BURIED IN HER OWN BACKYARD

LISA FEIN WAS MURDERED IN FRONT OF HER LITTLE BOY

- Jacqui Lang

In the tiny town of Galien, Michigan, locals still shudder, remembering the horrific events of June 30, 2000, the summer night young mum Lisa Fein, 33, was murdered by a mystery man right in front of her horrified little boy.

At 3.30 am, Jacob Fein, 11, woke to hear screams coming from his mother Lisa’s bedroom. Peering in through the half-open door, he saw his mum desperately struggling with a man masked by a snowboard helmet.

Jacob raced back to his bedroom, waking stepbrother Shane, 10. “I think my mum and your dad are fighting,” he whispered. Jacob then returned to his mum’s bedroom, calling for her. The door was now closed, and no-one answered, but he could hear tape being torn from a roll.

Terrified, he and Shane then fled, racing to Jacob’s grandmother’s house nearby.

Jacob and Shane had lived as brothers for six years; after Lisa – who’d split up with Jacob’s dad Frank before he was born – married Shane’s father Ron, a divorcee working at the same factory where she worked.

“I liked Ron from the start,” recalls Lisa’s sister Laurie, saying he was a fine father figure to Jacob.

But could Ron have been responsible for harming Jacob’s mother?

Police first learned something was amiss at the family home when, three hours after Jacob fled, Ron phoned 911, saying, “I just got home from my night shift and my wife and both kids are gone … The bed’s all messed up … It doesn’t look good.”