April 26, 2022 • 18 mins
Ep. 38 takes us to Michigan for the story of Florence Unger, whose life was cut far too short.
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Venmo Donations @SteveHollywood
**Five-star reviews really help and are always appreciated**
All music by Kai Engel licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For more info, please visit https://www.kai-engel.com/.
Written, hosted, edited, and produced by Steve Hollywood
Streaming Recommendation: The Weekend Away https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14817272/
SOURCES:
https://forensicfilesnow.com/index.php/2021/09/30/drowning-sorrows/
https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.2003.10.31.001/109
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2019/08/16/florence-unger-murder-michigan-huntington-woods/2023133001/
Buy Me Coffee (please!) - https://paypal.me/greatlakestruecrime
Website - www.greatlakestruecrime.net
TwitterX - https://twitter.com/greatlakescrime
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/greatlakescrime
Venmo Donations @SteveHollywood
**Five-star reviews really help and are always appreciated**
All music by Kai Engel licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For more info, please visit https://www.kai-engel.com/.
Written, hosted, edited, and produced by Steve Hollywood
Streaming Recommendation: The Weekend Away https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14817272/
SOURCES:
https://forensicfilesnow.com/index.php/2021/09/30/drowning-sorrows/
https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.2003.10.31.001/109
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2019/08/16/florence-unger-murder-michigan-huntington-woods/2023133001/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Each summer, the younger family fromthe Detroit, Michigan area would take an
annual vacation to a quiet town innorthern Michigan or up north, as Detroiters
like to say. Their two thousandand three vacation would turn out to be
their last, however, as thirtyseven year old mom Florence Unger, went
missing while on that vacation and wasnever seen alive again. From the south
(00:23):
shore of Lake Erie, this isGreat Lake's True Crime. Born in Detroit
(01:07):
on March sixteenth, nineteen sixty six, Florence Gabrielle was adopted by Claire Stern
and her husband, Harold, asuccessful attorney. Florence was known as Flow
to friends, enjoyed hiking, horsebackriding, and interior design. According to
the Detroit Jewish News, she hadan eye for beauty and was the last
(01:30):
person you'd want to be with ata flea market. Her older cousin,
Elizabeth Stearns hold the newspaper Friends andRelatives of Florence, says she had a
zest for life and an eye forbeauty, including the ability to see the
beauty and every person she came across. She had worked as a loan officer
(01:52):
at Flagstar Bank and was active inher community. Florence would sometimes volunteer as
a mystery reader at her children's school, where she would come in and surprise
the students by reading a story tothem. As a testament to her popularity
in her hometown of Huntington Woods,Floes funeral was attended by over seven hundred
(02:13):
mourners. Mark Stephen Unger came intothe world on No. Twenty ninth,
nineteen sixty. He grew up inthe affluent town of Huntington Woods, Michigan,
a suburb of Detroit just north ofthe city in Oakland County. Mark's
mother, Betty Rosenthal, owned severalsuccessful restaurants in the Florida Keys, which
(02:36):
allowed Mark to live a charmed life. Growing up as a student at the
private Detroit Country Day School, Markwas very athletic. He was on the
football and swim teams, and headvanced to the Michigan State championships as a
tennis player in his eleventh and twelfthgrade. Years. After graduating from the
(02:57):
University of Michigan, Mark found employmentas an advertisement copywriter, a restaurant manager,
and a bartender, but he eventuallylanded his dream job a radio sportscaster
on a Detroit radio station. Thejob didn't pay well, but it was
a job he truly loved. Markmet Florence while both were college students,
(03:21):
with Florence majoring and fine arts atMichigan. After two years of dating,
Mark proposed by hiding an engagement ringin an ice cream Sunday. They got
