Jerry Strickland, Melissa (Missy) Munday -- What Happened After the "Unsolved Mysteries" Episode

By: Shane Lambert (@UncoolNegated on Twitter)


Amazon Kindle author of THE SUIT IN THE BACKPACK - PART 1

DOWN AND OUT IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES


Time of writing: December 5th, 2020

If you are a fan of the old "Unsolved Mysteries" episodes that Robert Stack hosted in the 1980s and 1990s, then you might remember Episode 2 of Season 1. That program opened with a murder case, one that saw Elmer DeBoer brutally killed, allegedly at the hands of one Jerry Strickland.

Wed, Feb 19, 1992 – Page 22 · Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) · Newspapers.com

The story of Strickland, his girlfriend Missy Munday, and the murdered DeBoer ended with viewers learning about the arrest of Strickland after the episode aired. For those wondering what happened next, here's a rundown.

According to an article in the Detroit Free Press from August 17th, 1988, Munday testified against Strickland and named him as the murderer of DeBoer. She claimed that Strickland confessed to the murder. Charges against her were dropped because of this.

Wed, Aug 17, 1988 – Page 4 · Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) · Newspapers.com

Munday claimed she helped plan the robbery but that she didn't know that the plan was to kill DeBoer. Planning the robbery included executing the plan on a Monday because the safe that was robbed would be fuller due to the fact that no one emptied the safe on Sunday (ie. there would be two days' worth of revenue instead of just one).

According to another article in the Detroit Free Press from October 15th, 1988, Munday was sentenced to time in Oakland County Children's Village for her role in the robbery. Strickland received a life term for the murder of DeBoer. He received a life term for kidnapping as well. A marginal from the February 19th, 1992 Detroit Free Press recounted their terms, stating that Munday was released from the village when she turned 19. It further stated that DeBoer was still serving his time.

At the time of writing in 2020, Jerry Strickland is likely still in prison and thus continuing to pay the high price of committing murder. I found a March 2020 article at medium.com that included a mug-shot sort-of photo of Strickland. In the photo, he is an old man, the article states that the photo is fairly recent, and the photo is credited to the Michigan Department of Corrections. The author of the article is Lisa Marie Fuqua.

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