John Norman Collins Trolls Strike Back

Early on in my writing of Terror in Ypsilanti, my primary goal was to pay a debt to history and restore the real names of the victims which were changed in the novelized treatment The Michigan Murders. John Norman Collins's name was also changed to mask his identity--a courtesy he does not deserve. Many of the people in law enforcement who worked on these cases and others in the know were dissatisfied with Edward Keyes's version. Too many assumptions and presumptions.

Even John Collins criticized the liberties Keyes took with the descriptions of his family and his motivation for committing these crimes--his mother. Collins claims he never read the Keyes book, but how else could he comment on it? In Terror in Ypsilanti, I went easy on Collins's family. They never killed anybody.

Over the five years it took to research and write this book, I received nasty emails from a number of people using fictitious names. For example, one goes by the handle Disrobing Furball. Some complaints came from Collins acolytes and some from fraternity brothers who took exception with any re-examination of these cases. Some few of these guys have reason to feel uncomfortable. They knew or suspected Collins of these crimes early on but remained silent.

Now that my nonfiction treatment of this subject matter is out, these same people have surfaced on my Amazon book page giving me particularly nasty reviews. They stand out because my reviews are overwhelmingly positive, but these have a distinct pernicious quality and are thinly disguised personal attacks. I would regard their comments more seriously if they were informed, and they had placed their real names on their reviews. But they hide behind pseudonyms. All I can say is consider the source.

In a recent Detroit News article [September 27, 2016], Collins claims he hasn't read my book but is quoted as saying it is "HEARSAY AND SPECULATION." For five years, he has refused to speak or meet with me but uses a go-between when he wants to communicate--knowing I'll get word of it. The woman he has chosen for this duty has been corresponding with Collins for years and speaks with him every Tuesday over the phone for fifteen minutes. She and I have been communicating for the last several years and have developed a cordial relationship.

Last Tuesday, Collins phoned and told her he was "Super Pissed! But my Ypsilanti and Center Line friends have my back." Now, I know the source of the toxic reviews. As an author, criticism comes with the territory, and I expect to get my fair share, but personal attacks are a horse of a different color. I welcome all fair and honest remarks and reviews.

Amazon Terror in Ypsilanti page: https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Ypsilanti-Norman-Collins-Unmasked/dp/1627874038/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477158434&sr=1-1&keywords=terror+in+ypsilanti

The Missing John Norman Collins Trial Transcripts

Dr. Paul McGlynn and I--February 2016.

Last week, I flew to Florida to visit my former English professor from Eastern Michigan University--Dr. Paul McGlynn. He earned his doctorate degree at Rice University in Texas and taught at Eastern Michigan for thirty-seven years, including the years during the Washtenaw County sex-slayings in the late 1960s.

We hadn't seen one another for forty years, but I knew Paul McGlynn had attended every court session of the John Norman Collins' trial and taken notes of the proceedings. His goal was to write a novel loosely based on the Collins' trial.

Author Edward Keyes was fresh off his success with the novel and movie The French Connection. As part of a multi-book contract, Keyes learned of the Collins' trial and the unsolved murders. He contracted with Simon and Schuster to write The Michigan Murders.

McGlynn read about Keyes' project in the Ann Arbor News, contacted him, and offered to help research his book. For an undisclosed stipend, McGlynn gave Keyes access to his trial notes. Much of what Keyes wrote regarding the trial comes directly from McGlynn's notes, and he gives McGlynn an acknowledgement in the introduction to The Michigan Murders.

Edward Keyes made an unfortunate editorial decision to use pseudonyms for the seven victims, their killer, and the witnesses. The overall effect was to obscure their identities and cloud the history behind these cases. Forty years later, people who lived through those times and were familiar with people involved with this case become confused after reading Keyes' novelization.

A debt is owed to history to get the facts straight. The Collins' trial was the longest and most expensive criminal proceeding in Washtenaw County history. After Collins' lawyers exhausted every appeal, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the constitutionality of Collins' life sentence for first-degree murder. The high court returned the trial transcripts on April 19th, 1974. After that date, no mention of the transcripts is made in the county record log book.