married on February twenty fourth, nineteenninety. Once the couple started a family,
Florence chose to stay at home andraise the children, leaving Mark the
(03:43):
sole income earner in the household,with his dream radio job not paying a
whole lot. Mark picked up asecond job at the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall
of Fame, but he ultimately hadto step down from his cherished sportscaster job
for better paying career as a mortgagebanker. Friends of the youngers knew them
to be a happy couple. Florencewas charming and was said to have movie
(04:06):
star good looks. On the surface, it seemed like Mark and Florence were
living the dream with a happy marriage, two kids, and a spacious home
in an upscale suburb. But bynineteen ninety eight, eight years after they
were married, Mark became addicted topainkillers after back surgery for an old sports
injury. He developed a drinking problemon top of that. In nineteen ninety
(04:32):
nine, three casinos opened in Detroit, Michigan, and Mark developed a gambling
addiction on top of his drug andalcohol dependency, with the MGM Grand reportedly
being his casino of choice. Ontop of these issues, the couple struggled
to make the payments from their bighouse in the fancy suburb. According to
(04:53):
various sources, the younger's thirty threesquare foot home and Huntington Woods had at
least four bedrooms and three bathrooms.Mark did realize that he needed help,
though His father had been a heavydrinker who went off on benders, and
Mark did not want to follow inhis dad's footsteps, so he checked into
a residential rehab facility in late twothousand and two and spent about a total
(05:16):
of five months there. After hecompleted his treatment, Mark did not go
back to his mortgage banker job.It's not clear if he quit or if
he was let go by the company, but in any case, Mark found
himself unemployed. Not surprisingly, thefamily struggled without Mark's income. On top
of the expenses he paid for rehaband his gambling losses, so Florence took
(05:42):
a job as a loan officer atFlagstar Bank. By this time, the
marriage was on very shaky ground.On top of Mark's addiction issues, he
had apparently let himself go physically andbegan to let down the family by missing
important school events for the kids andby frequently turning angry and hostile at home.
(06:04):
Florence, at the age of thirtyseven, had decided that their marriage
was over, and she began anaffair with a man named Glenn Stark,
who happened to be a good friendof Mars. Florence filed for divorce in
August two thousand and three, butMark was uncooperative and refused to sign the
divorce papers. Florence and her lawyerhad irritated Mark by demanding to know the
(06:29):
full extent of his gambling losses andthe total amount of money he spent on
his extensive rehab stays. Mark hadno interest in a divorce. He insisted
that he still loved Florence and pushedto take her their ten year old son
Max and seven year old son Tyleron their annual family occasion to northern Michigan.
(06:51):
Florence had no desire to go onthe trip with Mark, but she
eventually relented and agreed to go.So in late October of two thousand and
three, the younger family went ontheir trip to Arcadia, a small resort
town just off of Lake Michigan.They stayed at a resort called the water
Vale Inn, which was in nineteentwenties era resort on Lower Herring Lake.
(07:15):
The first night there, Florence andMark were sitting on a deck attached to
a neighboring resorts boat house. Aroundnine pm, a fisherman docked a small
boat and spoke to Florence. Bythis time it was very dark out,
and the fisherman said that Florence toldhim she was afraid of the dark.
According to Mark, he walked backto the couple's rented cottage, which was
(07:39):
about a hundred yards from the boathouse, at nine thirty pm to put
Max and Tyler to bed. Then, he said, he returned to the
deck and discovered Florence was missing.He said he saw some lights on at
the neighbor's cottage, so he guessedthat she may have gone over there to
visit. So then Mark said hesupposedly went back to the cottage, watched
(08:01):
a movie and fell asleep. Whenhe woke up the next morning and Florence
wasn't there, he called the resortowners to ask if she had seen Florence.
