Jurors heard about a death first seen as natural, then recast as homicide through autopsy findings, recorded statements and a detailed travel trail.
GRAND HAVEN, Mich. — The murder case against Randall Alan Grinwis was built piece by piece in Ottawa County, with prosecutors using an autopsy, repeated confessions, bank and travel details and detective testimony to persuade a jury that Donna Hyma’s death was second-degree murder.
That structure mattered because the case did not begin as an obvious homicide. Hyma, 63, was found dead Jan. 1, 2024, during a welfare check at the home she shared with Grinwis in Zeeland Township. At first, according to testimony cited in trial coverage, there was an initial belief that she may have died of natural causes. A later autopsy changed the direction of the investigation by concluding that Hyma died of asphyxiation. Once that finding came in, the death of a woman on a couch in a manufactured home community became the center of a homicide file that would eventually stretch across two states and into an Ottawa County courtroom more than two years later.
Prosecutors then turned to Grinwis’ own statements to fill in the mechanics of the killing. Jurors heard recorded interviews in which he admitted that he had argued with Hyma about living arrangements, placed his forearm across her neck and pushed down until she stopped breathing. The phrase “I snapped” appeared repeatedly in those recordings. So did his claim that he did not know why he lost control. But the prosecution used the same recordings for a different point: not only that Grinwis admitted the killing, but that he described enough detail to show pressure, position and duration. Detective David Bytwerk testified that he had Grinwis demonstrate the movement on him during an interview, allowing investigators to compare his account with what they had seen in crime-scene video and physical evidence from the home.
The larceny charge gave prosecutors another factual thread. Trial testimony showed that Hyma’s brother had asked that $1,800 be withdrawn from his account and placed in a lockbox while he recovered elsewhere after surgery. Bank statements showed the money was withdrawn the morning of Jan. 1, and Hyma texted her brother that it had been placed in the box. Police later said the lockbox was found in the back of Grinwis’ vehicle, supporting the allegation that he took it after Hyma’s death. That evidence did more than support the theft count. It also helped prosecutors explain how Grinwis financed his flight and why the hours after the killing looked, in their telling, less like confusion and more like escape.
The prosecution’s timeline after the death was unusually specific. Medema told jurors that Grinwis called 911 from Interstate 196 in Van Buren County at least 90 minutes after Hyma died to request a welfare check. He then threw away his phone, stopped at a casino in Michigan City, Indiana, drove to Chicago and flew from O’Hare International Airport to Las Vegas. On Jan. 15, 2024, he confessed there. A month later, Ottawa County detectives flew out to question him again after obtaining a warrant. The state used this travel trail to argue consciousness of guilt. The defense, by contrast, faced the difficulty of minimizing a sequence that included leaving the scene, spending stolen money and making repeated admissions to police.
The legal choices before jurors were narrower by the end of trial than at the start. Grinwis had initially faced an open murder charge, which could have allowed a first-degree murder conviction and mandatory life without parole. But by the third day of trial, according to court reporting, the prosecution and defense agreed the highest homicide option jurors would consider was second-degree murder. Jurors were also instructed on voluntary manslaughter. That mattered because the defense could still urge a view of the killing as sudden and drunken rather than malicious enough for murder. The jury rejected that path. After a three-day trial, it deliberated less than two hours before convicting Grinwis of second-degree murder and larceny.
At sentencing, Judge Karen Miedema accepted the prosecution’s broader account of the case. She said the killing was avoidable and told Grinwis he had chosen “a very drastic and very evil option.” A prosecutor added that the attack lasted long enough for him to change course, saying, “This was not a snap.” Family members then supplied the final layer of the record, describing Hyma’s death as both a killing and a betrayal by someone they had known for years. Grinwis declined to address the court before receiving a sentence of 32 1/2 to 90 years in prison.
What remains in the case file is a model of how circumstantial details and direct admissions can lock together: a revised cause of death, recorded confessions, a reconstructed body position, a missing lockbox, a westbound route and a jury verdict reached quickly once those pieces were set in order.
Author note: Last updated April 19, 2026.