John Norman Collins--the Wayside Theater--and The Boston Strangler Movie

John Norman Collins in 1969 and 2014

As I edit The Rainy Day Murders manuscript--material which is either too broad or doesn't advance the story of the Washtenaw County, Michigan murders--is being removed. Rather than reject these portions out of hand, I have decided to rework and repurpose some of them in my blog.

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Early on in my research, I interviewed someone who rode motorcycles with accused serial killer John Norman Collins. He asked that I refer to him by his biking nickname. Dundee said that he and several others rode with Collins--who always took the lead position--and toured the back country north of Ypsilanti. This was the area where six of seven bodies of young women were deposited over a two year period. "Collins knew the area like the back of his hand," Dundee said.

I asked him if he had ever seen Collins pick up young women while cruising with him. "Yes, Collins liked riding with girls."

"What was his come-on to these girls?

"When he spotted someone who caught his eye, he'd drive up next to her and gun the bike's engine a few times to get her attention. Then he would grin and ask if she wanted a ride. He was a handsome, clean-cut guy who worked out with weights. Sometimes a girl would hop on the back of his bike, and he'd gun his engine and speed off--usually splitting from the pack. Sometimes John would only make a date or get a phone number.

"How often would this happen?'

"Occasionally. John was popular with the ladies," Dundee grinned.

"Did any of these ladies turn up dead?"

His grin disappeared, "Not that I know of."

"Do you think Collins was guilty of killing any of these girls?

Dundee's answer disappointed me.

"No. I don't believe he killed any of them."

"Not even Karen Sue Beineman, the coed Collins was found guilty of murdering?"

"No."

When I asked why not, he had nothing of substance to say other than John was a scapegoat for the county sheriff. It was obvious that--even after forty-five years--Dundee felt uncomfortable with the subject matter. I was hoping for more incriminating information about Collins. I asked if he had anything else he could tell me about his friend. Then, he shared this anecdote with me.

Tony Curtis as The Boston Strangler

In October of 1968, he and Collins went to the Wayside Theater located on Washtenaw Boulevard--between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor--to see Tony Curtis in The Boston Strangler. The movie had just been released and was being shown in the new state-of-the-art theater which could seat one thousand patrons. The Wayside had the biggest screen in the county at that time--56' wide by 24' tall.

Dundee told me that when the movie was over, John was clearly excited and talkative. "John loved the cool split screen effects where you saw the killer’s view and the victim’s view. We went into the lobby afterwards," Dundee said. "We talked about going someplace to eat when John asked if I would stay and watch the movie again with him.

"I told Collins that Tony Curtis’ performance freaked me out because I liked seeing Curtis in comedies. The role of Albert DeSalvo was too dark and disturbing for me." Dundee took off and left Collins to view the movie a second time alone. What Collins did after the film is anybody’s guess.

Dundee remembered Collins remarking with pride how he thought he resembled Tony Curtis in that role--his looks and mannerisms.

“If you watch The Boston Strangler," Dundee said, "the movie very clearly leaves room for a split personality interpretation. Also, Albert DeSalvo was never taken to trial or convicted of any of the crimes for which he was accused. The movie’s theme was that he got away with all those murders.”

It should be noted for the record that Albert DeSalvo was recently found to be the Strangler when DNA evidence--recovered in 2013 from his exhumed body--proved he killed Mary Sullivan in 1964.

    

Albert DeSalvo in mental institution with handmade choker chain.

It seems clear that John Norman Collins found inspiration and a kindred spirit in Albert DeSalvo--the Boston Strangler--but not motivation. He had plenty of that already. By the time The Boston Strangler movie was released, two of the Washtenaw County murders had already been committed. Regardless, the movie undeniably resonated with Collins.

Psychic Peter Hurkos Explains his Gift

When a serial killer has been at large in a community for an extended period of time, the public loses faith in local law enforcement and begins to look for its deliverance from other quarters.

The first manifestations of this are usually prayer vigils and crusades calling on divine intervention. If the killer continues to slaughter victims and eludes police long enough, calls for supernatural assistance inevitably arise.

The Jack the Ripper case is the most famous serial killer case in history, but by no means the first or the worst. In the Whitechapel area of London's East End, five women were butchered and left in streets and alleyways, and one was viciously mutilated in her bed. Then, the Ripper vanished into history.

Noted British spiritualist, medium, preacher, and Fleet Street journalist, Robert James Lees believed he saw visions of Jack the Ripper and went to police with that information. Scotland Yard turned him away thinking he was on a lunatic fringe. For a short while, Lees was himself a suspect in the Ripper case.

Sooner or later, psychics turn up in virtually every serial killer case. The first person to bill himself as a "police psychic" was Dutchman Pieter van der Hurk, known in America as Peter Hurkos. 

When the Stone of Scone was stolen from Westminster Abbey in 1950, legend has it that Hurkos told police that the Scottish relic was stolen as a prank but would soon be found. Just over a week's time later, the Stone was recovered. The French press had a field day with the story.

Hurkos received international press coverage, which made him an instant celebrity in Europe. By the end of the decade, he migrated to the United States and developed a supper club act based on his notoriety in solving crimes for police around Europe. Most of his claims were anecdotal and lacked official documentation.

In 1961, Peter Hurkos, with the help of  V. John Burggraf, wrote his autobiography simply titled Psychic. He tells of the origin of his gift of "second sight," a fall from a four story building, and he proceeds to give numerous examples of his more notable cases with "extrasensory perception" (ESP).