The resort owner later said that Marksaid he was going to check around
the end to see if she hadtaken another room. He didn't explain that,
but he indicated that she might besuicidal. That same resort owner would
(08:26):
later find Florence Unger's body floating inthe water down at the lake. When
she went to the cottage to breakthe news to Mark that she and her
husband found Florence's lifeless body, Markwent ballistic. She said, she started
crying and screaming and hollering, andhe went directly down to the lake to
the exact spot where her body waslocated. The resort owners found this quite
(08:50):
peculiar, though, as they hadn'ttold Mark where they found her, and
her body wasn't visible from their location, so how did he know exactly where
to go? That seems pretty strange. Police noticed that a deck railing on
the boat dock was broken and leaningin the water, which led to speculation
(09:11):
that perhaps she was sitting on therailing when it gave away, thrusting Florence
into the water. This seemed plausible, as the railing was in a state
of disrepair. In fact, itwas in such poor condition that locals apparently
referred to it as a death trap. No drugs or alcohol were found in
(09:33):
Florence's system, and her death wasinitially viewed as a simple, yet unfortunate
accidental drowning. That theory quickly changed, however, when police found a very
faint but large area of blood onthe dock. This led to a question
as to whether this was Florence's blood, and if so, whether she was
harmed. Prior to entering the water, police had actually been suspicious of Mark
(09:58):
from the time they got there.On the roof deck, they noticed that
a portion of the railing was broken, and the blood stain that they found
on the dock happened to be twelvefeet directly below the broken railing. Next
up, the police search Mark's SUVand found a pair of his shoes smeared
with white paint that turned out tobe very similar to the paint on the
(10:20):
deck railing. And what's more,by the time investigators first arrived at the
scene, Mark had already packed upthe family's Ford Expedition suv and was about
to head home with his two sons. This obviously seemed like odd behavior.
Your wife tragically dies, you haveno real answers, and yet you're ready
(10:41):
to leave the area and head homeas if it was case closed on her.
After being confronted by police with thisinformation, Mark hired his own private
forensic investigators, who tried to suggestthat Florence must have sat on the railing
it broke, she fell down ontothe concrete deck and then rolled into the
(11:05):
water and drowned. No one reallybought into that theory, though the medical
examiner replied with a simple statement,quote bodies don't bounce. Investigators looked into
how much force it would take tobust through that railing. They applied two
hundred pounds of pressure to a sectionof the rail and found that it did
(11:26):
not break. While this doesn't seemto take into account all the variables that
could factor into a railing busting loose, police were convinced that the accident scene
had been staged. Police theorized thatperhaps Florence and Mark got into a fight
that night over her refusal to reconcilewith him, and then maybe Mark blew
(11:48):
up on her and threw his wifeover the railing, later kicking in some
wooden slats to make it look likean accidental fall. Maybe the rejection stoked
some old angers and feelings about havingto give up that beloved sportscaster job,
or frustrations over his weight gain,or just the stress of not being able
to use the drugs or alcohol thathe had been addicted to. The Police
(12:13):
theory based on forensic analysis also includedspeculation that after about ninety minutes, which
was long enough for the pool ofblood to form on the concrete, Mike
checked on Florence and discovered she wasstill breathing, so he pushed her body
three feet from its location into thewater. Mark stood to gain financially from
(12:35):
Florence's death. He had two lifeinsurance policies for a total of seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars on his wife, But people who knew Mark argued that
he loved this family and there's nothinghe would do to hurt them. He
had no criminal history. Nobody inthe area heard anything strange the knight of
(12:56):
Florence's death, Mark maintained his innocenceall along. In May two thousand and
four, seven months after Florence's death, Mark was charged with murder. Max
and Tyler went to live with theirmaternal grandparents, and in the run up
to Mark's trial, a circuit courtjudge in Oakland County, Michigan declined a
(13:20):
request by Mark to have the boysreturned to his custody from the grandparents.
Mark's murder trial finally began in twothousand and six in Benzie County, Michigan,
Circuit Court. During the trial,Mark's defense team suggested that Florence may
have had a seizure that propelled herfrom the cements into the water. They
(13:41):
also showed an animated rendering of howshe could have fallen and then tumbled into
the water. The defense went onto note that the boat house railing was
too low to meet building code requirements, and they suggested that that may have
contributed to Florence's quote accidental fall.For their power, prosecutors accused the defense
(14:05):
team of trying to portray Florence asa shopping crazed adulteress. After Glenn's Stark,
who had moved to Montana by thetime of the trial testified. Glenn
acknowledged that he and Florence exchanged romanticemails for two years and had sexual relations
on four separate occasions, one ofwhich was just a week before her death.
