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    • Man killed, wife bound by men posing as utility workers
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    Man killed, wife bound by men posing as utility workers

    Caradoc Wyn Posted on

    On Friday, an Oakland County man was killed and his wife was tied up in their home in an upscale Rochester Hills neighborhood by two men the county sheriff believed were posing as utility workers.

    “We’re seeking the public’s help: anyone who saw something, anything,” Sheriff Michael Bouchard said from his office Friday.

    The 72-year-old man is a business owner in Wayne County, Bouchard said during a news conference in the 3700 block of Newcastle Drive, where the crime occurred just before noon. Video of the press conference aired on WXYZ-TV’s Facebook page and website.

    The sheriff’s office did not release the man’s name until other family members were notified.

    Bouchard said there was a 911 call from the woman, who is also 72 years old. She told officers she believed her husband may have been kidnapped, and officers checked the home, the release said. Officers found a crime scene in the basement where the man’s body was found. According to the news release, the woman was handcuffed and her hands were bound with duct tape.

    Bouchard said it is believed the two men approached the home and said they were DTE workers looking for a gas leak. There was a sign on the side of a white pickup truck that said “DTE,” he told reporters at the scene. The notice indicated that there were orange cones in the bed of the truck.

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    Bouchard said the woman told officers the men came to the house around 10 p.m. Thursday claiming there was a gas leak, but they were not allowed entry into the house. The men returned Friday and said the same thing about a gas leak and were allowed into the home to check for the alleged leak, Bouchard said in the news release.

    He said the husband went with the men into the basement, where the gas enters the house, and the wife “never saw him again. Never saw him come up again,” the video from WXYZ-TV says.

    She was upstairs when the two men came up, Bouchard told reporters, and they apparently tied her up, searched the house for about 20 minutes and then left.

    It’s unclear how the husband died, “frankly because there was so much blood,” Bouchard said in the WXYZ-TV video. The sheriff’s office press release said it was unknown whether the husband was shot or beaten as his injuries were gruesome.

    The criminal police are checking whether anything was stolen from the house. Bouchard said in the WXYZ-TV video that authorities were “reviewing every direction and every potential motive.”

    The wife, who was on the ground floor, was taken to a hospital. She and her husband were the only people at home, Bouchard told reporters at the scene.

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    Bouchard told reporters that authorities are looking into a possible motive involving the husband’s activity as a business owner, such as suspects looking for anything, including assets or cash, that he may have brought home.

    Bouchard said in the television station’s video that the pickup was not found and the sign on the side may have been magnetic.

    Authorities are seeking surveillance camera footage or video from the neighborhood or a nearby neighborhood from 8 p.m. Thursday until about noon Friday to obtain additional information.

    Bouchard said in the television station’s video that it was his intuition that the men had nothing to do with DTE and that authorities had no information that the men were with the utility. Bouchard didn’t know why the men were allowed in Friday.

    He encouraged residents to check with a utility or business to see if they have workers in the area if people claiming to be from that utility or business unexpectedly show up at a home and demand entry.

    Contact Christina Hall: [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @challreporter.

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