DETROIT -- A woman and her brother were charged with murder in the 1985 death of the woman's 11-year-old stepson, the state attorney general's office said Thursday.
Rosalind Brown, 50, and Montel Pettiford, 43, are accused of poisoning Christopher Brown, whose body was found in the Flint River about 60 miles north of Detroit.
The attorney general's office did not give a motive, but spokesman Matt Frendewey said "a lot of interesting family dynamics were in play."
Brown was arrested Wednesday as she returned to her home in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming. Police arrested Pettiford on Wednesday as he boarded a bus in his hometown of Flint, Frendewey said.
Both were arraigned Thursday on first-degree murder charges. They were ordered held without bond in the Genesee County Jail with a preliminary hearing scheduled for June 6.
Christopher's body was found in the river nearly three weeks after he was reported missing from the home of his father and stepmother, where he was spending Easter vacation.
The sixth-grader's death initially was ruled an accidental drowning. The case was reopened in November 2004 when police spoke to witnesses who weren't interviewed during the initial investigation in 1985, Attorney General Mike Cox said.
"New leads opened up, and there are two cops who were dedicated to the case. One of them was even retired," Frendewey said.
Genesee Township police Lt. Dwayne Cherry said the department asked Gerald Parks, a retired Genesee County sheriff's detective, to help with unsolved cases in the early 1990s.
"We had a couple of homicides and asked for his input," Cherry said. "Since 1993, he's been stopping in and looking into old cases. He picked up on this one and saw inconsistencies."
Parks and township police Sgt. Terry Clemons began interviewing witnesses and building a new case, Cherry said.
Christopher's body was exhumed for tests, which showed a substance in his system that would have been strong enough to incapacitate him, Cox said.
Christopher's mother, Brenda Simpson, joined Cox and others at a Thursday press conference along the riverbank near where her son's body was found.
"Today represents the beginning of a new journey," she said. "I fought a long time just to get people to listen to me and believe me when I said my son was murdered. Now, I've got to stand by and have my trust in 12 jurors coming back with that same verdict."
Christopher's father still lives in the Flint area, but is not a suspect in the case, Cherry said.
Rosalind Brown maintains her innocence, said her court-appointed lawyer, Mark Latchana of Flint.
"My client hasn't run from the current information and has cooperated fully," Latchana said. "She has met with investigators and is anxious to show everybody she had nothing to do with this tragic death."
Pettiford asked for a court-appointed lawyer, but court records did not indicate whether one had been assigned to him Thursday.
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