Nikki Brueger with a photo of her daughter Ally Brueger, who was gunned down July 30 just two miles from their Rose Township home. Photo by Susan Bromley.

By Susan Bromley

Staff Writer

Nikki Brueger believes everyone has a special person in life.

Her special person, her daughter Ally, has been taken from her— murdered seven weeks ago while running in broad daylight in Rose Township.

Now her grieving mother is pleading with the public to help find the killer. A reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case has reached $7,500.

“Losing her is incomprehensible to us,” said Brueger on Monday afternoon at the Rose Township home she shares with husband Franz and until the end of July, also shared with Ally. “She was our only child and my best friend. My husband uses the word assassinated because she was shot four times. He’s a Vietnam vet and his comment was that he made it through the war and 40 years later, our daughter is assassinated two miles from our home. This was the route she ran and she never told me that she ever had any problems with anyone.”

Alexandra Brueger, 31, was shot in the back four times around 2:30 p.m., July 30, as she ran in the 11000 block of Fish Lake Road.

The quiet gravel road has homes scattered among long stretches of woods. It looks like any other beautiful, peaceful country road, except a murder occurred here. Now there are sneakers tied to trees, memorializing Ally, a dedicated runner for the past 10 years who logged 10 miles every day, even before working 12-hour shifts as a registered nurse at Providence Park Hospital in Novi.

‘Everyone a suspect’

Michigan State Police Lt. Michael Shaw said there was evidence at the scene that indicates Brueger likely knew her killer.

“There are a lot of things at the crime scene that points us to that she knew who this was,” said Shaw. “I can’t expand on that, but there is not enough evidence that

we can rule out a random event. We think it’s someone she knew, but we can’t say for certain that she didn’t get into an incident with a vehicle in a road rage type of event either. We have to be careful to not narrow the focus.”

For now, after receiving about 75 tips, and interviewing approximately 100 people that knew Ally, he emphasized “everyone is considered a suspect” in this case which presents a difficult challenge due to the rural environment in which there are a lack of witnesses and no surveillance cameras.

While there are no known witnesses to the actual crime, Ally Brueger was often seen running by neighbors on Fish Lake Road in the days and weeks leading up to her murder. She had moved back in with her parents in April after what her mother said was an amicable break-up with a boyfriend of 2-and-a-half years.

Nikki says neighbors who saw Ally on her daily runs said she often had her head down and it made them think she was not paying attention to her surroundings, but that is an incorrect assumption. On the contrary, while her music-loving daughter ran with earbuds in, she was very observant and would bring baby birds home in her hat which they would feed using eye droppers. Nikki shows a picture of a baby turtle near a heart-shaped rock that Ally took while on one of her runs.

Kind, compassionate person

Ally’s soft-spot for animals was just another part of her kind, caring, compassionate personality, said her mother. Nikki points to Zeus, a white boxer/American bulldog mixed breed that the Brueger family rescued at Ally’s urging in January.

“She went out that Saturday to run and she never came back and this poor dog doesn’t understand. When he came to us in January, he had separation anxiety issues and even though Ally was living someplace else, she would come and visit often because she liked to spend time with us and the dog. When she moved back and she would leave for work or to go on runs, I would tell him, ‘Ally’s going, but she’ll come back.’ But she didn’t come home from that run and her car is out there and she’s not in it and she’s not in her room. She’s missing and he doesn’t understand.”

Ally’s parents don’t understand either.

Nikki said their daughter rarely drank, didn’t smoke, and didn’t use drugs. Ally wasn’t raised with any particular religious beliefs as her mother wanted her to choose her own spiritual path. In 2009, as an adult, Ally did— taking classes at St. Rita Catholic Church in Holly, where her mother believes she ultimately found a career path, influenced by a church member who was a former nurse.

Ally went on to earn degrees with high honors in nursing from Baker College and an online school. She spent one year working as a nurse at Hurley Hospital in Flint before spending the last three years as a registered nurse at Providence.

While former colleagues praised her as an excellent nurse, it was writing that was her passion and for which she was pursuing a master’s degree online, with hopes of eventually attaining a doctorate degree.

Like most writers, Ally had a love of reading, which her mother nurtured right from the start. Nikki has a picture from New Year’s Eve 1984 showing her reading the newspaper to a 6-week-old Ally. In the early years, she remembers she had to read Ally five books a night, every night. Ally’s favorites were “Good Dog Carl” and “Good Night Moon.” Nikki would check out at least 50 books a week at the Holly Public Library to satisfy her daughter.

Ally grew up to be a fan of authors including Stephen King, Ray Bradbury and David Sedaris, who she went to see with her mother when he was at Michigan State University. She also loved poetry, and Nikki retrieves a thick tome titled “The Poetry of Pablo Neruda.” She has another book of poetry as well, one in which a poem titled “Pacifier,” written by a 17-year-old Ally, then a Holly High School student, was published in a contest, as well as her thoughts on the piece.

