Doomed to Fail - Ep 111 - Michigan's own 1970s Serial Killer - John Norman Collins

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

There's a lot to be said about the 1970s heavy hitters - your Bundys, Kempers, etc. It was a dangerous time to be a young woman in America. Mostly because it was a time when you just got in cars with strangers (pre-uber, where we're getting in cars with strangers again). John Norman Collins terrorized Michigan's College Women for years. It's the little-known story of small town murder.  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Sweet. Okay. We are back and we are doomed to fail, not literally, only figuratively, because our name is doomed to fail. But we are doomed to succeed. Not doomed. Oh, yeah. Destined. right taylor perfect perfect so far no notes i'm far as joined here by taylor this week we heard all about the opium war from taylor

wars plural uh and this week i'm going to be covering a topic of my own i'm going to be going back taylor towards the true prime side of things i will say that the more i've covered true crime and the more i investigate true crime the more tiring it is to just talk about how someone gets gutted and killed and murdered and thrown into a ditch like it's just like that's something interesting part so i found the case where the interesting part is really how they got caught and so i'm gonna cover a michigan killer and i was in michigan i was a michigan from memorial day and it was taylor i man i i don't maybe i'm just like a softy like this but being out there i was like

like, this place is so gorgeous. Like, I don't get way we don't all live there. And I met up. It's partially, yeah. So apparently they've had a lot milder winters the past couple of winters. Um, God bless global warming, apparently. It worked out for them. But I hung out with our old former colleague, um, Brian Palmer, if you remember him.

Well, yeah, he lives in Detroit. Yeah, he lives in Detroit. And we landed in Detroit. And I was asked him, I was like, this place is incredible it's so beautiful it's so lush it's like weirdly affordable for how pretty it is and he was like yeah it's like the best kept secret it's like everybody thinks that this place sucks and it's too cool to inhabit and all that and like we kind of want it that way because it keeps everything normal and affordable and i was like i get it like i would totally

i mean we also used to work with michigan's PR person so someone whose job it is to get people into you are there. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I think she's a chief strategy officer now or something. Anyways, who knows? So, uh, so anyways, I was there and I was having some conversations with folks and I learned about it about a local boogeyman in Michigan who receipts like some fan favorites. Proceed Ted Bundy, proceeds John Wayne Gacy, a particularly brutal guy, which at the end of this conversation, I would love to get your perspective on why this guy isn't famous

because he is brutal, ruthless. Like, all the things. Yeah. Yeah, maybe too much, maybe too much. But I don't know. He,

he, you'll see. He's going to be like a very Ted Bundy-esque kind of a character. But I'm going to be covering a guy named who I would bet any amount of money you have not heard of, John Norman Collins.

Maybe not. You haven't heard of him? I knew a man named him. John Collins and his parents were from Ireland and he wanted to get dual Irish citizenship. In order to get it, he had to go find a police officer or a Catholic priest to sign his papers. And we laughed for like seven days because that was the most Irish requirement of the whole world. Sorry, you don't know a serial killer by that name, do you? No.

Great. Great. So I don't have to pay you. Nope. So I already named the guy. So let's just backfill the story by starting with his life and like who he is, roughly and then get into what ended up happening and then get into the most interesting part which is like him getting caught. So this guy John, I'm just going to call him John.

He was born on June 17th, 1947 in Windsor, Ontario for the non-geography buffs. That is in Canada. Thank you. His father abandoned the family

when John was a baby when he was first born and the mother went on to have a series of horrible, horrible relationships. She didn't be getting married to about three different men and they were all increasingly worse than the last. I think the last one was an abusive alcohol could beat the shit out of John and the mom. So not great, not great.

But also, this was like raising a child in the 40s and 50s in Michigan. If you didn't be... Wait, how they get to Michigan? That I don't know. I think the mom is from there and somehow they were in Ontario, Canada, and that's when, or Windsor, Ontario, when she gave birth.

But my point was, like, if you're raising a kid in Michigan, like, isn't it just like being an alcoholic who beats some kind of normal? Like, isn't that like, how you're supposed to raise a kid in the 1950s? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, I feel like that is a big part of. I mean, it made a lot of strong, strong men.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe we should be beating our children more often. Parents, if you have a child, then you aren't beating them. Can you write to us on a stone why? I can tell you, I don't be my children to continue. Nice cover. I'm kidding, obviously. So, okay, so the type of person John was.

So I hate to, like, describe it this way, and I know you're going to hate it, too. Who's just like a normal guy growing up in Michigan? He was an honor roll student. He played baseball. He lettered in football. He dated a ton. He was super pomp. And ultimately, he would end up attending a university called Eastern Michigan for a degree in education with the ultimate goal being an elementary school teacher, which goes to show why you should never trust anybody.

