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Worry about the wellbeing of Rick & Gail Brink began on the morning of Monday, November 23, 1987, only three days before Thanksgiving, when both Rick & Gail hadn’t shown up for work & no one was able to reach them both. When Rick’s parents drove over to the couple’s Park Township home in Holland, Michigan, they saw something that no parent should ever see. Not only were their lives forever shattered in that moment, but it would take decades to dig up a long-buried secret that revealed the horrifying truth behind the deaths of Rick & Gail Brink that no one could have ever imagined.
Three years before this tragic moment, a 25-year-old Rick Brink was going about a typical workday in 1984 when he heard the infectious laugh of his 19-year-old co-worker, Gail Wyngarden. She had long hair, an athletic build & as they got to talking, Rick knew in his heart that this was the girl he was destined to marry.
After dating for two years, Rick & Gail got married in 1986 in a small ceremony, surrounded by loved ones & after a reception at their country club, the couple headed out on a romantic honeymoon cruise.
On returning from their honeymoon, they began to build their lives together, starting with buying a new home. They found a fixer-upper ranch at 14947 Ransom Street that was situated on 20 acres of land that Rick was convinced they could transform into their dream home. Since he worked at a furniture store where he trained carpenters, he was confident he would be able to handle the renovations himself while Gail worked in the office of an auto parts company.
By October 1987, one month before Rick suddenly failed to show up for work, the papers were signed, the house was theirs & they were ready to start the renovation project.
Room by room, they began to transform the home to fit their needs, all the while, Rick documented their progress with his camcorder, likely hoping to one day show it to the children he & Gail planned to have. The footage depicted a young, happy couple who had just started on their journey through life together.
By November, the renovations were nearly finished & Gail & Rick began to discuss the idea of renovating one of the rooms to eventually serve as a nursery. Sadly, after only a year & a half of marriage, their lives suddenly came to a violent end & they never got the chance to live out their dreams.
On Saturday, November 21, 1987, 28-year-old Rick & 22-year-old Gail headed out to a wedding of one of Rick’s high school friends at the Holiday Inn near their home. While they celebrated that night, they were surrounded by people they loved & no one could have fathomed that this would be the last time they would see the young couple alive.
After the reception, Rick & Gail headed back to their home, likely ready for bed & looking forward to a quiet Sunday.
Since they were both exceptionally responsible people, when they each hadn’t shown up for work on Monday morning, November 23, co-workers were immediately concerned. After Gail failed to show up, her employers called Rick’s work only to be told that he also hadn’t come in that day. This was when Rick’s boss decided to contact his parents, Garrett & Ida Brink.
As soon as Garrett & Ida heard the news & were unable to reach their son & daughter-in-law, they were immediately concerned. They jumped into their car & drove to their home on the outskirts of town to check on them. As soon as they pulled up, they saw Rick’s SUV parked on the driveway. As they parked their own car & headed toward the house, they didn’t even make it to the front door before their lives would shatter forever.
When they began to walk past Rick’s Chevy Blazer, they noticed someone slumped over in the driver’s seat, leaning toward the passenger side. As they got closer, they realized in horror that it was their son. Blood was everywhere in the car & Rick was dead from two bullet wounds to his head. Ida nearly collapsed at the sight of her son, her baby boy, dead from an apparent execution.
Garrett & Ida immediately called the police & while some sources indicated that Garrett rushed into their son & daughter-in-law’s home, desperate to find Gail, others report that it was the local police who had first gone inside.
When investigators did examine the home, they found no signs of forced entry or a struggle. However, when they entered Rick & Gail’s bedroom, they found Gail lying on their waterbed with a blood-soaked pillow covering her face. When the pillow was moved away, they saw that she had been shot in the head three times, likely while she had been asleep.
Not only were there no signs of forced-entry, but it appeared that nothing had been stolen from the home, including $500 that was in plain view as well as Gail’s jewelry & other small valuables ruling robbery out as a motive.
Investigators briefly wondered if maybe Rick had shot his sleeping wife & then gone out to the car to take his own life in a murder-suicide, but this idea was quickly ruled out since Rick had been shot twice in the head & there was no gun in the car.
The driver’s side window was slightly open & the bullet wounds were two the left side of Rick’s head while the passenger side window had a bullet hole through it. Just as with the house, nothing was taken from Rick nor his car, including his wallet that contained both cash & credit cards, confirming that this hadn’t been a robbery gone wrong.
