Chronicles of a Full-Time Father by James Ninness

Robert Schlosser attributes a heart attack his wife later had to the news. One of Cathy's sister was pregnant, and the child would never know her aunt. 'The first thing they said, there's been - they didn't call it a murder - a homicide.' 'The police knocked on our door after midnight,' he said. James Krauseneck went to work there after his wife's death. This file photo shows Krauseneck Carpet & Rugs in Mount Clemens, Michigan. 'It was just impossible to figure out that he would do that,' Schlosser said. Now, the trial of James Krauseneck is scheduled to begin in June, and Robert Schlosser feels he must be there - for his slain daughter and for his late wife.

She, too, would have traveled for the trial. The couple had earlier met with the Brighton police, learning of possible new evidence against Jim Krauseneck. Schlosser lost his wife, Theresa, in 2017. This year, he felled a buck that, after being field dressed, weighed 180 pounds. Schlosser still does not miss a hunting season himself.

Schlosser's land is ideal for both hunting and snowmobiling. The closest community is the village of Pellston, with a population of fewer than 1,000. Life is quiet on Robert Schlosser's 118-acre property. 'It's just been in the last four years that it came back alive,' Schlosser said in an interview earlier this month at his home, a once-dilapidated and crumbling structure that he previously used as a hunting camp and rebuilt himself. When the Brighton police in 2015 renewed the investigation, assisted by the FBI, the family found new hope for answers. 19, 1982, with 3½-year-old Sara in the home. For years, the police suspected Krauseneck of the killing of his wife.Īnd now, more than 37 years later, the 68-year-old Krauseneck is accused of the horrific killing that stood as one of the region's most notorious unsolved homicides - the 'Brighton ax murder' as it came to be called. He maintains his innocence and has pleaded not guilty. That was before someone took an ax and, with a single strike to the head, killed Cathy Krauseneck as she slept on the morning of Feb. That was when all seemed comfortable within the Krauseneck home. They were a family that, seemingly stress-free, traveled from Michigan to Colorado to Virginia and then to Brighton for Jim Krauseneck's career. That was when 'Jim' Krauseneck and Schlosser's daughter, Cathy, seemed to be a loving young couple the proud and doting parents of a cherubic daughter, Sara. identified as kin - not necessarily close, but always friendly. There was a time when Robert Schlosser and James Krauseneck Jr. James Krauseneck said he discovered the body of his wife, Cathy, murdered with an ax in their Brighton home.

Chronicles of a Full-Time Father by James Ninness