Lawyers for the Defense in the John Norman Collins Case

John Norman Collins' legal team - Neil Fink and Joseph Louisell - June 1970

Immediately after John Norman Collins was arrested on July 30, 1969, his mother Loretta retained the legal services of Robert Francis and John M. Toomey of Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

A week later on August 7 during a preliminary examination, Mr. Toomey told presiding Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Edward D. Deake that he had discussed withdrawing from the case with Collins and his mother. The reason given was lack of funds and Mrs. Collins' "inability to undertake further financial liability."

"John will benefit by a court-appointed attorney because this will give him the right to a lot of things, such as the court paying for independent blood tests, ballistic tests, and fingerprints," Toomey explained. "Mrs. Collins indicated that she might not be able to afford this type of work and wanted a court appointed attorney." 

The judge agreed, and on August 12, 1969, a three-judge Circuit Court panel appointed Richard W. Ryan to handle the case. Ryan asked Francis and Toomey (Collins' original attorneys) to stay on as co-counsels at county expense to assist him with the defense.

Ryan and his team were on the case for only a couple of months when Ryan began to have doubts about his client. He requested Collins take an off the record polygraph (lie detector) test. Collins agreed but Ryan refused to disclose the results. 

When conferring afterwards with the family in the judge's chambers, Ryan suggested a "diminished capacity" plea for an insanity defense. Mrs. Collins flew into a rage and fired him on the spot.

Then The Detroit News reported on November 25, 1969, that Joseph W. Louisell and Neil Fink from Detroit had agreed to defend Collins after conferring with Mrs. Collins and other relatives over a two week period. It was agreed that they were to take over the case on December 1st.  

When Neil Fink was asked by the press how Mrs Collins could afford the highest priced law firm in the state of Michigan, when she had plead poverty in open court only months before, he made no comment.

The Detroit Free Press reported the next day that "Mrs. Collins, who is a waitress, reportedly has received a pledge from a national magazine for a large sum of money in exchange for the exclusive rights to her son's story." No evidence of such an offer exists. 

Enter the man who has been described as "Michigan's Perry Mason," Joseph Louisell, the Detroit area's Mafia mouthpiece. In the decade before the Collins' case, he was best known for defending reputed Mafia figures including Pete Licavoli, Anthony and Vito Giacalone, and Matthew (Mike, the Enforcer) Rubino. All of these men were identified as Mafia chieftains in testimony before the U.S. Senate in 1963.

The fifty-three year old father of ten, five boys and five girls, Louisell  had a "hefty figure" with a "round jowly" face that was familiar to Detroit courtroom observers who watched him build a strong reputation as a prominent criminal lawyer.

He gained fame for his successful 1949 defense of Carl E. Bolton and Carl Renda, both charged with shooting United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther in the back.

Another notorious case was the acquittal of blond and beautiful Nelle Lassiter, who was charged with conspiring with her lover to dispose of her husband's body, used car dealer, Parvin (Bill) Lassiter.

Some of Louisell's critics have complained of his courtroom theatrics. "All trial lawyers are ham actors at heart. Especially me, I guess," he said. "Normally 65% of my practice is in civil and corporate law. That's where the money is. But criminal law has some kicks. That's for fun." 

Neil Fink was a thirty year old junior partner in the firm of Louisell and Barris. He assisted his senior partner and handled all the pre-trial examinations and defense motions. 

He stayed active in the case while his boss was recuperating from a heart attack he had on February 2, 1970. Louisell's doctor said he would permit Louisell to return to work on April 1. Fink handled the entire Collins case load for a couple of months

Rumors circulated about how a waitress at Stouffer's in downtown Detroit could afford such a high priced legal firm. Just for the record, Mrs. Loretta Collins refinanced her home in Center Line for an undisclosed amount to pay for the estimated $15,000 it would take to cover her son's legal fees. 

(Next post: The Prosecution Team for the People against John Norman Collins) 
 

The John Norman Collins' Prison Papers

Blocking the facts and details of the John Norman Collins coed killer case, through the trial and sentencing, has been a time consuming and tedious process. But bringing out the voices of the past by reconstructing the dialogue of the witnesses' testimony from newspaper reports of the day has been insightful and fascinating.

Working with old information and with what we've learned about this case since the seventies, an account is starting to form which will give a more textured and resonant picture of the trial than the phonetically transcribed court transcripts would have, which incidentally were unavailable to me. The Washtenaw County Courthouse Records Department has "purged" this case from their files.

My researcher, Ryan Place from Detroit, and I are entering uncharted territory now - the John Norman Collins prison years. Using the Freedom of Information Act, we were able to secure a thousand prison documents from the Michigan Department of Corrections. 

