Bent Corner

Comic book retailing news site ICv2 posted an article yesterday about the sentencing of Pittsburgh Comicon organizer and comic book retailer Michael George.

They make a rather huge factual error:

With no witnesses, physical evidence, or confession (see “Greed, Sex, and Power”), the prosecutors basically convicted George on motive (a $130,000 insurance police), opportunity (by casting doubt on alibi), and his behavior after his wife’s death (he reportedly hit on a woman at his wife’s funeral). This sensational cold case trial gained nationwide attention as the result of a feature on NBC’s Dateline.

No witnesses? The reason doubt was cast on his alibi is because the prosecution had a witness that put Michael George on the scene at around the time of Barbara’s murder. Michael Renaud testified that he called the comic book shop at around the time of the murder and spoke to Michael George on the phone.

To say that there were not witnesses is really kind of silly. It makes me think that whoever wrote the article over ICv2 never watched the Dateline feature they referred to.

Convicted murderer and Pittsburgh Comicon promoter Michael George is scheduled to be sentenced today in a Michigan courtroom. George was only recently convicted of murdering his wife Barbara George 18 years ago in the comic book shop they both owned. George was having an affair with one of his employees who he later married.

The case was recently featured in a two-hour episode on the NBC show Dateline.

The sentencing today is all but a formality since he is facing mandatory life in prison.

The prosecutor in the case, Assistant Prosecutor Steve Kaplan said that he expects several of Barbara George’s relatives to speak at the sentencing.

Michael George is still listed on the Pittsburgh Comicon website concerning the 2009 show. His photo remains there too.

Link

Dateline NBC ran their 2-hour episode last night on the Michael George murder trial. Michael George along with his current wife Renee own Comics World, a comic book shop in Windber, Pennsylvania. They also own and operate the annual Pittsburgh Comicon.

Michael George used to own a second Comics World store in nearby Scotland, Pennsylvania. The store still exists, but is now owned by a new owner and is in no way connected to Michael George. It’s located in the Chambersburg Mall nearby where I work and It’s where I buy my funny books every week.

I knew Michael George from when he owned the Comics World in Scotland. Not that we were friends or anything. I just knew who he was. I wasn’t buying my comics at Comics World back then, but I would stop in at the shop every time we visited the mall.

I watched the Dateline NBC episode last night. I didn’t really learn anything new. I’d been following the case very closely since word got out that Michael George was arrested for his first wife’s murder. I remember stopping in at the Comics World that afternoon. Everyone was in shock. I don’t think I’ve ever known someone who was arrested for murder and I don’t think anybody else in the store that day had either.

A lot of the people in the store that day had either worked for Michael and Renee George in the shop or at the yearly comic book convention in Pittsburgh.

Over on the Dateline NBC website, there is quite a lot of information to be had. They have posted an “express” episode that you can watch on your computer. They have posted an entire transcript for the whole 2-hour show. They have posted many of the actual crime scene photos taken where Barbara George was murdered.

One of the interesting things brought out in the show was being able to put a face on the various people that testified during the trial. I had been reading about the trial every day online. I was already familiar with the testimony.

And finally, the thing that I will take away from watching this program the most was what a wonderful and special person Barbara George was. If anyone didn’t deserve to be shot in the head, it was Barbara. That’s something that doesn’t come out as much when you are only reading about the case. There is just something more powerful about seeing photos of her smiling and laughing and being happy. I think the fact that her husband could be screwing around behind her back and then shack up with his mistress so quickly after her death speaks volumes about him. If someone — as Michael George had claimed — had murdered my wife and the mother of my two kids, I would hunt them down and make them wish they were never born. Michael George didn’t do that. No, he used her life insurance money to start a new life with his mistress.

It was very plain to see that Barbara George was good people. She deserved better. Much better.

I remember reading during the Michael George murder trial that producers for Dateline NBC were in court getting footage for an upcoming show. Word on the street is that the comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comicon promoter Michael George case will be featured on tomorrow night’s episode of Dateline NBC. And when I say “word on the street”, I of course am referring to what a woman at work told me. She said that she saw a promo for tomorrow nights program and “that comic book guy that killed his wife” was going to be on. Michael George used to own the comic book shop located in the mall next to where we all work.

I checked out the official Dateline NBC website, and it says squat about tomorrow night’s show. I checked out tomorrow night’s TV listings on Yahoo and it showed the Dateline NBC will appear on NBC from 9pm to 11pm. It doesn’t list anything about the stories that will appear.

I’m planning on watching it. Even if they don’t show the Michael George murder trial episode, they might show Chris Hanson bust some online perverts. I love when he offers them a cookie. There’s nothing more entertaining on prime time TV than catching child sex predictors.

[UPDATE] It’s been confirmed that the Michael George segment will indeed appear on tomorrow’s Dateline NBC.

Convicted murderer and Pittsburgh Comicon organizer Michael George is seeking to have his murder and insurance fraud convictions nullified by the judge. His lawyers are seeking to have Judge James Biernat throw the convictions out.

He faces a mandatory penalty of life in prison without a chance for parole for the murder conviction alone.

Judge Biernat will decide on April 25 if defense attorneys can even file a motion to have the conviction nullified before George is even sentenced. Prosecutors contend that they can only request a new trial after he has been sentenced.

April 25 is also the first day the Pittsburgh Comicon. George’s photo still appears on the Pittsburgh Comicon website. George’s name still prominently appears on the Pittsburgh Comicon website.

