Where is Heather Kelley? Missing Michigan mom-of-8 told her children she was coming home, but never did
PORTAGE, MICHIGAN : Heather Kelley, the missing mother of 8 children, was last seen on December 10. According to Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller, Kelley left home around 9.00 pm and called her children at 10.20 pm to say she was headed back home. Authorities say she was likely the victim of "foul play."
Her truck was found abandoned the day after she disappeared, about three miles from where she was seen on surveillance video outside a Comstock business, Fuller said. According to the investigators, evidence collected from Kelley's abandoned vehicle suggested she was the victim of violence. "We have hope that she is still alive, which is why we continue to work this as a missing persons case," authorities said in December 2021.
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"We're going to continue moving forward on the basis that we're going to find her, and as a decent human being, I'm hoping we find her healthy and happy and we can return her to her family," said Nicholas Armold, the Director of public safety in Portage, the city where Kelley lived.
A person of interest has been identified in the case, "We believe that person has some information that can help us locate our missing person," Fuller said but they have not identified the man by name yet.
Stephen Martin, Kelley’s ex and father of her eight children, said she was dating a man at the time when she disappeared, according to a report by WOOD TV. The authorities have given an insight into this man's criminal records. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said the 37-year-old man had been released from federal prison in July and was transferred to “community confinement,” a halfway house operated by the Bureau of Prisons’ Detroit Residential Reentry Management Office. The federal records show the man was listed as an escapee from federal custody on December 12, two days after the disappearance. The spokesman also revealed that he was subsequently arrested on December 14 and locked up at the Newaygo County Jail.
Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting refused to discuss the man and only said that he was in federal custody. Records also show that he was accused of soliciting others to help him murder a drug dealer who had robbed him. In 2013, he was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for the conspiracy and on a weapons charge, but records don’t show what happened in the murder-for-hire plot.
In an earlier interview, the paternal grandfather of the eight children, Stephen Martin Sr, begged the man to talk. “If you had anything to do with it, confess, get it over with, don’t make people suffer. We don’t know where she’s at,” he said. “I just want to know if she’s alive. If she’s not, I can get on with it better, but I can’t without knowing,” he added, remarking, “I don’t believe the kids should have to suffer, them poor kids.”