Page 2 — Thursday, November 4, 2021 — The Hastings Banner
staff. Those two are far from the only ones
who are branches off the Karpinski coach-
ing tree.
“There are a lot of similarities to the team
this year that Jamie is coaching to that [late
80s/early 90s] team,” Evans said. “It was an
honor to coach with [Karpinski]. He was
tough. He was old-school. Kids would go
through a brick wall for the guy. He was
great at what he did, and he was just a fantas-
tic person – not just about coaching, but with
so many other things, too, in life. He was
dedicated to his family. He taught me to have
balance in my life. I will always remember
that part of it. Mrs. [Marlene] Karpinski, she
sat through many football games. They had a
great family.”
Bill and Marlene have four children:
Debora Trutsch, Jacqueline Vignolo, William
J. “John” Karpinski III and Michael
Karpinski.
“I was honored to experience Coach
Karp as a high school athlete and a college
athlete,” Murphy said. “His son [Mike] and
I played football together at Hillsdale
College. Although he was a little older,
Mike made things seem manageable when I
transitioned from high school to college.
After Mike graduated from Hillsdale, Coach
Karp came to head up the defensive line-
men. In my two years in high school and
three years in college, I found that Bill
knew more about the changes in the game
of football than I ever knew existed. Many
of the changes were things I had read about
as a kid. As a college player, I heard first-
hand what he experienced, leather helmets
and everything. Thank God football has
changed over the years.”
Bill Karpinski played football and wres-
tled at Western Michigan University and
after graduating came to Hastings in 1959 to
teach physical education, coach wrestling
and serve as an assistant football coach. He
left in 1960 to take the job as the head foot-
ball and wrestling coach at Buchanan High
School in his hometown.
During the mid-1960s, Karpinski’s
Buchanan Bucks put together a 27-game
win streak and were named the 1965 state
champions.
In 1975, he returned to Hastings to take
over as athletic director, director of physical
education and as the head varsity football
coach.
In his years of varsity football coaching at
Hastings, Buchanan and Battle Creek Central
and across the state line in Michigan City,
and Mishawaka, Ind., Karpinski put together
a record of 146-53-7. His teams collectively
won nine conference championships and had
five undefeated regular seasons.
His first Hastings team went 3-6 in 1975.
The Saxons won seven games under his
guidance in 1976, five in 1977, seven in
1978 and then had a perfect 9-0 regular sea-
son in 1979. That 1979 team was bested in
the first round of the state playoffs by a
Grand Rapids West Catholic team that went
on finish as the state runner-up in Class B
that fall.
Karpinski left coaching in 1980 to focus
on being the athletic director/assistant prin-
cipal at Hastings High School, then returned
to the sideline for the Saxon varsity football
team in 1988. The Saxons went 5-4 in 1988,
6-3 in 1989, 9-1 in 1990 and 7-3 in 1991.
“Bill was one of the toughest men, besides
my dad, I have ever known,” Murphy said.
“He was everything about a man that you
wanted to be. He was straight to the point,
no-nonsense, honest, and always doing whatwas best for students, parents, teachers and
the community. Without knowing Coach,
you would think he was a hard, gruff,
uncompromising man. Yet when you got to
know him, he was kind and always knew it
was more important to listen than to tell
people what he thinks.
“All of his players and assistant coaches
can tell you stories about how tough,
demanding and how high he set his expecta-
tions,” Murphy said. “Those same men can
also tell you stories about how he could stop
and listen, as well. He understood that
everyone had their own story, yet that didn’t
... lower his expectations of you. Matter of
fact, the tougher the situation you came
from, the higher the expectations he set for
you.”
Hastings was in the state playoffs in both
1990 and 1991. Dowagiac, the eventual
Class BB state champion, defeated the
Saxons in the opening round of the 1990
playoffs following the Saxons’ undefeated
regular season. Evans recalled 1991 as being
an especially enjoyable campaign because of
how the team was able to exceed expecta-
tions to get back to the postseason a second
year in a row.
“You can look at his won/loss record and
see he’s had great success,” then-Hastings
Schools superintendent Carl Schoessel said
in a Banner interview after Karpinski
announced he was leaving Hastings for a job
as an assistant athletic director/assistant foot-
ball coach at Hillsdale College in January- “But what strikes me most about
[Karpinski] is that people tell me little anec-
dotes about their sons who had played for
him, and the positive effect he had on their
lives.
“They talk about him with such high
regard. I’m very proud of him and like him
both personally and professionally. He han-
dled all of his duties with a great integrity.”
Karpinski was inducted into the Michigan
High School Football Coaches Association
Hall of Fame in 1993.
“Bill was always one to be more prepared
than the other guy,” Evans said. “Watching
film back then was a transition from the old
reel-to-reel 16 mm films you’d watch on
projector to the VHS tapes.”
