Teh One Who Knocks
10-13-2021, 10:33 AM
By John Agar | MLive
https://i.imgur.com/5zhWDou.jpg
Halloween display at scene of a triple murder
KENT COUNTY, MI – Jon Siesling beat his mother and teen sister with a baseball bat and stabbed them with a kitchen knife before he plunged the blade into his distraught 6-year-old sister’s throat.
Now, nearly 20 years after the killings, some are shocked and outraged by a display outside of the house on Walker Avenue NW near Four Mile Road.
There are three gravestones, surrounded by police tape. There is an evidence marker by a baseball bat on the porch. The front door has silhouettes on the glass, with “HELP US” written in dripping red paint.
Handprints on the front window look like they’re made of blood.
https://i.imgur.com/6fFqHwJ.jpg
The builder of the display – Amanda, who did not want her last name published – was unapologetic. She grew up in the house, which has been in her family for decades.
“It’s a Halloween decoration,” she said.
She remembers the bloodbath she had to clean up after investigators finished their work. There is still blood inside she cannot reach.
The Sieslings rented the house and were friends, she said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpaJJE8HXD0
Everyone in the area knows what happened there. Just the mention of the address raises eyebrows. Drivers slow down, staring and pointing, with people sometimes yelling as they pass, she said.
For Amanda, the house – a “Walker legend,” as she put it – is where she raised her children.
“We know some people might look at and say, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ This is my way of saying, ‘We are well aware. Stop screaming at us when you’re driving past my house.’”
Siesling killed his mother, Sharon Siesling, 42, and sisters, Katelin, 15, and Leah, 6, on Jan. 22, 2003, at their Walker home. He struck his mother with a baseball bat then slit her throat when she tried to crawl up the stairs.
He did the same to the older sister. He put his younger sister, who was crying, in bed after she came in from playing outside. Then, he stabbed her neck.
His father, Jan, a truck driver, was on the road when his family was killed. He was never the same.
https://i.imgur.com/0KbkRGm.jpg
Jon Siesling, now 36, was 17 when he killed his mother and sisters.
As a “juvenile lifer” serving a life sentence without parole, he was eligible to seek a lesser sentence given his age at the time of the killings.
But Kent County Circuit Judge Mark Trusock upheld the state’s harshest sentence late last month. He said he had seen “nothing … as horrific as this case.”
Chief Assistant Prosecutor Monica Janiskee, who argued against a sentence reduction, declined to comment about the display.
Kathy Gordon was a classmate to Katelin Siesling, who would have graduated with her in Kenowa Hills High School’s Class of 2006, she said in an email. She said the “tragedy struck hard” at school.
For days, students cried and sought help from school counselors, she said. Everyone heard what happened but the violence was “hard for high school students to take in.”
She said her school bus route took them past the Sieslings’ home.
“The morning of the murders all bus drivers were told to avoid that street due to the caution tape scene. My bus unfortunately had no choice but to go on that street. We saw the caution tape scene. It was like something out of a movie.”
She said the current display made her “want to vomit,” and was “truly unacceptable.”
She said it dishonors the victims.
“It is just disgusting, especially since this crime hits close to home,” Gordon said.
Amanda said that the display was not intended to hurt anyone. In a way, she said, it brought “closure,” especially for her daughter, who was a friend to the youngest victim.
“That family that lived there, that family was our friends,” Amanda said. “I’m not going to sweep it under the rug and act like it didn’t happen. Leah was a friend of my daughter. We went to their funerals.”
She said her family remembers the lives lost on the anniversary of the killings.
She said that Sharon Siesling “was a great friend to my mother and also a friend of grandma.”
Her daughter, Katie, and Leah, the youngest victim, rode the bus together every day and played three to four times a week.
She said she was not sensationalizing the killings. Jon Siesling is the one who “committed the ultimate atrocity,” she said.
“We’re not heartless. We’re not monsters. … But it happened. This is my way of saying, ‘I am absolutely aware of what happened here.”
She said she welcomes anyone to talk to her about it.
