Michigan double murder: The Unsolved 2005 killing of Pamela Jean Barnes and Kenneth Kanehl Jr
WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. — All Pamela Jean Barnes ever wanted was to get married and have a home to call her own, her mother once said. At 41 years old, she was still single. She had a daughter, but Barnes and the father never tied the knot, and their relationship eventually dissolved.
Barnes finally found the love of her life when she met Kenneth Kanehl, Jr. in December 2004.
The relationship progressed quickly, and the couple moved in together in April 2005.
Both had good, stable jobs. Kanehl, 39, worked for Minacs Corp. as a troubleshooter technician for GM cars. Barnes was an occupational therapist.
Barnes and Kanehl had daughters from previous relationships — Kanehl’s daughter Kylie, 15, and Barnes’ daughter Alyssa, 13 (newer reports say nine). Alyssa’s father did not like her living with Kanehl.
Barnes was preparing to take Alyssa’s father to court over thousands of dollars in back child support when the unthinkable happened.
Alyssa spent the 4th of July weekend with her father. He was supposed to take her home on the morning of Sunday, July 3, 2005, but he did not.
Concerned family members called the Waterford police when Barnes and Kanehl failed to show up at a family function, and Barnes never showed up for work on Tuesday, July 5. Police went to the couple’s home in the 5400 block of Brunswick Boulevard on July 6 and found them both dead in their bed.
The victims were shot multiple times in the head while they slept, but the police never found the murder weapon. There were no signs of forced entry, and the back door was unlocked. Barnes’s purse was left in the home untouched.
With no robbery or sexual assault, investigators were initially clueless to a possible motive and unsure of the exact date the couple was killed.
Family members last saw Barnes and Kanehl at a party on July 2.
Alyssa’s father is the main person of interest in the case. He is now deceased. The local media did not name him because the police never charged him with the crime.
Kylie told her father’s stepmother the man approached her at the funeral home and said, “It will be okay now, it will all be better now.”
Police report shows he twice refused a polygraph test. Detectives interviewed dozens of people, but the interviews led nowhere, and the case stalled.
On Wednesday, September 22, 2010, Detectives from the Waterford Township Police Department and members of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department Forensic Services Division executed a search warrant on the grounds of a residential property located at 755 W. Buno Road in Milford, Michigan.
Waterford Township Police Department press release
Investigators executed the search as part of the ongoing Barnes-Kanehl murder investigation, police said. They indicated that an unsolved 1996 shooting in Milford was eerily similar to the double murder.
On Saturday, Oct. 26, 1996, Jennifer Peppard married Joe A. Anderson. Hours later, someone shot her father.
Between 5 and 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 27, 1996, a masked intruder entered the rural residence of William “Bill” Peppard, lead pastor of Milford Assembly of God, and shot him with a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun. The 1-ounce lead slug put a 3-inch hole in the right side of Peppard’s chest and “came within an inch of his liver and two inches of his heart,” according to John W. Kennedy in a story from the Assemblies of God website.
Peppard’s wife, Joanne, was next to him in bed, and their other two daughters were asleep in their bedrooms when the shooting occurred. The intruder fled and did not shoot the other members of the family.
The intruder had cut the telephone landline to the home. Jodi, then 18, drove two miles to the nearest neighbor to call for help, which delayed Peppard getting to the hospital by 45 minutes. Leah, 16, made attempts to stop the excessive bleeding while Jodi called for help.
Peppard lost seven pints of blood but miraculously survived the shooting and walked out of the hospital 10 days later.
At his first sermon after returning to work, Peppard looked out among the congregation and saw the suspect sitting in a pew watching him.
In 1989, Peppard had trouble with a particular male church member, who had joined the church not long after Peppard became the lead pastor in 1986. According to Peppard, the man was a loner and unmarried, and he and Peppard formed a friendship. However, the church member became obsessed with Peppard’s wife JoAnne and his oldest daughter, Jennifer.
Kennedy wrote, “He hovered around her [JoAnne] in the nursery or kid’s church when she had ministry duties there. He even showed up at the nursing home where she worked as a licensed practical nurse, telling her how much he cared for her.”
JoAnne told him to leave her alone and that she was happy in her marriage.
When confronted by Peppard, the man told him that he was a “horrible husband and terrible father” and the man was “going to have JoAnne and Jennifer,” Peppard said. When the minister asked the man what he meant, he responded, “I will marry them and have them sexually.”
The church’s ministry’s leaders demanded the member leave the church. Peppard had no further contact with the man, but seven years later, Peppard was nearly killed.
The church member and the man police believe shot Peppard are one and the same — Barnes’ ex-boyfriend.
After the 1996 shooting, police had no evidence tying Barnes’ ex to the crime because the shooter wore a mask and gloves. Furthermore, Barnes’ had given the man an alibi for the time of the murder.
While investigators never said whose property they searched in 2010, it most likely belonged to Barnes’ ex-boyfriend; he died in 2018. However, Redfin.com shows the Buno Road property sold on May 16, 2018.
Police gave no further information on the search and remain tight-lipped over the case, refusing to discuss it with local reporters.
In 2007, frustrated the investigation was going nowhere, the families held a press conference pleading for information. They wanted to know if anyone had seen anything or anyone suspicious in the couple’s neighborhood on July 3, 2005 — the night police think the intruder shot them. They also wanted to know if anyone had heard talk of who might have committed the crime. It was another dead end.
They have held subsequent appeals since. In 2016, police said the case is solved; they could not make an arrest due to insufficient evidence, and now their main person of interest is dead.
.jpg)
