Families baffled by Gabrion decision

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Shannon Verhage's grandmother doesn't necessarily believe in the death penalty, but she liked knowing Marvin Gabrion's death was always in the back of his own mind. Relatives of Gabrion's victims were baffled by Wednesday's U.S. Appeals court ruling to toss out the death penalty over a mistake in court.

Gabrion was convicted of killing Rachel Timmerman, and is believed to have killed her 1-year-old daughter, Shannon. There's also the disappearances of two men, the death of a third man.

A federal appeals court overturned Gabrion's death sentence for drowning Rachel Timmerman in a remote lake to prevent her from pursuing a rape case against him. His conviction remains intact.

Both the Timmerman and Verhage families want to see him on death row.

"I kind of like the idea that he was sitting there, knowing someone was planning his death, so he could feel a little of what he put Rachel through," Kim Verhage told 24 Hour News 8.

"I believe Mr. Gabrion should be put to death because of what he did to my daughter, Rachel," her father, Tim Timmerman told 24 Hour News 8 on Wednesday. "He put her in handcuffs and chains, he chained cement blocks to her. He wrapped her entire head in duct tape. He put her on a boat and drug her out into the middle of Oxford Lake and then he threw her in."

Rachel, 19, was alive when she went under.

"If that doesn't deserve the death penalty," he asked, "what does?"

"I don't care" if he's put to death, Verhage said. "I really don't care." But she wants him on death row.

Though Michigan does not have the death penalty , the lake is on federal land -- and that's how Gabrion came to receive a death sentence once he was convicted of the crime.

Police searched the same lake for Shannon, believing Gabrion dumped her there with her mom, but some still hold out hope she's alive.

"I loved my granddaughter. I watched her take some of her first steps. She told me hi," he said.

Tim Timmerman co-wrote The Color of Night about the case, which is the best seller in Kim Verhage's Reading Book Store in Rockford. He was shocked when 24 Hour News 8 told him an appeals court had overturned the death penalty for Gabrion.

"I was afraid it was going to be for him punching his lawyer. I thought that's why he was g oing to get off, not because of Judge (Robert Holmes) Bell making a mistake," he said. "I never would have guessed that.'

The apparent mistake was that Judge Bell failed to tell the federal jury that Gabrion couldn't get the death penalty if this were a state case.

"It seems to me that they're overthinking it, doesn't it? Aren't they overthinking it? The jury decided. The jury is the only one capable of giving the death penalty; it wasn't the judge; it wasn't an appeals court judge. It was the jury."

Kim Verhage is certain Gabrion is gloating in prison.

"He is evil. He is evil," Verhage said. "No one is real to Marvin Gabrion. Nobody has any rights to live."

Gabrion's home in White Cloud is padlocked shut, and his mother's tombstone is just a few feet from the front door.