Michigan man arrested in Richard Ashbrook cold case homicide

An eight-year mystery around Richard Ashbrook’s disappearance finally broke open when Lake County Sheriff Rich Martin announced that Jesse Manley, 45, of Antrim County, had been arrested in the case. Manley was taken into custody on May 15, 2026, and now faces charges of concealing the death of an individual, tampering with evidence and lying to a police officer.

Martin said the death of Ashbrook, who was reported missing from Lake County in February 2018, was later determined to be criminal in nature and ruled a homicide. The arrest marks the sharpest turn yet in a case that sat for years between a missing-person file and a homicide investigation, with investigators working from the grim fact that Ashbrook’s body was found only after the trail had gone cold.

That trail led deputies to a house in Pleasant Plains Township after a credible tip in 2020. Human remains were discovered in the backyard in June 2020, and the sheriff’s office later confirmed the remains were Ashbrook’s. At that point, investigators said the cause of death had not yet been determined, and the case was still being built piece by piece from the ground up. One account says Ashbrook was last seen in November 2017, underscoring how long the gap had already widened before authorities publicly connected the remains to the missing man.

The file was still active enough in May 2021 that Lake County brought in part-time detective Pat Hedlund to help with cold cases, including Ashbrook’s. Martin said then that he wanted a new set of eyes on the investigation and help deciding what charges should go to the prosecutor. That detail now reads like a road map for how the case finally moved: not a sudden break, but a long review that kept pushing at old assumptions and possible cleanup work around the original death.

What makes the arrest especially significant is the shape of the charges. Manley is not yet facing a homicide count, but accusations tied to concealment, evidence tampering and false statements. Martin also said the primary suspect in Ashbrook’s death is deceased, leaving investigators to build the case around the surviving evidence and testimony. The next step is review by the Lake County prosecutor, and the central question remains whether the evidence assembled over years can carry the case forward now that the silence around Ashbrook’s disappearance has finally been replaced by charges.