Couple Charged In Attempted Murder

A 27-year-old Interlochen woman told police she thought it was strange that Renee May Huckle-John wanted to visit and bring her food while she was a patient at Munson Medical Center. She didn’t know Huckle-John well and she had only met her boyfriend, Steven Matthew Sulz, once or twice.

Now Charlevoix resident Huckle-John, 32, and Traverse City resident Sulz, 32, face life in prison on charges of attempted murder, accused of attempting to cause the woman to overdose.

The couple were arraigned Wednesday in the 86th District Court in Traverse City and were jailed in lieu of $2 million bond. Both are four-time habitual offenders with multiple drug crimes on their records.

Huckle-John and Sulz visited the woman March 19 and the next thing the woman recalls, she told Traverse City police, is waking up as doctors were treating her for an opiate overdose. Investigators determined the woman was administered a near-lethal dose of Fentanyl.

Huckle-John was arrested soon after the incident in a traffic stop. Sulz was arrested the next day in a Traverse Narcotics Team raid of a Long Lake Township residence. The victim had been charged in Grand Traverse County March 16 with forgery, uttering and publishing and larceny.