A Lake County man accused of murdering a 3-year-old in California 35 years ago told police that he did not kill the girl but helped her mother bury the body in a canyon before the couple fled to Illinois, authorities said Monday.
James Michael “Mike” Kent, 62, of Lakemoor has been charged in Orange County, Calif., in the 1969 disappearance of Michelle Pulsifer. He was living with Michelle’s mother, Donna Pulsifer Prentice, who is being held in Wisconsin on the same California murder charge.
Kent, who lives in the 100 block of Port Side, was extradited to California on Friday, but not before giving Lake County sheriff’s police a videotaped confession, said Detective Sgt. John Byrne.
“He seemed relieved,” Byrne said. “It seemed like it was something that had been troubling him for a very long time.”
Kent did not say whether Prentice killed Michelle but said he helped remove the girl’s body from the couple’s Huntington Beach residence and bury it in Silverado Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains, Byrne said.
Mark Macauley, a spokesman for the Orange County district attorney’s office, confirmed that a search is under way for the body but would not disclose details.
Orange County authorities began investigating Michelle’s disappearance for the first time a year ago after a private investigator presented police with evidence, Macauley said.
The investigation revealed “a series of lies and mistruths about Michelle’s whereabouts,” said Orange County District Atty. Tony Rackauckas. “In fact, we have concluded that she never left that home alive.”
Kent and Prentice, then known as Donna Pulsifer, abruptly left California for the Chicago area in summer 1969 with her other child, Richard Pulsifer Jr., 6, and one of Kent’s children, Macauley said. He did not know in which suburb they settled.
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Back in California, he said, Richard Pulsifer, Prentice’s ex-husband and father of her two children, went to visit and found an empty house. Later, when Pulsifer tracked down and phoned his former wife, she said Michelle was staying with Kent’s mother, Macauley said.
Pulsifer told investigators that, unable to find Michelle and growing suspicious, he tried to file a missing person’s report in California but was told he could not because his ex-wife had custody of the children.
Eventually, Kent and Prentice split up, Macauley said. She moved to Wisconsin with her son and remarried.
Pulsifer, who lives in Las Vegas, was left to wonder what had happened to his daughter.
Macauley said the case began to break several years ago when Pulsifer talked of his frustration to Ann Friedman of Coronado, Calif., who had been married to a brother of his who died in Vietnam.
Friedman, who remained a friend of the family after her husband’s death, offered to pay for private investigators. One of them spent two years on the case and compiled enough evidence pointing to murder that the Orange County district attorney’s office took up the case, Macauley said.
Until that point, “there hadn’t even been a missing person’s report filed on this case,” Macauley said.
“After we got the case, we put her picture up on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Web site, but otherwise for 34 years there was no background on this case,” he said.
Newly armed with information, Orange County investigators spent a year crisscrossing the country interviewing potential witnesses, including the two suspects and Richard Pulsifer Jr., Macauley said.
In Lake County, sheriff’s police had watched Kent for months at the request of California authorities and picked him up Wednesday as he left court in Mundelein on an unrelated traffic charge, Byrne said. He is being held in lieu of $1 million bail in Santa Ana, Calif.
Prentice, 57, was arrested Friday at her home in Genoa, Wis. She appeared in court Monday to fight extradition and is being held without bail in the Vernon County Jail.
Her husband, Noble, reached at his home Monday, said, “There is no question about her innocence.” But he declined to comment further.
Vernon County Sheriff Gene Cary said Prentice had been in the area for at least 25 years and apparently had no contact with law officers in that time.
Kent has been arrested at least 17 times in Illinois, Byrne said. He has four convictions–including for damaging property, violating an order of protection and battery–and has spent time in the Lake and McHenry County Jails, records show.
Island Lake resident Corinne Hall, 47, a former girlfriend of Kent’s, said she had an on-and-off relationship with him for 11 years, beginning in 1979. They have two sons together, ages 23 and 17, Hall said.
She described him as a good father and hard worker who has owned taverns in the Fox Lake area but in recent years has survived on disability checks and odd jobs.
Kent once had a quick temper but has mellowed with illness and age, Hall said. He has diabetes and is on the waiting list for a liver transplant, she said.
Hall said Kent told her little about his relationship with Prentice. Hall knew they lived in California during the late 1960s with Kent’s son from an earlier marriage and the two children from Prentice’s previous marriage.
Hall said she knew Michelle did not come with Kent and Prentice when they moved to Illinois, but she always thought it was because the girl was living with another relative.
Sometimes Kent would bring up the subject but stopped talking when she asked too many questions, Hall said.
“I’d ask, `What happened? Did you give her away? What happened to her?’ And then he’d say he didn’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said.
Hall said Kent called her from jail after his arrest last week.
“He said, `I came out of the courthouse, and sheriff’s deputies surrounded me with their cars and guns and said they were arresting me for murder,'” Hall said.
“For Michelle?” she said.
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“Yes,” she said he replied.