Father in disbelief over slaying of grad student

By David Enders

Daily Staff Reporter

After two weeks, Charles Heisinger still has trouble accepting the events surrounding the death of his son.

"I still pinch myself because I can't believe it happened," Heisinger, of St. Louis, said yesterday.

Heisinger's 24-year-old son Kevin was beaten to death by a man said to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia on Aug. 24 in the bathroom of the Kalamazoo bus-train station.

Kevin Heisinger was on his way home to Evanston, Ill., after his orientation at the University's School of Social Work.

Police say the most disturbing aspect of the crime is that witnesses to the mid-afternoon crime failed to contact them despite seeing and hearing the struggle.

Police operate a substation at the opposite end of the bus station.

Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Lt. Joseph Taylor said people at the station heard screams coming from the station's bathroom.

One man later said he saw Heisinger laying in a pool of blood, but it was a 9-year-old boy who finally prompted someone to alert police.

Officers were able to reach the scene 19 seconds after they were alerted.

"It would have been nice if someone had contacted us a little earlier," he said.

Officers arrested Williams a few blocks away as he apparently fled after trying to hijack a bus.

His hands were bloody and swollen, Taylor said.

"Scumbags and lowlifes," Charles Heisinger said.

"All they had to do was yell. They didn't have to stop what was going on."

Kevin Heisinger, who graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston this year, "wouldn't harm a flea," his father said.

Police believe Kevin Heisinger's death came at the hands of Brian Williams, a 40-year-old Ypsilanti man with a long history of mental illness.

Williams' brother Amos, a Detroit attorney, served as counsel for Brian Williams during his arraignment on open murder charges and expects to continue as his lawyer.

Amos Williams has requested a forensic investigation of his brother to determine whether he is competent to stand trial.

"He's been a mental patient on and off for over 20 years," Amos Williams said.

Brian Williams had been off his medication, but it was unclear how long he had not been taking it, his brother said.

"He was on his way to Chicago to see our father," Amos Williams said.

"It's just a very tragic incident, and my family is very distressed over it - the killing of this young man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Amos Williams said he has had no contact with Heisinger's father and does not expect to.

"I sent him a letter from all of us expressing our deep grief and sorrow," Amos Williams said.

Charles Heisinger also said he is not sure about claims that his son's alleged assailant was mentally ill and said he will attend a trial, if there is one.

"He was a good kid," he said. "He always wanted to help people - any race, any color. He used to always help his friends. He would tutor them and they could always go up to him."