Monday, July 30, 2007

What if this blog ever BROKE a story....like now...

Well, it's not so much a story (though I'm sure to the woman involved it's a BAD story) as the unearthing of information in the John Norman Collins case from oh so long ago. Last week I let you in on some info the Ann Arbor Police Department was holding back and some that had leaked out (see the comments section in the post before this one) ever so slowly. However this information is unknown even to them, the Michigan State Police, the Ypsilanti Police and the Department of Public Safety at EMU. Now YOU get to read the world exclusive (where's my Matt Drudge flashing light when I need it?).

In the summer if 1967 John Norman Collins was stalking and chatting up women. Yes I know that's not news. But what if I told you he had a fixation on an African American woman, so much so that she fled without a word to anyone, back to her home in Detroit. Now you get it. John Norman Collins only KILLED petite, brunette females (Alice Kalom was a little bigger than the others but not by that much and Roxie Phillips in California was blonde). No, the summer of 1967 saw Mr. Collins forming an attraction to a black female, who was a co-lead singer in a band, with dreadlocks down the middle of her back and she was a broad shouldered tough as nails Detroit raised, street smart gal. Collins was in the habit of showing up to the bands shows (a minor local band, nobody of note) and waiting until the show was over for some direct face time with the female singer. One of the other band members specifically remembers Collins showing up to the shows and he spoke with him only in passing, it was the lead female singer he had his eye on. He could tell Collins made her a tad uneasy the more he'd show up. The pattern always repeated itself, he'd show up, wait until after the show and make sure he got a chance to be alone with the singer (whose name I'm not releasing currently). One day, she vanished. No trace, simply vanished. Her bandmates weren't told, nobody was told. She simply went missing. One of these bandmates (and the one who first told me this story) bumped into her about four or five years later at a concert and asked her what the hell had happened, why she'd up and vanished. "It was HIM" she told my wide eyed contact, "it was HIM". She relayed that indeed, Collins HAD been stalking her, and in her eyes making some very uncomfortable moves on her. She had simply vanished to be rid of him. She didn't tell anyone because she was VERY fearful of him finding her. She also mentioned that when she began seeing HIS face on TV a couple years later as a suspected serial killer, she REALLY freaked out.

This would have been either RIGHT after or RIGHT before the death of Mary Fleszar, Collins supposed first victim. My HUNCH would be right before as after murdering Fleszar he waited almost another year before killing again.

First off, I think the fact this woman was so street smart at the time may well have saved her life. I can't say for CERTAIN it did, but knowing what we know NOW it would appear it sure helped.

This also now begs the question maybe Collins sought different types of women for his debauchery, maybe he felt he needed smaller women who wouldn't or couldn't offer heavy resistance (this woman, trust me would have offered a lot of resistance) when he attacked them. Maybe this rejection or perceived rejection sent him over the edge the first time.

There you have it, make of it what you will but Collins WAS stalking an African American female in the summer of 1967,

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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

24 years ago TODAY, Laura McBride was murdered

Walking down from her apartment up across the Huron River off Green Road and somehow wound up in Peninsular Park where she was killed. My guess is that since she was stabbed (well there's more to that but I'll spare you the details until it comes out in open court) she was led into the park at knifepoint by her killer, a piece of human shit named Jimmy Eric Green (and Jimmy's parents should be SO PROUD of what they raised), was identified by DNA. They had to look no further than the State Prison in Jackson, MI to find him. He was serving a life sentence for rape and assault.

If anyone knows this case in Ypsilanti it's normally because they have heard the legend of Laura's ghost roaming up by the Hill dorms (ironically enough where Laura Dickinson was recently murdered) during the fall. Hopefully the closure in this case will allow Laura's memory to be that of a kind soul who was also an Air Force vet.

Maybe even perhaps it will release her ghost (which I believe was and is there due to an eyewitness account of a former EMU police officer named 'Joe' who worked there in the late 80's) from it's tortured existence. Who is to say but we do know, the book on one of the most intriguing cases in Ypsilanti's history can now be closed.

Peninsular Park
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