"He's a rocker, not a killer."

WTF?

PLYMOUTH

Teen says he called cops for suspect
Pal: Letkemann had more to tell
November 20, 2007

BY BEN SCHMITT

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Alex Letkemann told his friend to make the call. Letkemann had been questioned by police about a beheading, but there was something more he wanted to tell them.

Letkemann, an 18-year-old suspect in Daniel Sorensen's killing, had left the Northville police station about 6 p.m. Nov. 9 and went to his friend's home in Livonia.

That friend, Sean Gaikowski, 17, said Monday that Letkemann immediately wanted to talk to the police again.
"He seemed pretty shaken," Gaikowski said Monday after Letkemann and another suspect, Jean Pierre Orlewicz, 17, appeared in 35th District Court in Plymouth. "There was something on his mind."

Gaikowski called the police at Letkemann's suggestion after Letkemann told him he knew something about the killing.

"He told me he was there and stuff," Gaikowski said. "I said: 'We should go back there.' "

By 8 p.m., a Northville Township police car picked up both teens and took them back into the station.

"He wrote another statement," Gaikowski said. "I was released. He stayed. I'm assuming he just told them everything."

Friends of Letkemann have maintained the teen didn't know his alleged accomplice, Orlewicz, planned to kill 26-year-old Sorensen on Nov. 7 in the home of Orlewicz's grandfather in Canton.

Prosecutors call the crime a thrill kill and said the teens ambushed Sorensen of River Rouge when he entered the Canton garage, the floor covered with tarps.

Investigators say Orlewicz of Plymouth stabbed Sorensen, cut his head off with a hack saw and took a blowtorch to his corpse, before the pair threw his head into the Rouge River. Police found the burned torso in a Northville Township field Nov. 8.

The teen suspects appeared briefly in court Monday in green jail uniforms for a preliminary examination that was postponed after defense attorneys asked for more time to review documents. Judge Michael Gerou rescheduled the exam for Nov. 30.

Afterward, Orlewicz's parents declined comment. His mother, Charlotte, wore a locket with her son's photo around her neck.

Letkemann's father, Peter, said he plans to continue defending his son publicly.

Letkemann's girlfriend, Julian Yu, 17, of Livonia gathered with friends outside the courthouse after the brief hearing.

She said her boyfriend, who lived in Westland, had no violent tendencies and had a passion for guitar playing and classic rock. He played in a garage band called the Bad Lucys.

"I just wrote him a letter, telling him that I love him and we're behind him all the way," Yu said. "We know he's not capable of all this.

"He's a rocker, not a killer."