Jury finds Alpena man guilty of strangling teen, then executing girlfriend

Alpena ― A northern Michigan man has been convicted of strangling a 17-year-old girl and burying her in a backyard, and then executing his girlfriend to keep her from going to police.

An Alpena County jury deliberated for five hours on Thursday before convicting Brad Srebnik, 37, of first-degree murder in the 2021 deaths of Brynn Bills and Abby Hill.

The verdict followed a two-week trial in which prosecutors and police detailed how Srebnik strangled Bills to death in an Alpena home, then buried her body in the backyard of his friend, Joshua Wirgau.

"Yes, justice was served, but it wasn't the justice deserved," said Duane Bills, Brynn's father, in a statement to The Detroit News after the verdict. "It's a sad shame that Michigan doesn't have the death penalty for senseless acts like what happened to my daughter."

When police zeroed in on Srebnik and Hill as possible suspects in Bills’ disappearance about a month after the teen's death in 2021, Srebnik killed Hill in a secluded wooded area, fearing she would tell police about Bills’ murder, witnesses said.

The jury took five hours to return a guilty verdict on two counts of first-degree murder, one charge of mutilation of a body and weapons charges. In Michigan, a first-degree murder conviction requires a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Wirgau, 36, testified against Srebnik as part of a plea deal offered by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, which prosecuted the case. Wirgau is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 22 with an expected sentence of no fewer than 15 years in prison for helping to bury Bills’ body and contributing to Hill’s death.

As the verdict was read, some expressed shock at the violence of the crimes and how a family-friendly, rural community such as Alpena could be associated with drug trafficking, murder and more.

They echoed the words of Wirgau, explaining on the stand why he struggled to believe his lifelong friend could commit murder: “Not very many things like that happen around here.”

Bills disappeared in early August 2021, shortly before her 18th birthday. Some time earlier, struggling with a methamphetamine addiction, the girl moved from the small town of Mio to Alpena. There, she couch-surfed at the homes of numerous people with known connections to meth trafficking, according to police reports.

Forming a friendship with the 31-year-old Hill, Bills left with her for a night of getting high and relaxing. She never returned. Police said Hill brought Bills to her boyfriend, Srebnik, who beat and strangled the girl until she died.

Srebnik then enlisted Wirgau and Hill to help him dig a hole behind Wirgau’s rural home, place the body inside, and partially burn it to destroy DNA evidence before burying it with dirt and a cement slab, according to testimony.

When Bills did not respond to birthday messages, her family reported her missing. The Michigan State Police began an intensive search for Hill, who they knew picked Bills up the night the girl disappeared.

They eventually linked Hill and Srebnik to a Lake County family with connections to the Pagans Motorcycle Club, designated by the U.S. Department of Justice as an outlaw motorcycle gang and among the most dangerous motorcycle clubs in the country.

In mid-September, police stopped Hill and Srebnik in Srebnik’s distinctive orange Hummer H3 and arrested them on unrelated charges.

Srebnik arranged to pay Hill’s bond using money he earned selling cocaine in Alpena, and his Pagans' contacts put up their motorcycles as collateral for his release. Once freed, Srebnik collected Hill and Wirgau, and the trio made panicked plans to either escape or, as police were warned in one interview, go out in a “blaze of glory.”

Srebnik called an ex-girlfriend in hysterics, asking if his child was safe. Wirgau texted his wife, urging her to get out of their house and using words like, “I lived a good life” and “kiss my kids goodbye,” according to police reports.

When Srebnik, Wirgau and Hill stole several guns from a gun safe owned by Wirgau’s wife, they left behind lines of cocaine, possibly from the stash Wirgau kept hidden in the house to sell for Srebnik, police said.

Instead of fleeing the area, the threesome hid in the woods. They then took shelter at the nearby home of Bruce Kinsey, a friend of Srebnik’s since the two of them a decade earlier organized a small band of thieves who broke into hunting camps in nearby Montmorency County to steal guns and other goods to sell in Alpena, according to police reports.

Wirgau said Srebnik physically abused and choked Hill when she tried to leave. Srebnik considered Hill a liability and, declaring she needed to go, orchestrated a trip to a wooded property north of Alpena, where he shot her, Wirgau said.

Three days later, police dug up Bills’ body, buried eight weeks before. About two weeks after that, acting on information from Wirgau, police found Hill’s body in the woods.

Defense attorney Patrick Cherry on Thursday posed an alternative scenario to the jury in his closing argument. A woman known to hate Bills ― later convicted of operating the drug house where Bills and Hill may have met ― could have killed the girl and framed Srebnik, Cherry suggested.

“That is a load of garbage,” replied Danielle Hagaman-Clark, head of the Attorney General’s Criminal Justice Bureau, who prosecuted the murders in conjunction with Alpena County Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski.

When the jury concluded deliberations, Srebnik refused to leave the Alpena County Jail to return to the courthouse. He turned off a device that would have let him appear virtually for the reading of the verdict.

Srebnik's sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.