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Hunters Murdered Hunters Over a Deer

BROTHERS SENTENCED TO LIFE IN HUNTERS' 1985 MURDERS

Standish, Mich.(13 November 2003) — It wasn't until this year that the families of two Detroit-area hunters who vanished in 1985 learned their fates. There will be no such questions about the brothers convicted of killing them.

Raymond "J.R." Duvall and Donald "Coco" Duvall were sentenced Thursday to mandatory life imprisonment with no chance of parole, said Christal Richards, a secretary for Arenac County Circuit Judge Ronald Bergeron.

It took investigators 18 years to build a case against Raymond Duvall, 52, of South Branch, and Donald Duvall, 51, of Monroe. But a jury needed only two hours to find them guilty Oct. 29 on two counts each of first-degree murder in the deaths of Brian Ognjan and David Tyll.

The lifelong friends headed north on a hunting trip in November 1985 and never returned. The Duvalls were accused of savagely beating and kicking the 27-year-old victims and laughing at their pleas for mercy on a snowy night outside a bar in Mio in northeast Michigan.

The bodies of Ognjan, of St. Clair Shores, and Tyll, of Troy, have never been found. Tyll's Ford Bronco also has not been found.

No clear-cut motive for the killings emerged from the eight-day trial, although some prosecution witnesses said the Duvalls had spoken of having clashed with the hunters over a deer.

Messages seeking comment were left Thursday with Donald Duvall's attorney, Seymour Schwartz, and Raymond Duvall's attorney, Scott Williams. Schwartz said at the time the brothers were convicted that the verdicts would be appealed.

The Duvalls were to be transferred Friday from the Arenac County Jail to the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson, where authorities would decide which institution the brothers should serve their sentences in, Richards said.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, whose office prosecuted the Duvalls, said the victims' families were still coming to terms with the murders. But, he added, "They know the animals who did this to their children have been put away."

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