Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 19

pi ifijiu raw to 0 nt HELP PAGE WORKING GENERAL NEWS DETROIT FREE PRESS psps 5-10 Call The Way We Live: 222-6610 LMJIiirtei rs GGI1H Jack Brown was described by friends as a good-natured, well-liked, Ypsilanti businessman. On Jan. 11, 1984, a killer walked into his office and shot him In the neck. Crime's solution worth $30,000 By JENNIFER HOLMES Free Press Staff Writer Jo Brown had told her supervisor at the University of Michigan Hospital that she wouldn't be in Jan. 1 1.

For the first anniversary of her ex-husband's death, she would be in Manistee the place he had wanted his ashes strewn. Early in the morning that Friday, she left her Ypsilanti frame house, drove to Birmingham for a meeting of SHARE (Survivors of Homicide and Related Effects), and then headed north. She thought about the man who had been her husband more than 20 years, the father of her four children. She had divorced him, yes, but still was grieving over his brutal, and unexplained, death. Who were his killers? Why did they do it? "You give us a 'why and we'll give you a the police kept telling her.

The Brown family had spent an exasperating year running down leads and offering rewards to anyone who could lead police to the killers. But they found nothing. Jo Brown's trip to Manistee simply was intended to be her private memorial to Jack Brown, but out of it came a wave of new resolve. She would organize a new reward, bigger and juicier than any of the ones offered before. can't give up, she thought.

There must be someone out there who knows. If it's money they want, it's money they'll get." She didn't know it then, but within a week she 'would raise $30,000 from his family members. That will be the reward for anyone who, by midnight tonight, contacts Ypsilanti police with information about his killer or the motive for Jack Brown's killing. 'f- hat price love? Try biibbles and a rose at S55 The Moet Chandon annual Luxury Index has been released, just in time for Valentine's Day. Thank heavens! We still have time today to shop.

Moet Chandon, of course, are the wonderful French people who invented Dom Perignon champagne by accident (according to legend) sometime around the first decade of this century. They finally let us taste it in 1921. The world fell in love at first sip. Like many swell things, Dom Perignon is pricey. According to the Luxury Index, it costs $55 for the 750 milliliter bottle.

In West Germany it costs about 1 80 marks; in Britain, about 50 pounds; in Italy, about 1 10,220 lira. None of that matters, I just decided to figure it out. For reasons Moet Chandon can't explain, but never questions, Dom Perignon has become the champagne standard of the world. This is a little silly since Italian, German, American and other vintners make excellent champagnes. And even among the French champagne producers, Talttinger, Roederer and good old Bollinger (Prince Charles' favorite) certainly are not dishwater.

Ours is not to question -Some things are beyond logic, however. Dom Perignon reigns in its class. That's a comfort to us It's a comfort because when times are tough and the IRS gouges, the furnace dies and the car suffers an expensive breakdown, all at the same time, good old Dom Perignon is nearby to cheer us up, Compared with the cost of taxes, heat and wheels, it's a bargain, too. You don't have to drink the wine, of course. You can get zonked much more inexpensively, if that's your intent.

What you do with Dom Perignon is buy it in order to have it, like good pearls. Perhaps you share it with someone on some special occasion, such as Valentine's Day, when you wear your good pearls. Otherwise, you store it my experts say up to 10 years, on its side, in a cool, dark place and look at it's divinely shaped bottle and label from time to time. It tells you no matter how the bills are piling up that you are a person of quality. No one has a better champagne in their cupboard.

If Henry Ford should come to call, you have something quite adequate to serve. Henry Ford, piffle. Should the Queen of England come to call! (For Prince Charles, better get Bollingers.) But, I digress. As they say, it's all relative As noted earlier, the Moet Chandon Luxury Index says Dom Perignon is priced at $55 this year, the same as last year. A round-trip ticket, New York to Paris, on the Concorde, by comparison, is up three percent, to $4,244 per person.

A full-length mink coat of fine quality (would you want less?) is up 15 percent, to $12,650. A man's Rolex watch the Oyster perpetual day-date model, with President-style bracelet jumped 11.3 percent, to $8,850. Dom Perignon, at $55, is holding the line against inflation. But I have discovered something even better. In Detroit, dear loves, that perfectly swell bottle of bubbles and dreams can be had for a mere $49.95.

Couldn't you just die! With the $5.05 cash saving, one can purchase a single, perfect, long-stemmed, red rose plus a sentimental Valentine card ($1 ought to do it). So, you see, the very best of everything can be yours to give him or her for no more than you would have spent for that dumb sweater you were considering. Let's go shop! i Free Press Photo by PAULINE LUBEN5 Jo Brown of Ypsilanti hopes a new reward will entice someone to offer knowledge of the one-year-old killing of her ex-husband. local newspaper accounts of Jack Brown murder, friends and associates described him as a good-natured, well-liked, highly ethical Ypsi The suspects: ij'i' 40-plus years, 5-foot-8 or 37-plus years. 6-foot-2 or 5-foot-9, medium build.

