Lpumpkins and zombies are back! If the Halloween phenomenon has gradually established itself in France, in the United States it is a real institution. No American cuts it! From the beginning of October, everyone is busy populating their garden with nightmare creatures. Tarantulas, grimacing skeletons, giant bats… Whoever gets the scariest decoration!
As every year, the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has honored the tradition. Locals competed in imagination, but one particular house on Walker Avenue is a real eye-catcher. It must be said that the owner put the package! Three graves with the initials RIP welcome passers-by. On the front steps, there are small plastic studs, like those that mark the locations of crimes in TV series. There is also a bloody baseball bat, sitting in the middle of the pumpkins. But the highlight of the show is the silhouette of a woman banging behind the door to call for help! We can even see the word “Help!” », Traced on the glass with his blood. Still, this staging is not to everyone’s taste. In the neighborhood, some passers-by are shocked. Because, in Grand Rapids, no one has forgotten that twenty years ago, three appalling murders, real ones, were committed in this same house. The youngest of the victims was barely 6 years old …
A complicated, taciturn and rebellious teenager
Back in January 2003. A family without history lives in this small white wood ranch. The father, Jan Siesling, is a truck driver. He spends the week on the road. The mother, Sharon, is a receptionist at the hospital. They have three children aged 17, 15 and 6. If the last two aren’t a problem, the older one is more difficult to deal with. Jon is a complicated, taciturn and rebellious teenager. As his father is often absent, he takes advantage of this. He smokes weed, drinks alcohol, skips high school, openly mocks his mother’s remonstrances. Locked in his room, he spends his days listening to music, headphones on. In front of his friends, he delights in a morbid depression and boasts of having put the barrel of a revolver in his mouth once. True ? False ? His friends have got into the habit of not believing him. Jon is a myth. Also, when one day he announces to them that he is going to kill his whole family, no one takes him seriously. Pity.
On January 22, 2003, a heated argument broke out between Jon and his younger sister, Kaytlin. Their mother intervenes to separate them. Furious, the teenager goes upstairs to lock himself in his room. For hours, he broods over his hatred, lying on his bed. Then, at the end of the day, he takes action.
He hits his mother by surprise. In the head. Several times
He tiptoes back down and approaches his mother from behind, baseball bat in hand. He hits her by surprise. In the head. Several times. The unhappy woman collapses, still conscious. And, as she tries to crawl upstairs, he goes to get a kitchen knife, and slaughters it without further warning. Then he enters Kaytlin’s room, and inflicts the same spell on him. That’s when little Leah, 6, who was playing outside in the snow, comes home. The little girl screams when she sees her mother, her throat open at the foot of the stairs. Jon grabs the little one by the wrist, forcibly drags her into her room, and sticks his blade in her neck, to silence her. Then he goes quietly to take a shower and change.
The teenager first considers running away
What to do now ? The killer plans to run away at first, but he knows full well that the police will soon catch up with him. Might as well take the lead. He picks up his phone, and calls 911.
– I just got home, burglars killed my whole family! he explains.
The police rush to the scene. Inspector Bert Elliott is one of the first to enter the house. The images of the carnage will mark him for life. Streams of blood. The three slaughtered bodies. The terrible image of this bloodless little girl, lying on her child’s bed, her neck pierced right through …
The thesis of the burglary is dismissed from the outset: the house was not searched. On the other hand, the eldest son left his footprints everywhere. Questioned, Jon gets entangled in his story, contradicts himself several times. He is officially confused and incarcerated in the Kent County Jail. His trial opens two years later. Shaved head, shifty gaze, the young man poses as a victim. He was his family’s heartache, he swears. His father, an alcoholic, beat him with a belt. His mother humiliated him all day long. Stupid by drugs, he was no longer even aware of his actions! But jurors don’t believe his story. Jon murdered his family in cold blood, without any mercy, for “fun”. Psychiatrists portray him as a manipulative, anti-social personality. During their interviews, he also admitted that killing had given him “delicious excitement” and that he would like to do it again. Jon Siesling is sentenced to life imprisonment, with no possibility of parole. An extremely rare sentence for a minor, at the height of the facts.
So how dare, twenty years later, to decorate the house of the crime with blood, three coffins and a reddened baseball bat for the unhealthy wink? Are Halloween parties worth such a bad taste debauchery?
It turns out that the owner knows perfectly well what carnage has sheltered these walls. The house once belonged to his parents, who rented it out to the Siesling. When she was little she helped them clean up after the massacre, and even twenty years later some stains have not disappeared. But now it’s her home, her kids grew up here, and she doesn’t see how shocking her Halloween decoration would be.
– My daughter and little Leah used to take the school bus together every day, she defends herself. We went to their funeral. We have no lessons to receive. I am at home, I do what I want!
a strange coincidence occurs as this Halloween approaches
Strange coincidence: while just a few days ago the mother was setting up her little macabre decor, Jon Siesling, now 36, made his first request for release. Polite, soft-spoken, the inmate explained to the judge that outside he would keep his feet and not commit the slightest crime until the end of his days.
– I’m not a cold killer, he pleaded. At the time, I was just a lost kid, brain ravaged by alcohol and drugs.
The judge therefore refused to let him out. On Halloween night, at least that ghost is not going to haunt Walker Avenue.
An investigation by Axelle Winieux
