May 18, 2005

            LANSING – Attorney General Mike Cox announced today that a Bay County jury has convicted confessed serial killer John Rodney McRae of First Degree Murder and Felony Murder for the 1987 killing of 15-year-old Randy Laufer. McRae will be sentenced to a mandatory life sentence without the chance of parole by 18^th Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Schmidt on June 27 at 8:30 A.M.

            "My Office of Special Investigations sent another serial killer to prison for the rest of his life," Cox said. "I commend the members of my staff, Clare County Prosecutor Norman Gage, the Clare County Sheriff’s Department, and the men and women of the jury for their commitment to seeing justice served."

            In 1951, McRae was sentenced to life in prison after confessing to the murder of Joey Housey, an 8-year-old Macomb County boy. Twenty years later, in 1971, McRae’s sentence was commuted because he had been a teenager at the time of the murder.

            Ten years after he was reported missing by his family, Randy Laufer’s body was discovered in Harrison in August of 1997, only yards away from McRae’s front door. Attorney General investigators tracked McRae to Mesa, Arizona where he was arrested in October of 1997. Convicted in 1998 of First Degree Murder, McRae was ordered to stand for a new trial by the Michigan Supreme Court. The trial, which lasted two weeks, included new evidence of jail house confessions by McRae.

            The case is the latest victory for the Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigations, formed by Cox in 2003 to investigate and prosecute public corruption cases and cold case homicides. In addition to McRae, the unit is responsible for more than 50 investigations, including the conviction of serial killer Coral Watts.

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