She Lived to Tell Her Tale - Don't Get in a Car with a Stranger! - Part One

To the Reader: For the first time in this blog, I am running a post of an email I received. A former University of Michigan student wrote me several days ago in response to my call for information on the John Norman Collins' series of sex slayings in the late Sixties.

I found her story compelling reading. She was having a bad day and accepted a ride from a stranger on a rainy day at the height of the "Co-Ed Killings" in 1969. In part one of this two part post, she tells her own story. My response to her and the surprising result will appear in part two in several days.

I have her permission to run her letter.

*****

Dear Mr. Fournier,

In 1969, I was a sophomore coed living in the Alpha Chi Omega house on Washtenaw [Ave]. On a rainy spring afternoon I was walking with my umbrella up on University [Ave], a block or two from the corner of Washtenaw and University. A large, 4-door sedan (in my memory it was a Pontiac or something of that size, heavy and solid) pulled up beside me, and a man opened the passenger door and offered me a ride.

In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that I would get into a car with a stranger, but for some reason that day I did. I had some sort of boyfriend issue at the time, so insignificant that I can't remember what it was about. I had been to St. Mary's Chapel for a little prayer time and was walking home in a dejected state. I'm sure my body language marked me as a target for the driver of the car.

As I closed the door, I got a sinking feeling that I was doing the stupidest thing I would ever do in my life. He asked me why I was so down and where I was going. I said I had just come out of St. Mary's and was heading out Washtenaw. He made the turn onto Washtenaw and drove carefully. I wondered if he would stop at my corner or continue on past towards Ypsilanti. I remember thinking if he didn't stop, or if he speeded [sic] up, I would open the car door and take my chances and leap to the pavement. I would definitely have done it. It crossed my mind to take my book bag with me.

We talked for the few minutes I was in the car about my praying and how I thought God would help me with my troubles because I was close to Him and was used to going to Him for consolation and communion. To my great relief, at the corner of Cambridge and Washtenaw he slowed the car and stopped.

As I opened the door and thanked him for the lift, he turned to me and said, "I was going to rape you, but I changed my mind." I pretended to laugh, as if it was a joke, but I knew he was serious. He then said to me. "The next time you are in church, say a prayer for Dave." I promised to do so as I closed the car door behind me and breathed a deep sigh of relief.

I was really not aware of the murders in the area at the time. I didn't connect this incident with local news. I've never forgotten the exact words he said to me, or the feeling that I had narrowly escaped from a very serious situation.

"Dave" was dark haired with a slick-backed haircut that was right out of central casting for the "Sopranos". I remember a prominent Roman nose and a "city clothes" style unlike the casual jeans and flannel shirt look of the day, a contrast to student attire. I really couldn't provide any better description of him or of the car, even at the time.

I was reading your blog today, asking for any small details. I don't know if this is helpful or not. I never reported it to any authority, although I used the story to scare the crap out of my own two girls as they went off to college.

(Name withheld by request)

*****

Part Two will run in a few days.

Psychic Peter Hurkos vs. John Norman Collins

 

Ancient myths and tales abound with stories about oracles, seers, soothsayers, sorcerers, and fortune tellers. Common among these legends is an appeal to a charmed man or woman who has the gift of inner vision. Usually, the person comes from outside the village or town where an overwhelming problem is plaguing the community and he or she agrees to relieve the populace from their resident evil.

Since Jack the Ripper cast a pall over London's East End in 1888, in virtually every serial murder case that goes unsolved for any length of time, a psychic is called in to relieve the public of their collective angst. It is a common appeal for supernatural assistance when confidence in local law enforcement erodes.

Murderous crimes that go beyond simple killing and become ritualized orgies of carnage and butchery evoke antediluvian images of blood thirsty ghouls, evil witches, and demons in league with Satan. These images are deeply embedded in the human psyche and express our deepest psychological fears.

 

Enter psychic Peter Hurkos, the self-proclaimed first police psychic, arguably the most famous psychic of his day.  Hurkos believed he had a "psychometric" sense, the ability to gain information about people from physical contact with inanimate objects they had touched. He also believed he could enter a crime scene and pick up an aura. "Vibrations" he called them.

Peter Hurkos honed his skills into a popular nightclub act and rubbed elbows with many Hollywood and Las Vegas celebrities. He was a favored guest on the talk show circuit and appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Merv Griffin Show, and The Dinah Shore Show to name just a few.  

After an inauspicious performance and ensuing bad publicity from his work on the Boston Strangler case in 1964, his bookings were fewer and farther between. He just wasn't news anymore.

