"She fabricated it big in Detroit. She was built-in for that," Tom Dowlin said. "That's aloof how we anticipation about her. She was the aboriginal to go out and do what she said she would do."
As an affiliated Suzanne Wangler, she appeared to accept it all: a career as an accepted television account anchor, a bedmate who was an above academy quarterback, four children.
But at some point, Wangler's activity went into charge less fall, with a divorce, debt and several arrests, including one aftermost anniversary on an abstraction charge. It concluded with a blast aftermost weekend back Wangler's mother begin her blind from an axle in the basement of her Royal Oak home, aloof arctic of Detroit.
Wangler's aegis attorney, Carl Marlinga, said he was anxious back they batten at her arraignment.
"I said `Are you depressed? Are you suicidal?'" Marlinga said. "She aloof affectionate of laughed it off and said `don’t be silly.'"
But Wangler's activity was annihilation to accomplish ablaze of. Court and added abstracts acknowledge about $166,000 in banking judgments adjoin her, assorted cartage citations and driver's authorization suspensions.
On Feb. 20, she was arraigned on accuse that she embezzled added than $149,000 over four months from a man she briefly dated. The 43-year-old additionally was answerable with burglary by conversion.
The charges stemmed from checks cashed in 2006 at a check-cashing business. If convicted, Wangler faced 10 years in Bastille on anniversary charge.
Police said it was 32 degrees central her home back she was arrested. The abode was in foreclosure.
"When I apprehend about all of the bad, it's so sad because bodies don't apperceive her. She had such a huge heart," above acquaintance Jenni Wilson said. "She was fantastic, actually the activity of the party. She was so abounding of joy, funny and acute and so ambitious, one of those bodies who were activity to accomplish it in life."
Suzanne Pagella was an affiliate of the acclamation band and wrote for the aerial academy newspaper. She graduated in 1982 and left the small community about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh for Ohio State University.
Wangler became an accustomed face in the Detroit breadth in the 1990s at UPN 50 and WDIV-TV.
She affiliated above University of Michigan quarterback John Wangler and aggregate a cookbook, "A-Maize-Ing Tailgating: Wolverine Cuisine."
"She told me her apple came afar on Dec. 9, 1999, back she knew there was acceptable to be a divorce," said Marlinga, who had accepted Suzanne Wangler from her aboriginal canicule as a reporter. "She told me she never absolutely got over it."
Wangler larboard WDIV-TV in 2000 and eventually began affairs annuities.
Her annulment became final in 2001, and about bristles years after she was arrested on allegations of aggravating to leave a bazaar with a barrow of food. Wangler completed a court-ordered aberration affairs and the allegation after was dismissed, said Edward Cibor, warrants analysis arch for the Oakland County prosecutor's office.
She additionally was arrested aftermost summer on an allegation of operating beneath the access with an accessory in her vehicle, Cibor said. Wangler pleaded no challenge and had been on acquittal at the time of her death, he said.
She alternate to TV account in September back she became a account ballast at WLAJ-TV in Lansing, application the on-air name Suzanne Page. But the abstraction accuse affected her to resign.
"She was authoritative a comeback," Marlinga said. "She was accepting her bottom in the door."
Marlinga said him aftermost batten with Wangler on the night of Feb. 22.
"She said she was activity to a job fair on Saturday and that she would accord me a call," he said. "I anticipation that was abundant account and I took it as a hopeful sign.
"I told her to draw on her Catholic faith. `Forgive yourself and you'll appear out of this activity great.' That was the aftermost pep allocution I gave her."
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