It was the late 1970s & Jimmy Carter was president & Sony had just unveiled a portable music player called the Walkman. In 1979 Janet Chandler was a 22-year-old woman who was working nights at a local motel, the Blue Mill Inn & during the day, she was a music student at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Holland was a serene location where the streets were dotted with quaint Victorian-style street lights & each spring, six million tulips bloomed. Hope College is a small Christian school in the city’s idyllic downtown area.
Janet’s parents, Jim & Glenna Chandler, were not happy with the fact that she was working nights at the Blue Mill Inn by herself since they felt that it wasn’t safe. Janet came from a conservative Christian family & she sang in the choir at her church. She was described as a happy-go-lucky girl who lived a sheltered lifestyle; Janet wasn’t allowed to attend sleepovers in homes where alcohol was consumed. She was an outgoing girl in high school & she had dated boys, but never went too far sexually. She tried nursing school after graduation but felt that the students were too wild on campus.
As Janet went on to community college in 1974, she began pushing the boundaries of her upbringing & sexuality.
The Chandler’s worst fears about Janet’s motel job came to reality just after 2 am on Wednesday, January 31, 1979 when they were notified that the Blue Mill Inn was robbed of about $500 & Janet was missing. They were frantic & alongside their son Dennis, they searched for Janet all night long. They drove to Holland & through all the back roads in search of her but there was no sign of Janet.
The next day, at about 1 am on February 1, a snowplow driver was clearing the frigid streets on Interstate 196 near South Haven, about 40 miles from Holland, when he noticed fresh tire tracks on the road’s median. The driver found this odd & decided to follow the tracks to a wooded area. This was when he noticed, to his horror, an arm & part of a torso, poking through the snow. These were the only visible portions of what ended up being the naked & battered body of a woman. Janet’s parents were called to South Haven to identify their daughter’s body. Jim remembers feeling absolutely numb & could not believe that something this horrific could happen. The autopsy indicated that Janet had been strangled & that there were indications of recent “sexual activity.”
Janet’s funeral took place in the church where she sang choir & during the service, a recording of Janet singing ‘My Jesus’ was played at the service. The fact that Janet sang at her own funeral was extremely painful for the Chandlers & after, they could never bring themselves to listen to their daughter’s recordings again.
The vicious murder stunned the residents of the quiet lakeside town of Holland & an intensive investigation began. For months, police interviewed Janet’s family & friends as well as co-workers & guests from the Blue Mill Inn & more than 1,000 pages of notes had been compiled. At one point, local men were suspected of being involved after they were overheard bragging about their involvement while bar hopping. Despite this, no arrests were made, no real leads developed & the case soon grew cold.
Jim was not expecting the lack of progress & assumed that someone from the motel must have seen or heard something on the night that Janet was abducted. He began to wonder if others were keeping a secret & holding something back from investigators, but no witnesses came forward.
More than two decades had gone by & the Chandlers felt that their daughter’s case had been forgotten. However, in September 2003, 24 years later, a Hope College film class that was led by associate professor David Schock, decided to make Janet’s murder the focus of a documentary. They hoped that the film might bring the case back into focus & potentially jog someone’s memory to bring some new clues to light.
One of the film students, 21-year-old Sarah Hartman, who was a junior, brought her video camera to Jim & Glenna Chandler’s home in Muskegon, Michigan in the fall of 2003. Jim & Glenna sat side-by-side on their sofa & were very eager to discuss their daughter as they described her as “the most spiritual one in the family.” Janet was their only daughter of three children. Jim brought out a box of Janet’s belongings that they hadn’t touched in nearly 25 years; it included a college application that Janet had gotten started on for college. Janet wrote, “My goals are first to acquire what God wants for me. His desire is for me to acquire my bachelor’s degree in music vocal education, then my master’s degree. I hope to teach in a private, probably Christian school & to also work in the theater, in opera.” The students learned that Janet was extremely devoted to her faith & during one of their interviews with the Chandlers, Glenna held her daughters heavily underlined Bible. In her younger years, Janet had gone on evangelical missions & participated in the choir. As she moved onto middle school, she worked part-time at a daycare center & continued to dedicate herself to her love of singing. They spoke about their daughter’s beautiful singing voice.
