Temujin KensuThe Case File
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The Impossibility
An empty two-lane highway running through northern woods under an overcast sky.

One question has always ruled this case: where was he at 9:00 a.m.?

Scott Macklem was killed by a single shotgun blast shortly before 9:00 a.m. on November 5, 1986, in a parking lot in Port Huron, Michigan.

Temujin Kensu, born Fredrick Freeman, was living near Escanaba, in the Upper Peninsula, about 450 miles away. 

The alibi witnesses

The federal courts counted “nine witnesses who testified they saw Freeman hundreds of miles away in Escanaba, Michigan, on the day of the murder.”

COURT RECORD 2019 federal opinion, in Records

The jury trial timeline

Every entry below is sworn testimony from the 1987 trial.

From Trial Vol. VIII (May 12, 1987.  Escanaba · the defense alibi witnesses Port Huron · the state’s witnesses
Reconstruction: two men at the counter of a Big Boy restaurant at night, the waiter writing an order.
Reconstruction: two cars nose to nose in a restaurant parking lot at night, jumper cables between them.
A man in a winter coat and hat walking away along a sidewalk beside a college parking lot at sunrise.
A small tan car driving out of a college parking lot on a cold, bright morning, seen from behind.
Reconstruction: the front room of a Tae Kwon Do school at midday.
Reconstruction: a man demonstrating a kick in jeans on the school floor.
Reconstruction: a downtown Escanaba sidewalk on a November afternoon.
Reconstruction: a large gold car parked on Main Street, a woman in the passenger seat.
Reconstruction: a man at an auto parts counter near closing time.
Reconstruction: two men talking beside a red car in the K Mart parking lot after dark, the lit storefront behind them.
Reconstruction: two men talking on a residential Escanaba sidewalk at dusk, beside a dark red sedan.
12:05 a.m. · Big Boy restaurant, Escanaba
Illustration of a witness statement.
Scroll or swipe sideways · the card below belongs to the photograph above.
About 12:05 a.m.
About 12:05 a.m.

Big Boy restaurant, Escanaba

Seen by Jeffrey and 1 more.

McNamara was working the overnight 11-to-7 shift when Kensu and Paul DeMars came in for carry-out orders: “a little after twelve, probably five after twelve.”

12:00 to about 1:20–1:30 a.m.
12:00 to about 1:20–1:30 a.m.

Big Boy parking lot, Escanaba

Seen by Paul.

Kensu called DeMars about midnight: his car was dead in the Big Boy lot. DeMars drove down and jump-started it, and left him “approximately twenty after one, one-thirty.”

8:00 a.m.
8:00 a.m.

A “suspicious man” sighted

Port Huron, 450 miles away

A witness reports a “suspicious man” near a different parking lot. Eight hours earlier, and 450 miles away, two witnesses had Kensu in Escanaba.

8:55–9:00 a.m.
8:55–9:00 a.m.

Scott Macklem is killed

Port Huron

Scott Macklem is killed; a witness glimpses a man leaving the lot. Port Huron is 450 miles from where the witnesses above place Kensu that same day.

About noon
About noon

Chao’s Academy, the Tae Kwon Do school, Escanaba

Seen by Kathleen.

Coming out of the changing room after her 11-to-12 class she found Kensu at the desk, and left “about ten after twelve.” Asked whether there was any doubt it was him: “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

12:00 to about 1:45 p.m.
12:00 to about 1:45 p.m.

The school

Seen by John.

Kensu came in soon after noon and stayed “about an hour and-a-half, hour and 45 minutes or so,” talking martial arts and demonstrating a kick in the jeans he was wearing.

3:00–3:30 p.m.
3:00–3:30 p.m.

Downtown Escanaba

Seen by Dash and 1 more.

Kensu stopped on the street and talked with Diehl face to face; Amy Creten and Mike Olson were with Diehl, and Michelle Woodworth was with Kensu. Asked whether he was sure it was November 5: “Yeah.”

3:00–3:30 p.m.
3:00–3:30 p.m.

Downtown Escanaba

Seen by Amy.

Creten swore to the same encounter on her own details, and they match Diehl’s. Two witnesses, examined separately, one street corner, one time of day.

Close to 5:30 p.m.
Close to 5:30 p.m.

M&B Auto Parts, Escanaba

Michael Birkholz · the parts counter

A man came in about a red car with problems sitting in the K Mart lot, “close to closing. We close at 5:30.” His register receipts carry the chronology forward.