Don't love that. Yeah. It's like an absolute, horrific monster and he's going to teach children. So he started exhibiting anti-social behavior around this time. So it would have been somewhere around his, like, sophomore year, where. again he was really popular with women and he would go out with a lot of girls and a lot of them would later on report how he was really antisocial and awkward and aggressive in ways that were unusual for some reason which I could not I mean I googled enough to where there's definitely some sort of a tracker on my search history but he was obsessed with like not wanting women to be menstruating around him like he could tell he would ask there were stories of him

literally asking someone are you on your period and then when they would reply affirmatively him losing it on them like weird I keep saying weirdly antisocial behavior but like that's really weirdly antisocial behavior I think

it's like maybe okay if you're like 13 you know and you like don't know what it is and you're just like being a boy you're being dumb you know right or whatever but like it's not okay when you're a grown man even in the in the 40s and you're you're getting an education degree to teach other brains like

how to grow up so it was around this time when John would be around 20 in his sophomore junior year of college that a string of murder started happening in a city I'm gonna call it it's Ipsilante nobody knows I don't think anybody knows where Ipsilante is

it's Ann Arbor like it's like in and around Ann Arbor like University of Michigan It's like that whole area. It's technically a 15-mile radius. It's a county that encompasses Ipsilani and Ann Arbor. But, like, just picture that. Also in Ann Arbor last weekend. And Taylor, it is so beautiful.

Like, you've got to go. You've got to visit. I've been to Northern Michigan. I've been to Mackinah Island. And then also, Michigan is so confusing, like, where it is and why it's on Eastern time and, like, all of the map things. Like, I work with someone who lives in Ohio, but she lives, like, an hour from Detroit. And I'm like, no, this makes any sense.

Like, I don't understand this part of America. Yeah, and a part of Michigan is like attached to Wisconsin. And then also it's just like so much more north than parts of Canada. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it is a, it is a, it's weird. But there is a sandwich shop there. Zinger, Zingerman, I think it was called. It is phenomenal. It's like a Jewish deli in the center of Ann Arbor. And it's like a, like a city block. of just like this deli but then like there's like the deli also has like a separate

ice cream parlor it's just so fun you'll have a great time you literally just go to Ann Arbor and go visit this one deli you should have gone to the Gerald Ford Presidential Library so what I was going to do was go to the Henry Ford Library and it was like if I do this and I tell Taylor

she's going to tell Ann Bassby for doing it That's not true no that's where you can learn how drive the Model T you can't learn to drive anywhere else I saw an old Ford at a fair, like a county fair we had last week in town and I was like looking at the pedals because remember I looked up how to drive metal T and you can go to one of those places in Michigan but you have to do exactly do the cranking there's like a lot of I don't know how to drive a stick so it's like a stick times 10 because it's like way more gears that you have to do but is it really I got to research that that's really interesting it's like something else like it's extra it's extra steps yeah they probably didn't have like real how are we talking about this my steroid color product yes let me let me get back to this. Okay, well, I'm going to say when the next time you go, you should do that and drive a metal tea. Everybody, you heard from Taylor.

It's super fun. Okay, so we're talking about this area. Ann Arbor is where we're talking about. So, I'm going to start getting into the murders, and again, the murders, they're where they are. Like, it's tragic, it's awful, whatever, but I'm not going to go into too much detail because, like, who gives a shit? Like, it's the exact same thing,

story over and over again. So, on August 7th, 1967, a naked body was found on a patch of land near Eastern Michigan and identified using dental records to be a woman who is a 19 year old named Mary Teresa Blesar, who was a student at Eastern Michigan as well. She was brutalized. Obviously, her feet were cut off as were some of her fingers and she had about 30 stab wounds. It was bad. It was a really bad murder. Yeah. Like it was really grotesque. Like it was like one of those murders where like this guy just wanted to do the killing part you know they do like a product versus like process killer

and some want the body because they crave the body and some crave that kill this feels like a i want the kill kind of guy so something i found that was kind of sad there's like a modern looking website that's being maintained in honor of mary's life she died in 67 you can find it it's mary flessar.com it's so it's m a r-a-r-l-e-s-z-a-r-r-r-com and if you go to it it looks kind like it's like a modern-looking site it's like a weird geocity thing i mean it doesn't look like a 500,000 on our website or anything but like it looks like somebody like recently is updated and maintained it and like updated the fonts and all that stuff and it just like includes things that she liked to do when she was a kid and it includes her favorite hobbies and pictures of her when she was a kid and pictures of her family now saying like I didn't know any of you and y'all never knew me but I think we would have loved each other like it's like a really it's really sad I've never seen like a family too

no it's this is really sad it's like 60 years ago I know but like yeah so she has on her website a quote that goes, the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Do you know who that quote is? Eleanor Roosevelt. Yes. Yes. She said that was her favorite

quote was this one quote from Eleanor Roosevelt. I thought you'd like that. I do love that. Aw, poor thing. Yeah, really sad. Really, really sad. So moving on. To murder number two, it was about a year later where another body was found. This time, it was that of a woman named

Joan Elspeth, scale scale S. The very middle of middle of the U.S. names are hard. I know. I know.