(14:28):
Mark claimed that he didn't know aboutthe affair until after Florence died,
and Glenn's seemed to corroborate that claimby calling the affair the quote best kept
secret. In Huntington Woods, jurorsdeliberated for twenty six hours over a period
of four days before releasing their verdict. Mark Unger was found guilty of first
(14:54):
decree murder. Although Mark's attorney saidthe decision stunned him and his client,
Mark showed almost no emotion as hewas handcuffed and taken away from the courtroom.
Mark's mother expressed disbelief. My sonis innocent. She said he would
never hurt anyone. I think theworld knows that except those people. In
(15:18):
two thousand and six, Max andTyler won a ten million dollar lawsuit against
their father for their mothers projected lifetimeearnings as a bank loan officer and the
personal loss to her survivors. It'snot very likely that Mark had enough money
to pay off a settlement of thatsize, but the son's lawyers also pursued
(15:41):
claims on property and insurance. Intwenty nineteen, Mark lost a bid for
a new trial on the basis ofineffective counsel. He argued that his lawyer
didn't objective provocative comments in the courtroom. Mark is presently the offender number six
one one zero eight one in theChippewa Correctional Facility in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
(16:08):
Florence is buried at clover Hill ParkCemetery, which, according to the Detroit
Jewish News, is known as thefinal resting place of Metro Detroit's most prominent
Jewish figures. Although she never gotto fulfill all of her own promise,
it looks as though her sons areon track to realize their potential. Max
(16:30):
and Tyler both have successful careers oftheir own, and by all accounts,
are doing quite well. And that'sall for this episode of Great Lakes True
Crime. Although I do have onestreaming recommendation for you, and recently was
able to watch The Weekend Away,which is a film rather than a series.
(16:53):
The plot involves two British women takinga weekend trip to Croatia, and
only one of that makes it homealive. It's a bit of a thriller
as well as a crime drama.The Weekend Away is not a remarkable film
and it doesn't have a great scoreon the Tomato meter, but I think
it's worth watching. It was entertaining. You can find it streaming on Netflix.
(17:17):
It's called The Weekend Away. Abig thank you to the show supporters
who bought me a virtual cup ofcoffee through the website at podpage dot com
slash Great Lakes True Crime, andalso many thanks to those of you who
recently left five star reviews on ApplePodcasts and several other podcast apps. If
(17:37):
you haven't left a five star review, I could really use your help with
that, so please do so.If you have the time and inclination.
You can follow the show on Facebookand Twitter just search for Great Lakes True
Crime. You can also check outlinks in the show notes for our social
media handles, the web address,and the show merchandise page. This has
(18:00):
been Steve, your host and producer. Thanks for listening. Byes
Each summer, the younger family fromthe Detroit, Michigan area would take an
annual vacation to a quiet town innorthern Michigan or up north, as Detroiters
like to say. Their two thousandand three vacation would turn out to be
their last, however, as thirtyseven year old mom Florence Unger, went
missing while on that vacation and wasnever seen alive again. From the south
(00:23):
shore of Lake Erie, this isGreat Lake's True Crime. Born in Detroit
(01:07):
on March sixteenth, nineteen sixty six, Florence Gabrielle was adopted by Claire Stern
and her husband, Harold, asuccessful attorney. Florence was known as Flow
to friends, enjoyed hiking, horsebackriding, and interior design. According to
the Detroit Jewish News, she hadan eye for beauty and was the last
(01:30):
person you'd want to be with ata flea market. Her older cousin,
Elizabeth Stearns hold the newspaper Friends andRelatives of Florence, says she had a
zest for life and an eye forbeauty, including the ability to see the
beauty and every person she came across. She had worked as a loan officer
(01:52):
at Flagstar Bank and was active inher community. Florence would sometimes volunteer as
a mystery reader at her children's school, where she would come in and surprise
the students by reading a story tothem. As a testament to her popularity
in her hometown of Huntington Woods,Floes funeral was attended by over seven hundred
(02:13):
