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February 19, 2006Held at gunpointMom, daughter recount terrifying home invasion
LeeAnn Hecht and her daughter, Jennifer Hecht, 17, were held hostage at their home in Cedar for nearly an hour on Jan. 26. Dean Kinske, 18, of Suttons Bay, has been charged in the incident. The two defused the situation and said they eventually persuaded Kinske to leave peacefully. “I give her a lot of credit,” LeeAnn said of Jennifer. “She showed a tremendous amount of courage.” Jennifer Hecht's words tumbled out, a repeat refrain spilled moments after her mother screamed. Jennifer, 17, a senior at Leland High School, stood face-to-face with a nightmare clad in camouflage. "He has a ... gun and he's going to kill us," said Jennifer. There, late at night in the living room of the family home near Lime Lake in Leelanau County, stood an intruder, face obscured by a ski mask, holding an MR-15 assault rifle. Jennifer, a top player on Leland's volleyball team, had just returned home after helping the Comets defeat Northport. Just like that, from a game to life, and an encounter turned into an hour-long ordeal. "It was hard," she said last week. "It's still hard to think about. Even now it's hard to believe. Some things could have happened that could have been worse. Things could have happened so much differently, but it didn't." 'Heard my mom scream' Jennifer was on the phone with a friend, perhaps five minutes after arriving home Jan. 26. "I heard my mom scream," she said. "I thought it was a joke. I walked out and started screaming. "I saw a guy standing there with a gun pointed at my mom. I was still holding the phone, still screaming." Jennifer backed away, toward her bedroom. Her first thought was to flee, retreat, get away from the person with a gun. "I screamed at the top of my lungs," she said. "I couldn't stop screaming. I thought about going into my room and locking the door. But then I realized my mom was out there. I couldn't leave my mom out there." Her mother, LeeAnn Hecht, then gained a measure of composure. She'd spent 10 years in the U.S. Air Force, background that helped her steady her daughter. "You don't really know what you're going to do until you're in that situation," LeeAnn Hecht said. "We were fortunate - extremely fortunate - because our ability to stay calm paid off." "You still don't know what he's going to do," Jennifer added. "But you have to calm down and figure out what he wants." The masked figure before them also wanted calm. " 'As long as you do what I say, nobody is going to get hurt,' " Jennifer said, recalling the intruder's words. "But you can't really believe that when there's a gun pointed at you." The intruder, apparent by now a young male, led LeeAnn and Jennifer into LeeAnn's bedroom and told her to sit. Jennifer stood by her side. The assailant slid the loaded weapon from his shoulder. Then he reached into his pocket, where he produced a pair of handcuffs, and tossed them to LeeAnn. Clasp them around your wrists behind your back, he ordered. LeeAnn Hecht placed one of the cuffs around her wrist. The masked intruder put the other cuff on. Jennifer Hecht said she asked him to put the gun down. He clicked on the gun's safety and asked, "'Is that good?' " "I said, 'Yeah, that's better,'" Jennifer said. 'I was so mad' By now, Jennifer's ire began to rise. "I got smart with him," she said. "I probably shouldn't have been so brave, but I was mad. I was so mad." The intruder pulled out a white rope, told LeeAnn to get on the floor, face-down. He tied her feet to the handcuffs. "My mom asked, 'What are you going to do with my daughter? Where are you going to take her?' He said, 'I'm going to take her for a little bit.' "I just fell to the ground, holding my mom the whole time he was still tying her up. I asked my mom, 'What do I do? What do I do?' She said, 'All you can do is pray.'" Jennifer knelt on the floor and said a quick prayer. The intruder then beckoned her, turned off the bedroom light and closed the door. "He asked me to go back into my room and I'm like, 'Are you going to rape me?'" Hecht said. "He said, 'No, I'm not going to rape you. I want ransom.' " Jennifer moved toward her bedroom, but asked him to stay back a bit. Something clicked: His voice began to sound familiar. "I was thinking, 'I know who this is, I know who this is,''' she said. When they reached her bedroom, Jennifer confronted him. "Are you Dean Kinske?" she asked. "He said, 'No.' I asked again, 'Are you Dean Kinske?' He whispered, 'Yes.' " "I don't remember what I said. I just kept walking in my room. He followed me into my room and that's when he took the mask off." A classmate Jennifer sat on the edge of her bed while Dean Michael Kinske, 18, a fellow Leland High student, leaned against the wall. At tiny Leland, it's tough not to know names, faces - and voices, even those one doesn't know well. Jennifer looked up at Kinske. " 'Why me? Why did you do this?' she said. "'Why are you here? Did I do anything to offend you?' "He said, 'No.' " 'Well, why me, of all people? Why my family? He said, 'I don't know.' " 'That's not a fair enough answer,'" Hecht recalled saying. "'You come into my house, point a gun at me, point a gun at my mom, tie my mom up and you don't know why? That's not fair.'" Jennifer asked to see her mother again. She found her standing in her bedroom. LeeAnn had loosely applied the first handcuff, then slipped it off her wrist and used the free hand to untie the rope. "I guess in the back of my mind I had to take the chance he wouldn't check it," LeeAnn said. "Just to give myself an opening and not to back yourself completely in a corner." With her mother safe for the moment, Jennifer said she reassured her. "Don't call anyone," Jennifer recalled. "I'm talking to him. I'm calming him down. It'll be OK, I promise." Jennifer and Kinske returned to her bedroom, where she asked more questions and told Kinske he could have talked to her in school. "He said that his life is getting screwed up and it's not getting any better," Jennifer said. "I was like, 'It's not getting any better doing this.' " Then, Jennifer noticed her father drive up near the house. She asked Kinske to let her meet her father, Gary, before he walked into the house. "I walked out the front door and told my dad what was going on." She told her father: "'You have to promise me you won't do anything because I'm talking to him. I promise you, it's OK.' " Jennifer said Kinske then told her he was 'going to leave now.' "And I said, 'That's it? You're going to leave? Don't you think you owe us an apology?' " Jennifer said Kinske apologized to her and her parents before he fled. Family huddled The Hecht family waited for several minutes, huddled in the bedroom. Finally they emerged, locked every door, shut off interior lights and turned on all the exterior lights. They didn't know if Kinske lurked nearby. "He told us not to call anyone, so we don't know if he's gone yet or if he's out there watching," Jennifer said. But Kinske was gone into the night. Authorities searched high and low that evening and throughout the following day, but the youth, his gun, disguise and his Jeep Cherokee vanished. Grand Traverse County deputies, acting on a tip, picked up a young man the afternoon of Jan. 28, on foot, southwest of Traverse City. It was Kinske, who told deputies he'd fled to Kent County, dumped his vehicle, and cobbled together - on foot, in a cab - his way back to the area. He's now held in the Leelanau County Jail, charged with multiple felonies, a quiet, lonely kid who'd lost his father the summer before, and who Leland High officials said never them a hint that he could do anything of the sort. The Hechts embraced, happy they survived the encounter. Jennifer left early the next morning for a volleyball tournament in Grand Rapids. She continues to lead her winning team, but things aren't the same around home. She can't bear to look at some of the things in her house. She hasn't been home alone since Kinske broke in, and she sleeps with the light on. "I just have to find a comfort level with myself," she said. "It'll take a while. "But it's OK." See related stories:
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