Though Jurors didn’t hear George testify during his trial, they listened to an audio recording of a police interview conducted last August in his comic book shop in Pennsylvania. Police claim that George changed his story. The jurors heard George speak that at the time of his late wife’s murder, someone “was out to get him”. He claimed that instead of killing him, they chose to kill his wife. He failed to say anything about this at the time of the murder.

Why would someone out to get Michael George murder his wife Barbara?  By all accounts, Michael George wanted out of his marriage with Barbara.  He wanted to begin a new life with his then employee and now current wife Renee George.  Because of Barbara’s death, he was able to do just that.

It’s been about five days since Pittsburgh Comicon organizer and comic book retailer Michael George was convicted of murdering Barbara George, his first wife. Not only was he convicted of first degree murder for killing the mother of his two children, he was convicted of insurance fraud and obtaining money from an insurance agency under false pretenses.

The insurance fraud stems from the fact that Michael George made the murder appear t be a robbery and he fraudulently reported the loss of multiple high-value comic books to his insurance company. His insurance company paid him $13,000 to compensate him from the loss of these comics. The comics the jury decided he never owned.

Wont he now have to pay that money back?

Then there’s the matter of the $125,000 Michael George collected on Barbara’s life insurance policy. Since the jury ruled that Michael killed Barbara, wont he have to pay that money back too? Convicted murderers aren’t normally allowed to collect on the life insurance policy of their victims. And when I say normally, I of course mean never.

So where exactly does this leave the Pittsburgh Comicon?

The show is owned by Michael and Renee George. How will all this effect the show? Will the insurance companies that paid large sums of money to Michael George under fraudulent terms now move to seize assets belonging to him? Wouldn’t the Pittsburgh Comicon be one of those assets?

I’ve been checking out the Pittsburgh Comicon website every day since the verdicts were handed down. Everything looks the same. Not one mention of the fact that the show’s co-promoter has been convicted of murdering the mother of his children and is now facing a mandatory life in prison. Further more, prosecutors in the case claimed that Michael George killed his first wife so that he could start a new life with his mistress, the woman he is married to now.

She is the show’s other co-promoter.

It seems to me all this would require some sort of statement from the show. Not only is Michael’s name still featured on the Pittsburgh Comicon website, so is his photo.

There’s already talk among some comic book creators about boycotting the show on the grounds that it is supporting a man convicted of murder.

Last month I was contacted by Patrick Thomas, the Marketing Director of the Pittsburgh Comicon. He assured me that no matter what happened in Michael George’s trial, the 2008 Pittsburgh Comicon would be going on as planned and that nothing would prevent that. I don’t know Patrick, but I know people that do. I’ve been assured that when he says something, you can bank on it.

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 Tribune Democrat and the Detroit Free Press report on the ongoing Michael George murder trial. Tracie George and Michelle George, daughters of murder victim Barbara George and murder defendant Michael George testified in his defense Wednesday. Tracie — who was four at the time — testified that she remembers her father sleeping on her grandmother’s couch the day of the murder. Though she doesn’t remember the actual time, she remembers that it was dark outside.

Both daughters also testified that their father took them from Pennsylvania to Michigan once a year to visit their mother’s grave and to visit their grandmother, aunts and uncles. Michelle George testified that they all say a prayer each time they visit their mother’s grave, and that Michael George gets emotional at these yearly visits.

I’m no legal expert*, but I have to believe this testimony was persuasive. This case is built solely on circumstantial evidence. There is no physical evidence. This case relies solely on the testimony of what people remember nearly 20 years ago. In a case like this, I imagine having the daughters of the victim testify for their father is highly persuasive. If there was any doubt that their father murdered their mother, I have to believe Tracie and Michelle would not have testified. If there was any doubt in their minds, they would not have come to their father’s defense. Both girls know of the sordid details of their father’s womanizing and all around improper behavior while married to their mother. They none the less have come to their father’s defense.

If I was on the jury, that’s all I would need to hear.

* In full disclosure, I did use to watch L.A. Law.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Clinton Township police’s 17-year suspicion that Michael George killed his wife in the back of their comic book store finally reaches the courtroom today.

Jury selection is set to begin at 1:30 p.m. in the case, in which George is charged with the July 1990 shooting death of his 32-year-old wife, Barbara George.

Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Steve Kaplan said he expects to call 43 witnesses in the reopened cold case. The trial could last more than three weeks.

Former Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga is representing George, 47. The case has garnered national attention. The NBC show “Dateline” is expected to feature it in a future episode.

One of my personal goals in life is to never appear on an episode of “Dateline”. No good can come of it.

Things are not looking good for comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comicon promoter Michael George.

From this morning’s Detroit Free Press:

Allegations that Michael George cheated on the wife he is accused of killing will be allowed in his upcoming trial, a Macomb County Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday.

George, 47, is to go on trial Feb. 26 in the July 13, 1990, death of his wife, Barbara George, 32, who was shot in the head in the couple’s Clinton Township comic book store.

Judge James Biernat made several other rulings Thursday: He denied George’s request to exclude testimony about his behavior after his wife’s death — such as witnesses’ accounts that he wore sunglasses to and flirted with other women at his wife’s funeral. He also denied George’s request to quash charges of insurance fraud.

His own lawyers admit he committed acts of adultery with more then one woman. I would say this is a very bad development.