mourners. Mark Stephen Unger came intothe world on No. Twenty ninth,
nineteen sixty. He grew up inthe affluent town of Huntington Woods, Michigan,
a suburb of Detroit just north ofthe city in Oakland County. Mark's
mother, Betty Rosenthal, owned severalsuccessful restaurants in the Florida Keys, which
(02:36):
allowed Mark to live a charmed life. Growing up as a student at the
private Detroit Country Day School, Markwas very athletic. He was on the
football and swim teams, and headvanced to the Michigan State championships as a
tennis player in his eleventh and twelfthgrade. Years. After graduating from the
(02:57):
University of Michigan, Mark found employmentas an advertisement copywriter, a restaurant manager,
and a bartender, but he eventuallylanded his dream job a radio sportscaster
on a Detroit radio station. Thejob didn't pay well, but it was
a job he truly loved. Markmet Florence while both were college students,
(03:21):
with Florence majoring and fine arts atMichigan. After two years of dating,
Mark proposed by hiding an engagement ringin an ice cream Sunday. They got
married on February twenty fourth, nineteenninety. Once the couple started a family,
Florence chose to stay at home andraise the children, leaving Mark the
(03:43):
sole income earner in the household,with his dream radio job not paying a
whole lot. Mark picked up asecond job at the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall
of Fame, but he ultimately hadto step down from his cherished sportscaster job
for better paying career as a mortgagebanker. Friends of the youngers knew them
to be a happy couple. Florencewas charming and was said to have movie
(04:06):
star good looks. On the surface, it seemed like Mark and Florence were
living the dream with a happy marriage, two kids, and a spacious home
in an upscale suburb. But bynineteen ninety eight, eight years after they
were married, Mark became addicted topainkillers after back surgery for an old sports
injury. He developed a drinking problemon top of that. In nineteen ninety
(04:32):
nine, three casinos opened in Detroit, Michigan, and Mark developed a gambling
addiction on top of his drug andalcohol dependency, with the MGM Grand reportedly
being his casino of choice. Ontop of these issues, the couple struggled
to make the payments from their bighouse in the fancy suburb. According to
(04:53):
various sources, the younger's thirty threesquare foot home and Huntington Woods had at
least four bedrooms and three bathrooms.Mark did realize that he needed help,
though His father had been a heavydrinker who went off on benders, and
Mark did not want to follow inhis dad's footsteps, so he checked into
a residential rehab facility in late twothousand and two and spent about a total
(05:16):
of five months there. After hecompleted his treatment, Mark did not go
back to his mortgage banker job.It's not clear if he quit or if
he was let go by the company, but in any case, Mark found
himself unemployed. Not surprisingly, thefamily struggled without Mark's income. On top
of the expenses he paid for rehaband his gambling losses, so Florence took
(05:42):
a job as a loan officer atFlagstar Bank. By this time, the
marriage was on very shaky ground.On top of Mark's addiction issues, he
had apparently let himself go physically andbegan to let down the family by missing
important school events for the kids andby frequently turning angry and hostile at home.
(06:04):
Florence, at the age of thirtyseven, had decided that their marriage
was over, and she began anaffair with a man named Glenn Stark,
who happened to be a good friendof Mars. Florence filed for divorce in
August two thousand and three, butMark was uncooperative and refused to sign the
divorce papers. Florence and her lawyerhad irritated Mark by demanding to know the
(06:29):
full extent of his gambling losses andthe total amount of money he spent on
his extensive rehab stays. Mark hadno interest in a divorce. He insisted
that he still loved Florence and pushedto take her their ten year old son
Max and seven year old son Tyleron their annual family occasion to northern Michigan.
(06:51):
Florence had no desire to go onthe trip with Mark, but she
eventually relented and agreed to go.So in late October of two thousand and
three, the younger family went ontheir trip to Arcadia, a small resort
town just off of Lake Michigan.They stayed at a resort called the water
Vale Inn, which was in nineteentwenties era resort on Lower Herring Lake.