They're really thick. They're really thick. Yes. She was 20 years old. She'd also been stabbed to death. And for several reasons, it looked like her body

had been moved. Basically, the last time anybody saw her, it was her roommate. And the roommate accompanied Joanne to a bus stop to catch a bus

to Ann Arbor to stay with her boyfriend for the weekend she had apparently missed the bus and a group of three men rolled up to her and she accepted the ride and that's the last time anybody saw her Taylor there's gonna be like

audience and Taylor there's gonna be some bouncing around here because I'm taking things a little bit out of phonological order because it'll actually make sense more in the totality of the whole conversation we're having but I'm gonna leave it leave it that as far as like the experience

of her getting picked up by men. I promise I'm not going to leave it at that. I'm going to come back to that here in a minute or like in 20 minutes. That there were three of them? Yes. It's going to become relevant. So regarding her body when she was found. So her top half was way more decomposed than her bottom half indicating that perhaps her bottom half was somewhere colder

after death than her upper body was. And also there was no blood underneath the body when she was discovered. and a thing that I didn't set forth in the previous murder was that kind of the same thing happened to her a little bit different it wasn't it didn't have to do a decomposition of the blood thing but it did have to do with the fact that she'd been moved around like it was obviously she'd moved a bunch so at this point it was becoming clear like somebody was doing some of these women

and then like taking them from one place to another which is like pretty important to know so right but that makes you feel like the process and the product I don't know, the violence is just so violent. What do you do with a body that's been like its hands? I mean, I don't know. There's a lot of gross people. You must be just harder than not like doing something like sexually,

but like they like having it around, you know? Maybe. Or like they have done it because I don't know. It's much harder to get rid of a body than you would imagine because all these people have trouble getting rid of bodies and people find them and all the things. That is true. I have heard that like the hardest part of like committing a murder isn't the killing part

is to getting rid of the body part. Yeah. So one thing to remind you of Taylor, this was all happening in 1968. Do you know why that's relevant? Could you guess why that's relevant to this conversation? Vietnam. No, it said we didn't know what a serial killer was. Like serial killing wasn't a thing.

There was no like let's create these directories of all these different murders than tie them together so that different police can talk to different police like none of that existed then the 1970s we're in the 1960s right now it wasn't until the 1970s till the like quote unquote careers I guess of Ted Bundy and John Wayne gase even started which were like the archetypical serial killers like wasn't really a thing yet so you're flying really blind if you're the police here no totally so murder number three of About eight months later, after murder number two, the body of a University of Michigan law student who was named Jane Louise Mixer

was found having been shot in the head. There was no signs of sexual assault. The other two did have signs of sexual assault, which I left off before. But it was still weird enough to find a decomposing body within miles of all these other recently found bodies. And so they connected the dots on that. and then a few days after Jane's body was found another decomposing body that was also new

was found a few miles away. That was a 16 year old girl named Marilyn Skelton and her cause of death was blunt force trauma which resulted in multiple skull fractures. It was a brutal way to die. Moving on to number 5 and 6 less than a month after Mary Lynn's body was found. The body of a 13-year-old girl was found Don Louise Balsam, she was found on the side of a road and she had stab wounds and strangulation marks on her neck.

During the investigation of Don's murder, police investigated a vacant farmhouse about 100 yards from where her body was found and discovered evidence that this was probably where she had been murdered. Again, now we have two murders for sure at the very beginning that we knew weren't committed at the spot where the body was found. now we have murder number five where we know for sure that there was a murder that happened in a farmhouse outside of where this body was dragged to. It's also just like so much about the Midwest. You know how I was always like someone from Wisconsin, whatever? I keep trying to get people to buy me Wisconsin death trap for my birthday

because I really like it. Have you ever read that? It's not really a book. It's not really a book. I got up in the library in L.A. one time and I got out on the subway and people were looking to be weird. It's just a list of weird things from gravestones. in Wisconsin and how like weird ways people died.

Taylor, I will tell you that when I was in Michigan, one morning when nothing was going on, I took a probably two-hour detour walking through a graveyard in Michigan. I love that for you. And it was peaceful and kind of lovely, actually. So moving on. When police investigated this farmhouse, again, this. vacant farmhouse where they found evidence of the murder of Don Louison.