Ally explained her poem “came from a general hope for keeping the next generation of children open-minded. In writing it I was reminded of my own childhood, and the kind of life I might like to provide for my future family. In writing I also became aware of how impressionable children are, and how quickly life as a youngster flies by. I tried to capture the most precious moments of a young person’s life in the poem, and the effect they have on the witnessing parent.”

A dark place

There is no future family for Ally now, and it is a bleak future for the family she has left behind.

“We have nothing now,” said Nikki. “We don’t have her, there won’t be a wedding, there are no grandchildren… It’s the worst thing that could ever happen to me. Nothing else really matters. I could die now and I’d be with her.”

Ally’s mother often finds herself now in what she calls a dark place. The murder of her child is a preoccupation of her mind and without answers, she returns again and again to that dark place, unable to move forward.

“She was a nurse, she must have known she was dying,” said Nikki. “She didn’t run with her phone that day because it had rained that morning. Was she worried about us, knowing we’d be worried when she didn’t arrive home? You wonder what went through her mind and it’s maddening. You can’t go forward until you understand what happened.”

She calls the police when she thinks of things that might be important to the investigation, but says they have not reached out to her for a month. Her husband attended the Rose Township Board meeting last week in which Shaw had little news to share with a room packed full of frightened residents seeking answers.

Someone knows

At least one person out there knows the ultimate answer, and Shaw believes it very likely that dark secret has been shared.

“One good thing for us, but bad for criminals, is that they don’t keep their crimes to themselves,” said Shaw. “This person has already confessed or shown remorse. Someone knows.”

The state police have sought help with this case from their behavioral science department, as well as behavioral science analysts with the FBI. While he declined to describe a profile of the killer at this time, the police are asking the public to be on the lookout for changes of behavior in possible suspects, including a change in appearance, quitting of a job, a sudden move, break-up of a relationship, showing remorse, or someone who may have sold a white car suddenly for well below the value. A white or light-colored 4-door car was seen in the area around the time of the murder and police continue to consider this a crucial tip. Shaw notes that usually when information about a suspect vehicle comes out in a case, someone will come forward to say the vehicle they drive matches the description and they were in the area. In this case, no one has come forward, making the unknown vehicle that much more suspicious.

Investigators are currently in the process of executing electronic search warrants for telephone records, a lengthy

process, for Ally’s phone as well as other phones. They are also just trying to get to know Ally as a person.

“She was very private,” said Shaw. “It makes it difficult to see how far she reaches out, living in Rose with her parents and driving to work as a nurse in Novi. The advent of social media is huge. There are thousands of people on a Facebook page you’ve never seen in your life, but you make the wrong one upset and it is someone you would have to investigate.”

Although seven weeks have passed without a suspect named, the case is far from being cold. The Michigan State Police have a similar murder clearance rate to the national average of 60-65 percent, meaning that about six out of 10 homicides are solved, although the length of time varies for resolution.

“This one will definitely take a little longer,” said Shaw. “Every case is so, so different. As long as we get tips and leads, we’ll keep working it. We consider it a cold case when there are zero leads and zero tips. We have a lot of tips and leads, it’s not even close to being cold.”

Nikki knows the public is afraid, just as her daughter was as she ran from her killer, but she hopes they will be brave in the face of evil, as Ally was— not freezing in fear.

“She pushed her fear down, and I am asking people to push their fear down as well,” said Nikki. “If you have information about what happened to our daughter, you can make an anonymous tip. You

might think it is insignificant, but the littlest thing might be the thing that is most relevant.”

Police have increased the reward money in the case to $7,500 total— $5,000 from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and $2,500 from Crime Stoppers in the hopes of more leads.

In the meantime, a mother in Rose Township grieves in a very dark place.

“Everyone has a special person, whether your spouse, your son or daughter, a sibling, even a fur baby, like Zeus,” said Nikki. “And I am asking the public to stand in my shoes and think about their special person and if this had happened to their special person and how if someone had information on it, you would want them to speak up. Ally was my special person.”

Ally felt likewise about her mother. Nikki, who has eagerly shown many things that were special to her special person, now brings out a card her daughter gave her several months before her untimely death. The front of the small card reads, “I am a part of all that I have met.”

Inside, a printed message says, “I am lucky to know you,” followed by a personal message in Ally’s scrawl: “You’re my favorite human.”

Nikki has been strong in a 2-hour conversation about her only child, but tears come to her eyes as she says she still feels her daughter’s presence.

“There is no explanation for taking someone’s life,” she said. “Regardless of who and why, there is no reason. But I want to know who and why and I want justice. Someone took her away from us, from her friends, from the rest of our family, from Zeus and she had the rest of her life to live. She was 31, the same age I was when she was born and I don’t want her to be another gun statistic in this violent culture we live in right now. We know her life mattered to the people that she touched.”

Anyone with any information possibly related to the murder of Ally Brueger is asked to please call 855-MICHTIP or 800-SPEAKUP.

This story first appeared in the Novi News and on hometownlife.com.