Consumed by Desire

Chad Wiersma and Heather Gibson had been together for years before she ended the relationship in 1996. Wiersma, then in his early twenties and living in Kalamazoo, Michigan, would not let it go. In the days before the attack he asked coworkers how to get a gun, then took a loaded 9mm pistol from a friend’s home.

In early April 1996 he went to the Gibson family home. He forced Heather’s father, Robert Gibson, inside at gunpoint, and as Robert sat at the kitchen table, Wiersma stepped behind him and shot him once in the back of the head. Wiersma then held Heather’s younger sister and a friend at gunpoint for hours while he waited for Heather. When she came home, he forced her toward her car. She got away from him at a traffic light, and he surrendered to police that evening.

Before trial, Wiersma pleaded guilty to seven counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, felonious assault, and a weapons charge. A Kalamazoo County jury rejected his insanity defense and convicted him of first-degree premeditated murder and felony firearm, a verdict that carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole in Michigan. The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld all of his convictions in June 1998.