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Michigan Man Kills Wife in "Ambush" Witnessed By Their 2 Kids: "I Was Screaming"
Michigan TV anchor Diane King received threatening letters and had her home broken into before her murder.
Beloved and popular Michigan TV news anchor Diane King, days away from giving birth to a baby girl, walked out to her mailbox on Oct. 30, 1990, and found a disturbing letter. It read, “You should have gone to lunch with me,” in pasted cut-out magazine letters.
“And what’s even more frightening, it wasn’t mailed, it was placed,” said Lowell Cauffiel, author of Eye of the Beholder, on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins, airing Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.
The letter scared not only the 34-year-old, but those around her.
“Who cuts out letters and glues them on a piece of paper?” said Cindy Biggs, Diane’s friend, on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “It was so creepy. I was very concerned for her, especially because she was about to give birth to a baby girl.”
A little over three months later, on Feb. 9, 1991, in her Marshall, Michigan driveway, Diane was shot and killed as she got out of her car — her 3-year-old son and 3-month-old daughter inside. Her son said it’s his earliest memory.
“I do remember my mom getting out of the vehicle, and then [gunshots],” Marler King said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “You know, one instance she’s there, the next she’s not. I think I was screaming more than anything, and then it ultimately woke my sister up.”
But was it her stalker, or someone much closer to her who pulled the trigger? The police investigation revealed many secrets between Diane King and her husband, Bradford.
Diane King was frightened by a stalker in her final days
Diane King and her husband, Bradford, married in July 1984.
“Diane explained to me that when she and Brad met there was just kind of an instant connection,” Biggs said.
The couple had their first child, Marler, in 1988, and in 1989, Diane was hired to be the morning news anchor at a television station in Battle Creek, Michigan, while her husband taught part-time at Western Michigan University. They soon moved into a historic farmhouse on a 500-acre property in Marshall.
But as the birth of their second child approached in 1990, Diane received not only threatening letters, but other forms of harassment. In spring of that year, she received a call at the news station from a man, one of many in the months to come.
“He asks her to go to lunch with him, and she very politely declines,” Cauffiel said. “It gets to the point where he’s calling three times a week.”
Diane also received a letter at the station from a man who was infatuated with her. Then, in December 1990, as she went to visit family, Brad called her and said someone had tried to break into their home.
“It raised a red flag. And we were concerned about it,” said Jim Stadtfeld, a detective with the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department, on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins.
The family increased lighting and security around their home, but Diane still lived in terror in her third trimester.
“After the breaking and entering happened, her alert level was off the charts,” Biggs said. “She was very, very shaken by this.”
On Feb. 9, 1991, Bradford King told police he was on a walk on his property when he came back and found his wife, shot twice, near the family car, and called police. Police discovered a door to a nearby barn loft open, and a bullet shell up in the hay.
“I believe the shooting was targeted,” said Sgt. Harold Badger with the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “It was set up and the shooter was lying in wait.”
Police discover Brad King was having affairs with his students
Officers got a break in the murder case when a student from Western Michigan University called them and told them Brad King was having sexual relationships with several of his students.
“We contacted several of these young ladies,” Stadtfeld said. “They all confirmed the fact that Brad told everyone that he and his wife were separated. That’s another indication that he’s being very deceptive.”
Diane King also suspected her husband was having an affair and told friends the two were in marriage counseling.
“There was a whole series of lies that he told these women,” Cauffiel said. “It was very pathological kind of behavior.”
There was another strain on the King’s marriage: Diane was considering a career change that would force Brad to work more than part-time.
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“He didn’t want that,” Cauffiel said. “Not only because he’d have to go to work full-time, but he loses the woman that brings all that attention to him. He’s not going to be Mr. Diane Newton King. He’s just going to be some schlub. They were arguing a lot. There was a lot of tension.”
Friends told police Diane was considering divorcing Brad, giving him a motive to want her dead in addition to the affairs.
“I don’t think he was in love with his wife, and he was looking for a way out,” Stadtfeld said. “And when she said, ‘I’m going to quit my job,’ she forced his hand.”
“If she decided to divorce him, that’d be tough,” added K9 handler and trainer Gary Lisle on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “He’d have nothing. She’d get everything.”
A family gun ties Brad King to his wife Diane's murder
Police searched the King property, looking for the weapon that killed Diane. They found a rifle stuck down deep into creek mud, along with shell casings.
“Somebody had stepped on that thing to drive it down into the mud, and pushed it in as far as they could,” Lisle said.
The gun was found along the same track as K9 dogs followed a trail Brad King had likely walked the night of the murder. Brad’s family identified the gun as being in their family and belonging to Brad.
“His mom very reluctantly said Brad is the one who ended up with it,” Stadtfeld said. “That was one of the pivotal moments. It was circumstantial evidence, obviously, but we had family members who would testify that they believed that was the gun left to Brad.”
In one final twist, police believed Diane’s own husband played a part in her terror in her final days to throw suspicion off himself for the planned murder.
“Police thought that Brad King offered the threatening letters, and staged the scene for breaking and entering, and he did it by establishing the credibility that his wife, Diane, was being stalked and the stalker was the one who shot her,” Lisle said.
In November 1992, a jury found Bradford King guilty of his wife Diane’s murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole, leaving his two children parentless.
Watch all-new episodes of Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins on Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.