Jim also discussed the Blue Mill Inn & how, during one visit to see their daughter during work, they noticed a group of rough-looking individuals loitering in the lobby. They felt very regretful that they hadn’t questioned it more or done more about the uneasiness they felt. As Sarah continued her interview, she felt a connection to Janet & the way that Jim & Glenna spoke of their daughter made it seem that her murder had just happened. Sarah felt that everything about Janet was so real & during a break in filming, she looked at a photo of Janet wearing a white blouse & a mischievous glint in her eye. As she continued to view the photo, she began to see an eerie resemblance between herself & Janet. Glenna saw it too & Glenna rested her head on Sarah’s shoulder & began to sob. This moment gave Sarah the motivation to try & find answers for Janet’s grieving parents & give their daughter back, if only for an hour or so on film. The case hit close to home since Janet had been about the same age as Sarah & attended the same college.
Little did Sarah know that the documentary that she & seven of her classmates were working on would trigger a fresh police investigation & uncover the gory details of Janet’s last moments. Film instructor David Schock felt the mysterious, unsolved murder would be a good project for his class after he learned of Janet’s case in the spring of 2003 while interviewing a detective who was retiring from the Holland police. Schock asked the detective if there were any cases that still haunted him & he turned & pointed at a photo of Janet hanging from the bulletin board since 1979.
As the film students prepared to start their project, Schock warned them not to get their hopes up that they would solve the murder. He, instead, encouraged them to aim to revive Janet’s memory by making the documentary. The plan was to speak with Janet’s parents, her old college teachers & the police about their theories about the case. At most, maybe they would spark some new leads. The work would have to be swift since they only had four months & the documentary would mark the 25th anniversary of Janet’s murder.
As the students got started, they learned that in the winter of 1978, a massive strike was unfolding in Holland’s Chemetron paint plant. During the process, Chemetron hired the Wackenhut security company to provide guards who could keep the gates open for the strikebreakers & about 70 guards were sent to Holland & the majority moved into the Blue Mill Inn.
After hours, the guards & the strikebreakers would head to the Blue Mill Inn to stay in the 80 rooms that had been reserved for the Wackenhut force & they would all head to the bar next door, the Tap Room.
Sarah & her classmate, Amy Schlusler, wondered about Laurie Ann Swank who was Janet’s supervisor at the Blue Mill Inn as well as her roommate in an off-campus apartment. Laurie was 21-years-old at the time that Janet was murdered & Sarah & Amy learned that she left town shortly after & wondered why. They tried to track her down, scouring the phone books & knocking on doors in her old neighborhood, but no one knew where she was.
They began to document both Janet’s life & death & went back to the fateful night of January 31, 1979, the night of Janet’s murder. It was just after 2 am when police received a call from the Blue Mill Inn, “I have reason to believe there might be a robbery in progress down in the office or lobby.”
Holland police detective Jim Fairbanks raced to the scene & determined that there had been a robbery & that the hotel’s clerk, Janet Chandler, was missing. Janet’s jacket was still draped over the chair & her cigarette was smoldering in the ashtray. Robert Lynch, who was one of five security guards staying at the Blue Mill Inn, was the man who made the 911 call & when he was interviewed by Fairbanks, he said that he hadn’t seen anything. Fairbanks was befuddled that despite the fact that the motel was full of guests, no eyewitness had seen nor heard Janet being abducted.
