By Jeff Hogan
County Press Editor
(Editor’s note: This story was originally published in the July 2, 2023 edition of The County Press)
Lapeer — Chadwick Mobley, 42, a suspect in the 2011 murder of Andrea Eilber was arrested June 28 by the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) in Montana following a tip from a local resident who spotted a man matching Mobley’s description.
The LCSO posted information to its Facebook page with a photo of Mobley four hours before he was arrested near Libby, which is what the sighting was formed from. Mobley was arrested for premeditated first-degree murder, immediate flight after homicide, and carrying a firearm during the act of a felony. The charges against Mobley were filed by Michigan State Attorney General’s Office which also issued a warrant for his arrest. He is being held at the Lincoln County Detention Center, waiting to be extradited to Michigan.
Libby is a small town in the northwest corner of Montana, population 2,775, near the Idaho border.
Details regarding how Mobley was taken into custody were not immediately available.
Eilber, 20, was found shot to death from a single gunshot wound to the head on Nov. 14, 2011 in her aunt’s home in Mayfield Township where she was house sitting.
Kenneth Carl “KC” Grondin, then 19, Eilber’s boyfriend, was arrested and charged with Eilber’s murder. Grondin is now 31 and remains on a tether.
Grondin in 2015 was convicted by a jury of killing Eilber and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, his conviction was overturned in 2018 after state courts ruled there were issues with the verdict form used at trial.
Grondin has been on house arrest awaiting a new trial, which was expected to take place this year.
“I’m glad he (Mobley) was arrested. I hope they bring him back, and I hope he talks to identify the other people we think we’re involved,” said Carl Grondin Sr., KC’s grandfather.
The charges against Mobley came after DNA collected in Utah matched with previously unknown DNA collected in Michigan. Additionally, the gun possibly used in the killing may have been recovered in Utah, according to court documents.
A cigarette butt found at the crime scene was one of the pieces of evidence that Michigan State Police collected, but investigators were never able to match the DNA collected from the cigarette to any of the people believed to be involved with Eilber’s murder.
In 2022, the cigarette butt found in the front yard of the crime scene was tested by a private lab in Texas specializing in genetic genealogy. In January, the familial genealogy test results linked the DNA to a man living in Utah, according to the search warrant affidavit. At the time, Mobley was listed as living in Brigham City. Police further learned that Mobley had lived in Auburn Hills in 2011.
The Utah Dept. of Public Safety was contacted, and investigators held surveillance on Mobley for two months. According to a recently unsealed second search warrant affidavit, on June 6, Utah authorities collected six buccal swabs from Mobley and shipped them to the Michigan State Police Forensic
Laboratory in Grand Rapids to be compared to DNA from the cigarette butt.
According to the affidavit and published media accounts in Utah, “a visual examination of the firearm was conducted by the forensic scientist, and
determined that a match occurred between the firearm from Mobley and the fired bullet recovered from Eilber’s skull,” according to the affidavit. It does not indicate whether a full ballistics test was conducted.
Brian Legghio, Grondin’s legal counsel, issued the following statement on this week’s development,
“On Nov. 16, 2011 the Michigan State Police collected this cigarette butt at the murder scene ofyoung Andrea. In 2012 the Michigan State Policeidentified DNA on this cigarette butt, determined it came from a male and they conclusively excluded KC Grondin as the contributor. The State Police, however, never submitted it for further testing until KC Grondin’s defense team began demanding genealogy testing in 2019. The State Police waited until 2022 to submit it to Othram Labs. Had MSP submitted it sooner, Andrea’s murderer would have been identified and apprehended much sooner.”
He continued, “Thankfully Othram identified the real murderer. After Othram identified Mobley’s DNA, a search was conducted of Mobley’s truck in Utah and the gun he used to kill Andrea was found.
It is a tragedy that the Michigan State Police waited so long to submit this DNA for genealogy testing. KC Grondin has always been innocent. The MSP’s failure to test the evidence they possessed since 2011 robbed KC Grondin, a then young University of Michigan student, of a bright future and of all that they could have lived and could have been.”