Once we paid our tribute ($500), we were sent a box full of unsorted photocopies which had to be categorized, placed in chronological order, and thinned of duplicate copies. Of the one-thousand photocopies we purchased, only about three-hundred are useful to us, and many of them are routine paperwork of little or no interest to the general reader. 

The good news is that now I have a manageable amount of information to work with, and a picture of John Collins' years behind prison bars is beginning to take shape. 

When we saw the initial amount of prison materials, we hoped that we had received the full sweep of his four decades in prison at Marquette, Jackson, and several other Michigan correctional institutions, including a short stay at Ionia, which houses Michigan's mentally ill and deranged prison population.

But there are huge gaping holes in the chronology of his many years in prison. Still, there is some interesting factual information to be found among the routine and often sketchy paperwork. 

Something missing is any information on John Collins attempted prison breaks, especially a tunneling attempt he made with six of his prison inmates. They tried to dig themselves toward an outside wall of Marquette prison in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 

Discovered by a prison guard on January 31, 1979, Collins and six other convicts had dug nineteen feet toward an outside wall within thirty-five feet of freedom. They had been scooping out handfuls of sand since the previous summer. 

The prisoners were charged with breaking the prison's rules but little more is known about the incident. There must have been an investigation, but we don't have any evidence of any. Were escape charges ever brought against them? I'd like to know more and will pursue it further.

It would have been nice to get a well-organized and concise information drop from the Michigan Department of Corrections, but they aren't in the business of helping me do research for my book, In the Shadow of the Water Tower.

It is the search for knowledge that drives me and my researcher to uncover as much about these matters as we possibly can and to shed light on this dimly remembered and deliberately shrouded past.
 

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! Now playing at San Diego's Globe Theater in Balboa Park

Saw this with my daughter and granddaughter on Saturday. If you are in the San Diego area this holiday season, catch this show. You won't be disappointed.

http://www.theoldglobe.org/?gclid=CNnq_5Xe67MCFaGPPAod9Q0Akg

"Bond, James Bond" is Back to the Basics

Since Sean Connery first spoke these iconic words, "Bond, James Bond," in Dr. No, British secret agent 007 has captured the attention of a world-wide audience and soon the character became the most popular and beloved in movie franchise history.

Many avid Bond fans will agree that Connery's portrayal of the British secret agent in the classic cold war thriller, From Russia with Love, may be the most accurate depiction of the Ian Fleming character in the Bond novels. But I would like to say that Daniel Craig in Skyfall gives Sean Connery a run for his money.

Skyfall begins like the formulaic Bond films with Bond in hot pursuit of a villain, aided by the latest technology, but it takes a hard left and resurrects a long dormant 1962 Bond storyline from the most unique of the thirteen Bond novels, The Spy Who Loved Me, which was never made into a movie.

"What!" you say. "That has been made into a Bond film in 1977."

Yes, there was a Roger Moore film with that name, but it resembled the Ian Fleming novel about as much as Moore resembled the literary James Bond. Not at all.

I was hooked on the Bond books and read all thirteen of them several times over the years. One of them was so different from the rest, "as seen through the wrong end of a telescope" Ian Fleming says in the author's statement introducing The Spy Who Loved Me. This novel was written in the first person through the eyes of a woman. Whether the male chauvinist author was successful in his depiction of the female voice is best left up to the reader.

Without giving away too much of the plot, Craig's Bond in Skyfall finds himself isolated with the latest and most unlikely "Bond girl," which plays out the basic plot complication and storyline of the novel The Spy Who Loved Me. An overwhelming menace descends upon them in the wilderness. No MI6, no CIA, no INTERPOL, no NASA, no kidding. Bond gets back to the basics in this latest entry into the series.

Looking for a great movie to see this Thanksgiving Day weekend? See Skyfall!

http://www.skyfall-movie.com/site/

Invoking the Freedom of Information Act in the John Norman Collins Case

Trying to piece together the forty-three year old John Norman Collins sex-mutilation murder case of Karen Sue Beineman, without the benefit of the court transcripts which have been purged from the Washtenaw County court records, has been a challenge to say the least.

Collins was convicted on August 19, 1970, of the Beineman murder, but six other young woman thought to be multiple murders committed by Collins between 1967 and 1969 were never brought to trial. Behind bars, he has steadfastly maintained his innocence for over four decades.

Were it not for about 800 pages of news clippings from 1967-1970 and the efforts of court and crime reporters of that era, the true facts of this case would be lost to history. Another thank you and acknowledgement goes to the archivists at the Ypsilanti Historical Museum and the Halle Library at Eastern Michigan University for their generous help and expertise.