They also discovered the earrings of the previous victim, the 16-year-old Maryland. So they were starting to connect some dots. I get such true true crime. Is that what it's called? What's it called? The HBO series. Is it true crime?

Oh. True blood? No. True blood is a vampire one. Great. With Matthew Conaghanay? Yeah. I've never seen it, but I know you're talking about.

Two lies. No. Somebody's like screaming into their right now. It's true crime. True detective. True detective. It's so true detective sounding,

which I kind of love despite how horrible and violent it is. So basically, okay, so two months after the discovery of the body of this, this 13 year old, the nude body of a. 21 year old Alice Elizabeth Kalum was discovered by another

in another abandoned farmhouse she'd also been stabbed extensively and shot in the head. Keep that one in mind. Keep Alice Elizabeth Caleb in mind because she had been stabbed extensively and shot in the head. We're going to come back to us. Did the first one shot? No, she wasn't. So the first

one shot was Jane Louise Mixer, which was a lawsuit at University of Miami. But we will circle back to that too. So. I'm ready. So by now they have six murders all happening in close proximity to each other and all within a two-year period of time. There's some outliers, again, kind of to your point, the fact that two of them were children is kind of weird. The fact that some of them were sexually assaulted and some weren't is a little bit odd.

The fact that some had gunshot wounds to the head versus stabbings or strangulations, you know, it was a little bit different. It was kind of like all over than that. But regardless, it was clear that there were some connection between at least some of the murders. So to the infinite credit of the police in Michigan at this time, given we just discussed about cooperation around serial killings in the 1960s, they did something that was rare then. And it's kind of rare now, too. They coordinated efforts. So these murders were all over a 15 mile radius in Washington County, Michigan. and that essentially meant

that five different law enforcement agencies had jurisdiction over different parts of the murders. Usually that means that they would just work their cases separately but in this case given the immense public outcry from the community, they actually coordinated their efforts. Wow.

The, yeah, the community was terrified and police really had no leads to help them hone in on a perpetrator. This part I actually like love. At one point, they hire a psychic to try and predict who the killer is, which is... I love when they do that. They're like, fuck it. 60s.

Like, fucking who cares. This psychic, a guy named Peter Herkos, basically sounds like a charlatan. He guessed that the killer would be a strongly built white male under 25 years of age, one outside of the U.S., and who rode a motorcycle. So... Wait, that's pretty cool. They got born in the U.S. That is cool. I will give you that. That is cool. But also, He's guessing in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the 1960s, where the vast majority are white men under the age of 25. Yeah, sure. I guess he's still right.

Outside the U.S. Yeah, sure, sure. I want to say a dude did it. He's still right. Who has mom issues. Fine. He's still right. That part I think it's cool.

Later on. But maybe not because also like my family, I know immigrated to Canada first and then to the U.S. to the Midwest. so maybe there was a lot of that happening as well. I'll also say that he, in the 1960s predicted that Hitler didn't die in the bunker that he was living in Argentina. And that's where we get the whole schick of Hitler living in Argentina from. I mean, right. That's not great.

Like, maybe he was right. Who knows? So one last thing that he predicted was that whoever the killer was wasn't done yet and they were going to kill again. And on that point, he was proven right on July 26th, 1969, the most consequential murder that we've discussed so far. The body of 18-year-old Karen Sue Byneman was found. And there was a lot going on with this one. So this sounds, like when I read about the way she was killed, it sounded like a scene out of seven, the movie. He beat the shit out of her.

And he also removed parts of her skin to the point where you could see like the subcutaneous fat underneath. it like he really did a number on her but on top of that for some reason he made her drink some sort of caustic substance like bleach like it was like weird torture murder stuff like it was really scary they all feel so different they kind of feel different yeah like they're all awful they all they feel different like I can't even tell if it's escalating or not because it's all different yeah this one feels like more brutal than the rest although oh yeah like he also killed a 13 year old like you don't think like how do you tell like what's worse i mean they're all bad so so this woman karen was killed um and by now you're in a college town everybody's losing

their mind and the police are trying to figure out like we we got to we got to figure someone out like this is like everybody's lose their minds at us and so they start by um by going back to examining some of the previous killing. So back when police had first discovered Joan, she was the one that had accepted a ride for the men for the bus stop that I told you I'd come back to, right? Right, the three of them, potentially.

She, police had at that time gone over every single lead they could go over. The roommate had described the car, so they pulled the registrations on all the cars that fit that description, and they'd run interviews of those guys. They'd also described,

or the roommate had also described the men in the car but again how many different ways can you write down white men in the early 20s in a college town of michigan like it's just it's everybody like so even today yeah yeah and so months after the body was found though um police had been told about john norman collins basically two eyewitnesses stated they saw joan walking with john specifically people who knew them and a guy named, a police officer named Larry Matheson had met with an interview John and was convinced by him that he never knew Joan, never met her, and that he was in Detroit the weekend that Joan disappeared and he bought it. He believed her or believed him.

