Facing Down John Norman Collins - Kristi Kurtz

The tale I'm about to tell really happened. It took over a year for me to contextualize the incident  that occurred one Sunday evening to me and my then girl friend, Kristi Kurtz, as we were walking to our apartment after visiting friends.

We stopped at Abby's party (convenience) store on the corner of W. Cross Street and Ballard Street just off of Eastern Michigan University's campus. We bought a bag of groceries, walked up the street a block, and turned right on Emmet Street heading for College Place where we shared an apartment.
 
This neighborhood was over a hundred years old and the old growth trees that lined the street provided a natural canopy of added darkness. As Kristi and I casually walked up the street, a car pulled along side us. It was a muggy July evening, and the windows were rolled down revealing three males in the car.

The driver addressed Kristi first saying, "Hey, baby. Want to go out with some real men?" My response was, "Hey, man. She's with me." The next thing I heard was, "Shut the fuck up asshole or the three of us will get out and kick the shit out of you."

Before I could respond, Kristi was impugning their manhood. "What a bunch of dickless wonders!" she scolded the driver. "Three against one, you cowardly faggots." Did I mention that Kristi didn't take crap from anyone and had a mouth on her?

I figured that it might be time for us to drop our groceries and sprint home, but something unexpected happened. Kristi's defiant response seemed to perplex the driver, then out of frustration, he punched the gas pedal and left us in a cloud of screeching tires and stinking exhaust.  That was sometime after nine o'clock on the evening of July 30th, 1968.

Although I thought this was an isolated incident, one day I was reading an article about the series of unsolved murders in the Ypsilanti area and focused on the second murder victim, Joan Schell. Suddenly, I was able to connect the dots. Joan had been hitchhiking and had taken a ride with three guys in a black and red, unidentified car some time after Kristi and I had been approached.

A year after John Norman Collins was arrested for the abduction and sex-slaying of Karen Sue Beinemen, Collins ex-housemate, Arnie Davis, told police while being interrogated that he was in the black and red car with Collins the night they picked up Joan Schell. Then Collins and Schell left Davis and an unidentified third person to cruise around town while John would drive Joan to Ann Arbor in his car. After that fateful ride, Miss Schell was never seen alive again.

In yet another cruel twist of fate, Kristi Kurtz (41) was found murdered in 1990 during a bungled burglary attempt at her horse farm in Whitmore Lake. More on that story in my next post.

 

Kristi Kurtz Murder 

The Rainy Day Murders - Light at the End of the Funnel

For the last three years, my researcher Ryan M. Place and I have been compiling as many official documents as we have been able to get our hands on concerning the alleged John Norman Collins' murder cases. 

I say "alleged" because the deaths of six of the eight women killed have never been adjudicated. These young women were brutally murdered in Washtenaw County between July 9th, 1967, and July 23rd, 1969. 

Collins was convicted only of the last of these brutal, power and control killings. He was convicted of first degree murder for the sex-slaying of Karen Sue Beineman, an eighteen year old freshman new to the campus of Eastern Michigan University.

Gary Earl Leiterman

The murder of the third victim originally believed to be the work of John Norman Collins was Jane Mixer. In 2005, thirty-five years after the fact, Collins was exonerated of her murder when DNA proved that Gary Earl Leiterman had killed Jane. 

For some of the public, particularly those not born when these frightening murders happened, the shadow of doubt hangs over these events. Collins is cast as a victim of circumstance and not of hard evidence. Many believe he was railroaded by a hungry press and a vindictive county police department bent on venting their revenge upon him.

The comment threads on the John Norman Collins sites are full of incorrect perceptions and blatantly false statements all taken from the John Norman Collins media playbook.

Once the other six cases are presented with the documentable facts, along side what we have recently learned from our extensive research and first-person interviews, readers can make up their own minds. The facts as they exist in these other cases have never been fully revealed to the public.

Ryan and I have read thousands of pages of vintage newspaper clippings, complaint reports from the Michigan State Police, records from the Michigan Department of Corrections, the Ypsilanti Historical Society archives, the archives of the Halle Library at Eastern Michigan University, The Michigan Murders novelization, and Catching Serial Killers detailing police errors of procedure in this case. 

Additionally, we've read all the magazine articles, the internet material, and many of the top titles of the true crime genre in preparation for writing The Rainy Day Murders. 

Now to funnel this heaving mass of information into a coherent and readable book that will withstand the test of time. A thorough accounting of these matters has never before been accomplished, and if the truth be known, without a full confession on the part of the murderer, the complete story will never be known. 

The purpose of this book is to restore the lost identities of the victims and to pay a debt to history. Ryan and I want to tell the truest and most complete version of these events as we are able. 

The families and friends of the victims deserve to know the truth as it exists, and the public has the right to the freedom of information.

For more information on Jane Mixer's murder, see:
http://fornology.blogspot.com/2012/07/redezvous-with-death-part-four.html