Richard Clarey

Richard Clarey is a Germanic serial killer, currently imprisoned in Munising.

History
Clarey was raised in West Germany by American parents who were working abroad. Clarey had a troubled childhood made worse by the use of drugs. Clarey left for the United States at the age of 16. He stayed briefly with an aunt that lived in Oregon. The arrangement did not work out so Clarey spent the next two years drifting through the western half of the country, he made a living off of burglaries, armed robberies and drug sales. In 1979 he settled in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Clarey wanted a change of scenery so on April 15 1984 he killed Robert Baranski 35 and dumped his body in lake Michigan so he could take his car for a trip across country. Clarey made it to New Buffalo before the stolen car ended up in a ditch two days later. Clarey was approached by tourists so he shot the two men before slipping across the Indiana border. The two victims were Floyd Holmes and Dean Bultema. Later that day Clarey was arrested and returned to Michigan for a trial on murder charges. Clarey's defense blamed the crimes on nightmares that were generated by his childhood. He wore a swastika tattoo upon his chest, together with the likeness of a German helmet on his arm, committing himself to do "as much damage as he could" to blacks and other minorities in his cross-country ramblings. The jury did not buy the psychological argument and only deliberated a hour before convicting him on dual murder charges, imposing the mandatory sentence of life without parole on December 20, 1984 Dr. Leonard Donk, who diagnosed the subject as a schizophrenic sociopath in February 1985 was quoted "I suspect he's killed more people than he's been charged with," Donk said. "How many more, I wouldn't even want to speculate on." In October 1986, Clarey joined another inmate in an escape attempt, stealing a truck and crashing it into a fence at the prison near Ann Arbor. Clarey's escape planes did not go through when the fence held and the truck's engine stalled.