When police started retracing the steps Karen had taken the day she went missing, they started with a wake shop. She had visited that day and was told by the employee of the workshop that she specifically remembers Karen because she mentioned that she felt stupid because she had accepted a ride at the wig shop and from the wake shop by a stranger on a motorcycle who was waiting for outside. Yes, I remember. This is familiar to me. Something.

I'm never sorry yet. Probably ID. Probably ID or somebody. Probably. So this officer was Larry Mathewson who had interviewed John over a year prior. and when he heard the Wigsaw employee describing the man on the motorcycle, his head went to, that sounds

like that guy, John, I interviewed immediately. So, it's so wild, like, have you ever been interviewed for potentially being a murderer? Shockingly, no. Because there's, like, in these stories, like, interviewed a hundred dudes in town, and you're like,

what? It feels wild. I don't know anybody who has been interviewed for that. So, this officer, having heard from the wake shop employees pulls up a picture of john and the wick shop employee says yeah that was the guy that was on the motorcycle waiting for karen everybody knew that the last person to have seen karen alive was with these wick shop employees so they're like okay

this is something so police start looking at the john and they start interviewing people who know him and they discovered that he had some again antisocial behavior especially weird anger towards women. I don't know what this personality type is where like do you just hate women? Like I don't get like an insult, you know, they like hate women so much. But that's what's weird about this guy.

Like he wasn't an insult. He was dating a lot. Like he was constantly, he had like multiple girls. He's a teacher yet? Or he's still in college? He's in college so. Wow. Yeah, I don't get. I don't get this like I just hate like hate women personality. Like I. So, but that's basically what it was

he had legitimately multiple corroborating sources said that he legitimately raped at least one woman in college Oh That he didn't murder That didn't murder And that even under consensual situations

With women he would grow angry For reasons that were like unusual Kind of like the whole menstruating thing When he would find out a woman was menstruating he would lose his shit at them it was like again weirdly antisocial um he was also at this time when he was in college employed at a company uh where they made drum brakes which are like breaks for cars and he would talk to his co-workers about details of these murders that are called the michigan murders at this point and the details that he would discuss they were not public

knowledge but what he would say is that his uncle was a police officer investigating this crime and would share these details with him and that's how he knew these details about the wounds the specific damage done to those victims later on when as police are learning all this right this picture like they just started being like

we're connecting the dots we're going to interview this person so they immediately asked the uncle like wait what did you tell this kid about these murders is like nothing like I've not even premed like I don't even talk to him all this stuff like not talking about my job much less the nuanced details of these these grisly crimes so by now the police are pretty sure that this is this is their guy um they'd end up going to john's apartment to question him about where he was the day that karen went missing and they let him

know that seven eyewitnesses saw him with karen that day and that another three women told police he also tried to entice them to ride his motorcycle that day so John maintained his innocence and refused police attempts to get him back to the station for polygraph by this point I assume police were kind of waiting for him to kind of slip up and lead them to some more evidence because he's still free he's totally free there's no charges or anything or he hasn't been arrested but when all this is going on his cop uncle comes back into the picture and that's what I meant when I said like sometimes it's just fascinating know how these guys get caught so the really wait there really is a cop uncle

yes okay again I thought I just making that up no this this reminds you of Ted Kaczynski I'll have my revenge but in the brother that tournament so while Karen had gone missing the uncle which I'm going to call him the uncle because it's just more interesting than his name. His name is Sergeant David Leek. But the uncle was on vacation with his family and he had a German Shepherd and the German Shepherd stayed at home and he needed someone to look after the dog. And so the uncle gave John the keys to the house and John was basically living there during this time. When the family gets home from their vacation, they noticed like some weird stuff going on. They first off noticed there's like black paint on the floor of the basement. And they also noticed

that like a bunch of cleaning supplies they owned were missing from the house. Hate that. Yeah. Have a good sign. The next day is when investigators tell the uncle that his nephew is under investigation.

He goes home with this knowledge and the uncle and what I assume is like a scene out of a horror movie. He just starts like scraping away some of his paint that's in the basement and he thinks what he

has uncovered under the paint is human blood. And so he reports back to the investigators what he's found. So police decide to conduct a full on forensic investigation of the basement and discovered two pretty interesting bits

of evidence. First off was that tiny hair clippings, which appear similar to hair clippings found at a site where Karen's body was discovered, they were positively identified to being Karen's hair. I'm not going to go into a time of detail again. I'm I hate the graphicness of this.

Whatever this guy did to Karen, there was obviously a rape involved and there was stuff shoved inside her and part of the stuff that was shoved inside her include these weird small hair clippings that police feel like, why is this in here? And they find this hair clipping in the uncle's basement.

