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Neighbors Remember Slain Michigan Couple

Posted at 9:17 PM, Feb 02, 2013
and last updated 2013-02-05 11:52:43-05

BALDWIN, Mich. — News of Paul and Margaret Sue Brooks’s murder stunned two communities, one in Missouri and their hometown, Baldwin, Mich., hundreds of miles away.

“It was just just a horrible thing, just to hear about it,” neighbor Gordy Howe said. “I don’t know a thing about it yet but we’re all still quite in shock.”  He has lived down the street from the Brooks’s for seven years.

“Paul and Sue were really very nice people. Paul used to walk around trails with us, with his dog every day. They were just great people.”

Other neighbors say the Brooks’s raised three sons who became doctors, and they themselves were the kindest people.

The couple split their time between Michigan and Missouri. They lived in Baldwin during the warmer months and moved to Missouri around Thanksgiving.

Paul, 70, and Margaret, 69, were staying at a family member’s lake house in Missouri when deputies discovered their bodies Thursday night.

“The neighbor had noticed some suspicious activity at the residence,” Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader said.

It appears the Brooks may have been killed during a break-in. The sheriff’s department wouldn’t say how they were killed. The sheriff says two teens that escaped from a nearby ranch for at-risk boys are the suspects.

“We found evidence where they had actually been in a residence that was a lake house next door,” Rader said. “It looked like they may have stayed there for a few days.”

The sheriff said the neighbor who caught the teens and held them at gunpoint ought to be commended for his actions. “I am very proud of that man today, and I thanked him and told him how proud I was,” Rader said.

The sheriff’s department said the teens, one 15 and the other 16 years old, were taken into custody and are now with juvenile authorities.