosecutors do not get to pick their witnesses, and this is true. When you are dealing with shady people they generally hang out with other shady people. The problem is that not all of them are murderers. This is why we have a justice system that requires evidence and informs a jury that they are to not have any “reasonable doubt” when they convict someone. This case YELLS reasonable doubt and yet twenty-four people convicted Carol Ege and sentenced her to life in prison. Again, I am just hoping that my research was severely lacking in information because this conviction seems unreal.