Remember when that guy when that guy said about your apartment for a couple weeks and he like never paid you when one was like drinking the entire time I did think about that actually I'm glad that

he didn't murder anyone in your apartment or maybe he did I don't know yeah I still getting everything about it I'm gonna let's move on so the other the other interesting thing they found this uncle's basement was that blood on the ground there was blood on the ground

there was absolutely unequivably there was blood on the ground again, this is 1969. They can't do DNA analysis on this. The best thing you do is blood type analysis and what they discovered is that the blood type on the ground didn't match anybody

who was in the house or was president of the house's blood type, but it did match Karen's. So there's that. So by this point, they're like, okay, so obviously we know that those other two girls were taken somewhere

killed and then their bodies were placed somewhere else now we found karen's body and there's all this evidence pointing to this being the murder site of karen and so it's starting to form a pattern for the cops right and so they ended up arresting john and let him know what they had discovered um but at the time all this is just tied to karen it's not related to any of the other murders i mentioned earlier. This is where another incredible insane tidbit comes into play. Shortly after being

arrested and charged, police and Michigan are contacted by investigators in Salinas, California, who thought a murder on their books was connected to John. Well, in this case, it was a 17-year-old girl named Roxy Ann Phillips, whose nude and

badly beaten body was found in a ravine in July between the deaths of Joan and Karen. Karen, Karen being the last person I just discussed, who's presumably been killed in the uncle's basement. Police heard through Roxy's friend that she'd been acquainted with a man who recently was visiting Monterey, California, who attended Eastern Michigan named John, who wanted to be a teacher and was living there temporarily in a camper trailer. Like, obviously this guy, right? So police tracing John's footsteps found that he was traveling during this time to Monterey, California, towing a camper trailer behind his car.

So they made the connection of the murder of Roxy was also added to John's indictment, but that was a separate indictment. So this was all Michigan-based stuff, and they issued this indictment in California. The whole point of it was you got to hold off until this Karen murder trial is concluded. included, then you can address Roxy's murdered. So that's what ended up happening. So his trial begins and his defense argues basically that the evidence was shaky and that it was circumstantial and not conclusive, that police mishandled the evidence and that they intimidated witnesses and that John is not guilty. That's the whole argument. He was obviously found guilty. Yeah, clearly.

And he was sentenced to life without parole in solitary confinement. California tried to extrad him back to try him for Roxy's murder but they gave up because they were like look this is a waste of time it's a waste of money because even if we do bring him back and secure conviction he has to go back to Michigan to serve his sentence anyways like there's no he's never getting out of jail like there's no point doing this like you know so they let it go but as it relates to the other murders again he's only tried and convicted for Cairns as it relates to the first murder the Mary Flesler the one who has the the Eleanor Roosevelt quote associated with her.

So she was really proud of this 1967 coin, the silver dollar from the Expo that she had. It was like a keepsake for her. They found that coin in John Stressor. No. As it relates to- Like, poor baby. Yeah, as it relates to Joanne Scale,

the girl who was trying to go to Ann Arbor to visit her boyfriend and then got stopped and a bunch of guys off for her ride. So John's roommate, Arnold verified that the two of them and another one of their friends offered to give Joan a ride that day at the bus station and that John later take the two other men out and then arrived home three hours later calling Joan a bitch and carrying her purse with him great not great that explains the couple people yeah yeah car yeah the other is Alice Calum so Arnold also said that this woman was at their apartment and that her and John got into an argument and that she left the apartment and then he went racing after her he returned later with a knife which he gave to Arnold to hide for him which he did he would later state that he wanted to go to the police who's positive he had killed Alice but was terrified of him and so he didn't that's fair which at this point it's like dude

he already he already a pretty sure he killed one woman like now you know he killed two like maybe just back off this one. But long story short he ends up trying to appeal a sentence multiple and multiple different ways. None of it goes anywhere because he is so obviously guilty of this stuff. Even if he didn't

kill one of these, he killed one of the other ones. Like he did suck on here, right? The only thing is that he actually is exonerated off of one of them because you had asked, isn't it weird that he shot one in the head? And it was weird because Jane Mixer, the lawsuit of university,

Miami or Michigan. In 2005, a guy named Gary Earl Lederman. So that would be 40 years, no, 37 years after the murderer, this guy, Gary Earl Lederman was charging convicted off TNA evidence that was found in her body for having killed her. And so John is not guilty of that one. But the rest, he almost certainly did. Rough time, rough time to be a lady needed a ride the 60s and 70s.

So this is when universities starting to introduce the buddy system. So the buddy system wasn't really a thing until this point. Yeah. So it was like either I like how they put it. It was either every woman should walk home with a man that they know and trust or three women.