Since there was no murder weapon, no bullet casings, no strands of hair or obvious DNA left behind, other than six usable prints, four of which belonged to Rick & Gail, investigators were left with little to go off of. According to their loved ones, the young couple had no known enemies so they could only wonder who would have wanted to execute them.
When the two fingerprints that didn’t belong to the couple were run through the police database, they weren’t a match. However, being only 1987, DNA technology was in its infancy & the CODIS database didn’t yet exist. DNA was first introduced as evidence in the United States criminal court system in 1986, one year earlier, but the FBI didn’t introduce the national DNA database until 1998, eleven years after Rick & Gail were murdered. Sadly the case went cold very quickly.
Witnesses who last saw the couple on Saturday night at the wedding reception indicated that when they left at about 11 pm, they were in good spirits. When Gail’s brother Ryan called her on Sunday morning & never got a reply, he only assumed she was busy. It’s likely they were murdered shortly after coming home from the wedding.
Meanwhile, residents within the town of Holland were terrified that a brutal killer was out on the loose. In 1987, there was a population of about 25,000 in Holland, a town known for its Dutch heritage along the shores of Lake Macatawa near Lake Michigan.
Gail & her seven siblings were raised by their parents, Wendell & Dorthea Wyngarden, & the family of ten were exceptionally close. Wendell, a WWII veteran, worked at a furniture company for 26 years & the family attended Central Church each & every Sunday where Wendall sang in the choir. The family were very well-respected, church-going people who were trusted among their neighbors.
Of all the family & friends police interviewed, no one could think of a single person who had a grudge against the couple who worked hard with the simple goal of having children & growing old together. According to Gail’s brother, Ryan, They were the nicest people in the world. I’ve never seen a couple get along better than they did.
There was also nothing to suggest that they were tied up in any illegal activities. Investigators tried to examine any possibility & even considered the idea of a case of mistaken identity. The property they purchased had previously belonged to a biker known amongst his people as Shotgun Cid, who was said to have been involved in Michigan’s criminal underworld. He was part of a motorcycle gang, the Highwaymen, who trafficked illegal drugs from Detroit.
Eventually, Cid’s conscience kicked in & rather than continuing to sell drugs, he began secretly working with the feds, providing them with information about dealers who were targeting kids. Because of his assistance, his life was in danger & he’d been shot at on more than one occasion, one time when he was living at the home where Rick & Gail lived at the time of their murders. According to Cid, three men came to his home with shotguns, but he was also armed & managed to calm the situation down. It came to light that the men were there for a car that Cid had been holding as leverage for unpaid drug debt.
Since Cid was no longer earning money illegally, he was unable to afford the house so the bank eventually foreclosed on it which gave Rick & Gail the opportunity to purchase it at an amazing price. The police questioned if maybe someone had come there thinking that Cid still lived there & mistakenly killed innocent people. However, even with Cid’s help, investigators were once again led down a dead end.
Only one month after Rick & Gail’s murders, a woman was found dead in her home only a half mile away on December 23. A man named Rock Wilson finished his midnight shift at the steel factory & rather than going home, he headed to his company’s Christmas party. His 30-year old wife, Deb Wilson, hadn’t wanted to attend the party so on his way, he called to check in & all was well.
When Rock came home sometime between 5-5:30 am on Christmas Eve, he was surprised to see that all of the lights in the house were on. As he came inside, he began calling Deb’s name, but he was met with only silence. As he continued on through the house, he was alarmed to see that the back sliding doors were wide open, but when he went outside, nothing initially seemed out of place.
Rock called his dad & asked him to come over to help him find Deb & when he did, they walked the grounds around the house & it was Rock’s dad who came upon Deb’s body. She was fully clothed, lying next to the vegetable garden, dead from a slash wound to her neck.
After police arrived & began their investigation, they couldn’t help but realize that the Wilson’s property was only about five minutes from the Brink’s home that could be reached on foot by cutting across a couple of fields.
Just as it was with Rick & Gail’s case, nothing seemed to be stolen from their home, there was no sign of a break-in & Deb had not been sexually assaulted. Only four weeks had gone by since the Brinks’ double homicide & the couples knew each other & had mutual friends. Rick Brink & Deb Wilson had actually gone to high school together. This raised the question, was there a serial killer on the loose & were these three murders connected?
Fear amongst the residents of Holland only skyrocketed after they learned of Deb’s murder, putting the pressure on investigators to solve these cases.
On top of these three murders, investigators recalled a murder that had taken place ten years earlier in July 1977 when a woman named Deborah Polinsky was murdered only a half-mile from Rick & Gail’s home. 20-year-old Deborah was killed with a knife, just as Deb Wilson was, but unlike Gail or Deb, she had been sexually assaulted.
