Victim's father angered at 'despicable' timing of death sentence commutation

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A Michigan man said he doesn't disagree with President Joe Biden's decision to commute the death sentence of his daughter's killer. However, the father of 1997 murder victim Rachel Timmerman, whose infant daughter was never found, said he's angry it couldn't wait until after the holidays.

"We thought the timing was despicable," Tim Timmerman told Nexstar's WOOD-TV on Monday, the day after learning Marvin Gabrion's death sentence had been commuted.

"I offered to speak with you today because I'm the family of a victim, and I think President Biden offered a Christmas gift to the perpetrators of murder, but he offered only pain to the victims, the families of the victims," Timmerman said.

He said the U.S. Attorney's Office in Grand Rapids called him Sunday night to tell him that Biden had commuted Gabrion's death sentence, which means Gabrion will serve life with no chance of freedom.

Biden said the commutations were consistent with his administration's moratorium on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.

He issued the commutations just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office.

Gabrion was convicted of killing Rachel Timmerman in 1997 — throwing her into a lake weighted down and alive — to keep her from testifying against him in a rape trial.

Her body surfaced in Oxford Lake in the Manistee National Forest, giving the federal government jurisdiction.

"You couldn't imagine someone that deserved it more than Mr. Gabrion," Timmerman said. "He killed at least five people. Where's the justice in just giving him a prison bed to die comfortably in?"

A federal jury sentenced Gabrion to death in 2002. He has run out of appeals.

The Michigan Constitution banned the death penalty in 1847.

"It wasn't me that gave Gabrion the death penalty," Tim Timmerman said. "It was the jury, and I always think it's important to point that out, that the jury are the people who sentenced Gabrion to the death penalty. It was the consensus of the jury and not any one person."

The body of Rachel's 11-month-old daughter, Shannon Verhage, was never recovered, despite repeated searches of the lake.

"From the get-go, we offered to trade the death penalty for information regarding my granddaughter," Timmerman said. "We offered that from the very get-go. Gabrion was unwilling to tell us what he did with Shannon, so that's always remained an open hole in our heart.

"I think we've accepted that we're not going to see Shannon again. We've accepted that, so that bargaining chip is really irrelevant," he added.

He said he believes her body is in the lake.

Tim Timmerman, who co-authored a book on the case, The Color of Night, said he'd accepted, even before the commutation, that Gabrion would likely die a natural death in prison. Gabrion is now 71.

"Actually, I never really felt that Gabrion would be put to death by the federal government. We felt that the best case would be locked in a very small cage and not allowed to hurt anyone else. That was our best case scenario."

If alive, Rachel would be 46 and Shannon would be 28.

"It's just crazy," he said. "It's hard to believe that many years have gone past and it's still an open wound."

Gabrion is serving his sentence at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.

President Biden commuted the sentence of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement issued after the commutations. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.