More than three decades after a middle-school teacher was gunned down in a Detroit school parking lot, the woman serving life in the case is asking the state for one thing she has never had since: a second chance.
Bernice Starks, now 79, appeared this week before state parole officials and told them she has been rehabilitated and should be freed. Her plea brought the long-closed file back into public view, in a case prosecutors say started as a love triangle and ended in a fatal ambush outside a city school.
The victim, 53-year-old teacher Betty Jean Roberson, was shot on June 9, 1992, in the parking lot of Webber Middle School, now the Sampson-Webber Leadership Academy. Prosecutors say Anthony Harris pulled the trigger, while Mary Jean Williams arranged the hit and put down a $350 deposit toward a $1,000 fee. Those details were laid out at the commutation hearing, as reported by The Detroit News…