“Come knock on my door. Then ask me what I had to clean up. Maybe this is my way of dealing with it.”
https://i.imgur.com/5zhWDou.jpg
Halloween display at scene of a triple murder
KENT COUNTY, MI – Jon Siesling beat his mother and teen sister with a baseball bat and stabbed them with a kitchen knife before he plunged the blade into his distraught 6-year-old sister’s throat.
Now, nearly 20 years after the killings, some are shocked and outraged by a display outside of the house on Walker Avenue NW near Four Mile Road.
There are three gravestones, surrounded by police tape. There is an evidence marker by a baseball bat on the porch. The front door has silhouettes on the glass, with “HELP US” written in dripping red paint.
Handprints on the front window look like they’re made of blood.
https://i.imgur.com/6fFqHwJ.jpg
The builder of the display – Amanda, who did not want her last name published – was unapologetic. She grew up in the house, which has been in her family for decades.
“It’s a Halloween decoration,” she said.
She remembers the bloodbath she had to clean up after investigators finished their work. There is still blood inside she cannot reach.
The Sieslings rented the house and were friends, she said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpaJJE8HXD0
Everyone in the area knows what happened there. Just the mention of the address raises eyebrows. Drivers slow down, staring and pointing, with people sometimes yelling as they pass, she said.
For Amanda, the house – a “Walker legend,” as she put it – is where she raised her children.
“We know some people might look at and say, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ This is my way of saying, ‘We are well aware. Stop screaming at us when you’re driving past my house.’”
Siesling killed his mother, Sharon Siesling, 42, and sisters, Katelin, 15, and Leah, 6, on Jan. 22, 2003, at their Walker home. He struck his mother with a baseball bat then slit her throat when she tried to crawl up the stairs.
He did the same to the older sister. He put his younger sister, who was crying, in bed after she came in from playing outside. Then, he stabbed her neck.
His father, Jan, a truck driver, was on the road when his family was killed. He was never the same.
https://i.imgur.com/0KbkRGm.jpg
Jon Siesling, now 36, was 17 when he killed his mother and sisters.
As a “juvenile lifer” serving a life sentence without parole, he was eligible to seek a lesser sentence given his age at the time of the killings.
But Kent County Circuit Judge Mark Trusock upheld the state’s harshest sentence late last month. He said he had seen “nothing … as horrific as this case.”
Chief Assistant Prosecutor Monica Janiskee, who argued against a sentence reduction, declined to comment about the display.
Kathy Gordon was a classmate to Katelin Siesling, who would have graduated with her in Kenowa Hills High School’s Class of 2006, she said in an email. She said the “tragedy struck hard” at school.
For days, students cried and sought help from school counselors, she said. Everyone heard what happened but the violence was “hard for high school students to take in.”
She said her school bus route took them past the Sieslings’ home.
“The morning of the murders all bus drivers were told to avoid that street due to the caution tape scene. My bus unfortunately had no choice but to go on that street. We saw the caution tape scene. It was like something out of a movie.”
She said the current display made her “want to vomit,” and was “truly unacceptable.”
She said it dishonors the victims.
“It is just disgusting, especially since this crime hits close to home,” Gordon said.
Amanda said that the display was not intended to hurt anyone. In a way, she said, it brought “closure,” especially for her daughter, who was a friend to the youngest victim.
“That family that lived there, that family was our friends,” Amanda said. “I’m not going to sweep it under the rug and act like it didn’t happen. Leah was a friend of my daughter. We went to their funerals.”
She said her family remembers the lives lost on the anniversary of the killings.
She said that Sharon Siesling “was a great friend to my mother and also a friend of grandma.”
Her daughter, Katie, and Leah, the youngest victim, rode the bus together every day and played three to four times a week.
She said she was not sensationalizing the killings. Jon Siesling is the one who “committed the ultimate atrocity,” she said.
“We’re not heartless. We’re not monsters. … But it happened. This is my way of saying, ‘I am absolutely aware of what happened here.”
She said she welcomes anyone to talk to her about it.
“Come knock on my door. Then ask me what I had to clean up. Maybe this is my way of dealing with it.”