Attorney General Joins Killing Probe

Attorney General Joins Killing Probe

The Michigan Attorney General’s Office has joined local authorities in the seven-month-old investigation into the shotgun slaying of a Manchester lawyer.

The case has been under the supervision of Washtenaw County Sheriff’s detectives since the body of Peter A. Kensler was discovered last February 5 near the driveway of his home at 17750 Sharon Valley Rd.

Kensler had been shot an undisclosed number of times in the head and upper torso with a shotgun.

Despite questioning of nearly 100 witnesses and suspects, sheriff’s detectives have reached an impasse in the case. Authorities say there are still several suspects in the killing. No murder weapon has ever been found.

The state’s investigator has been in Washtenaw County for at least three weeks, The News has learned.

But it cannot be determined who asked the Attorney General’s Office to step into the investigation.

“We think,” said Perry Schectman, the sheriff’s administrative assistant, “that someone sent the Attorney General an anonymous letter suggesting that a specific person committed the crime.

“An investigator came down and looked over our reports,” he continued. “We showed him where this person had been interviewed several times, and I believe the investigator went out to interview the person himself. He came up with the same dead end that our investigators did.”

There have been few promising new leads in the case, however.

Police believe Kensler was killed by someone he knew.

According to most sources, the Attorney General’s investigator has been unable to turn up any new leads.

Deputy Attorney General Stanley Steinborn, who reportedly assigned the investigator to the Kensler murder case, could not be reached at his office in Lansing for comment on why the investigator was assigned the case.