By Chris Bartholomew
Nickname: Chili, Chilli
Carolyn Kronenberg, 60, a Lansing (Michigan) Community College professor and the mother of a city council member, was found dead 15 minutes before her class was to start on Jan. 23, 2005. She was raped and murdered. She could have died one of two ways. Her left vertebral artery, which supplies blood to the brain, ruptured probably due to a hyperextension of her head. She also had patterned bruising on either side of her neck from the sweater she was wearing that morning. A bone located above her voice box was also fractured. This is often seen in cases involving manual strangulation, where asphyxiation is caused by an attacker's hands.
Kronenberg's other injuries included a skull fracture in the back of the head, a contusion on the top of her head and two fractures in her jaw. She also had some lacerations and abrasions inside her mouth. She had scrapes and bruises elsewhere on her body, notably on her legs. She could have received the injuries while fighting for her life. The professor had a large amount of tearing, blood and clotting in her vagina, resembling the kind of tears seen after childbirth. The amount of blood and bruising indicates that Kronenberg was alive while she was being assaulted. Significant force was required to create the injuries Kronenberg suffered.
In 2005, Claude McCollum, a drifter with no permanent address was convicted of the rape and murder of Prof. Carolyn Kronenberg in her classroom. The conviction was based on what police termed a "confession", speculation whether McCollum could have committed the crime while sleepwalking, and despite his exclusion by DNA.
McCollum served a year and a half of his life sentence for a crime we now know he did not commit. We know this because someone else confessed, serial killer Matthew Emmanuel Macon. Magically, three years later, authorities now have a video that proves that Mr. McCollum was someplace else when the crime was committed.
Macon rampaged across Lansing for nearly five weeks, a parolee, attacking at least six women and killing five, was convicted of two of the slayings and of attacking a third woman who survived.
Macon will be sentenced to life without parole for murdering Sandra Eichorn, 64, and 41-year-old Karen Delgado-Yates. He also was found guilty of torturing Delgado-Yates and of assaulting Linda Chapel Jackson, 56, with intent to commit murder.
Macon bludgeoned Delgado-Yates with a toilet-tank lid, stabbed Eichorn with a kitchen knife, and used a beer bottle to strike Jackson, who survived because her dog chased Macon away. He also was found guilty of one count of home invasion.
Macon is suspected in the deaths of five other women, three from the summer of 2007 and two others dating back to 2004. Not all the women died the same way or appear to share much in common. Some were prostitutes, some elderly, some sexually assaulted. The 28-year-old hasn't been charged in those cases. Investigators are trying to determine he is responsible for several 2003 attacks on the city's west side. At least one of the 2003 victims was sexually assaulted. In the recent cases, it is known that one was sexually assaulted with a stick.
Killing was his hobby. It was something he did for fun, using whatever weapon was available. Some serial killers go for the randomness, it gives them a thrill.
Macon's attorney had claimed Macon's brother was responsible for Eichorn's death and the attack on Jackson. Apparently there was no evidence to suggest that this was so, and the jury obviously didn't buy it.
Carolyn Kronenberg (noted above)
Ruth Hallman, 76 was beaten in her home. She died two days later. She was a community activist who was the first of the five women to be killed. She is described as a courageous soul who spent much of her life fighting drug dealers who threatened to take over her west-side neighborhood. She was the mother of a Lansing councilwoman who lived next door.
Deborah Cooke, 36 had a history of prostitution. Police officers on routine patrol Aug. 7 discovered her partially nude body in Hunter Park, a place plagued by prostitution and drug use. She had been sexually assaulted with a stick. She had no known address, no driver's license, and no place to call home. She sometimes worked as a waitress but never for long. People who knew her say she had once been married and had a child taken from her because of neglect.
Debra Renfors, 46 Police found Debra Renfors' body when they responded to an emergency at her home, a 3-story gray house she shared with a boyfriend several blocks north of the state Capitol. She was killed in the same house where her good friend, Barbara Tuttle, 45, was beaten to death in December 2004. She worked low-paying jobs in nursing homes and restaurants. She also had lived in a homeless shelter. She never had an easy life, but she made the best of what she had. Renfors had many run-ins with the law for intoxication, trespassing, begging and prostitution.
Sandra Eichorn, 64, a General Motors retiree, was found dead by her son in an attic room in the rented house where she lived alone. She was beaten. He used a knife to kill her where she suffered dozens of stab wounds but was likely killed by one that went through her chest wall, severing an artery. Eichorn also suffered deep bruises to her head. She had been stabbed more than 30 times.
Her tennis shoes were taken off her feet and placed by a couch. Nearby, a Bible was left open. A business card was placed on top of a bowl of spaghetti. A graduation photo of another murder victim was propped up among items on a floor. There was a business card to Trouble Shooters Technical Support, a Lansing store, in a plate of spaghetti left on a table in the house. These were some of the clues left by a man who killed for the thrill of it. The owner of the technical support store said that he serviced a laptop brought in by Macon and didn't know how his business card wound up in Eichorn's house. A copy of Macon's invoice was later found in pants belonging to Macon that were obtained through a search warrant.
Her life is described as simple and low key. She had a favorite spot at Harry's Place, a neighborhood bar and grill around the corner from the yellow clapboard house where she was living out her retirement. She dropped by two or three times a week, and took her place at the bar where she could see the Keno screen and sip a Miller Lite. She was a nice person, always happy.
