By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org
On Aug. 5, 2006, Forrest DeMaagd and his wife had stopped at his daughter’s house in Rockford to check on her after she failed to meet with a friend. Knowing that she was recovering from surgery to donate a kidney, they went upstairs only to find Renee Pagel stabbed to death in her bed. Fourteen years later, the Kent County Sheriff’s Department and Prosecutor’s Office would announce the arrest of her Pagel’s estranged husband.
This Friday, the memory of Renee Pagel and the passion of her friends to get justice for her will be the focus of Dateline. The show is set to air at 9 p.m. on NBC affiliate, WOOD TV, which is channel 8 in Grand Rapids.
“Renee Pagel’s murder was heartbreaking to so many people in the community because so many people knew and loved her,” said Susan Samples, an Target 8investigative reporter, during the Dateline interview. “I mean she touched so many lives. She was a nurse, a nurse practitioner, a teacher.
“Her friends would not give up. They were not going to let the news media forget about Renee. No matter who the reporters were in the newsroom, they were going to hear about Renee Pagel’s murder and they were going to remind people about it.”
A mother of three, a nurse practitioner at Forest View Hospital, and a health instructor at Kent ISD’s Kent Career Tech Center, Pagel was known for her compassion. She had just donated her kidney to a student’s father only a few days before her murder and was in a weaken state. At the same time, her divorce with husband Mike Pagel was about to be finalized.
According to officers, the scene was strange as there was no sign of any trouble outside or inside the house. The only struggle was contained to the bedroom said Kent County Sheriff Lt. E.J. Johnson who along with Detective Sgt. Bill Marks were instrumental in helping to solve the mystery.
“For a crime like this to take place in Courtland Township, even in Kent County is very rare,” said Kent County Deputy Michael Allen in the Dateline program. “The feeling of walking into that home and into the bedroom was an eerie feeling. You could sense that something evil had taken place that night.”
The case left law enforcement stumped as the key suspect, Mike Pagel, had a solid alibi, he was at a sleepover with his children, and there was no murder weapon.
The murder may have gone unsolved for years if it had not been the dedication of Pagel’s friends, specifically Chris Crandle. Crandle put up the Facebook page Justice for Renee, to keep the investigation going in hopes of an arrest. It was Mike Pagel’s brother, Charles also known as “Bo,” who finally came forward, telling police that some years earlier, Mike had confessed to him some killing his wife and threw the murder weapon in a river in Saginaw County.
Through an effort to drag the river using a magnet, law enforcement found the murder weapon among car parts, bullets, and a Christmas tree stand. Mike Pagel was arrested in February 2020 and sentenced in October to 25 to 50 years in prison, which means he will not be eligible for parole until he is 80.
WOOD TV did a half hour special, “Secrets Kept, Secrets Revealed,” on the case in January. On April 30, Oxygen presented the Pagel story in its “An Unexpected Killer” series.