Other than the close proximity of the crimes, detectives were unable to pinpoint a connection between the cases. Sadly, all four murder investigations were cold. Although tips continued to come in, months turned into years & investigators were no closer to solving any of the cases.
Twenty-four years went by until 2011 when a new team of cold case investigators were assembled from the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department & reopened Rick & Gail’s case. They combed over the old reports, traced down witnesses & reviewed every piece of evidence, conducting over 250 interviews. They could only hope that guilt was weighing heavily on someone’s conscience & someone with information would come forward.
As part of their interviews, the cold case team spoke with the Wyngardens, Gail’s family. Her sister, Cheryl, mentioned something that her brother Ryan had said so many years earlier that stuck with her. A few days after Rick & Gail’s murders, Ryan told a few family members that he felt like he could visualize his sister lying asleep in her bed, turning over & getting shot to death. He followed this statement with, Sometimes I wonder if I could have done this. At the time, his family only assumed Ryan was speaking from a state of shock & grief, but the new cold case team felt that the statement sounded highly sinister.
Back in 1987, Ryan told investigators that when he tried to call his sister on Sunday morning, she hadn’t answered. His girlfriend, Pam, who was now his wife, indicated that she was with Ryan on Saturday during the timeframe investigators suspected that Rick & Gail were murdered. Regardless, something wasn’t sitting well with them & they turned their full attention to Ryan Wyngarden.
According to reports from 1987, Ryan & Pam had been doing laundry & visiting a friend during the time that Rick & Gail were thought to have been murdered. Since they didn’t have laundry in their apartment, they’d gone to the laundromat that day. On further review, the cold case detectives now noticed that in Pam’s second statement, she said that she hadn’t been with Ryan for the entire timeframe in question.
It wasn’t until October 2012, nearly 25 years after the murders, when investigators brought Pam back in for questioning. When she & Ryan began dating in the fall of 1987, she was a single mom with a 6-month-old, but now she was a 48-year-old mother of four. After she & Ryan got married in 1988, they had three children of their own.
When cold case detectives went to Ryan & Pam’s house, they explained that they were trying to finally solve the murders despite the passage of so much time. When they told Ryan that they wanted to go over Pam’s original statements, he indicated that Pam wasn’t home. When they began asking him a few questions, he told them that he couldn’t remember since it was all a blur. When they left, they asked him to tell Pam to drop by the station for a few questions.
When Pam did come by the station on October 1, 2012, Ryan was with her & although he wanted to sit in on her interview, detectives wouldn’t allow him to. This time, she repeated what she said in her original statement back in 1987, that Ryan had been with her at Pete’s Laundromat. Although they fully believed that she was holding back from full honesty, she remained adamant that she was telling the truth.
Ryan had been the fourth born of eight children, before Gail’s birth & although the Wyngarden siblings seemed to be doing well in life. Ryan was floundering. In contrast to Gail, who was in a happy marriage, Ryan was selling small amounts of marijuana, financially struggling & drifting from one relationship to the next until he met Pam at a time when his relationship was ending with a woman named Crystal.
When investigators spoke with Crystal, they learned that she had dated Ryan off & on for four years & their relationship officially ended when he started seeing Pam, although they had remained friends. Just as the interview was about to end, Crystal told detectives that one week after Rick & Gail were murdered, Ryan had come over. When he asked if she would go on a drive with him & she agreed, he said he wanted to go by Rick & Gail’s house to have a look. Crystal felt highly unsettled by the suggestion & insisted that she didn’t want to go anywhere near the place where two innocent people had only just been brutally killed.
When Ryan & Crystal drove around, he eventually stopped at a local park. She could sense that he wanted to talk when he suddenly turned toward her & told her that he’d had sex with his sister, Gail. He went on to say that it first happened when he was 12 & Gail had been either 9 or 10. He said it started as sexual curiosity with him touching his younger sister until they eventually began having sexual intercourse in their early teens.
As Ryan sat in the car with Crystal, he insisted that their interactions had been consensual. He became tearful when he talked about the last time they had been intimate when he was 15 & Gail was twelve. Gail had been sitting on a bench at the back of her parent’s home when Ryan walked up behind her & began touching her, but Gail told him to stop. From what Crystal told detectives, Ryan likely forced himself on his sister during his last sexual encounter with her.