His agent fielded an offer she took over the phone for him to go to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and see if he could help with the coed killer case there. At first, Hurkos declined, but his agent convinced him that if he could help find the killer, his career would get a boost.

On Monday, July 21, 1969, as he was getting off the plane at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport, Hurkos noticed a cadre of media waiting on the tarmac to interview him. There were too many newsmen chasing too little news in Ann Arbor, and Hurkos put some new life into the story, so they were there to welcome him, and he didn't disappoint them.

With characteristic bravura, the Danish psychic challenged the killer, "He knows I'm coming. I'm after him and he's after me. But I am not afraid. I come thousands of miles to find him and I won't give up." 

While he was in the area, the Danish psychic wanted to examine the landmarks of the cases and handle items of evidence obtained from earlier police investigations. What harm could there be with that?

Taking exception to Peter Hurkos' unauthorized collaboration on the case was Washtenaw County Sheriff Douglas Harvey. There were chain of custody issues regarding the collection, cataloging, storage, and admissibility of evidence. Law enforcement didn't have the time to waste on a man who some people thought was a media hound.

Peter Hurkos, with five police escorts, explored the Friday Ann Arbor nightlife to get a feel for the area. Hurkos also wanted to personally thank John Sinclair and members of his commune at Translove Energies on Hill St. in Ann Arbor. They were the people who raised the money to summon the psychic from California. 

When Hurkos returned to the Inn American early the next morning where he was lodged, the desk clerk told him that a young man about six foot tall with slicked down hair and wearing a turquoise colored shirt, handed her an envelope at about midnight addressed to Dutch psychic/Peter Hurkos. 

When his police security detail asked if she could recognize him again, she said, "No. I was busy with another customer and it happened so quickly. He was gone."

Hurkos opened the letter and read it silently. It directed him and the police to search for a burned out cabin on Weed Rd. in the northeast corner of Washtenaw County not far from where several other murder victims were found. They would find "something interesting" there the note assured them. The psychic had finally been enjoined in direct communication with the killer.

Hurkos had a "feeling" about this message and gave it to the police to investigate. Then he went to bed. A crew of investigators was hastily formed to investigate the tip in the middle of the night in the pouring rain. They searched the entire area for a burned out cabin they would never find. After an hour, the police returned to the Task Force Crime Center. They had had their fill of Mr. Hurkos. 

Three days after Karen Sue Beineman had been reported missing on Wednesday, July 23, her nude body was found in Ann Arbor township, face down in a small gully. The dump site was less than a mile from the Inn America where Hurkos was staying and the Holy Ghost Fathers Seminary where the crime task force was headquartered. 

The latest murder and the disposal of the body were a blatant affront to everyone connected with this case. Even worse for Hurkos, news of the police finding Miss Beineman's body was kept from him. When he was asked by a reporter for a comment on the matter, he was totally in the dark. The Dane was furious and complained to the prosecutor's office.

During his uneventful week in Ann Arbor, Hurkos cast a wide net. He variously described the killer as a troubled genius, an uneducated vagrant, a sick homosexual, a transvestite, a member of a blood cult, and a drug crazed hippie.

Arrow points to site where Karen Sue Beineman's body was discovered

Once Miss Beineman's body was removed from the gully and the scant evidence secured by the State Police Crime Lab, Hurkos was escorted by the assistant prosecutor and permitted to examine the drop site. Under the withering glare of Sheriff Harvey from the street above, Hurkos made his way down the gully to the spot where the body had been found.

He got down on his haunches and spread both hands out and felt the ground where the body had been. Try as he might, the spot was cold, no vibrations or emanations of any sort.  

With growing resistance from the police and his press entourage shrinking, there was little to be gained by staying in Ann Arbor. Hurkos and his assistant, Ed Silver, left town on Monday, July 28th, headed for the West Coast.

In the end, Sheriff Harvey turned out to be the only clairvoyant on this case. He predicted, "I think these murders will be solved with good old-fashioned police work." Their prime suspect was under arrest within a week. 

One Step Beyond: "The Peter Hurkos Story" 1/6

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

 

In the Shadow of the Water Tower - The John Norman Collins' Story

The Ypsilanti Water Tower

Forty-five years ago, a series of seven horrific sex slayings of young women began in the Ypsilanti, Michigan area. The first mutilation murder was of Mary Fleszar (19), an Eastern Michigan University coed majoring in accounting. On July 9, 1967, Mary went for a walk on a hot summer evening and never returned to her apartment. A month later her, body was found in a fallow field in an advanced stage of decomposition. It took dental records to identify her.

