Flint is well known for its modern violent crimes but Flint's history is filled with little known stories that read stranger than fiction. Gruesome murders, weird accidents, and violent deaths. Join us every Thursday as Joe Schipani details some of the odd but true deaths he found in Flint's archives.
It was a beautiful Sunday
afternoon, when Allen Papendick and his wife decided to have some of their
closest friends over.
In attendance were Berry Sugg and
his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Gideon, who lived in the apartment above the
Papendick’s. The three couples had been close friends for many years. It was
common practice for Allen and Berry to quarrel almost every time they got
together. Berry was a drinker and did not let prohibition slow him down.
That afternoon, the two men got
into their normal quarrel, but this escalated quickly due to Berry’s intoxication.
Berry became very agitated and walked over to his home on Court Street to find
his gun. When he got there, he discovered that his wife had hid it. Berry stormed
back to Allen’s home and demanded she tell him the location of the gun.
Thinking that he was all show, the other men convinced her to tell him where it
was. After she did, he stormed back home to retrieve it and more whiskey.
Shortly after he left Mrs. Sugg got
a very bad feeling. She convinced the Gideon’s to walk her home and so they
could stop Berry. When they arrived at her home she found that Berry had
already left. He was back at Allen’s house trying to convince him to drink more.
Allen walked him out to the back
yard where the two chatted for a while.
According to Allen’s wife’s police
statement, Berry kept trying to get Allen to drink with him. After a while, he
got so angry at Allen’s refusals Berry shot him.
The sound of the gun shot made Allen’s
wife rush out to the back yard where she found him lying there with gunshot to
the heart.
Berry was gone.
Police arrived on scene at the Papendick
residence around the same time Berry Sugg stumbled into the police station and
turned himself in. At first he confessed to accidently killing Allen while
showing off his new gun. Later that afternoon he changed his story and said
that Allen was holding the gun and accidently pulled the trigger.
The coroner’s report determined
that the gun was fired from about twenty feet away. There was no gun residue on
Allen’s hands. The biggest indication that Allen did not shoot himself was the
angle the bullet entered, and the fact that the bullet grazed Allen’s arm
before entering his chest and going through his heart.
Berry Sugg was arrested and
received ten years in prison.
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