Crystal sat in the car, stunned & sickened with this revelation while Ryan pulled out a picture of himself & Gail that was taken over the summer when they were out on a boat with Rick. Gail was wearing a bikini & he said, Look how hot she is. Crystal told detectives that she was greatly taken aback, but she allowed him to continue talking. Ryan went on to say that he was blatantly staring at Gail while they were out on the boat, so much so that Rick had taken notice.
Detectives wondered if this had been the motive for murder; if Ryan couldn’t have his own sister, then no one could? Or had he wanted his sick sexual secret to die with Gail & Rick?
As investigators continued to bring Pam & Ryan into the station for questioning, Pam, much like her husband, indicated that her memories were hazy. However, in January 2013, she finally began talking. Pam explained that they had been doing laundry at the laundromat on Saturday, November 21, 1987 but only from about 5 or 6 pm to about 8 pm. Ryan left for a couple of hours & Pam never questioned where he was going. When he came back, they smoked marijuana, had sex & then he left again.
According to Pam, she didn’t see Ryan again until Sunday morning at about 9 am. When she opened the door to his knocks, he looked visibly distraught, he was holding his head in his hands & when Pam asked him what was going on, he confessed to what he had done.
Pam said that Ryan told her that he’d gone over to Rick & Gail’s after the wedding reception to confront them about a property issue. Apparently there was a disagreement about Gail not wanting her parents to live on their property. After they got into an argument about the situation, Ryan was asked to leave, but when he went outside, he pretended that his car wouldn’t start. Rick, being a good person, offered to drive Ryan home & as they got into Rick’s Blazer, Ryan shot him twice without any warning.
After Rick was dead, Ryan went back into the house where Gail was already in bed & likely never saw him coming.
Pam told detectives that after he confessed, she told Ryan to leave, which he did, but hours later, he came back & Pam allowed him to stay regardless of the fact that she had a six month old baby. She elaborated that when they were on their way to his house, he drove them to Rick & Gail’s house & when they pulled into the driveway, she saw Rick’s lifeless body in the Blazer. He then dragged her into the house & forced her to look at Gail’s deceased body as he threatened, If you go to the police or tell anybody what I did, this could happen to you. For twenty five years, she kept Ryan’s secret, never spilling a word.
Pam said that although she was horrified, she went back to Ryan’s house & stayed there with her 6-month-old son, Nathan. When she woke up at about 6 am to feed Nathan a bottle, she saw that Ryan’s friend, James Meacham, was there & Ryan was telling him that he just found out that his sister & her husband had been killed. This was on Monday morning before Rick’s parents had even made the horrific discovery at their son’s house.
After James left, Pam asked Ryan if he could take her home & when he agreed, he took out a .22 revolver & showed it to her, along with the clothes he’d worn during the murders. As they drove, he continued to remind her that she better not go to police with what he’d told her.
When she asked Ryan why he murdered his own sister & brother-in-law, he admitted that he was jealous & didn’t want Rick to find out about the sexual relationship he had with his sister. Pam said she had stayed quiet for so long because she was scared that Ryan would harm her or her child. In the years that had gone by, they went on to get married & have three more children together. While Pam was the bread winner of the family, Ryan was a stay-at-home dad who home-schooled their children despite Pam’s objections.
When investigators went to speak with Ryan’s friend James to confirm the story about James being told that Gail & Rick were dead even before their bodies had been found, James said it had been so long that he could no longer recall.
On January 18, 2013, Ryan Wyngarden was arrested & charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Ryan claimed that he was an innocent man & that his wife had only been coerced into providing a false statement. He accused Pam of being harassed to the point that she could take no more.
When he was asked about his sexual relationship with Gail, he compared it to an innocent children’s game of playing doctor & nurse & simply exploring each other’s bodies for curiosity purposes. Although Dorothea refused to believe that her son would be capable of something so terrible, Gail’s sister, Cheryl, believed it. Cheryl was the sister who told investigators that Ryan had said strange things after the murders, mentioning that he could visualize his sister in bed, getting shot to death. He also made a comment that Rick & Gail would probably still be alive if Gail had only just allowed their parents to park their trailer on their property. Cheryl also felt devastated that her sister hadn’t felt comfortable enough to confide in her as to what Ryan had been doing to her sexually.
Not only had Cheryl believed that Ryan was responsible, but as did an aunt. She also recalled Ryan making odd comments & one day before the murders when she spoke with Gail on the phone, she mentioned that she & Ryan were in a tense situation because he owed her money.