Amy & Sarah were also baffled that Janet had somehow been placed into her car & wondered how she could be taken without anyone hearing her scream or put up a fight. They questioned that maybe Janet had gone with her captor or captors willingly which would mean that she had known the person or people. The students were tasked with visiting the spot where Janet’s body had been found, dumped in the snow & then viewed the crime scene photos. The photos showed that Janet had been strangled with something, possibly a rope, wire or belt. They wondered how soon after she’d been abducted had she been murdered. If she had been alive for some time after her abduction, what happened during those hours. Suddenly the students had transitioned into investigators.
Jim & Glenna feared that they would die without ever knowing who was responsible for their daughter’s death.
The student’s documentary, “Who Killed Janet Chandler” opened at the Knickerbocker Theater in Holland just days before the 25th anniversary of Janet’s murder, on January 30, 2004. They had been no closer to solving the case than police had been, but they did accomplish bringing Janet’s case back to life. Professor David Schock wanted to use the documentary as a springboard for a cold case investigation, but investigators were hesitant because a tremendous amount of time would be involved.
Lieutenant John Slenk indicated that there was physical evidence but it didn’t bring any real value to the investigation & modern technology wasn’t going to help solve it. The investigation would involve tracking down witnesses that hadn’t been spoken with in 25 years. Investigators hoped that the documentary would encourage someone to come forward who had kept information quiet since 1979.
Slenk assembled what he referred to as a dream team of investigators who began learning all that they could about Janet & her life. It was their opinion that the more they understood their victim, the victim oftentimes, even in death, points to their killer or killers.
When Holland police tracked Laurie Swank down, Janet’s boss, roommate & close friend, she was living in Pennsylvania, in her forties & working as a nursing assistant at a hospital. She described Janet as musical & fun-loving & said that she herself hadn’t been working on the night of the murder. After they showed Laurie a clip from the documentary, she indicated that she felt physically ill after watching, wondering what Janet could have done to deserve what happened to her.
The team also tracked down a group of former security guards who had been staying at the motel in late 1978 & early 1979. The strike ended soon after Janet’s murder & the police hadn’t had time to question them all. Those that were questioned said they barely remembered Janet since they’d been working twelve hour shifts & said that they would just come back to the motel & crash.
When investigators spoke with Glenn Johnson who was a former guard who lived at the Blue Mill Inn, they got their first big break. He said that he’d heard a rumor that a guard, 39-year-old Robert Lynch was involved in Janet’s murder. This wasn’t the first time the cold case team had heard Robert’s name since he was the person to call 911 about the possibility of a burglary at the motel on the night Janet was murdered. When a detective listened to the recording of the call, something seemed off to him. The tone of his voice seemed scripted & emotionless.
When Robert Lynch was brought in for questioning, he came off as evasive & detectives believed he had more involvement than he was leading them to believe. With this belief, the cold case team went after anyone who had been close with Lynch back in 1979 & showed them clips from the documentary. One person seemed to have an emotional response to watching the piece & this was Harry Keith who had been Lynch’s roommate at the inn. While he watched, a photo of Janet flashed onto the screen & he told detectives that he had been the person to take the photo back in 1979. With that, he showed them additional photos he’d taken that were inside an album of photos of people at partying & drinking.
Detectives learned that the Blue Mill Inn served as a party hub for the guards who used a conference room for their big gatherings & things got crazy with drinking, drugs & sex. The parties would hop around from room to room throughout the inn. Apparently, during these parties, Janet got a lot of attention from the men. Robert Lynch was captured in some of these photos as well as Janet. The guards had said that they barely knew Janet, yet in a photo, she wore a guard’s uniform & sat on someone’s lap. Police brought him back in for questioning. By this time, he was in his mid-sixties, married with two children & still drinking very heavily. Detective Geoff Flohr was brought in because he was known for his interrogation skills & breaking down a suspect into confessing which earned him the nickname “The Closer.”
