Varner freed in murder case
Jason...@virgin.net
'Wants to vindicate his name,' his attorney says
June 28, 1999
BY JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Harold Varner -- held and questioned by Detroit police for three days in
a murder investigation based on a tip from his sister's partner in a
Detroit casino project -- is back home and anxious to clear his
reputation, his lawyer said Sunday.
"Mr. Varner wants to vindicate his name," said Robert Kinney, adding
that Varner denies implicating himself in the fatal shooting last year
of his niece's former boyfriend.
"He had made no threats," Kinney said. "And he has the right to be
presumed innocent. He denies making any statement to anybody."
However, Kinney said Varner must refrain from commenting publicly on his
arrest and the investigation.
"Now is not the time for him to be talking," Kinney said.
Varner, 40, was released by police Saturday afternoon after being held
since Wednesday following the search of his home in connection with the
July 1998 slaying of Alvin Knight. Police were searching for a gun,
among other items, when they raided the house.
Richard Padzieski, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office chief of
operations, said there is no case against Varner at this time.
"The police had some information and they moved on it, and if they get
more information, obviously they will move on that, too," Padzieski
said.
While they have freed Varner, Detroit police still have some of his
business and personal papers, as well as his truck. A weapons charge
remains a possibility, based on a .25-caliber pistol found during the
search. With a 1994 conviction for carrying a concealed weapon, Varner
is a felon prohibited from having a gun. A new conviction carries a
10-year prison term.
Varner's arrest and release are the latest twists in a bizarre murder
mystery strung together with money, politics, magical incantations and
spells, and allegations of a botched attack by a would-be teenage hit
man. The prize in the struggle, authorities allege, was the love and
custody of Knight's young son.
When police raided his home and took Varner into custody, they were
acting on information supplied by Herbert Strather, a partner in the
Atwater-Circus Circus casino project with Nellie Varner, a former
University of Michigan regent and a finance boss of Dennis Archer's
first mayoral campaign.
Strather and Harold Varner also did business together, including a
$1.4-million real estate deal this year.
Last week, Strather told police that Varner told him he was the gunman
who fatally ambushed Knight outside his Fenkell Avenue apartment in July
1998.
Knight, who had been in a long and fierce custody fight with Nellie
Varner and her daughter, Janniss, for his son, had just gotten a court
order for the women to return the child to him.
In 1995, Knight was wounded by a masked gunman inside Nellie Varner's
garage when he went to pick up his son at the home in Detroit's Palmer
Woods neighborhood.
No one has been charged with Knight's death, but Janniss Varner and a
Detroit teenager, Richard T. Oliver, are charged with the 1995 attack.
Oliver told police that Janniss Varner promised him $4,000 to kill
Knight, but paid him only $1,500 because Knight escaped.
In her personal journals found by police, Janniss Varner wrote of
wanting Knight dead and her belief that she should use magic spells and
candles to thwart people who were using them against her.
Joe Swickard can be reached at 313-223-4557 or swic...@freepress.com.