In March 2014, 27 years after their murders, Ryan’s trial began. The prosecution argued that Ryan murdered his sister & brother-in-law because he feared that his incestuous sexual abuse toward his sister would come out as well as the jealousy he felt because his sister was in a loving marriage to Rick. He felt resentful that the couple had made something of themselves & on more than one occasion, he’d made a comment that Gail acted like she was too good for the rest of the family.
Unfortunately, there was no physical evidence to prove that Ryan was responsible.
During the trial, more than 60 witnesses were called, including Pam, who testified against her husband. As she did, she avoided his gaze & described what she saw & why she’d remained silent through all of the years. She denied that the detectives had coerced her into a false confession & during her testimony, where her voice remained strong, Ryan was temporarily removed from the courtroom after he shouted abusive words at her from his seat at the defense table.
It came to light that while Ryan had been behind bars, he’d obsessively written Pam a total of 29 letters, some pleading with her to recant her statement, others warning her that she would face God’s wrath for turning against him.
A fellow inmate also testified that while Ryan was behind bars, he bragged about being responsible for a double homicide & also often vented about his sister, Cheryl. He mentioned that he should have killed her a long time ago for causing him trouble since throughout the years, she had remained persistent that Gail & Rick’s murders be solved & their killer be brought to justice.
Crystal testified about the car ride she’d taken with Ryan & their conversation about the incestuous abuse. Gail & Cheryl’s sister, Lynn, testified that Ryan had told her that he wished he could apologize to Gail after the murders for dishonoring Gail. At the time he made the comment, Lynn hadn’t understood what he meant, but it now made sense to her.
When Ryan took the stand, he was extremely combative & defensive & claimed that the justice system was rigged & he claimed that he had no idea why his wife & sister, Cheryl, had chosen to turn against him. He had, however, admitted that a sexual relationship with Gail had begun when she was about 9-years-old. Despite the fact that the courtroom understood that a 9-year-old cannot consent, Ryan tried to maintain that their relationship was consensual.
Ryan claimed that he hadn’t heard about Gail or Rick’s deaths until Monday night after he’d gone to his brother’s house.
The defense tried to argue lack of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as they brought up the idea of mistaken identity/death by a motorcycle gang member. There was also a suggestion that someone from Gail’s work had been responsible since Gail had apparently taken a file home from work that supposedly showed financial irregularities. However, before the file could be looked at, it had been removed from the home by an unknown person.
After four hours of deliberation, the jury returned with a verdict on March 28, 2014. They found 51-year-old Ryan Wyngarden guilty of murdering his sister & brother-in-law. As he was removed from the courtroom, he shouted out that he was innocent.
One month later, Ryan was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole, all the while, he tried to interrupt the judge & scream out that the system had failed.
Up until her death at the age of 90 in 2021, Dorothea maintained that her son was innocent. Ryan has appealed his conviction on three occasions, but each time he was denied.
Meanwhile, 20-year-old Deborah Polinsky, who was stabbed to death & sexually in her Port Sheldon Township home in July 1977, remains unsolved. She was found by her co-worker after she failed to show up for work after the weekend. She was last seen on July 23, 1977. As her co-worker entered the home three days later, Deborah’s German shepherd, Thor, was standing guard over her body.
Her case remains unsolved, but despite the passage of 48 years, detectives are actively investigating her case. New DNA results & tips have investigators looking to the West Coast to interview several people who have since relocated to that area, but lived near Holland, Michigan during the late 1970s.
New data proves that a female was present in Deborah’s home when she was murdered. Because there was no sign of forced entry & her notoriously protective German shepherd didn’t attack the killer, proves that they were someone that both Deborah & Thor were familiar with. Contrary to initial investigative reports in 1977, current detectives do not believe that Deb had been sexually assaulted.
As for Deb Wilson, who was murdered one month after Rick & Gail, investigators focused on someone Deb knew as an acquaintance, David Oudemolen. He became a prime suspect after some suspicious photos linked him to the crime. Sadly, before an arrest could be made, David passed away, but investigators feel confident that he was the person responsible.
Gail & Rick Brink had only been married for 18 months when their dead bodies were discovered at the home they had only just finished renovating. The young couple had dreams of a life together, starting a family & growing old together, but everything was taken from them by someone they should have been able to trust.
References:
- Medium: Newlyweds, secrets & a deadly knock at the door. The murders of Rick & Gail Brink
- News Channel 3: Unsolved Michigan murder from 1977 sends investigators to the West Coast
- ABC 13 On Your Side: New clues uncovered in 40-year-old cold case murde
- Oxygen True Crime: Man murders sister, her husband to cover up incestuous relationship
- Justia U.S. Law: People of MI V Ryan Mark Wyngarden