So they assumed that it was like if there was three women they could overtake a man, which I think two would be enough, frankly, but sure. I don't know. No, I think that's fair. you know it sucks but like it's hard i mean in new york i used to walk home all the time with my keys and my fist you know like i would be able to get my wits together to punch them in one of the face with my keys but i would that's what i would do just in case you know it is weird to like

i have heard from women about like what it's like to be alone and like i don't know i i guess like it's like a privilege and a courtesy like i've never walked home and been like scared someone's going to hurt me i have so many times it's just been like you have to be like you have to be super alert that your headphones off be ready to like fight for yourself and i definitely had men that i trust walk me home and like make sure i got inside yeah yeah yeah i remember doing that in uh in high school or not in high school but in college for people too but it just it just shows like you know what uh are our lived experiences are like and can be can be because like in the cases of these seven women they walked home and their parents are updating a website

for 40 years or no 60 years about like their favorite kind of macaroni and cheese it's crazy like did he ever say anything about why he did it is it still live yeah he's still alive he's so alive he's 77 years old he's never he's never said that he's guilty he's never said that he did it whoa i see pictures of him old yeah he's just like hanging out in jail i guess yeah yeah he's never he's never been like yeah he's been he's confess his innocence been appealing it ever since. Yeah. Yeah, he's a horrible, uh, old person, but...

That's so scary. So anyways, uh, ladies, um, listen, don't walk home with your keys. Get, get some mace. Get some pepper spray, like... That's true. I could have gotten some mace. I did not. I got, I had my keys, and I think now I'd have some...

And there's also some really cool things that you can buy now that are like really loud alarms. And I also have on, like, my, I have on, like, my... iPhone if you like really quickly click this this top button it'll call 911 so get the top right button on your iPhone if you click it like three times it'll directly call 911 wait really so I've yeah wait I can do that right now click it three times it'll say do you want to call 911 if you have it set up try it the top um like the power button yeah did it do it no pulled up my credit card okay maybe sure not let me do it let me have to open it no i guess i don't have it on back to the middle

well i should turn that on i think it's something or also like find find a way to like solve the problem yourself by the time the cops get there you're already fucking dead so like yes have the cops on call but like also have like pepper spray on you yeah oh no that's what you do you hold the volume button and the side button at the same time for a couple seconds it'll give you emergency call right away

holy shit wait that works make a picture of it again but yeah do that so that you can you don't have you don't have to open your phone you can just get right to call emergency services. Man, Apple's so good. Between really, these laptops that last a lifetime. I know. Anyways, that's my story. I'm sticking to it.

Agreed to agree. Well, thank you, Fares. My announcement for today is that it's a birthday on June 5th on Wednesday. Wait, it's your birthday on June 5th? Yeah. So if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, please share with your friends for my birthday present um is this 42 it is the year the what's the 42 the answer to life and everything what is 42 it's the answer to life it's the ultimate it's the answer to life

it's the answer to the ultimate question of life the universe and everything is 42 that's from hedgeger's guide to the galaxy one of my favorite movies which i hate the fact that it doesn't hold up because I watched it like years later and was like this is kind of stupid I have I've read it but I should read it again so the meaning of life is 42 um so I'm excited to be 42 I was just talking to Rachel about this about how um I guess everybody says this but like it's kind of nice being our age you know no I like it I'm good I felt oh no one thing we missed because we missed last week because i didn't tell you that i ran a 5k did i tell you this and so we have the king in town and they have like an annual grubstakes

days which is like a yucca valley town thing and there's a 2k a 5k and 10k last year we did the 2k and one did the 10k it was a lot one was like that was too much and we did the 2k and i was like that was dumb i feel stupid it was like a mile so so we all do the 5k this year and florence did great she got number nine all around in females and she got second place in her age group she did wonderful she totally was like i was like stay in my eyesight she was gone just gone one got like fifth in his in men and then um miles got third place for his age group um but i did not get in the medal but i carried miles half of it he was crying so hard he was like i hate this and never want to do this again and he totally gets up for me because i totally would do that during the middle of

5K. So I carried him and I carried him across the finish line. And then we got the local paper and I was not listed as someone who had ran the 5K. Miles was, Florence was and Juan was and I was not. So I heard a letter to the editor of the local paper and they wrote back and said they're very sorry. But then my body hurt until Wednesday. So that was my old, that was my old lady thing. I ran the 5K on Sunday until Wednesday. I was like, ow, ow, ow, ow. I had a brief moment where I thought maybe I should sign up for a half marathon and I was like, what are you talking about? Ew, gross, no. I'm like miles. I'm like, dude, like, this is pointless. It's so stupid. There's more gritas in every store I'm passing, and I'm like just running. Like, I don't get it.

