Ted Bundy's Ghost

Over twenty-three years after his execution, Ted Bundy still appears to have the ability to animate himself in the minds of people who have fallen under his spell. In the link below, Katherine Ramsland makes the point that Bundy remains the most popular serial killer in American history, who continues to inspire numerous ghost sightings across America which adds to his legend.

Bundy's reaction to guilty verdict.

More Americans today believe in ghosts and angels than believe in scientific fact. The inability of many people in our culture to distinguish between fantasy and reality goes much further that the willing suspension of disbelief. For too many people, delusional behavior forms the basis of their elemental certitudes about life. It informs every decision and judgement they make.

Serial killers are deranged individuals who fascinate many people, but to create folklore and urban legends about these psychopaths only obscures their wanton disregard for human life and sensationalizes their depravity. There has been no shortage of Bundy ghost sightings since his electrocution in a Florida state prison on January 24, 1989.

In doing research for my book on John Norman Collins, for example, I came across a novel called Archetype, about an Eastern Michigan University student who falls under the spell of the John Norman Collins mystique. He researches the murders and tours the body drop sites.

Soon after, the "voices" of the victims begin to talk to him and urge him to solve their murders and answer their question, "Why". A few weeks later, the tormented student obsesses and decides to murder seven women of his own to stop the voices. He sets about killing innocent EMU coeds with impunity, and then the book ends abruptly with him getting away with it and no point being made. Perhaps the author intended to write a sequel.

Dead Bundy.

This is the only book I've ever read where the publisher includes a disclaimer: "At the specific preference of the author, Publish America allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended, verbatim, without editorial input."

It is my belief that mixing true-crime and the paranormal only obscures the facts and sensationalizes the crimes of these inhuman monsters. My true-crime book on the John Norman Collins murders, In the Shadow of the Water Tower, will endeavor to give the facts of this case and tell as accurate a portrayal of the events of those terrible days as I possible can. 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201210/ted-bundys-ghost/comments

October Ypsilanti Trip Proves Productive

I just returned home after two weeks of field research for In the Shadow of the Water Tower on John Norman Collins and the Michigan murders in and around Ypsilanti, Michigan. People have started to come forward and share information from those difficult days forty-five years ago.

These cases from the late Sixties are still considered "open" by the Michigan State Police. Getting information about them from official sources is no easy task. The Washtenaw County Courthouse, for instance, has "purged" the Collins' files from their records.

But thanks to the efforts of my chief researcher, Ryan Place of Detroit, Michigan, we were able to invoke the Freedom of Information Act to obtain more than 1,000 pages of prison documents from the Michigan Corrections Department.

Soon we hope to have a similar number of documents from the Michigan State Police. Most of these files will have routine information, but we are sure to find some nuggets of new information in them as well.

Through this blog and my Facebook page, I was able to connect with some former Ypsilanti High students of mine and several former Ypsilanti High School colleagues. This research trip was like old home week for me.

Thanks for your hospitality.

California Takes a Big Step Forward: Free, Digital, Open-Source Textbooks

Governor Jerry Brown is promoting a program that will help California students struggling with the rising cost of a college education. He is proposing that the state fund fifty open source digital textbooks for undergraduate, entry level courses. The governor also wants to establish a California Digital Source Library

California is the first state in the union to propose such a plan which will save students millions of dollars each semester and make a difference in the lives of students who would not be able to afford college and pursue a career otherwise.

California Takes a Big Step Forward: Free, Digital, Open-Source Textbooks - The Atlantic

The Fourth Estate Proves its Worth in the John Norman Collins Case

When I went to the Washtenaw County Courthouse to get transcripts for the John Norman Collins case last fall, I was surprised to discover that those files had been "purged" from their records. The explanation was that they were old and it was a cost saving move.

I was dumbfounded. I'm  hoping that they are stored deep in a warehouse someplace, so I continue my document search. It is hard for me to imagine that history can so wantonly be destroyed because of a short sighted budget decision.

With the absence of official documentation, it would be impossible to piece this forty-five year old case together were it not for a small handful of reporters who went beyond the headlines and wire service reports to document this case. Hundreds of stories were filed in newspapers cross the state of Michigan and beyond, but some reporters stand out.

First and foremost is William (Bill) Treml, crime reporter for The Ann Arbor News in those days. This was Bill's first big break and the longest lasting case he ever reported on. His news stories were the most detailed reporting on the string of seven murders that plagued the campuses of Eastern Michigan University and The University of Michigan.

Bill Treml also had a virtue that made his reporting cutting edge; he had the trust of local law enforcement which placed him at the top of the list for inside information. The Detroit News and The Detroit Free Press reporters were outsiders and were treated that way. There is something to be said for reporters not getting too cozy with authorities.

Walker Lundy of The Detroit Free Press stung Washtenaw County law enforcement with a string of critical articles on local police efforts, but none more scathing that his report on the botched "mannequin" mantrap where he described police as the "Keystone Kops." This was a major slap in the face for local law enforcement who was on the verge of capturing the killer when the governor took over the case and handed it to the Michigan State Police. Lundy's critical eye and adversarial relationship with the police gave his reporting more of an edge than Treml's.

The pressure to solve these cases was intense in Ypsilanti and nobody kept the police on their toes more than John Cobb of The Ypsilanti Press. John was licensed to have police band radio scanner in his car and was often on the crime scene taking pictures and snooping around before the police could get there. For a time, he was under consideration as a possible suspect.

The last reporter I would like to single out is Cynthia (Cindy) Cygan of The Macomb Daily. She had a distinctive approach to her stories. The Daily was the local Warren and Center Line newspaper, the hometown paper of the Collins' family. 

