Copyright M Live Michigan
BAY CITY, MI — The witching season is upon us, the days before Halloween tantalizing us into revisiting classic horror movies or reading vintage ghost stories. But for the most macabre and history-minded among us, autumn invites us to delve into Michigan’s links to monsters of the flesh-and-blood variety. Michigan has a significant number of connections to serial killers and mass murderers. Some I’ve written about before: John E. List, the Bay City-born man who massacred his five-member family in New Jersey in 1971 then remained at large for the next 18 years. The Rev. Jim Jones, who recruited eight Michigan natives to join his Peoples Temple movement, all of whom died along with 910 others in Jonestown in 1978. But did you know America’s three most infamous serial killers — Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer — claimed victims from Michigan? Or that Michigan was the birthplace of two female serial killers, a breed exceptionally rare compared to their male counterparts? Or how about knowing one of the Manson Family victims, a celebrity in his own right, is buried here? Did you know at least six serial killers are spending their twilight years in Michigan prisons, with one a few years from release? Wanting to learn more about these cases, I attended a presentation on the subject by Candice Smith of Tours Around Michigan at the Alice and Jack Wirt Public Library in Bay City the evening of Oct. 15. I expected a small scattering of attendees. Instead, the conference room was standing room only. “Nice to see a wholesome event really bring the community together,” my friend, Jeff Kart, chuckled beside me. Point taken, though. Yes, an interest in serial killers can be criticized, but its prevalence can’t be denied. With that in mind, below are a handful of Michigan’s ties to America’s most notorious bogeymen (and women): John Wayne Gacy Gacy was convicted of killing 33 boys and men between 1972 and 1978 in his Chicago suburb home. Three of them had Michigan ties, including his first victim, Timothy J. McCoy. Gacy stabbed the 16-year-old to death in his home on Jan. 3, 1972, after McCoy had spent the winter holidays with family in Lansing. Jon S. Prestidge, Gacy’s 16th victim, was a 20-year-old from Kalamazoo who disappeared in the Chicago area while visiting a friend in March 1977. Robert D. Winch, 16 and also from Kalamazoo, was last seen alive in Chicago on Nov. 11, 1977, making him Gacy’s 21st victim. Police recovered the three young men’s bodies from the crawlspace under Gacy’s house. Winch is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Eastwood. Before his crimes were discovered, Gacy owned a general contracting business. This frequently brought him to Michigan to work on pharmacies in Bay City and in cities in the western region of the state, Smith’s research shows. Curiously, flight records indicate Gacy was in Michigan when one of his victims was killed on Sept. 25, 1977, according to two Chicago attorneys. Five of Gacy’s victims remain unidentified and investigators are soliciting tips and DNA samples from the public to put names with the bodies. Jeffrey Dahmer Dahmer’s second of 17 victims was Michigan native Steven W. Tuomi. Tuomi, 24, hailed from Ontonagon in the Upper Peninsula and was working as a short-order cook in Milwaukee when he met Dahmer in November 1987. Dahmer claimed he battered Tuomi in a drunken state inside the Ambassador Hotel then disposed of his body. Tuomi’s remains were never found, leaving him with the ignominious distinction of being Dahmer’s only victim whose homicide did not lead to his killer facing charges. Tuomi’s family erected a cenotaph in his memory at Holy Family Catholic Cemetery in Ontonagon. Ted Kaczynski The anti-technology ideologue also known as the Unabomber, killed three people and wounded 23 more between 1978 and 1995 by mailing explosive packages to universities and airlines. Before he holed up in a rural Montana cabin to send his deadly missives, Kaczynski earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan. He later targeted his alma mater in November 1985, sending a bomb to psychology professor James McConnell. McConnell and an assistant were both injured by the blast but survived. Charles Manson Jay Sebring, one of five people killed by members of Charles Manson’s followers the early morning of Aug. 9, 1969, was raised in Detroit and graduated from Detroit Catholic Central High School. Back then, he was still known by his birthname of Thomas J. Kummer. He adopted the pseudonym after moving to Los Angeles to start his career as a hairstylist for Hollywood stars. Even The Bay City Times ran no fewer than seven wire articles between 1962 and 1968 covering Sebring’s salon business, noting his clientele included Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, and Elvis Presley. Sebring had dated actress Sharon Tate from 1964-1966 and remained close friends with her through their shared, brutal homicides. Sebring is buried at Holy Sepulchre Catholic Cemetery in Southfield. Aileen Wuornos Wuornos (nee Pittman) was born in Rochester in 1956 and “raised” by her maternal grandparents in Troy. Essentially homeless from the age of 15, she began offering sex for money and made her way to Florida. Between 1989 and 1990, she killed seven men who had solicited her for sex. Wuornos reconnected with childhood friend Dawn Botkins while awaiting execution on Florida’s death row. Upon her death via lethal injection in 2002, Botkins received all of Wuornos’ belongings and her ashes, which she scattered under a walnut tree in the yard of her Tuscola County home. Mary McKnight Nearly a century before Wuornos made headlines, Michigan produced the now-obscure Mary McKnight. Retroactively given the sensational sobriquet “the Strychnine Saint,” McKnight was convicted of fatally poisoning her brother, sister-in-law, and baby niece in Kalkaska County in 1903. But following her arrest, investigators discovered a trail of bodies in McKnight’s wake through Grayling, Saginaw, and Alpena counties, including two husbands and five of her own young children. One of those children, May Ambrose, died in 1884 and is buried in Saginaw’s Forest Lawn Cemetery. Whether McKnight was truly a serial killer or just beset with tragedy is debatable, but author Tobin T. Buhk makes a case for the former in his 2014 book, “Michigan’s Strychnine Saint: The Curious Case of Mrs. Mary McKnight.” Helmuth Schmidt Speaking of Buhk, the author also wrote a book on another suspected serial killer who plagued Michigan in the early 1900s, Helmuth Schmidt. The German immigrant worked as a machinist for the Detroit Motor Company in the 1910s, while at the same time building his reputation as the “Royal Oak Bluebeard.” Although he only confessed to murdering one woman, authorities suspect he killed about a dozen more. He killed himself while in custody in 1918. Schmidt lured his victims through newspaper personal ads, earning him the handle of a “lonely hearts killer.” The moniker was made famous about 30 years later by convicted serial killers Raymond Fernandez and his wife, Martha Beck, who were arrested, tried and executed in 1951 for the slaying of a Wyoming Township woman and her 2-year-old daughter. Carl E. “Coral” Watts Watts, of Inkster, admitted to or hinted at killing between 13 and 80 women. Separate Michigan juries in the 2000s found him guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of Gloria D. Steele, 19, and Helen M. Dutcher, 36, killed in 1974 and 1979, respectively. Watts, 53, died of prostate cancer in a Jackson hospital in 2007 while serving his life-without-parole sentence. Steele is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Kalamazoo, while Dutcher is interred at Forester Township Cemetery in Sanilac County. Don G. Miller Miller has been dubbed “The East Lansing Serial Killer” and “Killer Miller” for killing four women, starting by strangling his ex-fiancée, Martha Sue Young, on New Year’s Eve 1977. He killed three more women in the summer of 1978 before being arrested after raping a 14-year-old girl. Convicted of the sexual assault and given a 30- to 50-year sentence, Miller accepted a controversial offer: he admitted to killing his four victims and took police to two of their bodies, and in exchange, prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to two manslaughter counts. As a result, the 70-year-old Miller has been eligible for parole since 2018. His maximum possible release date is May 3, 2031, at which point he’ll be 76. He’s currently housed at the Central Michigan Correctional Facility in St. Louis. John N. Collins Known as the Ypsilanti Ripper or the Co-Ed Killer, John Collins, now 78, is serving a life-without-parole sentence at the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility for killing Karen Sue Beineman, 18, in July 1969. Law enforcement, though, assert Collins killed five more females in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area, as well as a woman in California, between July 1967 and June 1969. They allege Collins abducted and raped the females, ages 13 to 21, before stabbing and strangling them then discarding their bodies. Collins has maintained his innocence in all the homicides. The Michigan Department of Corrections currently houses at least four more serial killers: Leslie A. Williams, EliasAbuelazam, Anthony G. Walker, and Shelly A. Brooks. The quartet has claimed 21 lives between them. The killers are serving life-without-parole terms. The Oakland County Child Killer