Karen Delgado-Yates, 41 Real Estate buyers found Yates naked and gasping for air in the bathroom. On the living room floor was a blood-smeared ceramic toilet lid, a blue latex glove, a condom wrapper, shorts, shoes and a purse. She was found in a vacant house on Hickory Street, a few blocks from where Cooke was found dead in a park. Yates died on the way to a hospital. She had a fractured skull, brain hemorrhage, a broken nose, several cracked ribs, and cuts and bruises. She was beaten severely. Her skull was fractured and her cause of death was blunt force injuries to the head and she also suffered four broken ribs and bruising all over her body. Delgado-Yates' injuries could have occurred as many as 24 hours before she was found barely alive.
Delgado-Yates had history of prostitution. She was charged with solicitation, and possession of drug paraphernalia. She stayed at a Lansing homeless shelter for several weeks. She also volunteered at the shelter. She left the agency's North Larch Street shelter sometime this spring. She grew up poor, her family surviving on welfare, they moved from Paris to California and then Michigan. Yates dropped out of high school and married, had two children who she lost custody of because she couldn't provide for them. She worked as a nurse's aide in homes to make ends meet. Despite her financial difficulty, she stayed upbeat. After losing custody of a child of a relative she was working for, she quit working and went to the homeless shelter. In the weeks before she died, she was charged with accosting and soliciting and drug possession.
Barbara Jean Tuttle, 45 her body was found in the same house where Renfors' was later discovered. She was beaten to death.
Linda Jackson is the one who got away. Her encounter with Macon: Macon approached her residence and asked if she had any odd jobs for him to do around the house. She declined his offer, but told Macon she would take down his name and give it to neighbors who may be interested in hiring him. Macon provided an alias, one that he had used in the past. Once their conversation was over and she had turned her back to Macon, she believes he attacked her by breaking two bottles over her head, although she never saw Macon during the assault. Jackson's dog was credited with chasing Macon off after the attack.
Macon has fathered two children by two different women, and they both say that he was never violent or disrespectful to them. They say he's a good person. They've never seen him mad, and they have never been in an argument with him. They don't believe he could have done the crimes, as he's never been physically abusive toward them. But the thing about serial killers is their ability to fit in. They don't go around being abusive; they are regular people most of the time. There haven't been many where people have said, 'I knew it!'
A forensic scientist introduced DNA evidence linking Macon to the homicide scenes.
2001, Macon went to prison for a larceny. Corrections officials say, because he was a model prisoner, he was paroled twice. His behavior was very good; he did not have any misconduct in prison, they say. Macon was last paroled in June 2007. The series of killings began one month later. The parole board reviewed his file, reviewed all his criminal history, talked with him, and made the decision he wasn't going to be a menace to society.
Macon, shackled to a fellow inmate last year in a jail transportation van bragged about killing seven women. He smiled as he talked and even joked. He also said he regretted not finishing off an eighth victim. "It made you feel like you were in the presence of evil," the inmate said. "He had no remorse whatsoever. It's like you look in his eyes and there ain't nothing there."
He's a four-time parole/probation violator who has been in and out of jail or prison for the past 19 years. His crimes appeared to target property rather than people, larceny, home invasion. But in a 2000 larceny case, he pleaded guilty to stealing a woman's purse after grabbing her by the throat.
Macon's childhood was turbulent. His father was violent and abusive, and was accused of sexually abusing one of Macon's siblings. From age 9, Matthew Macon's life was filled with criminal court appearances, foster homes, juvenile detention facilities and camps for incorrigible youth, petty crime, he often broke into bike shops and stores, and not-so-petty charges. At age 14, Macon admitted he sexually assaulted a girl younger than 13 with a stick in his mother's home. By age 16, Macon was in a program for sex offenders, and although he was making progress, he required "lifetime vigilance."
Sexual violence has played a role in the deaths of some of the women Macon is suspected of killing. At least two were raped with objects.
Many serial killers were either victims of abuse or witnessed abuse in their childhoods. They often choose a first victim out of anger and a need for revenge and discover they like the way killing feels. They want to commit the act over and over again. They begin to feel entitled to do it and that they're supposed to do it.
As Macon described the attack on Chapel Jackson, he appeared disappointed she survived. Macon said he should have finished her off. He would have had fewer problems, he said. Macon claimed that he had been offered a plea deal that would have netted 80 years for the seven dead women and one attack, and then he joked about it saying it was ten years per body.
Editor's note: this was written in 2008 to 2009, around the trial, and is reproduced as written. Two points in it do not match this archive's own record of the McCollum case, which is set out in TWELVE CASES WHERE THE CONVICTION DID NOT HOLD. The archive dates his conviction to 2006, not 2005, with the conviction vacated in 2007 and the charge dismissed in 2008. More importantly, it was not a confession that freed him. Nobody was ever charged with Carolyn Kronenberg's murder, and Matthew Macon has not been convicted of it. What undid the conviction was the surveillance footage this article calls magical: when Macon was arrested, someone went back through the file and found footage placing McCollum somewhere else at the time of the killing, footage that had been in the file from the start. The archive also records that McCollum has an intellectual disability, which is the context for the statement in which he allowed that he might have done it. On Macon himself: he was convicted of the murders of Sandra Eichorn and Karen Delgado-Yates and of the attack on Linda Chapel Jackson, and the further deaths named here are attributed rather than charged, which is how they should be read. This archive has no roster entry for Macon, and on two convicted murders and five attributed he is a candidate for one.