6-foot-3, 200-plus 1 63-1 65 pounds, brown pounds, light blond hair, eyes, dark hair. lanti businessman. For 17 years he had worked in a small real-estate and insurance office, Ehman and Greenstreet, which had been in the family of Jo Greenstreet Brown, his first wife, since 1922. He bought the business from his former father-in-law in 1979, three years after he and Jo Brown were divorced. He was gunned down in his office across the street from the police station by two men who police say behaved with the calm, detached manner of professional hit men.

One held a gun on a secretary while the other shot Brown just once. Then they fled. Police found the safe open, but nothing removed. The only clue was the words the killer spoke to Brown before he shot him: "You think you're smart, don't you?" Within days of the murder, more than 100 tips poured in to Ypsilanti police. Of them, only a handful were good.

And like all roads leading to Rome, all the good leads led to the same place a dead end. Police, relatives and private detectives the family hired exhausted all the obvious whys: mistaken identity, disgruntled insurance claimant, gypped real estate client, jilted lover, disgruntled husbandlover, overanxious beneficiaries, financial difficulties, drug connections even suicide. The reward: -aid b7 "rfmJ i tl Until midnight tonight, anyone who calls Ypsilanti police, 483-9510, with information about 'Jack Brown's killers or about the motive for his death will be eligible for a $30,000 reward. Under a secret-witness procedure, a tipster must give police a six-digit number. If and when the murderer is arrested and convicted, the tipster will be able to claim the reward by referring to the number.

"Whoever it is may be too scared or too intimidated to speak up," says Jo Brown, Jack Brown's ex-wife. "We're hoping this will force them off the fence." Clark Brown now works in the same office where his father was killed. See MURDER, Page 3B Spic and Span is awash with diamonds Guindon's Detioit Mm UK It jr mm I S21 I I said Kip Knight, marketing manager for Spic and Span at Procter Gamble's Cincinnati headquarters. "The 60th anniversary is traditionally known as the 'Diamond We thought about diamonds. We thought about Cracker Jack.

This is what we came up with." Knight would not release any sales figures, but said the campaign is already "the most successful promotion the company's ever run Beyond sales, the publicity can't be beat." THE DIAMONDS are in 54-ounce boxes and 28-ounce bottles of Spic and Span, which will sell for about $3.50 and $2.50, respectively. Stones in the boxes are wrapped in small plastic bags. didn't want customers to have to sift through each box," Knight said.) Stones in the bottle float freely in the amber-colored liquid. Both containers carry labels screaming, "Free One-Third Carat Diamond Inside," so the suspense is not whether one has a gem, but whether it's a real one. Company officials say chances of finding a real diamond are one in 4,500.

Most of the stones are cubic zirconia, a popular high-quality diamond simulant developed in France about 20 years ago. Procter Gamble has an arrangement with the Jewelers of America a retail association with 15,000 members nationwide, for consumers to have the. gems authenticated free of charge. Retail value of each fake is about $5. Procter Gamble officials said they braced themselves for possible scenes in grocery stores as glitter-crazed shoppers plundered shelves, but so far no incidents have been reported.

By LYNNELL MICKELSEN Free Press Staff Writer It's a new twist on the old Cracker Jack trick a free prize in every box. But forget the whistles and plastic magnifying glasses. This time the prizes are diamonds. Real ones. Five hundred diamonds each worth about $600 will soon be sitting on grocery-store shelves nationwide.

To find them, consumers have to search through approximately seven million pounds of Spic and Span cleanser. To make the hunt a bit trickier, the 500 real diamonds are scattered with 2 54 million fakes that look like the real thing. Only a jeweler will know for sure. This may seem like a lot of work for diamonds the size of a split pea, but seven million poundsorf Spic and Span make a lot of soap sales. That's why Procter Gamble executives are delighted with their new campaign to celebrate Spic and Span's 60th anniversary.

Although the boxes and bottles have not yet appeared in most local stores, Bob McLellan, Proctor Gamble district sales manager, says 250,000 units should arrive in the seven-county metropolitan area within a few days. According to the odds, McLellan said, about 55 diamonds should be on local shelves. SPIC AND SPAN started out in Saginaw in 1925 with sugar-beet wax as the secret ingredient that left the floor shiny. The local company was bought by Procter and Gamble in 1945; the sugar beets were phased out long ago. Because Spic and Span is still one of the company's most popular products, its birth is being celebrated in a big way.

"Wexa'me up with the idea at a brainstorming session," ttttW" mtiwsim UiWUHUUSUIMttS Spic and Span is celebrating its 60th anniversary by giving away 500 real and 2Vt million fake diamonds. "We thought in certain metropolitan areas, we might have trouble," Knight said. "But actually, in order to get to the stones people would have to pour the entire contents of a bottle or box into the aisle. There's no way they could be subtle about it. If that kind of behavior is going on in the, store, the problem isn't just diamonds." i It's depressing for hipsters to hear "Lullaby of Birdland" piped into an elevator.

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