Darker Than Night (2006) is the true story of a brutal double homicide of two deer hunters from the Detroit area in the woods of northern Michigan in 1985, the surprising developments that shone light on the case eighteen years after the events unfolded, and the quest for justice.
Paperback: On a cold snowy night in November 1985, two men begged for their lives.
Two friends, Brian Ognjan of St Clair Shores and David Tyll of Troy.
They were only twenty seven years old.
They left their suburban Detroit homes for a weekend of deer hunting at the Tyll family cabin near White Cloud, a small town on the western side of the state.
They never arrived. They were never seen or heard of again. It was scary.
Their families and police suspected foul play.
For eighteen years, no one could prove a thing and their killers went free.
It made no sense. How? Why? Where were they?
Then, a relentless investigator got a witness to talk, and a horrifying and chilling story emerged.
In 2003, this bizarre case hit the glare of the criminal justice system as prosecutors charged two brothers, Raymond and Donald Duvall, with murder.
With no bodies ever found, the case hinged on the testimony of one terrified witness who saw a bloody scene unfold and who was still nearly too frightened to talk.
Later, more than half a dozen witnesses cited terror and threats as factors in not coming forward sooner with information.
Now, the truth behind an 18-year-old mystery is revealed against the backdrop of an unusual, electrifyingly dramatic trial.
Raymond and Donald Duvall bragged to friends that they killed their victims, chopped up their bodies and fed them to pigs.
Even though several witnesses told police that others might have been present that night in 1985 when Ognjan and Tyll lost their lives, only the Duvall brothers were arrested, tried and convicted for the crime.
After a seven day trial and 120 minutes of deliberation, the jury found both brothers guilty of two counts of first-degree premeditated murder.
Nine days short of the eighteenth anniversary of Ognjan and Tyll's disappearance, the killers were brought into the courtroom for sentencing.
After the victims' impact statements, the presiding judge sentenced the brothers to life imprisonment without parole.
Raymond is currently incarcerated at the Newberry Correctional Facility and his younger brother, Donald, is detained at the Chippewa Correctional Facility in Michigan.
"It won't bring my son back, but it will help," said Arthur Tyll. "It's about time somebody paid for it. It's kind of justice but they owe me eighteen years and a son, and they can't give me that. I was glad to see them cuffed and I can't wait to see them in chains."
Helen Ognjan, in the early stages of Alzheimer's, said softly after the verdict, "I'm glad, I'm just glad." Brian Ognjan was her only child.
Sadly, neither Tyll nor Ognjan's remains were ever found.
What of the motive? There was no motive. It started as an argument which escalated into a beating and ended in a brutal and barbaric crime and "completely unjustified by any circumstance imaginable."
In her closing arguments, the prosecuting attorney said, "There is no understanding of the whys of Ognjan and Tyll's death, because it's pure evil, and there is no understanding of pure evil, only recognition of what it is."
After all, how can there be enough justice for the ruthless and senseless obliteration of two human lives?
About the author: Tom Henderson was a copywriter and sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press in the 1970s, covering the University of Michigan football team and the Red Wings hockey team. He began a weekly running column for the Detroit News in the 1980s that ran for nearly 20 years, and also regularly profiled high-tech companies for the paper's business section. In the 1990s, he was senior editor of a monthly publication called Corporate Detroit. His first true-crime book, A Deadly Affair, was published by St Martin's Paperbacks in 2001, the same year he helped launch a website, www.smalltimes.com, and a print magazine, Small Times Magazine, both based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and devoted to micro- and nanotechnologies. His second true-crime book, Blood Justice, was published in 2004. A veteran of 40 marathons, he has coached the American Diabetes Association's marathon fundraising team and is a frequent contributor to Runner's World Magazine and Running Times Magazine. He covers banking, finance, accounting, venture capital and technology for a weekly business publication, Crain's Detroit Business, and teaches feature writing in the journalism department at Wayne State University. Darker Than Night is his third true-crime book and his fourth, published in 2009, is Afraid Of The Dark.
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