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Daniel Clay was sentenced to life in prison without parole on July 13, 2017, for felony murder in the death of Chelsea Bruck, 22, of Maybee, Michigan. Circuit Judge Daniel White also sentenced him to 40 to 60 months for concealing the death of an individual, telling him, "You're a liar, a rapist and a killer."

Bruck was last seen alive at a Halloween party in Frenchtown Township, Monroe County, on the night of October 25, 2014. She wore a homemade Poison Ivy costume: a green leotard with leaves and flowers, a wig, leggings and flats. Clay, then 26, also attended. Between about 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., Bruck asked several people to borrow their phones, saying her friends had left her. She never got home, and her parents reported her missing on October 27, 2014.

One of her shoes was found on private land about 2.3 miles from the party on March 22, 2015. About a week later, her leotard and wig were found in an abandoned building on Peters Road in Flat Rock. On April 24, 2015, a man working on his land on Briar Hill Road in Ash Township found her skeletal remains covered with tree limbs and leaves. Dental records confirmed her identity. A Wayne County deputy chief medical examiner testified that she died of blunt force trauma to the face, with fractures of the orbital bones, jawbone and teeth. A state police scientist testified that the leotard straps were twisted and pulled apart and the crotch torn open.

There was no suspect until a stain on the leotard was processed for DNA. Clay's profile was in the state database from a May 2016 arrest on a larceny from a person charge, dismissed on May 24, 2016. His profile matched the stain on July 18, 2016. He was arrested on July 22, 2016, and questioned that day in a recorded interrogation.

Early in the interrogation, a detective told Clay he had come up in a tip. Clay said he had been at the party for about two hours. When the DNA came up, he said that if his DNA was on her he thought he needed a lawyer, then said he did not want one. Later, he asked whether a lawyer could be brought in right then and was told no. The courts held neither was a clear request for counsel. According to the Court of Appeals, Clay first said he had neither seen nor spoken to Bruck, then that he had seen her, then that he had talked to her briefly, then that they had sex once in the back seat of his vehicle and parted. His final account was that he saw her walking along the road, intoxicated, offered a ride, and they stopped and had sex a second time. He said she bit and slapped him and asked him to choke her, that she went limp after 20 to 30 seconds, that he tried to revive her, and that he panicked and hid her body in a wooded area.

Clay was charged with second-degree murder on July 25, 2016; the case went to the jury on open murder. His trial began on May 8, 2017, in Monroe County Circuit Court. He testified that he offered Bruck a ride after seeing her on the road and that she died accidentally during consensual sex involving choking. He denied striking her. On May 16, 2017, the jury convicted him of felony murder, which Michigan law classes as first-degree murder, with third-degree criminal sexual conduct as the underlying felony, and of concealing the death of an individual. He was not convicted of premeditated murder.

On January 8, 2019, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed (People v Clay, No. 339659), rejecting challenges to the evidence, the DNA retention, his statements, the photographs and pretrial publicity. The Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal on March 3, 2020. In August 2016, Clay had been charged in a separate case with home invasion and first-degree criminal sexual conduct involving another woman. Prison records show a jury conviction in that case for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, for an offence on June 9, 2016, with a sentence of 39 to 60 years imposed on August 29, 2019. He is held at Chippewa Correctional Facility.

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Part 2 of 3 of the recording described above.

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Part 3 of 3 of the recording described above.