some say that it was staged by Detroit car companies to instill fear in americans and not buy imports at the time...there is no record of her in social security death files....hmmmmm
The Plot Thickens
At this point we have an event without explanation, but with lots of contradictory testimony between the witnesses and the evidence. This by itself is unremarkable: few things in life come neatly bundled and tied up with a ribbon. Inexplicable things happen every day, and very few are due to conspiratorial shenanigans. Why then do I catch the scent of deception?
• Multiple searches of the Social Security Death Index have turned up no mention of Leslie Ann Pluhar.
• Pluhar’s neighbors at her Royal Oak apartment complex say that she had moved in only two or three months before the accident [Detroit Free Press, 9-27-89, p. 14A; Battle Creek Enquirer, 9-28-89, p. 1]. Her friends also report that Pluhar and Burton planned to marry within the next six months [Detroit Free Press, 9-28-89, p. 1A]: in some press accounts, Burton is called a fiancé rather than a boyfriend. Why would a woman who was planning to marry and move up to the Upper Peninsula in less than a year take the trouble of getting a new apartment?
• The later press accounts of the accident play up the issue of Pluhar’s speeding, although the early witnesses emphasize wind as the key factor and not her speed. Witness Jim Jaskiewicz told reporters outright: “It wasn’t like the driver was speeding or anything.”
• Pluhar’s driving record made it into the papers: four speeding convictions, one drunk-driving conviction, two license suspensions and a restriction between 1982 and 1984. But she had no tickets since her license was reinstated in February, 1985. It strikes me as unusual for the papers to cast aspersions on an accident victim by printing past bad acts. It seems like an attempt to smear the victim rather than explain the accident.
• Likewise, the medical examiner’s statement that Pluhar had an “extremely low level of alcohol in her system” seems like further post-mortem character assassination. Can a coroner really determine blood alcohol levels on a body that has been underwater for eight days?
• The cast of characters in this drama is drawn from an unusually large geographical range. The medical examiner worked in Grand Rapids, four hours south of the Straits. The judge who presided over the civil suit, Macomb Circuit Court Judge Michael Schwartz, heard the case as an acting state Court of Claims judge. Why not one of the regular judges? And the Pluhar family attorney, F. Joseph Cady, was from Saginaw (some accounts say Sault Ste. Marie). Why would a Detroit-area family choose a small-town attorney from 100 miles north (or more!) rather than a big-time law firm from the big city?
• Wikipedia at one time claimed: “In actuality every driver that day had been warned against traversing the bridge. Pluhar had insisted on making the crossing, and officials said later that excess speed was a factor in her death.” This false claim was later removed. This disinformation is re-quoted around the Internet in discussions of the incident.
• The amount of the settlement in the civil suit seems low for a wrongful death award for a young woman at the start of her working life. It was reported in the press as follows [Detroit Free Press, 9-18-94, p. 25]:
“The family of a Royal Oak woman killed when her car plunged off the Mackinac Bridge in 1989 will get $325,000 as part of a $555,000 settlement with the Michigan Department of Transportation. The parents and four brothers and sisters of Leslie Ann Pluhar, 31, each will get $44,444, plus $55,000 combined from the bridge’s architects. Their lawyers were awarded $288,320 in costs and fees.”
For even numbers, these sure seem odd … AND they don’t add up …
• Cady’s case against the State seems so flimsy: he practically conceded that Pluhar’s own actions caused her to lose control of her vehicle. Why would the State opt to settle?
• The news accounts consistently mention the make of the car as a Yugo, and attribute the accident to the light weight and small size of the vehicle. Yet no small car before or since has gotten blown off the bridge—not even the Smart cars and Priuses of today!
• Somehow in the course of the accident, the rear window of the Yugo popped off the car and fell onto a girder below, where it was found intact, albeit shattered. It’s not quite a scorched hijacker’s passport in 9/11 rubble, mind you … but still a curious quirk of physics that allows an object with such high momentum to land so squarely on such a narrow spot, waiting to be found by searchers.
• In several Internet discussions of the incident, one finds posters claiming a personal relationship with Pluhar and trying to sway the discussion with obvious disinformation (more below).
in its entirety if you so desire
https://pieceofmindful.com/2017/08/18/mackinac-machinations/