This was the worst sight most of the detectives called to the scene had ever witnessed. Everyone involved in this gruesome episode hoped that it was an isolated incident committed by a deranged transient, but it appeared that the murderer had returned to the scene twice, maybe three times.This suggested that the killer was someone local.

Almost a year passed before another brutal murder of an EMU coed occurred on July 1, 1968. Twenty year-old  Joan Schell was last seen just before midnight on June 30. When her body was discovered a week later, it had been mutilated and dumped not far from where Mary Fleszar's body had been dumped, just north of Ypsilanti. Police began to worry they had a maniac murderer on their hands - maybe two. Not wanting to cause the public to panic, law enforcement downplayed any connection between the two murders, but some police detectives believed differently.

Eight months later on March 20, 1969, a third murder was discovered neatly placed in a cemetery in Denton Township just inside the Wayne County line with Washtenaw County. Jane Mixer was a twenty-three year-old University of Michigan coed who had identification in her belongings. The coroner sent the body to University Hospital morgue in Washtenaw County. Now the press showed a deeper interest in connecting the three murders. But police thought things were fundamentally different about this murder.

Then a mere five days later, Maralynn Skelton (16) was last seen hitch-hiking in front of Arborland Shopping Center on March 25. When her body was found, there was such an overkill, that some cops felt her murder might have been a drug related message murder for talking with the police. Maralynn was a drug informant and may have owed money to some people. Her body was found approximately in the same area as the first two, north of Ypsilanti in Superior Township.

Dawn Basom

Dawn Basom, a local thirteen year-old Ypsi junior high school student, went missing while walking home on April 15 just before dark. She walked part of the way home on the railroad tracks which was and is the local shortcut. The next day, her body was found in the same vicinity as the previous three of four murders of young women in the area.

Only twenty-two days separated the killings of the youngest teenage girls. The public was officially panicked and outraged. What were the police doing? Did the area harbor a multiple murderer? Where and when would he, or they, strike next? Nobody felt safe.

Then seven weeks passed until Alice Kalom (23), a University of Michigan student was last seen on June 7,1969. She was supposed to meet some friends at a place called The Depot House who said she never showed up. Others at the Depot House said they thought they saw a girl who looked like her dancing with a young, long haired guy, but they couldn't be sure. Just another one of the many unanswered questions and conflicting evidence the police were struggling with.

Things were getting red hot for the killer, whoever he might be. A female accomplice might be involved or maybe a copycat killer or killers. The police had theories but no suspect. The reality was that the police were no closer to solving any of these cases than ever, but they were scouring the town searching for the maniac killer. By this time, most experts believed the killer acted alone in the commission of these power and control murders.

There was a pause of sixty-four days until another EMU coed disappeared from the area. On Thursday, July 23, Karen Sue Beineman was seen driving off on a motorcycle with a young man she had just met. She took a ride with a stranger despite all the warnings she had heard from the university and the appeals made in the local media by police. Her body was found laying face down in a gully three days later on Sunday, the 26th, only a mile away from the police task force command center. Law enforcement officials were desperate for a break in the case and were about to get two major ones.

John Norman Collins

A twenty-three year-old EMU student, John Norman Collins was arrested on August 1, 1969, for the mutilation sex slaying of Karen Sue Beineman. John Norman Collins was convicted of first degree murder on August 28, 1970 to life in prison.

But what of the other murders? These cases were shelved and never prosecuted. And an additional murder surfaced in Salinas, California, of Roxie Ann Phillips (17) of Milwaukie, Oregon. Roxie went missing on June 30, 1969, and her body was found on July 13, in Pescarado Canyon. Collins had been "visiting" in Salinas and was linked to her. A Monterey County Grand Jury brought an indictment against Collins on April 16, 1970, for her murder.

All of these cases are still considered open, so evidence is not available and is closely guarded by Michigan State Police in Lansing. The official Washtenaw County Courthouse case transcripts have been "purged" from their records, and understandably, family members of the victims are reluctant to talk, including the family of John Norman Collins.

Apparently there was a point of diminishing returns for more jurisprudence. One conviction was as good as seven. The police got their man off the streets, the rash of sex slayings ceased, so the other cases were never pursued. This was the most expensive case in Washtenaw County history. Some people may not want this story re-examined, but history demands a full accounting.

As a writer and researcher, I am left with archival news clippings and the memories of people who knew the victims and the alleged serial killer, John Norman Collins. Remember, he was only convicted of one murder and officially doesn't qualify for the title of serial killer.

