A Flex-Cuf Solves Jeanette Kirby’s Murder
(“Bound for Jail,” Forensic Files)
It was an unlikely person who took down David Draheim — and for a reason that’s kind of, well, quaint.
Authorities desperately needed something to tie Draheim to Jeanette Kirby, a jogger found stabbed to death in a sprawling Michigan park in 1986.
There were no eyewitnesses, and heavy rainfall had washed away any forensic evidence. Twelve years passed before police got a solid lead — and when they did, it came from none other than Draheim’s best buddy.
Bromantic story. Mark Greko and Draheim had once shared an apartment. Here’s the cute part: Greko was a self-admitted pack rat. He plucked an old item out of storage that shifted the stalled investigation into overdrive.
For this week, I looked around to find out what’s happened to Draheim and Greko since the Forensic Files episode “Bound for Jail” first aired in 2003, and also to learn a little bit more about Jeanette Kirby. Forensic Files mentions that she was in her mid-30s and divorced, but that’s about it.
Cause for alarm. Here’s a recap of the episode along with extra information drawn from internet research:
A retired nurse named Muriel Kirby got worried one day after her daughter missed their breakfast date on June 11, 1986.
No one had heard from Jeanette Kirby since she went for a jog in Riverbend Park in Ingham County, Michigan, on the previous day.
Twist of fate. Jeanette hadn’t shown up at her job as a Medicare analyst and didn’t call.
According to the Investigation Discovery network’s Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets, Jeanette had once hoped to embark on a career in law enforcement.
But she suffered from rheumatic fever as a child and missed a whole year of school. She recovered, but her heart wasn’t quite strong enough to do whatever one has to do to graduate from a police academy, according to “A Walk in the Park,” the ID network series’ episode about her murder.
Her cousin Nancy Bishop remembered Jeanette as kind and loving.
Awful discovery. The area where the Kirbys lived in Ingham County was known for being safe — until Jeanette went missing on June 11, 1986.
Jeanette’s empty car was discovered near Riverbend Park. A search party formed and, on June 12, 1986, Jeanette’s friend James Hornyak spotted what he at first thought was a mannequin in a ravine a half-mile away.
Hornyak later said on the A&E series Cold Case Files that nothing he’d witnessed in combat during the Vietnam War was as frightening as Jeanette Kirby’s murder scene.
Unfortunately, the site surrounding her body didn’t yield much evidence. The storm had obliterated any footprints or fingerprints.
Work of a pro. The killer had cut off Jeanette Kirby’s clothes and tied her wrists with Flex-Cufs — the plastic hand restraints police often use. He had strangled Kirby and stabbed her to death.
Media accounts vary as to whether or not she was raped.
Because of the Flex-Cufs, local police wondered if one of their own could be responsible for the crime.
“This is someone with training, knowledge, and expertise in how to attack, disarm, and handcuff and then kill an individual in rapid succession,” Detective Pete Ackerly of the Ingham County Sheriff’s office said during his Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets interview.
But an investigation never turned up any suspects of note in local law enforcement.
Bogus traffic stop. The Kirby case went cold.
Four years later, in 1990, an imposingly tall man impersonating a Michigan law officer stopped a female motorist and tried to force her into his truck. He threatened her with a 9-millimeter handgun and fired a warning shot in the air.
She resisted, and he fled the scene without her.
Golden boy. A gas station receipt identified the driver as David Draheim. He was a 33-year-old worker at a wastewater treatment plant in Holt.
The sandy-haired blue-eyed ex-Marine was also a volunteer firefighter. He had a good reputation and no criminal record.
Local law officials had no idea that the man they knew as an asset to the community was using an Ingham County sheriff’s hat and police-style flashing lights in an attempt to waylay women.
Waitress terrorized. But the knife and plastic handcuffs found in Draheim’s vehicle were different from those used on Jeanette Kirby, and the failed abduction took place 200 miles away, in Leelanau County.
Police still couldn’t connect Draheim with the murder.
But the 6-foot-6-inch-tall Draheim received 40 years in prison for the attempted kidnapping of the female motorist as well as crimes from 1989 that Forensic Files didn’t reveal — two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a weapon, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections.
Draheim had repeatedly raped a waitress after pretending to be a good samaritan who wanted to help her fix a flat tire. She didn’t report the attack until years later because he threatened to kill her if she did, according to “The Cuff Link,” the Cold Case Files episode about the case.
Friend in a high place. Meanwhile, the Kirby case went cold again — until 12 years after the murder, when Muriel Kirby found a sympathetic ear in Michigan’s new attorney general.
Jennifer Granholm assigned two investigators to reopen Jeanette’s case.
They decided it was a good idea to interview Mark Greko, the aforementioned Draheim pal.
While living together in the early 1980s, both men had worked as security guards. During this same time, Greko found a stash of Flex-Cufs inside an old state police car he was rehabbing.
Tab settles it. Greko said he remembered using one Flex-Cuf for a repair and wrapping a second one around the brim of the hat he wore as part of his old uniform.
He gave the rest of the Flex-Cufs to his roomie, David Draheim.
Greko singlehandedly turned Kirby’s case from ice-cold to red-hot by digging through his storage area and plucking out his ancient security guard hat — with the Flex-Cuf still attached. Being a pack rat paid off.
Hand restraints in tow. Investigators found the same distinctive production markings on the metal tab of the Flex-Cuf used on Jeanette Kirby and the one from Draheim’s pal’s hat. They came from the same batch manufactured in 1979.
Finally, authorities charged David Draheim with murder.
At the 2002 trial, Draheim’s wife testified that he routinely took Flex-Cufs with him when he went jogging.
Mother gets results. Another woman, a former acquaintance of Draheim’s, told the court that he had Flex-Cuf’ed her once.
Prosecutors contended that Draheim was scouting for a random victim when he spotted Kirby jogging and ambushed her on that day in 1986.
The jury found Draheim guilty of second-degree homicide, and he received 60 to 90 years on top of the 40 years he was already serving.
It was a long time to wait, but mild-mannered Muriel Kirby’s persistence got results.
Epilogue and updates: So where are the parties today?
David Draheim is serving his time at Saginaw Correctional Facility in Level II security, which probably means he’s behaved himself while incarcerated.
On Jmail, a service that allows inmates to seek pen pals, he identifies himself as a 295-pound bodybuilder who’s “sensitive to other people’s feelings” with “true family values.”
Draheim, who says he’s looking for a woman to correspond with, claims that there are doubts about his guilt.
The innocence website hvots.altervista.org notes that Draheim saved several people’s lives through his firefighting work.
Draheim will be eligible for parole in 2050, when he’s 93 years old.
After her daughter’s death, Muriel Kirby started a chapter of Parents of Murdered Children and also added her voice to the Victims in the Media program at Michigan State University.
Unfortunately, her husband, Paul, had died in 1999, without seeing his daughter’s killer brought to justice. Muriel herself died at the age of 84 in 2006.
As for Mark Greko, the Investigation Discovery episode produced in 2012 used the pseudonym Mark Smith for him, which probably means he prefers not to be asked about the case anymore.
Greko still lives in Holt, Michigan, and works as a security guard for a mental health facility and as a rescue worker for the Ingham County Sheriff’s Office, according to his LinkedIn profile and other information available online.
Incidentally, in case anyone has the wrong idea about Greko, it should be pointed out that a pack rat isn’t the same thing as a hoarder.
While hoarders live among mountains of junk and other stuff they’ll never need, pack rats squirrel away things that may prove useful some day.
And speaking of useful, Jennifer Granholm went on to serve as Michigan’s governor and is often credited with helping to save Detroit’s auto industry in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime
