Unusual, but not unprecedented. In the annals of crime, the story of the murder of a woman in India in 2014 and the life sentence of her nephew in March, following the “denunciation” of the family parrot, occupies a place particular. However, another case also came to an end thanks to a feathered hero.
It took place in the United States in 2005 and the bird that made people talk regarding him is called Bud. Witness to the facts, he helped confuse the assassin by revealing the victim’s last words, whose voice he imitated very well. The little rapporteur has made it possible to relaunch an investigation that was stalling.
Eighteen-year-old Bud lived with Glenna and Martin Duram in Enlsey Township, Michigan, three hours by car from Detroit. In mid-May 2005, without news from the couple, a neighbor ended up alerting the police, who discovered the bodies of the two spouses in the living room of their house on May 13. Martin, 45, lies in his underwear in a pool of blood. Dead. His wife is at his side, dressed and wrapped in blankets. Unconscious but alive. Hospitalized, she will survive what looks at first sight like an attack by firearm, Martin having been hit by five bullets, Glenna by a projectile of a smaller caliber in the head.
The police quickly come up once morest a double enigma: who might have attacked this couple and for what reasons? No suspect, no motive, zero memory of the survivor. The death of Martin Duram, father of three children from a previous union, and the attempted murder of Glenna, whom he had married eleven years earlier, present all the ingredients of a potential cold case.
Writings with the accents of a will
A few days following the events, however, Martin’s children find writings in the Michigan home with the accents of a will, where Glenna apologizes for being a “bad person” and asks her ex-husband to take care of his children. children following “his departure”. Strange, especially since the wife has, discover the investigators, also searched the Internet on a model of pistol similar to those used in the shooting. Suspicion logically falls on Glenna, but she denies any involvement in her husband’s death. The main piece of the puzzle is Bud who will provide it a year later.
Recovered by Martin Duram’s ex-wife, the African gray parrot — a species capable of knowing more than 400 words — started talking like a broken record. Each time, Bud seems to be recounting an argument scene, tirelessly repeating three words in Martin’s voice: “don’t fucking shoot (don’t fucking shoot) ! A plea that looks like the last words of a man on the verge of being shot. As stunned as they are convinced they hold the key to the mystery, the victim’s relatives film Bud revealing Martin’s alleged final moments. They publish the video of this “testimony” on the Internet, which will contribute to the celebrity of this case and above all lead the police to re-examine the facts in the light of this unexpected element.
Although she has always maintained her innocence, Glenna Duram was tried for the murder of her husband, convicted in 2015 and then sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. According to the prosecution, this wife, who had been managing her husband’s money since a serious car accident had left him disabled, notably hid from him the household debts linked to his gambling addiction. Glenna no longer paid the bills to the point that the couple’s house had to be seized without Martin knowing. Finally, the prosecution believes that Glenna, following killing her husband during an argument, faked a suicide attempt, shooting herself while protecting herself with cushions. The rejection of his appeal in 2019 made his conviction final.
Bud’s story reminds us that these birds – unfairly caricatured by the expression “Repeat like a parrot” – are on the contrary one of the most intelligent animal species on the planet.
