Joe Gentz told the cops that Bob Bashara hired him to kill
Bob’s wife, Jane, for $2,000 and a used Cadillac in January 2012.
Now, Gentz has recanted the statements that led to Bashara’s
conviction in 2014 for first-degree murder. Just before Bashara’s trial, Gentz announced he would not
testify against Bashara, and word came down that Gentz was coached by fellow
inmates to hold out for a better deal from prosecutors, who refused to play his
game.
We now have a pretty good idea who the leader of that troupe
of jailhouse lawyers was; Carlo Vartinelli, who was convicted in 1992 of
first-degree sexual conduct and sentenced to life in Houghton County.
The
Oakland Press has the most complete story about a recent affidavit from
Gentz in which he recants the element of his confession in which he claimed
Bashara forced him to murder Jane at gunpoint, a story Gentz told several
people, including his family in the days after the murder.
It appears Vartinelli has ridden shotgun through all of
Gentz’s antics since Gentz was committed to the state prison system in 2013 for
second-degree murder.
From the Oakland Press story:
“In his motion, [Bashara’s
appellate lawyer Ronald] Ambrose states he received word of the new version
Gentz was offering through a private investigator who obtained it from Carlo
Vartinelli, a prisoner serving a life sentence for a criminal sexual conduct
conviction out of Houghton County.
Online court records
show Vartinelli, 57, is somewhat of a jailhouse lawyer, having filed numerous
on various issues in federal court. He was the one who compiled the affidavit
with Gentz, according to court records after having several conversations,
documents show.”
You can
read one of those filings here, to get a picture of how Vartinelli
works.
In it, he speaks of the MDOC’s “torturous” conduct regarding
his many physical ailments. I’m no defender of MDOC – far from it – but this
should give you an idea of the brain trust that is driving today’s news.
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