Like, what's the point of this? And I remember one time we did an AIDS walk. I used to do that in New York, which was fun. You could do a big walk. You raise money, all the things. But in the middle of the AIDS walk, we would like stop to get brunch.

Because I'm like, I'm not tapping myself for this AIDS walk. I'm going to stop and everything. I think you were the one that started the whole, there's some families that. Let's start drinking on Thanksgiving morning and some families that go running on Thanksgiving morning. You got to pick the right one to join. Exactly. You need to make that clear before you marry someone.

It's their family going to make you run a 5K Thanksgiving morning or are they going to start drinking at 10 a.m. Those are your two options. Yeah. We're coming the same cloth, Taylor. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not doing that. But it was really fun.

And we'll do it again every year because it's really fun. You get to donate money to the community. And like the lady that works at the post office was there. you know and some of their friends were there and then like the guy who has the car covered in trump stickers was there and he was holding across said jesus and an american flag and was yelling happy memorial day and then like praying he didn't actually do the 5k but he paid for it because he won the raffle it's a whole thing i parked for really he won the raffle because you have to like get your raffle tickets if you pay to do the 5k and he got raffle tickets

but he didn't actually run he just stood there the whole time holding his cross and his american flag and like praying and yelling happy memorial day every five minutes so one of the scariest moments i had was like the first month or so i moved to austin and if anybody is in austin no ladybird lake in auditorium shores like it's crazy populated crazy popularly up there running up and down the by the lake and i take my dog out for a walk i'm going to walk the lake and a guy in camo gear with like a giant knife like a rambo knife

he was walking crosswise on the trail holding make America great again flag but he was like cutting people off he was going sideways length to length as people were trying to go by him and then I noticed that he also had like a wife and like a very young child they were like sitting on the side

watching him do this and I was like in that one moment I was just like it was like a weird moment like being like it's scary because you have no idea what that guy's potentially going to do. They're like, what is going on with his wife and his killer? What is he doing to them? Where he's like, hey, this

Saturday morning, when all these people are going to have a good time and go running and then make game plans where they're going to get eggs Benedict, we're going to go cut them off threateningly with a giant freaking knife on my side holding camo gear with a giant

fly. It was really creepy. It was really easy. I hate that. I hate that. that sucks. I feel bad for them. I read this random article this week from a woman who was a cable person. And she would like go into houses and like install cable. And she talked about a lot of like the weird shit that she saw. And one of the like she went to like a Russian mobsters house and they made her do coke before she could do the cable. So they would know that she would be an arc, you know, stuff like that. But like one person, the husband was like so mad the cable wasn't working. And the wife kind of confessed to her that like if he can. that watch Fox News and be upset at the world, he's going to beat her up. Dude, Taylor, I, okay, sorry, we're segueing into some weird conversations. So at our last company together, I, do you remember Politicon? Mm-hmm. So for anybody that doesn't know, Politicon is like this political nerd conference, but it's like,

it's not, it's not policy walks. It's not like the Heritage Foundation. It's like the people are running, like, really obscure underground, like, like YouTube channels and like stuff like they these are not insiders they're just like crazy people mostly like that they show up here anyways that company would sponsor this like a showing because in this case it was in LA we're based in LA all that stuff anyways I was there and people come to booths and try to talk to us and this family came up and at first i was like man there's like something weird about this like the wife seems normal the kid seems

kind of normal it was the kid was like maybe like three years old the husband seems like like he's a contorted look on his face and like it's so weird it was like talking to me and like i didn't notice it for the first little bit and i noticed that he had like an info war's hat on it's like oh like this is like it was it was a moment of like when you consume this kind of like you consume this like think about the content you consume because it'll it'll impact the point where your face is just contorted in a way you're like are you like are going to hit me like yeah and imagine like living with that person or like watching that person become that person and that was the thing that's where my head went with the wife and the kid because like it was like dude like you got

to be so scared all the time but you wake up and this guy's coming out of the bathroom and just like with this face on like god it's nice probably you know Yeah, like, yeah, I don't know, be careful about the content you consume because, I mean, there's a difference in, like, being open-minded and being, like, just okay than crazy. Yeah. No, it's scary. It's scary. And it's scary that, like, you turn a corner and there's, like, so many different things you can find on the internet, you know. Yeah.

Or you can find us and we're wholesome and happy and healthy. Oh, you can tell your friends about us and share it with, like, everyone you know. We're smiling. None of our faces are Contorted. My face is controlled this entire episode, but I'm glad that I know we can see it. Anyways, Taylor,

yes, write to us at DoofelPod at g1.com. Find us on the socials at DoofelPod. Anything else to lead off with Taylor? No, that's it. Thank you, Fars. Thank you, friends. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, Taylor.

Thank you. Bye, all. I don't know.