After my researcher Ryan M. Place made an exhaustive statewide Freedom of Information search, the only response we received was from the Washtenaw County Clerk saying the records were "purged" in the mid-seventies. Why the county officials purged the trial transcripts is unknown. Surely, the historical significance of the case warrants that the public record be preserved somewhere--either in print or digitally.

Whether these documents were shredded for shelf space, misplaced through institutional neglect, or destroyed willfully to obfuscate the public record, the bottom line is they are missing. Meeting with Paul McGlynn was a unique opportunity to speak with someone who attended every court session. Collins is the only other person I know who was in court for all of the sessions, but he isn't talking.

My treatment of the trial is based on hundreds of vintage newspaper articles and interviews with some of the trial participants. The quoted dialogue from the daily reports is surprisingly detailed and helped me reconstruct the lost Collins' trial and the legal maneuvering that went on inside and outside the courtroom. Thank goodness for the press.

I asked Paul McGlynn if he would read my manuscript and question or comment on anything. I was most interested in his response to the trial. Here is what he wrote: "I'm wondering how you got the details of the trial so exactly. Did you finally manage to round up a transcript? It reads like a transcript, though of course much abbreviated. It brought back many memories of the long hours spent in the courtroom. Kudos."

East Cross Street/Depot Town/Water Tower

Rather than dress-up this dark episode in Ypsilanti's history as narrative nonfiction, I decided to take a terse journalistic approach and retell the events as they happened. The facts and conflicts are enough to carry the story line without manufacturing melodrama.

With any luck, Terror in Ypsilanti: John Norman Collins Unmasked should be available in July 2016. I decided to change the title to make the book more suitable for internet searches. 

 

 Terror In Ypsilanti

Why I Chose To Write About John Norman Collins

Even though it has been almost fifty years since the Washtenaw County murder cases, more than once I've been asked what my personal connection is to them and John Norman Collins. Why do I feel the need to disturb the ghosts of the past and resurrect the pain of the living? To that, I say that the seven innocent victims were real people who deserve to be remembered. 

I believe Elie Wiesel's quote from his Holocaust memoir, Night, is fitting because it addresses this attitude: "To forget them - would be like killing them twice." We don't get to choose our history, and it is up to the living to speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves.

These 1967-1969 serial murders terrorized the college towns of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, Michigan, directly affecting the lives of thousands of Washtenaw County residents. What most people remember about those times is based on the hasty novelization by Edward Keyes, The Michigan Murders.

Besides changing the names of the victims, the witnesses, and their presumed murderer which obscured their real identities, assumptions were made about the backstory to these ugly slayings without contacting people associated with these cases. 

What Keyes should be given credit for is keeping the essential facts and circumstances of these cases intact. Were it not for his novelization, this dark chapter of Michigan history would have vanished with time.

But his work came out only six years after these things happened. He relied heavily on official reports and the copious notes of Eastern Michigan University English Professor Paul McGlynn, who attended all of the court sessions.

Decades of hindsight combined with new living history accounts makes it possible to create a more accurate picture of those times and circumstances and place those events in some meaningful historical context.

Over the years, because of ambiguities in the novel and the absence of factual information about these cases, an urban legend has grown up around John Norman Collins making him a folk hero in some circles. People who were not even born then or old enough to know any better believe the Karen Sue Beineman trial was a travesty of justice.

They show up on the internet comment threads talking about how Collins was hounded by desperate police, persecuted by vengeful prosecutors, and brought low by unfair media coverage. They contend that circumstantial evidence doesn't prove anything and that the Michigan Department of Corrections uses Collins as their poster boy for crime in Michigan. Rather than imprison an innocent man, the mantra goes, the police should be out there looking for the real murderer.

Each of these talking points comes directly from the John Norman Collins Playbook, a product of Collins' many attempts to manipulate the media and mold public opinion from behind bars. Unbelievably after forty-five years, Collins still has the power to cast an evil aura and infect people's minds.

For the above reasons, I was drawn to this subject matter. There is a vacuum in the historical record that needs to be filled. But I have other reasons for writing The Rainy Day Murders, personal reasons.