(07:15):
The first night there, Florence andMark were sitting on a deck attached to
a neighboring resorts boat house. Aroundnine pm, a fisherman docked a small
boat and spoke to Florence. Bythis time it was very dark out,
and the fisherman said that Florence toldhim she was afraid of the dark.
According to Mark, he walked backto the couple's rented cottage, which was
(07:39):
about a hundred yards from the boathouse, at nine thirty pm to put
Max and Tyler to bed. Then, he said, he returned to the
deck and discovered Florence was missing.He said he saw some lights on at
the neighbor's cottage, so he guessedthat she may have gone over there to
visit. So then Mark said hesupposedly went back to the cottage, watched
(08:01):
a movie and fell asleep. Whenhe woke up the next morning and Florence
wasn't there, he called the resortowners to ask if she had seen Florence.
The resort owner later said that Marksaid he was going to check around
the end to see if she hadtaken another room. He didn't explain that,
but he indicated that she might besuicidal. That same resort owner would
(08:26):
later find Florence Unger's body floating inthe water down at the lake. When
she went to the cottage to breakthe news to Mark that she and her
husband found Florence's lifeless body, Markwent ballistic. She said, she started
crying and screaming and hollering, andhe went directly down to the lake to
the exact spot where her body waslocated. The resort owners found this quite
(08:50):
peculiar, though, as they hadn'ttold Mark where they found her, and
her body wasn't visible from their location, so how did he know exactly where
to go? That seems pretty strange. Police noticed that a deck railing on
the boat dock was broken and leaningin the water, which led to speculation
(09:11):
that perhaps she was sitting on therailing when it gave away, thrusting Florence
into the water. This seemed plausible, as the railing was in a state
of disrepair. In fact, itwas in such poor condition that locals apparently
referred to it as a death trap. No drugs or alcohol were found in
(09:33):
Florence's system, and her death wasinitially viewed as a simple, yet unfortunate
accidental drowning. That theory quickly changed, however, when police found a very
faint but large area of blood onthe dock. This led to a question
as to whether this was Florence's blood, and if so, whether she was
harmed. Prior to entering the water, police had actually been suspicious of Mark
(09:58):
from the time they got there.On the roof deck, they noticed that
a portion of the railing was broken, and the blood stain that they found
on the dock happened to be twelvefeet directly below the broken railing. Next
up, the police search Mark's SUVand found a pair of his shoes smeared
with white paint that turned out tobe very similar to the paint on the
(10:20):
deck railing. And what's more,by the time investigators first arrived at the
scene, Mark had already packed upthe family's Ford Expedition suv and was about
to head home with his two sons. This obviously seemed like odd behavior.
Your wife tragically dies, you haveno real answers, and yet you're ready
(10:41):
to leave the area and head homeas if it was case closed on her.
After being confronted by police with thisinformation, Mark hired his own private
forensic investigators, who tried to suggestthat Florence must have sat on the railing
it broke, she fell down ontothe concrete deck and then rolled into the
(11:05):
water and drowned. No one reallybought into that theory, though the medical
examiner replied with a simple statement,quote bodies don't bounce. Investigators looked into
how much force it would take tobust through that railing. They applied two
hundred pounds of pressure to a sectionof the rail and found that it did
(11:26):
not break. While this doesn't seemto take into account all the variables that
could factor into a railing busting loose, police were convinced that the accident scene
had been staged. Police theorized thatperhaps Florence and Mark got into a fight
that night over her refusal to reconcilewith him, and then maybe Mark blew
(11:48):
up on her and threw his wifeover the railing, later kicking in some
wooden slats to make it look likean accidental fall. Maybe the rejection stoked
some old angers and feelings about havingto give up that beloved sportscaster job,
or frustrations over his weight gain,or just the stress of not being able
to use the drugs or alcohol thathe had been addicted to. The Police
(12:13):
theory based on forensic analysis also includedspeculation that after about ninety minutes, which
was long enough for the pool ofblood to form on the concrete, Mike
checked on Florence and discovered she wasstill breathing, so he pushed her body
three feet from its location into thewater. Mark stood to gain financially from
(12:35):
Florence's death. He had two lifeinsurance policies for a total of seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars on his wife, But people who knew Mark argued that
he loved this family and there's nothinghe would do to hurt them. He
had no criminal history. Nobody inthe area heard anything strange the knight of
(12:56):
Florence's death, Mark maintained his innocenceall along. In May two thousand and
four, seven months after Florence's death, Mark was charged with murder. Max
and Tyler went to live with theirmaternal grandparents, and in the run up
to Mark's trial, a circuit courtjudge in Oakland County, Michigan declined a
(13:20):
request by Mark to have the boysreturned to his custody from the grandparents.