Miss Cygan went to school with John Norman Collins sister, Gail, and now she found herself reporting on the trial of Gail's younger brother. Cygan often reported about the family in the courtroom or about the spectators, some of whom came to see Collins. Her perspective provided a necessary counterpoint to the overall reporting of this case.

I owe a debt of gratitude to these reporters in particular and also to the nameless staff reporters who helped to preserve this history, so I can reconstruct this "lost" case for the true-crime book I am writing entitled, The Rainy Day Murders.

In the Shadow of the Water Tower - Revisited

Detroit's rock and roll blogger extraordinaire, Kim Maki (Retrokimmer.com), has agreed to help me in my quest for information on the John Norman Collins' murders of the late Sixties in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Kim is a longtime resident of Ypsilanti who remembers the dark cloud that hung over Washtenaw County for two long years when seven young women were sexually abused and brutally murdered. See her video on the Michigan Murder Landmarks in the link below.

Contact me with any information you can share on these matters. Every piece of the puzzle is important. Your confidentiality will be respected.

            gregoryafournier@gmail.com       

or mail me at:

Fornology

PO Box # 712821 

Santee, CA 92072-2821

http://www.retrokimmer.com/2012/09/new-michigan-murders-book-project.html

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

In the Shadow of the Water Tower will be a true-crime account of what were known as “The Coed Killings” or “The Rainy Day Murders.” In the late 1960s seven young women were brutally murdered by what seemed like a phantom killer who spirited their bodies away until they were found dead, scattered within a fifteen mile triangular drop zone in the countryside just north of Ypsilanti, Michigan.

An Eastern Michigan University senior, one semester away from earning his degree in elementary education, was charged with the sex-slaying of eighteen year-old, Karen Sue Beineman. John Norman Collins was indicted, tried, and found guilty of her murder in the first degree and given a life sentence in Michigan prisons.

Evidence in the six other murders was never heard. Law enforcement “had their man.” Because Collins was only convicted of one murder, the sobriquet of serial killer does not officially apply, but his story is fascinating none-the-less.

Beineman’s murder and the ensuing court case were not only local and national news stories, but they also attracted some international attention. In Canada, Collins is known as “The Canadian Hannibal Lector,” and in Great Britain, he is known as “The Ypsilanti Ripper.”

The trial started on Monday, July 20^th, 1970 and by Saturday, the intense national media interest had shifted to the West Coast. The Sharon Tate and La Bianca murders had hit the front page. Charles Manson made better copy than John Norman Collins.

The Collins’ case has largely fallen through the cracks over time - literally. Washtenaw County Court documents for this case have been “purged.” Presently, my researcher and I are collecting every bit of information we can lay our hands on and compiling a photo bank to accompany the finished text, a feature missing from other treatments of this material.

We are piecing the story together from over 800 pages of news articles from the time, and we have just make arrangements through the Freedom of Information Act to get over 1,000 pages of documents from the Michigan Corrections Department regarding Collins and the forty-five years he has been behind prison bars. That story has never been told.

In addition to interviewing as many people as we can find who are still alive and were connected with this case, we also are interested in people who knew any of victims or their accused murderer, John Norman Collins. Some people came forward with information at the time but were ignored by the police. Some women have come forward recently for the first time and told their stories. I myself lived only one short block down the street from Collins and had several brushes with him.

In 1976, Edward Keyes rushed into print with The Michigan Murders, which told the then known basics of the case in a novelization of the real story. He took liberties by changing the names of the young female victims, their alleged murderer, and the witnesses other than the legal authorities.

Although it may have been the custom when it was written, in today’s tabloid world, protecting their real names doesn’t cut it anymore. These young women have been robbed of their identities, and the historical record has been subverted. I hope to remedy both situations.

If you have any information on these matters, I would like to hear from you.

Please contact me at:

<www.gregoryafournier@gmail.com> or post a letter to:

Fornology

PO Box 712821

Santee, CA 

92071-2821

Five Guys Took A Boy Band Anthem And Created One Of The Best Romney Parodies, Hands Down

I am old enough to remember the "I like Ike" black and white television commercials of the Eisenhower political era. "I like Ike. You like Ike. Everybody likes Ike." They were done with simple line animation.Then there was the "Daisy" political commercial from the Johnson administration, used against Sen. Barry Goldwater to cast him as a war monger.

A little girl was shown pulling the petals off a daisy one by one until the last one - then a devastating scene of an exploding hydrogen bomb filling the television screen until it couldn't be contained anymore. This notorious television political ad was only shown once during the campaign, but it pulled no punches and was very effective. Today, it is considered a classic.

Basic politics hasn't changed much since Julius Caesar took twenty-three stab wounds from his colleagues in the Roman Forum on March 15th, 44 BC. But in the modern world, politicians must package and deliver their messages in a very different way. Simple butchery is no longer an accepted political practice, but the time honored "hatchet job" has been a staple in the politicians' bag of tricks since the beginning of participatory government.

During the last presidential political season, Tina Fey did a devastating parody of Sarah Palin, and Mrs. Palin was never taken seriously again by anybody. In this election year, the Republican Greek chorus sang the same tune, "Show us your birth certificate." They tried to make high drama of it during their primary season and never made it past a dull roar.

What follows might become the most entertaining political message of this presidential year, depending on what your position is. Caution! Do not watch the link below if you are offended by the view of hunks in trunks.

Five Guys Took A Boy Band Anthem And Created One Of The Best Romney Parodies, Hands Down | MoveOn.Org