Bent Corner

Pittsburgh Comicon organizer and comic book shop owner Michael George was found guilty of murdering his wife Barbara George in 1990 in the back room of their comic book shop. The jury found him not only guilty of first-degree murder, but insurance fraud.

I’m really kind of surprised by this. I’ve been following the case from the day the news broke that he had been arrested. As I’ve blogged earlier, Micheal used to own the comic book shop in nearby Scotland, PA. It’s located in the Chambersburg Mall and it’s where I buy my comics every week.

As more and more came out about the case, I was certain he was guilty.

I then read how his two daughter testified for him.

They were familiar with all the evidence, yet they still firmly believed in their father’s innocence. Who was I to question that? They knew about all the womanizing — and attempted womanizing — while he was married to their mother and all of the other sorted details that came out about their father. They still thought he was innocent of the murder of their mother.

All of the evidence against Michael George was circumstantial. That’s not to say someone cannot be found guilty with only circumstantial evidence. It happens all the time. This just seemed so surreal in the fact that it happened 17 years ago. No new evidence had come up.

The prosecutor in Michigan is charging Pittsburgh Comicon organizer and comic book retailer Michael George with new charges.

George, 47 — who is accused in the slaying of his 32-year-old wife, Barbara, in his Clinton Township store — faces two new charges: insurance fraud and obtaining money under false pretenses.

“The proofs will show that nothing was taken,” said Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Steve Kaplan.

He acknowledged that the murder charge is more pressing, but he said that George received $13,000 in insurance money.

George reported that two boxes of valuable comics were stolen from a back storage room during his wife’s murder. The police now contend that no comics were missing and that George simply made the whole thing up to receive insurance money and to make the police believe that the his wife’s murder was the result of a robbery gone bad.

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