If anyone has information pertaining to this case, photos, or other relevant information, please send me a message at www.gregoryafournier@gmail.com or write me at:

                                                       Fornology
                                                   PO Box 712821 
                                             Santee, CA 92072-2821

All replies will be held in strictest confidence. I want to collect as many facts about this case as I possibly can for the true crime book I'm writing entitled In the Shadow of the Water Tower. Here's your chance to contribute information.

Rendezvous with Death - Part Three

Since the 1980s, law enforcement experienced a gradual decline in the number of violent crimes in the United States. In 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives authorized one billion dollars to use DNA to reduce the huge backlog of cases that had gone cold. Two retired Michigan State Police Detectives volunteered to look into the Michigan Coed murders of the late 1960s.
 
In 2004, the Michigan State Police ran DNA samples from at least two of the murdered Michigan coeds through the FBIs Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). The third young woman John Norman Collins allegedly killed in the series of seven sex slayings attributed to him was twenty-three year old, Jane Mixer, a graduate law student at The University of Michigan.

Even though a few investigators most familiar with these cases felt from the start that Jane's murder was characteristically different from the two previous murders, she was included in the unsolved coed murder cache. Thirty-five years later, a DNA analysis of her pantyhose revealed copious amounts of perspiration on them that wasn't from Jane. DNA was extracted from the sweat cells and run through the FBI's CODIS database.

The first run through the system produced a "cold" hit on a retired male nurse who had been convicted on a prior fraud charge for writing bogus prescriptions. He was entered into the CODIS system at that time. Gary Earl Leiterman, dubbed by the local press as "The Elmer Fudd Killer," was found guilty of the murder of Jane Mixer. John Norman Collins was cleared.

Since DNA scientific evidence is considered so strong in court, many cold cases have been solved in the thirty years since it has been introduced as an effective crime fighting tool. Many guilty parties have been brought to justice, while some of the innocent have been exonerated of their crimes after years of unjust imprisonment.

It should be noted that John Norman Collins has refused DNA testing, which could prove him innocent of the murders he has steadfastly claimed he is innocent of committing for the last forty-five years. Even John's supporters must find that curious. Seems to me if he had a "Get Out of Jail" card, he would have gotten his ticket punched years ago.

(To be continued...)

http://www.murderpedia.org/male.L/l/leiterman-gary-photos.htm

Rendezvous with Death - Part Two

My goal in recounting the horrible deaths of seven young women in Washtenaw County, Michigan, in the late 1960s, is not to evoke the pain and sorrow of friends and family, which is bound to happen, but to present an up-to-date account of what occurred so long ago, which has been obscured by time, hasty reporting, and spotty police work.

I have researched the misnamed "coed murders" and interviewed people who knew the victims and discovered details not generally known to the public. I am attempting to bring together living history accounts, over 700 pages of news clippings from the era, the Michigan State Police report the prosecutor of this case worked from, perceptions of people who knew John Collins - the alleged serial killer, and several post trial developments which will give a fuller picture of this story than ever told before.

The national obscurity of this case is largely due to being overshadowed by the Charles Manson case in Los Angeles, California. John Norman Collins was arrested the night of July 31, 1969. On August 10th, just over a week later, the bodies of pregnant Sharon Tate, director Roman Polanski's starlet wife, and three others people, were ruthlessly slaughtered in the Hollywood Hills. The discovery and the murder case that followed became known as the "Helter Skelter" murders. The national spotlight suddenly shifted from Washtenaw County and the sullen John Collins, to the West Coast and wildman Charles Manson. The spotlight suddenly dimmed at the Ann Arbor courthouse.

The case of the Michigan murders faded into the background, except for those who knew the victims and/or the suspect, or for people who lived in the area during those tense two summers between 1967 and 1969. The dim shroud of time, misinformation leaked by and to the press, the Blue Wall of Silence, and a "fictionalized" account of the murders rushed into print because of a publishing deadline, have obfuscated many of the facts and details of this case.

It should be remembered that John Norman Collins was convicted of only one of the seven murders attributed to him. The public knows a great deal more about Karen Sue Beineman than any of the other victims because of the public court proceedings. But Mary Flezsar, Joan Schell, Maralynn Skelton, Dawn Basom, Alice Kalom, and Roxie Phillips, the six other murdered young women linked to Collins, have never had their day in court or had their stories told publicly.

An interesting and pertinent development came to light thirty-seven years after John Collins was convicted of murder in the first degree of Karen Sue Beineman. DNA forensic evidence cleared Collins of one of the murders attributed to him. What of that?

(To be continued...)