“Sunday meetings, you would show up
3:30 or 4:30 in the afternoon and it might be
10 o’clock or 11 o’clock when you left,”
Evans added. “Bill just wanted to be more
prepared than the other team, and our kids
were. He was a perfectionist. Practice had a
purpose all the time. Our kids I think were
prepared for any situation. I think that made
the difference. We had great players. We had
a run of three or four years, and I think Bill
was able to take that talent and take them to
the highest level.”
Bill’s son Mike graduated from Hastings
High School in 1987. Evans was one of his
coaches. Mike’s Brother William “John”
Karpinski III got to play one year for his dad
at Hastings High School.
“I kind of wish I would have played for
him,” Mike said of his father. “He got the
best of his players. He motivated his play-
ers. I didn’t really need motivation, but I
just know he would have gotten the best out
of me, and that is no disrespect to the
coaches I played for. I would have enjoyed
it, that’s all.”
Mike Karpinski coached at Hillsdale for a
year, and Bill arrived on the Hillsdale staff
the following year. Mike spent 25 years
coaching, spending time at the University of
Indianapolis, at Franklin Central High School
in Indianapolis and then five years at
Michigan City High School, Indiana. He has
been retired from coaching for about five
years.
Mike Karpinski said he took all kinds of
things from his father that might sound little,
but are very important, into his coaching
career.
“Make sure you’re coaching everybody,”
his son said of one of his dad’s lessons.
“You’re coaching your best players, but
you’re also coaching those guys who are
struggling. You’re coaching every player,
whether it’s in a game or in practice. You’re
coaching everybody, and you’re coaching
hard. There are so many things.
“He was always prepared: ‘Make sure
you’re good at the things you’re doing.’
‘Don’t ever try to do something in a game
that you haven’t practiced for at least two or
three days,’ I think is another one. A lot oftimes you see things and you try to change
things the last minute. Offensively, that usu-
ally doesn’t work out. Defensively, you can
do some things, but offensively there are too
many moving parts that have to be on the
same page.
“There are so many things,” he continued.
“‘Make sure you’re working harder than all
your coaches are, so when they see you
working harder than them that motivates
them to work harder.’ There are a lot of little
things like that that stuck with me.
“That is true in life. Any kind of leadership
position you’re in, they don’t want to see the
head man sitting back with his feet up. They
want to see him working.”
Mike Karpinski said his parents rarely, if
ever, missed one of his high school or colle-
giate sporting events. Down time for his dad
was rare, but he said his dad liked to fish and
he liked to play golf.
“We played a lot of golf together, and my
mom and him used to fish. They had a cot-
tage on a lake near Paw Paw, so we were up
there a lot growing up in the summer,” he
said.
Mike Karpinski followed in his dad’s foot-
steps as a coach and physical education
instructor. He sat down this week and wrote
a letter to his father that he will leave with
him. He couldn’t help but note the way he
followed in his dad’s footsteps.
They were both three-sport athletes in high
school who went on to play college football.
“You married the love of your life, I mar-
ried the love of my life. You went on to teach
health and PE, I teach health and PE. You
coached football, I coached football. Then
there were two or three other things.
Basically, in a nutshell you pretty much
influenced my whole life,” Mike Karpinski
said of the letter.
That influence spread beyond his family
and continues growing today.“I couldn’t watch the whole thing,” he told
Nakfoor Pratt.
James said he had seen enough to know
that Lafey had killed Brickley.
“I told him to get out of my house.”
Then, James said, he flipped a quarter, try-
ing to decide whether to kill Lafey, he told
Nakfoor Pratt.
Instead, he left and went to his girlfriend’s
house. He did not tell her what had hap-
pened. That night he lay in bed and stared at
the wall. The next morning, he went to see
Ketola, Lafey’s father, and both men went to
the Nashville Village Police Department.
They reported the murder to officer Chris
Underhile, who has since been named the
department’s chief.
When he learned the location of the mur-
der, Underhile knew it was outside of the
department’s jurisdiction, and called Barry
County Central Dispatch.
James gave the police his permission to
search the residence, and six officers from
Nashville and the Barry County Sheriff’s
Office went to the residence.
The officers went into the house with their
guns drawn and made a sweep of the resi-
dence.
Lafey was sitting on the couch. He told the
officers that Brickley had left with another man.
After Deputy Rich Frazer searched Lafey
for weapons, Deputy Kevin Erb asked to see
Lafey’s phone. Lafey unlocked it and gave it
to him.
Erb found a file on the phone showing
Brickley on the ground, and showed it to
Lafey.
His demeanor, which had seemed calm,
changed.
“He was done talking at that point,” Erb
said. “It seemed like he just put his head
down.”
Lafey was read his rights and placed in the
back of Erb’s patrol vehicle. Underhile, who
had developed a rapport with Lafey from
previous contact, made his own attempt to
question Lafey.
