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

The Media, the Police, and the Washtenaw County Murders - 1967-1969

Before law enforcement and the public realized there may be a serial killer in their midst, three local coeds were found murdered and left scattered around the rural countryside of Washtenaw County outside of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Mary Fleszar (19) disappeared on the evening of July 9, 1967. She was an Eastern Michigan University student whose body was found a 150 yards from the road on an abandoned farm thirty-two days after she disappeared. In the absence of any real clues, police investigators surmised that she may have been killed by a transient and dumped there. The condition of her remains shocked detectives on the scene.

Just over a year later, on July 30, 1968, another EMU coed, Joan Schell (20) was hitchhiking and seen getting into a car with three young men. Her body was found a week later on the outskirts of Ann Arbor. Police determined that she had been killed elsewhere, and her nude body was dumped 12 feet from the road and covered with grass clippings. Little effort was made to conceal the body. 

A couple of investigators familiar with the Fleszar case the year before thought that these murders could possibly be related, but Schell's murder was generally regarded as an isolated incident by most investigators.

A third coed was found murdered eight months later; University of Michigan graduate student, Jane Mixer (23). Her fully clothed body was laid out on a grave site just inside the gate of Denton Cemetery; a yellow raincoat covered her up. 

Detectives on the scene felt that this murder was significantly different than the previous two, but the press ran with the story and began linking the three murders together in the public's mind.

A self-perpetuating engine of public opinion was fueled by the public's desire for the latest news and the media's commercial and competitive interests. This relationship led to the breakdown of collective solidarity in the communities of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. A generalized fear gripped the public psyche, suspicion ran rampant, and faith in law enforcement efforts declined. Fear fed upon itself and magnified divisions already in the community.

To provide the community with a sense of psychological comfort and help contain the threat, the police floated the story that the killer or killers were a bunch of drug crazed transients. This well-publicized fiction was based on wishful thinking and may have prevented police from recognizing the killer when he was in their custody. Their suspect was clean cut and simply didn't fit the profile.

The universities attracted lots of non-student hippie types who always seemed to be hanging around causing trouble. After all, the murdered girls were college students, so the threat may be limited to EMU and U of M and not the general populace.

Only five days after the Mixer murder, Maralyn Skelton's dead body was found horribly abused along a roadside. She was a sixteen year old who recently had dropped out of Romulus High School and was last seen hitchhiking in front of Arborland on Washtenaw Ave. 

Twenty-one days later, Dawn Basom (13), a local Ypsilanti junior high school student was snatched less than 100 yards from her house. Now the frenzied community felt no one was safe. The time between slayings was decreasing as the death toll was rising.

When the police were powerless to capture the killer, the public appealed for divine intervention. The media reported on prayer vigils held in local churches, and some religious people believed that the deaths of the victims had some sort of sacrificial purpose and spiritual significance. 

Marjorie Beineman, the mother of the last victim, believed, "God must have sent Karen to find the killer." She was convinced that her daughter's sacrifice was according to God's divine plan to save others, precious little comfort for a grieving mother.

Still, others believed that the killer was thought to have a Svengali type of hypnotic, superhuman power to spirit his victims away without a trace. If God's divine presence can take human-saintly form, then the opposite must be true, the devils' disciples exist on Earth as evil incarnate.

The public was desperate for its deliverance from evil. Faith in the local police was at an all time low, and there were too many reporters chasing too little news. Something had to be done to move this case along.

Enter the psychic - Peter Hurkos. His presence gave the media something new to report on, but the police were not happy with this interloper. Assistant Prosecutor Booker T. Williams had a more proactive attitude, "What is there to lose? Maybe he can help break the case."