After Lynch was brought back in, he was shown a clip from the documentary of Janet’s father. Flohr asked him if he had children & told him to put himself in Jim’s shoes; Lynch had a daughter about the age Janet was when she was murdered. Florh started to see Lynch’s foundation crack & finally, under intense questioning, he cracked in June 2005. He told Flohr that they had a party that went haywire on the night of Janet’s murder. Over the course of eighteen interrogation sessions over a three month period, Detective Flohr was able to fully break Lynch down & learn the truth about the party & the murder plot that was so elaborate & unbelievable that the veteran detectives were absolutely shocked.
Janet would have started her shift just before midnight on January 30, 1979. She often settled into the front desk with her notebook where she jotted down religious thoughts. Robert Lynch told detectives that the plan began to unfold in the early hours of January 31, 1979 at the Blue Mill Inn. He & another guard named Bubba Nelson told Janet that there was a surprise party in her honor. They told her that they needed to blindfold her so she didn’t know where they were taking her. She calmly went with them which is why no eyewitnesses heard Janet being abducted. It was their plan to “pass Janet around” in order to teach her a lesson for having relationships with various guards. Police questioned the fact that the motel’s safe was found open & $500 had been taken & Lynch indicated that he & Nelson were responsible. Lynch didn’t head to the party since he had to work at 6 am, but after they’d taken the money, he had made the phony 911 call.
Janet was driven across town to a lakeside cottage where one of the guards was staying. Rather than driving Janet to the surprise party they told her about, they brought her into an absolute nightmare. Janet was brought into a planned gang rape & after continued interrogation, Lynch indicated that when he finished his shift at 6 pm, he cleaned up & headed to the cottage. When he arrived, he found Janet sitting naked on a cushion with her hands bound & duct tape over her mouth. Guards were in the room, dancing around in their underwear & other men & women stood around, drinking. Soon, Janet was blindfolded with duct tape & tossed onto a bed & as many as twelve men sexually assaulted her while a belt was tied around her neck. Lynch eventually confessed to being one of the men who not only assaulted Janet but strangled her with a belt. He claimed that he hadn’t intended to strangle her to death & noticed that she was no longer moving & found no heartbeat.
By the time the interrogation was taking place, the cottage had been long torn down. Robert Lynch told detectives that while he & the other guards were upstairs, raping Janet in a bedroom, a party was going on downstairs with 25 guests that included both men & women. Not one person stepped in to save Janet & not one came forward for more than 25 years.
Lynch was arrested on February 7, 2006 & charged with Janet’s murder. He told them that it wasn’t just men involved in Janet’s attack & murder, but also women, specifically 2-3 women. One woman in particular was determined to get Janet; he said that she played the role of Janet’s best friend, but he didn’t believe that she actually was. He told detectives that he couldn’t recall the woman’s name so they began to track down women that Janet was friends with in 1979. Diane Marsman worked with Janet at the Blue Mill Inn & after repeated questioning she finally opened up. She said that she watched from the balcony of the Blue Mill Inn as Lynch & Bubba Nelson abducted Janet. She went to the party with another woman who worked at the motel, Cheri Ruiz.
As questioning continued with Robert Lynch, he told detectives that he remembered the name of the woman & it was Laurie. Detectives remembered that Janet’s roommate & boss was Laurie Swank who had previously expressed grief & disgust about her friend’s murder when she was first questioned.
Flohr conducted several interrogations with Laurie & she finally admitted that she was in on the gang rape plan from the start & was even there when the torture ended for Janet. Laurie said she wanted revenge on Janet since she’d slept with her boyfriend Carl Paiva. On September 20, 2006 it was announced that in addition to Robert Lynch, five other were also charged with first-degree murder: Laurie Swank & former guards Carl Paiva, James ‘Bubba’ Nelson, Freddy Parker & Tony Williams.
After living in freedom for 27 years after committing this horrific murder, the defendants would finally have to answer for what they did. Robert Lynch was allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for his full confession which included his admission to burying Janet’s body in the snow. He was given 25-40 years in prison. Like Lynch, Laurie Swank pleaded guilty to second-degree murder to serve as the state’s witness & was sentenced to 10-20 years behind bars. What police still couldn’t understand was why Janet was the target.
