Trial for Wyngarden in 1987 slayings

HOLLAND, Mich. (WOOD) - After two days of testimony from his wife who kept a secret for 25 years and an inmate who snitched, Ryan Wyngarden will stand trial for killing his sister and her husband in 1987.

Wyngarden, now 50, is charged with killing Gail and Rick Brink in November 1987 at their Park Township home.

After hearing the testimony, Judge Bradley Knoll determined there was enough evidence to try Wyngarden with murder and he was bound over to stand trial.

During her second day of testimony, Pamela Wyngarden was asked again why she married and stayed with her husband Ryan if he was such a bad person.

Again, she reached back into her child and teenage years. She blamed a lack of love from her father for her neediness.

"I was afraid for my life and I had Nathan and I had Caleb," referring to her two sons.

"Because of my father, I needed someone to love me," said Pamela Wyngarden under cross-examination by her husband's attorney.

On Wednesday, Pamela Wyngarden claimed Ryan, who was her boyfriend at the time of the murders, confessed he killed the couple.

She testified her husband claimed to have had a sexual relationship with his sister and was jealous.

A one-time friend of Ryan Wyngarden also testified he told her in the 1980s that he had sex with his sister when they were teens, but it was was not consensual.

In the witness's words, Wyngarden admitted forcing himself on his sister Gail.

Pamela Wyngarden kept her husband's confession a secret from investigators for more than 25 years before admitting what she knew to cold case detectives in January 2013.

Wyngarden watched his wife's testimony on Thursday from a windowed viewing room at the back of the courtroom. His outburst during Pamela Wyngarden's testimony on Wednesday led Judge Knoll to remove Ryan Wyngarden to the room.

He wrote a note of apology to the judge. He was allowed back in the courtroom at the defendants' table following his wife's appearance.

In late testimony, Daryl Cain said he was housed in a jail cell near Wyngarden. Over the weekend, he said, he had a conversation with Wyngarden through a crack in the cell door. He said the same thing Pamela Wyngarden testified: Ryan Wyngarden told him he killed the couple out of jealousy and that he set it up to make it look like a contract killing, a "hit."

"He went on telling me how he staged the crime scene -- left the phone book out with the two IDs on the table," said Cain.

Cain was asked to show the judge how Wyngarden said he shot Rick Brink.

"He put his hand up to the window and went, 'boom, boom, boom, boom,'" Cain said.

Prosecutors said the information Cain testified to was information known only to investigators and the person who committed the crime.

Cain, who is facing criminal sexual conduct charges, did not receive any deal for his testimony, prosecutors said.

A number of witnesses said there were troubling signs pointing to Wyngarden after the murder. Among those was an aunt who recalled Wyngarden bragging about owning a gun and knowing where to hide it where no one would find it.

And Wyngarden and Gail's sister Cheryl Murphree recounted a conversation she had with him just days after the bodies were found.

"All of the sudden, he just throws this comment out there he says, 'You know, sometimes I wondered if I couldn't have done this.' And I looked at him and said, 'Where did that come from?'" said Murphree.