Woman, Sons Kill 3 Officers, Surrender : Slayings, Motel Siege Leave Michigan Town in a State of Shock

Police found the bullet-riddled bodies of three fellow officers inside a rundown motel room early Friday after a 70-year-old woman and her three heavily-armed sons emerged from the barricaded room and surrendered.

The discovery, after a 10-hour siege punctuated by gunfire and a tear gas assault, dashed the hopes of law enforcement officials, who had been assured by the woman that her police hostages were still alive.

“It hurts,” said a somber Inkster police chief, James Buckley. Indeed, the small town was in a state of shock; all three officers were from Inkster, a depressed Detroit suburb that had a police force of just 45 before Thursday.

Officers Near Tears

“What’s this done to morale? Look around,” Buckley said at a press conference Friday afternoon, pointing to a group of officers on the verge of weeping.

Buckley said Friday it appeared that all three officers, who had gone on a routine call late Thursday afternoon to the motel to serve warrants on the woman and one of her sons for passing bad checks, had been shot to death with automatic rifles as soon as they entered the woman’s motel room.

Buckley said the woman lied to police negotiators about the killings until she and her sons surrendered at about 3:30 a.m. Friday.

The woman, identified as Alberta Easter, 70, and her three sons, all in their 40s, were being held in the Wayne County, Mich., jail and were scheduled to be arraigned today.

The full names of the sons were not released, and no charges had yet been filed against any of the family members. The family, originally from Ohio, had been living in the Bungalow Motel, a decaying, two-story structure, for several months, police said.

Police Puzzled

Buckley said the police were still puzzled over why the woman and her sons responded so violently to the arrest warrants. “That’s one of the questions we are trying to answer now,” he added.

The slain police officers were identified as Sgt. Ira Parker, 41, a 15-year police veteran; Officer Daniel Dubiel, 38, a 15-year veteran, and Officer Clay Hoover, 25, who had joined the Inkster force in March.

Each was shot five to nine times, police dispatcher Philip Rogers said.

Hoover and Dubiel had gone to the motel to serve the warrants at about 5:15 p.m. Thursday and then requested the help of Parker, their supervisor. As soon as all three police were in Easter’s motel room, the motel manager heard a volley of about 20 shots from automatic weapons and called police. Four more officers responding were then fired upon with automatic gunfire and retreated.

Buckley said that the gunmen then fired hundreds of rounds from the motel room. The shooting stopped after police responded with tear gas, but the gunmen were apparently well prepared for a siege; they donned gas masks and continued their holdout.

Had Hope for Hostages

Over the next 10 hours, as hundreds of police, state troopers and FBI agents converged on the motel room, Alberta Easter continued to insist that she and her sons had taken the officers hostage. Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano said police had remained hopeful throughout the night that the officers were still alive, although Easter had never offered any proof.

At one point, Easter negotiated with a local television reporter, who failed to persuade her to surrender Thursday night. Buckley said that she and her sons finally surrendered in the middle of the night, because of a combination of “time, fatigue and reassurances that they would be safe.”