Mark's murder trial finally began in twothousand and six in Benzie County, Michigan,
Circuit Court. During the trial,Mark's defense team suggested that Florence may
have had a seizure that propelled herfrom the cements into the water. They
(13:41):
also showed an animated rendering of howshe could have fallen and then tumbled into
the water. The defense went onto note that the boat house railing was
too low to meet building code requirements, and they suggested that that may have
contributed to Florence's quote accidental fall.For their power, prosecutors accused the defense
(14:05):
team of trying to portray Florence asa shopping crazed adulteress. After Glenn's Stark,
who had moved to Montana by thetime of the trial testified. Glenn
acknowledged that he and Florence exchanged romanticemails for two years and had sexual relations
on four separate occasions, one ofwhich was just a week before her death.
(14:28):
Mark claimed that he didn't know aboutthe affair until after Florence died,
and Glenn's seemed to corroborate that claimby calling the affair the quote best kept
secret. In Huntington Woods, jurorsdeliberated for twenty six hours over a period
of four days before releasing their verdict. Mark Unger was found guilty of first
(14:54):
decree murder. Although Mark's attorney saidthe decision stunned him and his client,
Mark showed almost no emotion as hewas handcuffed and taken away from the courtroom.
Mark's mother expressed disbelief. My sonis innocent. She said he would
never hurt anyone. I think theworld knows that except those people. In
(15:18):
two thousand and six, Max andTyler won a ten million dollar lawsuit against
their father for their mothers projected lifetimeearnings as a bank loan officer and the
personal loss to her survivors. It'snot very likely that Mark had enough money
to pay off a settlement of thatsize, but the son's lawyers also pursued
(15:41):
claims on property and insurance. Intwenty nineteen, Mark lost a bid for
a new trial on the basis ofineffective counsel. He argued that his lawyer
didn't objective provocative comments in the courtroom. Mark is presently the offender number six
one one zero eight one in theChippewa Correctional Facility in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
(16:08):
Florence is buried at clover Hill ParkCemetery, which, according to the Detroit
Jewish News, is known as thefinal resting place of Metro Detroit's most prominent
Jewish figures. Although she never gotto fulfill all of her own promise,
it looks as though her sons areon track to realize their potential. Max
(16:30):
and Tyler both have successful careers oftheir own, and by all accounts,
are doing quite well. And that'sall for this episode of Great Lakes True
Crime. Although I do have onestreaming recommendation for you, and recently was
able to watch The Weekend Away,which is a film rather than a series.
(16:53):
The plot involves two British women takinga weekend trip to Croatia, and
only one of that makes it homealive. It's a bit of a thriller
as well as a crime drama.The Weekend Away is not a remarkable film
and it doesn't have a great scoreon the Tomato meter, but I think
it's worth watching. It was entertaining. You can find it streaming on Netflix.
(17:17):
It's called The Weekend Away. Abig thank you to the show supporters
who bought me a virtual cup ofcoffee through the website at podpage dot com
slash Great Lakes True Crime, andalso many thanks to those of you who
recently left five star reviews on ApplePodcasts and several other podcast apps. If
(17:37):
you haven't left a five star review, I could really use your help with
that, so please do so.If you have the time and inclination.
You can follow the show on Facebookand Twitter just search for Great Lakes True
Crime. You can also check outlinks in the show notes for our social
media handles, the web address,and the show merchandise page. This has
(18:00):
been Steve, your host and producer. Thanks for listening. Byes
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