Evening, after 5:00 p.m.
Evening, after 5:00 p.m.

K Mart, Escanaba

Patrick Kennedy · the parking lot

Back from the supper break he took between 4:00 and 5:00, Kennedy was asked by a man for permission to leave a car in the lot. The car was still there, in the dark, when he left work.

6:30 p.m.
6:30 p.m.

Escanaba

Seen by Paul.

DeMars saw Kensu again at 6:30 that evening and stopped to talk with him. Asked whether he was sure he actually saw him that day: “Positive. Absolutely.”

The impossible driving theory

Two illustrations side by side: left, Temujin Kensu’s car, a large red 1970s sedan in an empty lot; right, the small light-coloured hatchback described by the witness, parked in a campus lot.
Illustration: Kensu's car, left; the car the witness described, right.

Skeptics who still hold to the drive theory should start with the car itself. This is the vehicle the theory needs to cover 900 miles in a day: it was dead in an Escanaba parking lot at 1:20 that morning, and a friend swore to driving out in the middle of the night to jump-start it. By late afternoon it was at an auto parts counter over a fuel pump. By that evening Kensu was asking a local K Mart whether it could sit in their lot overnight because it was broke down. A dead battery at the start of the day, a failed fuel pump at the end of it, and 900 highway miles in between is a lot to ask of a ten-year-old Marquis.

But the car is the smaller point.

The arithmetic is the larger one, and that makes this theory impossible.

Escanaba to Port Huron

A road map of Michigan and the surrounding Great Lakes, with Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula and Port Huron at the south-eastern edge of the state marked, and the driving route between them traced through the Mackinac Bridge.
Driving each way
≈ 450 miles
9½ to 10 hours
the sworn drive time including stops at the time with 55mph national speed limit law in 1986 (Sherman, Vol. VIII)

To reach Port Huron by 8 a.m., the car has to leave Escanaba before 10:30 p.m the night before. 

Leaving Port Huron after 9 a.m., the car gets back in Escanaba at 6:30 p.m. or later.

The driving theory was impossible.
..

So the prosecution proposed a plane.

The charter flight theory

A small single-engine plane parked on an airfield apron at dusk.

To convict Temujin Kensu of murder, the prosecution suggested he chartered a plane.

No pilot.
No payment.
No charter record.
No fuel purchase.
No FAA flight record.
No witness at either end.
No evidence whatsoever has been produced that would suggest these hypothesized flights ever happened.
Richard Pelegrand, juror

“It was circumstantial, all circumstantial. We have no evidence.”

Three reasons the state's theory could not happen

1. The middle-of-the-night flight at a closed airport has no explanation.

An empty, unlit general-aviation apron at night: closed terminal, dark hangar, one pole light at the far edge.

The theory’s first half is a pre-dawn walk-in charter from an airport that was closed for the night.

A stopwatch lying on frozen apron gravel at night, one pole light burning at the far edge.

2. The morning flight works only if every minute goes perfectly, in the most expensive and fastest aircraft, using a car the record has never produced.

Based on the state’s own sworn numbers, the affordable plane misses the sworn noon appearance at the school, the defense pilot’s plane misses it by hours, and the expensive twin engine plane fits only when every ground task takes its absolute minimum.

3. The witness who was with him at the exact time of the murder was never called.

Michelle Woodworth’s account covers the moment of the murder: together, 450 miles from Port Huron. She hasn't wavered on this fact in the 40 years she has been saying it. No flight theory survives it, and no jury has ever heard her.

Reconstruction: a farmhouse kitchen on a November morning, Kensu eating cereal at the table while Michelle Woodworth pours his coffee.
Illustration of Kensu and Woodworth
“at the time of the shooting, that being approximately 9:00am on the same date, he was with me in the city of Rock, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula”
Michelle Woodworth · affidavit, 1999 · quoted verbatim
SWORN her 1999 affidavit, in Records

The state’s theory needs:

The state’s theory is impossible.

  1. 1 two charter flights in ten hours,
  2. 2 a waiting pilot at an airport deserted for the night,
  3. 3 a borrowed or rented car,
  4. 4 a perfect run with the fastest aircraft.
  5. 5 someone two be in two places at one time, according to Michelle Woodworth’s sworn account.

It’s impossible to be in two places at once. What’s possible is your help to end this.

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