Bent Corner

Macomb Circuit Judge James Biernat decided that comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comic-Con organizer Michael George has to remain in Jail until his new trial. He said he thinks Michael George would be a flight risk if he were allowed to post bond.  Judge Biernat recently overturned George’s conviction for the 1990 murder of his wife Barbara.  A new trial has been ordered to start on December 2, 2008.

The prosecution is attempting to have the court of appeals to uphold the original conviction.

Michael George used to own the comic book shop in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.  It’s the shop I buy my funny books from.  When I buy funny books.  [WXYZ-TV Detroit]

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Among those protesting against the decision to throw out the murder conviction against comic book retailer Michael George and give him a new trial are members of the jury that convicted him this past March in the 1990 murder of his wife Barbara George.

Personally, I don’t blame them for being pissed off. They did everything asked of them. If Macomb County Circuit Court Judge James Biernat honestly thought the case was too flimsy for a reasonable jury to find George guilty, he should have thrown the case out before he asked a jury to consider the case. The defense team asked on two separate occasions for Judge Biernat to throw the case out because they argued the prosecutor failed to prove his case . He refused to do so both times. Now he says the case was too flimsy?

This makes me wonder just how many times he watched the 2-hour NBC Dateline story on this case.

This new evidence does nothing to clear Michael George. The fact that Marshall Prog showed up in town flat broke a few days before the murder and then left town a few days after the murder flush with cash proves nothing. The prosecutor already proved that it was not a botched robbery. Not only was no money taken from the two registers, Barbara had all of her jewelry when they found her. We are supposed to believe a junkie is going to kill a woman and then leave money in the registers and jewelry on the victim, but take high valued golden age comics that nobody remembers ever seeing? How would Marshall Prog even know which comics were valuable and which ones weren’t? Where would he go to quickly sell them?

At most, it could be argued that Marshall Prog was involved in a murder-for-hire scheme. That someone paid him to murder Barbara George. I don’t see how that would clear Michael George.  [Detroit Free Press]

Macomb County Circuit Judge James Biernat has ordered that comic book retailer Michael George is to get a new trial. He has cited prosecutorial misconduct as one of the reasons for overturning the jury’s conviction.  A month after George was sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murder of his then wife Barbara George, a file was found between two other folders.

The case was the subject of a recent episode of NBC Dateline.

This newly found folder contains information about a call the police received back in 1990 from a man named Pat Flannery who claimed that his girlfriend’s ex-husband, a drug addict named Marshall Prog, bragged about getting away with a murder.  Prog returned to Michigan from Florida only a couple of days before Barbara George was killed looking for money.  A few days after the murder, Prog returned to Florida reportedly with a large sum of money.

The police never followed up on this phone call.  Marshall Progg is now dead, but his ex-wife isn’t.  She could have been called to testify by Michael George’s defense team if they had been made aware of this information before the trial. [Detroit Free Press]

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.