A former Michigan Attorney General’s Office lawyer asked many questions about how the JoAnn Matouk Romain case has been handled over the past 15 years.
Matouk went missing on Jan. 12, 2010. Her remains were found two months later in the Detroit River.
Matouk’s family always suspected foul play, but police said it was a suicide.
The family spoke out on Monday (Jan. 13), and they are speaking out as they’re fed up with the lack of interviews, police not testing for DNA, and officers even donating evidence in the case.
The list of questions is long, and the family said they would not quit. They said there was more digging to do as they believed someone was responsible for their mother’s death.
That’s why Kellie and Michelle Romain came to our Local 4 studios, as they had more to share in what they call the mysterious death of their mother.
When asked how it feels to live in a community where they believed someone killed their mother," JoAnn’s daughter Kellie Romain said, “You get a lot of looks. Everyone still looks at us with the same commentary. ‘What’s going on? How are you guys? What’s going on, and what is the progress?‘”
The latest progress comes from Steve Haney, a well-known attorney who formerly worked for the Michigan Attorney General’s Office and whom Matouk’s family now hired.
Troubled is not even the word, you know, the things that were missed," said Haney.
“The facts known to law enforcement that this woman somehow walked into two feet of frigid, icy, crystal clear water in the middle of the winter and then somehow managed to drift 100 yards out into a shipping channel, all while the coast guard was undergoing a search and rescue operation with flood lights,” Haney said. “There’s just no way that could have happened.”
It was 15 years ago that JoAnn’s body was found 70 days after she left church in Grosse Pointe and went missing. Police say she walked into the icy Lake Saint Clair in high heels and killed herself.
--> 15 years ago: JoAnn Matouk Romain disappears, body later found in Detroit River
“There’s just no way that could have happened,” Haney said. “It just defies any kind of logic, and then for her body to be found some 30 miles downstream in Canada, traversing the shipping channels that would have had to have traversed with no water in the lungs.”
JoAnn’s daughter Michelle Romain says police showed up at her house asking if her mom was missing.
"A police department doesn’t report a person missing; a family does, I did not report her missing," Michelle said. “I remember she had only been at church for two hours. How does that happen?
The family arrived quickly at the church, and it was a full-fledged search team on the ground and in the air; again, no one had reported JoAnn missing. The car she was driving was in the church parking lot.
“The vehicle wasn’t even tested for DNA,” Haney said. “There was evidence of a struggle at the church with the purse being broken. The purse was not being tested for DNA. I have located that vehicle, and I won’t give much more information than that.”
Local 4 has covered JoAnn’s story for 15 years. Netflix did a special, and there is a podcast. It seems like everyone has an interest in the daughter’s mother.
“Everyone but the authorities that are supposed to be helping us,” Kellie said.
When asked why their mother’s case has not gotten any attention from the authorities they think it deserves, Kellie said, “We figured out that there’s a lot of corruption along the way.”
Local 4 has tried to get people to talk about the case but many people have cancelled and a lot of them still fear for their life if they speak up.
“Because we know that there’s something much larger going on than just my mom being murdered,” Michelle said. “She knew something, she uncovered something, there’s something else going on.”