The Chandlers felt relief that someone would finally be held accountable for what they’d done to their daughter. By the time the guards were arrested, many of the students involved in creating the documentary that helped reignite the investigation had already graduated from Hope College.
Donna Pendergast was the prosecution for the case & indicated that the evidence was lacking due to the fact that there was no DNA, fingerprint evidence or samples of any kind that could be used to compare to any of the defendants. They were to rely 100% on the credibility of their witnesses but because Robert Lynch suffered from alcohol related dementia, he would not be a consideration. They would be relying on the women who saw what happened to Janet & these were the friends who had betrayed her & included Laurie Swank.
Swank testified in January of 2007 that Janet was very popular amongst the guards at the Blue Mill Inn which caused Swank’s animosity to grow toward Janet. This animosity was built on jealousy that Janet was popular & Swank was not. She indicated that in January of 1979, she had a crush on Carl Paiva who was the supervisor of the guards, but she felt that Janet was standing in her way & indicated that Janet had started a sexual relationship with Paiva.
In retaliation, Swank began telling Paiva about Janet’s alleged sexual escapades in hopes that he would think less of her. Swank indicated that he was angry by this information & told her that he would “take care of it.” In order to humiliate Janet, they came up with a plan & other guards that Janet had supposedly dated & dumped were also in on it.
They planned for Bubba Nelson to take Janet to the cottage where Carl Paiva was staying during the strike. Robert Lynch would stage a robbery at the inn & call 911. Janet was taken at 2 am & held at the cottage until the party began the next afternoon. Swank said that she went to the cottage to see what was being done to Janet & found that Janet was being raped when she arrived. She said that as this was happening, other men were standing around watching & cheering on the rapists. Someone even stood by taking pictures. Swank indicated that she joined in on the cheering & began calling her names as she was being assaulted. She said that she did what she did because she was jealous & angry.
Swank indicated that all of a sudden she heard someone say that Janet was dead & Swank noticed that she was motionless. At that point, she fled from the scene. Other witnesses, Cheri Ruiz & Diane Marsman said that they also looked in while Janet was being tortured & backed up key portions of Swank’s testimony. The women said that they had stayed silent for so many years because Bubba Nelson threatened that the same thing would happen to them if they talked.
It was Carl Paiva that directed another guard to take the photos that night & Paiva said that he was holding onto the photos to use against the group if they ever went to the police.
The nearly thirty year old case was now in the hands of the jury & as Jim & Glenna awaited the verdict, memories of their daughter came flooding back. They thought of her beautiful voice & her playful personality.
On the second day, the jury came back with a verdict & Carl Paiva was found guilty of premeditated first-degree murder. The three other defendants were found guilty of second-degree murder & all four faced life in prison.
Hope College Professor David Schock celebrated with the students that helped create the documentary since this revived the case.
When two of the witnesses, Cheri Ruiz & Diane Marsman agreed to speak with Dateline, they were asked why they hadn’t warned Janet about what they knew the group was planning to do. They made the excuse that they were fearful & also never believed that Janet would die in the end. The two women had sporadically been in touch with each other over the years & were questioned if they had ever discussed going to the police, even sending in an anonymous confession & they said no, because they didn’t think anyone would believe them.
Carl Paiva, James ‘Bubba” Nelson, Freddy Parker & Tony Williams were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Jim & Glenna voiced their appreciation to the cold case team for their hard work in bringing their daughter’s killers to justice. The team had gone above & beyond & had even placed flowers on Janet’s grave. The photo of Janet that had been posted in the homicide division of the Holland police could finally come down after 28 years.
As Jim & Glenna celebrated their 54th anniversary, they reflected on the fact that their daughter would have been 52-years-old at that point. They felt that there was closure, but there could never truly be justice after their daughter had been lost.
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