My researcher, Ryan Place, and I have been pursuing every lead possible to obtain information about these cases. When Ryan's lawyer told him how to invoke the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a private citizen, he petitioned the Michigan Department of Corrections for information on John Norman Collins' prison years, and we received 1,000 pages of documents, taken primarily from Marquette Prison records. There were many duplications of routine documents and some were illegible photocopies, but much of the material gives an interesting view into his prison years. This cost us about $500, but we were happy to have some new information.

Next, we invoked the FOIA to get Michigan State Police documents that would be useful for their information and the authentication of facts. After a ten day waiting period, the department asked for a week's extension; then after that week, they asked for another extension. No problem for us, we were still working our way through the prison docks.

Well, they finally came through. We hit the jackpot! The Michigan State Police scoured the state of Michigan for forty-five years of documents related to these murders and this case. They discovered approximately 800,000 pages, and for a paltry sum of $318,000 (conservative estimate) they will photocopy them and send them out to me. Even if I could afford a third of a million dollars, it would take me and a warehouse full of trained researchers months to sort through, catalog, and annotate the material.

Ryan and I are going to narrow the scope of our request severely, so we can tell the essential story with as much authority and documentation as possible. 

One interesting side note to all of this is that Ryan was told by an informed source that these cases have been reopened within the last year. Now that's a story I hope we can get a piece of before I finish my true crime account of these events entitled, In the Shadow of the Water Tower.

 Check out the link for FOIA paperwork:
https://www.rocketlawyer.com/secure/interview/new.aspx?id=175&utm_source=103&try=1&v=3&gclid=CKzU-bfyzrMCFUxxQgodjQQAfg#q1 

Mark Safarik's Killer Instinct on Biography Channel Tuesdays at 10 PM EST/PST

The first season of Mark Safarik's forensic profiling show, Killer Instinct, premiered last Tuesday on the Biography Channel at 10:00 PM. After one episode, I'm hooked.

I found the show to be first rate, compelling, and informative. The distinction between modus operandi and ritualistic behavior made in the case will be helpful to me as I edit and revise the book I'm working on, In the Shadow of the Water Tower.
  
Mark is a former FBI profiler who is now the executive director of Forensic Behavioral Services Inc. In my conversation with Mark last week, congratulating him on his new show, he had this to say to viewers:

"My goal in filming the show was to give the audience insight into how I analyze and interpret the dynamic interaction of the offender, the victim, and the crime scene by integrating the behavioral, forensic, and physical evidence in an understandable series of events that address 'the totality of the circumstances' from both the chronological and temporal (time) view. 

This is done to understand what happened at the crime scene, how it happened, and most importantly, why it happened. In complex scenes with multiple victims, offenders, and/or scene locations, crimes with significant aberrant, excessively violent, or unusual behaviors are often not well understood by law enforcement investigators with little or no experience in investigating such crimes.

The cases in my television series are difficult cases in which I demonstrate how I assisted law enforcement to understand, investigate, and ultimately testify as an expert in these cases. I also wanted to make the audience aware that the bulk of the credit for solving these crimes always goes to the investigators who do all the hard work examining evidence, doing interviews, and keeping the case organized in a way that would support eventual prosecution."

"Thanks very much for sharing this with your audience. I hope they find the process in the episodes as interesting as I always have."

Mark E. Safarik M.S., V.S.M. (FBI Retired)
FBSInternational@gmail.com

For more information about Forensic Behavioral Services, view the link.  http://www.fbsinternational.com/main.html

Killer Instinct Promo: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=4996350351045 

The Morning After Obama's Win

The morning after the 2012 reelection of Barack Obama, something remarkable happened: Life went on as usual. The sun came out, and the flag on my neighbor's lawn waved in the autumn breeze, oblivious to who won this hotly contested presidential race. The system did what it was supposed to do - work. Now the challenge is to do the same for the unemployed in this country.

When  I was on a return flight to San Diego, the elderly woman next to me said with dismay, "The whole world is laughing at us. This is so embarrassing! He just doesn't look like our president."

"What's our president supposed to look like?" I gently asked. When she figured that I was an Obama supporter, you would have thought I had torn out her vocal chords. The rest of the flight was blissfully quiet.

This morning, a person I know claimed he is packing up his guns, ammo, water, food, and NetFlix subscription and moving to some remote part of Arizona. When I asked him if he was advocating a civil war, his response was, with a remarkable lack of self-awareness, "That's not a bad idea." He left me wondering how many other people feel the same way.

Now that the political attack ads and fear mongering are over, it is time for everyone to lick our wounds and reach across the aisle with a renewed sense of community and national purpose. We all claim to love this country, now is the time to prove it.

http://www.classwarfareexists.com/rachel-maddow-owns-conservatives-for-their-cognitive-dissonance/#ixzz2BgEQXzXd