Zimmer patriarch tries to reclaim life

WRIGHT TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) - On Tuesday, Troy Brake's trial for the murders of four people in Wright Township begins. 24 Hour News 8's Ken Kolker will cover the trial. In this article, he talks with the man who lost his wife and two sons in the murders. Monday, he'll look at the four people who were killed.

Robert Zimmer lost just about everything on Sept. 29, 2008 -- his wife, two sons, the family home.

Now, as he awaits the trial of accused killer Troy Brake, he is trying to reclaim at least a small part of what was taken.

"Coming back here, just, you know, I'm going to get back to where it was, but, I'm just going to be minus a family," he told 24 Hour News 8 last week as he worked on his yard on Eighth Avenue.

It was here, where Zimmer lived most of his life, that he lost his estranged wife, Sharmaine; his sons, Jeremy, 20, and Tyler, 17; and Jeremy's girlfriend, Katherine Brown, 18.

Brake, 31, is accused of shooting the Zimmers in the early morning so he could rape Brown. Prosecutors say he then beat Brown and set her on fire.

"They never done nothing wrong," Zimmer said. "I just don't understand why. Why he had to do it that way."

The trial is to start Tuesday in Ottawa County Circuit Court. Brake already has been convicted of raping and trying to kill a prostitute in Grand Rapids.

Brake had lived next door to the Zimmers years ago and, for a time, at the age of 12 or 13, stayed with the family.

"You've got to at least save the people, the family. What the hell's the reason for killing 'em for? I thought he was a good kid. God, he lived with us for a while there."

The fire destroyed the home Zimmer's father built more than 60 years ago, a home he grew up in, wedged between orchards and St. Joseph's Catholic Church. The home later was demolished, leaving only the foundation.

The loss was felt across the farming community in northeast Ottawa County.

"When I'm working out in the back yard, you don't see the house anymore," said neighbor Matt Trout. "You don't see people coming and going. Something's missing."

This spring, Zimmer returned to the land, mowing the grass, fixing the shed out back.

By June, he hopes to be living there -- in a modular home atop the old foundation. Orange flags and strings outline the new home's footprint.

"That's what I'm doing, starting over again," Zimmer said. "I don't know why. I'm 62 years old, and my health ain't worth a ----. What the hell. Might as well keep going until I die."

"I don't worry about things no more, after I lost my family. What the hell's the sense of worrying, you know? Just go from day to day. If you make it, you make it, if you don't, you don't."

Zimmer hadn't lived in the home for two years. He and his wife had separated, and he moved into a Coopersville mobile home park.

He says his health -- kidney failure -- hurt his marriage. He undergoes dialysis three days a week and is waiting for a transplant.

He and his wife, he says, were talking about getting back together.

"Her kids were No. 1," he said. "That's one thing for sure...Couldn't ask for better. She was a good mom, a good wife. She was everything, you know?"

For Zimmer, reclaiming his home is part of getting on with a life that will never be the same.

"I really don't need therapy," he said. "The rest of the family did...If I'm going to have counseling, I'll do my own. I don't need people to tell me how to get back onto life, you know?"

What has helped, he says, is the community support -- the fundraisers for headstones.

His family is across the street, in a cemetery behind St. Joseph's, in a single urn. The grave is marked by artificial flowers, an Easter basket and a small plaque, topped with an angel, and engraved with these words:

"If tears could build a stairway and memories build a lane, I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again."

The headstone, he says, will go up in September.

"That's one thing I like about it, how here you know everybody," Zimmer said. "It's a friendly neighborhood and

they all look out for one another. So, I mean, no matter what, if something happens, there's so many people who help out, like what they did for my family there. It's unreal, it's really unreal."

Neighbors have welcomed him back.

"He'll definitely be helping us by coming back and putting a house up here and stuff -- because it will make the neighborhood complete, " Trout said. "I shouldn't say complete, but it will kind of fill in the neighborhood. It will be nice to see a house. Maybe it will help with the healing process."

For weeks after the murders, neighbors watched hordes of people drive by slowly to see the burned-out house before it was demolished.

That led one neighbor to respond. Bob Bentley, who lives two doors down, painted a yellow and black smiley face that takes up his entire garage door.

"They drive by depressed and come back going that way happy," Bentley said, pointing down the street.

Bentley's children grew up with the Zimmer boys, got in trouble with them, sometimes sneaking up to the nearby Wright Tavern, where Sharm Zimmer worked as a bartender.

"They used to sneak up to the bar after I told them not to, go up there to see Sharm and play pool and goof off on the video games," Bentley said.

As neighbors look forward to the end of the trial, they know the scar will never heal.

"It will never be done in my mind," Bentley said. "It will never be done."