Hurkos tells his readers early in his story that his strange gift has baffled and astounded scientists and researchers throughout the world. "I am what parapsychologists refer to as a psychic. I am sensitive to people and events that concern them," he purports. Without giving any names or sources, Hurkos claims, "I have been told by scientists that my psychic gift is, so far as they know, the most highly developed in the world."

"I can read vibrations through a phenomenon known as psychometry. Another way to look at it is divining facts through physical contact with an object or its owner. Psychometry is only one of the many facets of my gift of ESP, the famous 'Sixth Sense' of history and legend. I also have the gift of 'precognition'."

Peter Hurkos cites in his book others from history who have had "inner vision." He mentions the prophet Isaiah of The Bible, the prophecies of Nostradamus four hundred years ago, and Edgar Lee Cayce, a famous twentieth-century sensitive. He criticizes Nostradamus for "vague predictions."

"I have never claimed more than eighty-five and one-half percent accuracy in my readings, as established by scientists performing thousands and thousands of tests with me."

Peter Hurkos equates that "emanations from a person or an object do exist, just as heat waves, radio waves, and electric impulses exist." He claims to be sensitive to vibrations from:

• an object a person has touched
• a piece of clothing the person has worn
• a bed a person has slept in
• anything a person is associated with
• even a photograph of the person

Hurkos writes that when his powers are very strong, he can hold a telephone line while the phone is in use, and without having heard the conversation, "images leap into my mind like pictures on your television screen."

Peter Hurkos gained national attention in America when he was the subject of a One Step Beyond episode, a television supernatural series in the early Sixties. 

Peter Hurkos in custody

In 1963, he interjected himself in the Boston Strangler investigation, much to the displeasure of the Boston Police Department. After being arrested for impersonating a police detective and harassing a potential witness, he left the city under duress. Charges would be made and a trial would be held if he didn't leave town immediately.

Nonetheless, Hurkos was portrayed by an actor in the Hollywood film, The Boston Strangler, which did much to rehabilitate his popular reputation. 

Peter Hurkos, wife Stephany, with actress Kathryn Grayson

He became a regular guest on the television talk show circuit, gave private readings to celebrities and the wealthy, and he continued to perform his Las Vegas and Hollywood nightclub act with his wife/assistant, Stephany, but his bookings waned.

In 1969, Hurkos received an unexpected offer from a citizens' group to come to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and help police solve another serial killer case. Six local young women had been sexually assaulted and killed within a two year period, and the police were baffled.  

Reluctantly, he agreed. He was hoping he could regain some lost credibility and jump-start his career, if he could only solve these brutal sex-slayings before the killer would strike again.

One Step Beyond episode: The Peter Hurkos Story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei0m__zST_0

Psychic Peter Hurkos and the John Norman Collins Case

Dutchman Peter Hurkos billed himself as the first police psychic and parlayed that into a career in the 1950s and 1960s. After making many claims about his extrasensory abilities in Europe, he came to wider attention after he volunteered to look into the Stone of Scone theft from Westminster Abbey in 1951. He did so at his own expense without official sanction. Hurkos was among several others who were allowed to examine the throne where the stone should have been lodged.

Hurkos made a great show of it by doing a "cold" reading of the area in front of some French reporters, who wrote articles which described his examination of the area in great detail. Thanks to the French press and his adroit self-promotion, Peter Hurkos became a European sensation despite British Home Secretary, Chuter Ede's official statement made on behalf of the British government, "The gentleman in question... did not obtain any results whatsoever."

Peter Hurkos called his gift "psychometry" - the ability to see past-present-future associations by touching objects. He claims he discovered this ability after a serious accident. He was painting a building several stories up in Hague when he fell off a ladder and lapsed into a coma for several days. When he awoke in the hospital, he had the gift.

Hurkos was invited to The United States in 1956 by Andrija Puharich, a parapsychologist and researcher into ESP. After getting Puharich's public approval and a wealth of free publicity, he became a popular nightclub entertainer.

From time to time, Hurkos would involve himself in high-profile police cases such as The Boston Strangler, the Michigan Murders, and The Sharon Tate Murders. The Boston Police found Hurkos a nuisance. He was arrested and convicted of impersonating a police office trying to gather information he could later claim were psychic revelations. With the Manson case, he claimed to identify Charles Manson when it was Susan Atkins, Manson's supporter, who dropped his name in jail.

In the case of John Collins, he proclaimed that the murderer had blond hair and at other times said it was brown. He described the murderer as five foot five or six inches tall and weighing 140 pounds; Collins was over six feet tall and 180 pounds. All of Hurkos' other "revelations" regarding this case could have been easily derived from newspaper articles on the murders, which he insisted he never read. After an unsuccessful week in Ann Arbor, the psychic left for home discouraged, blaming his failure on lack of police cooperation.

Peter Hurkos had an uncanny ability to promote himself on talk shows like The Tonight Show and The Merv Griffin Show. He appeared in several documentaries about himself, and he was portrayed in the movie version of The Boston Strangler by veteran actor, George Voskovec. Peter Hurkos played himself in the never-to-be released movie about John Collins and the coed killings called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

In 1960, the futuristic show One Step Beyond, brought to you by Alcoa Aluminum and hosted by John Newland, produced a two part show on Peter Hurkos' life story. I've attached the YouTube link below which includes the show's vintage opening. If you are sufficiently interested, the rest of the episode's segments can be found on that page's right sidebar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTXPzVIugsg