Nurse Found Dead Days After Donating Kidney, Leaving Investigators "Dumbfounded"

Nurse Renee Pagel gave the selfless gift of life to a stranger, just days before someone would take her own.

While still recovering from donating a kidney to the father of one of her nursing students, someone snuck into Renee’s Rockford, Michigan home and brutally stabbed the 41-year-old mother of three to death on August 5, 2006 as she lay in bed, according to Dateline: Unforgettable. 

The heinous crime sent shockwaves through Renee’s tight-knit group of friends, but it would take years — and the unrelenting determination of those closest to her — to bring her killer to justice.

“Collateral damage. It’s something I witness all the time especially when I’m sitting across from a person whose loved one was murdered and they’re somehow expected to just go on with their life,” Correspondent Andrea Canning shared of what made the episode so unforgettable. “Renee Pagel’s friends and daughter shared their stories with me, they talked about their fight for truth and justice, but in the end, this story is about Renee, a generous soul who touched the lives of everyone around her, even people she barely knew.”

Renee Pagel Found Dead

Renee — whose death was the subject of an episode of Oxygen's An Unexpected Killer — was found dead by her father in her home on Aug. 5, 2006 after she failed to show up at a craft fair she planned to attend with friends.

“Uh, my daughter,” the distraught father told a 911 dispatcher. “We just found her in bed and she’s got a lash on her arm, and, uh, she’s all bloody.”

E.J. Johnson, a detective from the Kent County Sheriff’s Department, rushed to the scene and quickly discovered that Renee’s death was a brutal homicide.

“When I walk into the bedroom, I see Renee laying sideways on the bed and I was seeing blood all over the bedding, then I started looking at her arms and around her head and face and [there were] just a lot of lacerations and cuts,” he said. 

A coroner would later determine that Renee, a devoted mother of three, had been stabbed more than 50 times and suffered defensive wounds including one stab wound that went straight through her hand as she tried to fight for her life. 

“There was blood on the walls, blood on the lamps, blood on the ceiling,” Johnson said. 

At the time of the murder, Renee’s three young children had been staying with their father while she recuperated from surgery. 

Michael Pagel Becomes a Suspect

At the time, Renee and Michael were going through a bitter divorce and had been separated for a year. 

Renee’s friends say part of the contention between the couple had been that while Renee often worked two to three jobs to support the family, Michael worked part-time or not at all. He spent more time as the caregiver for their three children, Sarah, Joel, and Hannah. 

"She was the worker, she was the breadwinner and he had backed off a little bit on his full-time work and he stayed home and was able to play with the kids and I know there was a little bit of tension there,” her childhood friend Laura Beach recalled.

Renee’s friend Chris Crandle said Michael had been a “master” gaslighter, finding unique and cruel ways to humiliate his wife like suggesting they meet for lunch and then never showing up, only to later claim she had misunderstood the plan. "He would make her feel like she was the crazy one,” she said.

As the couple neared their 10-year anniversary, Michael blindsided Renee with divorce papers, which he had served while she was in the middle of teaching a nursing class. 

But whatever issues there may have been in the marriage, by all accounts, Michael had been a loving and devoted father to his children.

“We all lived on a farm together and I would wake up at six in the morning with my dad and we’d go ride the horses and take care of everything on the farm,” Sarah remembered, before adding “He was a good dad.”

RELATED: Connecticut Mom Raped At Home and Shocking Attacker Is Revealed To Be Someone She Knew

The Case Goes Cold

Investigators believed Renee may have been killed by someone she knew after they noticed some telling clues at the scene. 

They were able to quickly rule out a burglary gone wrong after noting that Renee’s jewelry box was untouched and cash still lay on a dresser, clearly visible. They also found an orange flashlight in the backyard they believe may have been dropped by the killer. 

“The flashlight, it was clean, it wasn’t dirty, there were no signs it had been outside for a long period of time, so we were pretty convinced that whoever had it had recently left it there,” Detective Bill Marks said.

Authorities took a close look at a male tenant living in an apartment above the horse barn on the property, but the man insisted he had nothing to do with the slaying and passed a polygraph test. 

Suspicion quickly fell to Michael. Renee’s friends said just weeks earlier, Michael had lost an important battle in court. While they believed he had hoped to win the house and keep caring for the children while Renee paid alimony and worked, the judge ordered him to find full-time employment. 

"The judge told Mike in no uncertain terms you’re going to go get a job and you’re going to work full time and you are going to pay child support and Renee is going to stay in the home and he was incensed,” friend Joyce Schaner recalled. “I mean, he was livid. That day Renee came home from her court hearing, she told me she had never seen him so angry in her whole life.” 

On the night Renee was killed, Michael’s mom told police that she, Michael, and the children had a bonfire and then all three children and Michael slept in the front room of his house having a “fort night,” while she slept in a back bedroom.

Although she initially told police she heard the sliding door open and close at some point in the night, and assumed it was Michael letting out the dog, she later recanted her statement after prosecutors served her with an investigative subpoena that forced her to answer questions under oath in court.

Michael also quickly asked for an attorney and refused to answer investigators’ questions. 

During a search of his house, however, investigators discovered a hard drive with scanned copies of journal entries detailing his hatred of his wife, hidden in a hollowed out beam in the house.

"The b-tch is such a drain. I  am not appreciated for anything, not respected for anything I’ve done or I am doing or I will do. I must terminate with extreme prejudice,” he wrote in one damaging entry.

But without any hard evidence to link him to the murder, the case went cold for years.

Michael Pagel's Brother Comes Forward

Michael Pagel Photo: Oxygen

While the case may have stalled out, Renee’s friends were determined not to let it slip from the spotlight. They put up posters, fliers, met with local media and even called investigators week after week.

Crandle also started a Facebook page aimed at finding justice for Renee, which listed Michael as the “only” suspect.

She and others also regularly mailed Michael handwritten cards with bible verses on it. "I was never afraid,” Crandle said. 

Her tireless efforts paid off when she was contacted on Facebook by Michael’s brother, Bo, who told her during a recorded phone call that Mike was a “liar” and had “fooled” everyone.

“Do you believe he killed Renee?” Crandle boldly asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know for certain, but I will tell you this, I would not defend him now.”

The conversation was enough to spark investigator’s interests and although Bo initially told detectives he didn’t know whether his brother had killed Renee, he returned a few weeks later with a sensational story. He told authorities about five years after Renee’s death, Michael confessed to killing her during a hunting trip and pulled out the knife he claimed he killed her with, before tossing it over a bridge into a creek.

“He said to me, ‘this is how I finalize a divorce,’” Bo told authorities.

Detectives were ultimately able to recover the weapon in 2020. They also were able to link Michael to that flashlight found in the yard. They discovered he had a matching flashlight, though blue, in his home. The orange and blue flashlights had been sold as part of a pack of two and the batteries inside each flashlight were from the same lot number.

They finally had enough to arrest Michael and charge him with his wife’s murder. 

Sarah told Dateline: Unforgettable that she was “absolutely shocked” by her father’s arrest.

“It was very hard to process at first,” she said. 

Once behind bars, prosecutors agreed to let Michael plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a lighter sentence after speaking to his children.

"We did not want to make any kind of offer or even consider an offer, in fact if it wasn’t for those kids we would have made no offer. We would have tried him and God willing the jury would have seen the truth and he would have gone away for life without parole and died in prison,” prosecutor Kellee Koncki said. “But the fact is he does have three lovely children who are impacted by this more than anybody.” 

At his plea hearing, however, Michael threw authorities a curve ball when he admitted to wanting his wife dead, but claimed he had hired his brother Bo to commit the actual murder for $100,000. Investigators looked into the claims but found no evidence to support his story and believe it was just one final attempt to avoid accountability for his actions.

Sarah has decided to remain “neutral” about whether or not her father carried out the murder himself, but said she was “heartbroken” to learn that, at the very least, he’d orchestrated it.

“I forgive him,” she said. “I think he was always my dad. I never saw that side of him and even if it was something he did, that was some — I mean everyone deserves to be forgiven.” 

Today, Sarah — who was just 7 years old at the time of the murder — still maintains a relationship with her father while also honoring her mom’s spirit.

“She had a beautiful personality, that clearly speaks, I mean so many people care about her today,” she said.