After some small talk, Lafey told him
where Brickley’s body was buried.
The officers walked out to the area, a group
of pine trees behind the house, and saw foot-
prints leading to the spot.
They soon found blood spattered in the
snow, and discovered Brickley’s body under
two or three inches of snow.
After he was taken to the Barry County
Jail, Lafey was interviewed by Barry County
Sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Janette Maki.
Lafey told her that he had only known
Brickley for a few weeks, perhaps a month.
He said, before they had sex the first time,
he told Brickley that, if she gave him a sex-
ually transmitted infection, he would kill her- and that she should kill him if he gave her
one.
Lafey said he wasn’t serious at the time,
but he later believed he had contracted a STI.
He claimed that, on the evening of the
murder, Brickley asked him to
take her rabbit hunting. He
grabbed a.22 rifle and a shovel,
and they went outside.
When they were in the woods,
she asked if he recalled the con-
versation, then ran at him with a
knife. Lafey told Maki he shot
Brickley once, but she didn’t
stop, so he shot her again.
After the second shot,
Brickley fell to the ground, cry-
ing and moaning.
Nakfoor Pratt asked Maki what Lafey had
told her about the sounds Brickley made
while she was on the ground.
“He said that that bothered him,” Maki
said. “That he didn’t want to have to kill her,
that it hurt his feelings, so he started stomp-
ing on her to put her out of her misery.”
During the interview, Lafey motioned to
the side of his neck, Maki said. “He said he
was trying to stomp on the side of her neck to
make her die faster.”
Lafey told Maki he stomped on Brickley
until he was sure she was dead, then he put
her hat back on her, covered her with snow,
picked up her backpack, the two spent
shells and the knife before going back to
the house.
At first, Lafey told Maki, he didn’t know
why he took the video. Then he said it was to
prove to his father that he needed help remov-
ing and hiding a body.He also said he burned Brickley’s
backpack next to her body, then
changed the location to a burn bar-
rel behind the residence. But offi-
cers observed that the barrels were
covered in snow, and nothing had
been burned in them.
Police never found Brickley’s
bag or phone.
A knife fitting the description
that Lafey gave was lying on the
table near him when he was arrest-
ed.
Lafey told Maki he went back into the
house and waited for the police to arrive.
Maki also summarized the autopsy report.
The medical examiner said Brickley had died
from multiple gunshot wounds, with multiple
blunt-force traumas named as a contributing
factor. One bullet was recovered from
Brickley’s body.
At the end of the hearing, Nakfoor Pratt
went into more detail on the blunt-force trau-
mas listed the autopsy report.
Brickely had a broken nose, broken jaw,
four broken ribs on her left side, and three on
her right. She had multiple lacerations and
abrasions to her face, both ears, neck and
upper chest. Multiple teeth had been kicked
out of their sockets.
“Your honor, there is a total of 21 blunt-
force injuries,” Nakfoor Pratt told Judge
Doherty. “That is a clear, clear indication of
torture.”Doherty agreed.
Although the video was not shown during
the hearing, the judge viewed it in chambers
during recess.
“It is clear from the video that Mr. Lafey
committed a brutal, heinous murder of
Gracyn Brickley,” he said at the conclusion
of the proceedings. “... I don’t see any doubt
that he committed those offenses.”
“The video clearly shows torture and the
intent to inflict extreme pain to the victim,
and just a brutal attitude, numerous name
callings, a lot of statements within that video,
along with the comments to the witnesses,
watching the moment (that) her life left her
eyes, the obvious pain that the victim was in.”
Before Monday’s court proceedings,
Lafey’s bond had been set at $500,000.
After the hearing, Doherty revoked it, “due
to the overwhelming evidence of guilt and the
brutality of the charges.”
Lafey’s hearing had been delayed for sev-
eral months so that he could undergo exams
for competency and criminal responsibility to
determine if he was competent to stand trial.
During that time, Lafey was charged with
two additional offenses, of assaulting jail
employees.
Nakfoor Pratt told The Banner that her
office “recently dismissed those charges
without prejudice, as further investigation
was needed.”
“We will make a decision at a later date if
we will re-instate those charges,” she added.NASHVILLE, continued from page 1 –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Andrew LafeyKARPINSKI, continued
from page 1 ––––––––––
Bill Karpinski (left) accepts a traveling trophy from Hastings High School Principal
Steve Harbison in 1991. Karpinski received many awards and was named Coach of the
Year several times. He was inducted into the Michigan Coaches Hall of Fame in 1992.A plaque just outside the gate of Baum Stadium at Johnson Field was dedicated in
September 2007 to Bill Karpinski “for his many years of service to Hastings Area
Schools as football coach, athletic director and mentor.”
Former coach Bill Karpinski and his wife, Marlene, attend a dedication ceremony at
Hastings High School in September 2007. (File photos)