Edgar Award Finalist: The true story of a serial killer who terrorized a midwestern town in the era of free love—by the coauthor of The French Connection. In 1967, during the time of peace, free love, and hitchhiking, nineteen-year-old Mary Terese Fleszar was last seen alive walking home to her apartment in Ypsilanti, Michigan. One month later, her naked body—stabbed over thirty times and missing both feet and a forearm—was discovered, partially buried, on an abandoned farm. A year later, the body of twenty-year-old Joan Schell was found, similarly violated. Southeastern Michigan was terrorized by something it had never experienced before: a serial killer. Over the next two years, five more bodies were uncovered around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan. All the victims were tortured and mutilated. All were female students. After multiple failed investigations, a chance sighting finally led to a suspect. On the surface, John Norman Collins was an all-American boy—a fraternity member studying elementary education at Eastern Michigan University. But Collins wasn’t all that he seemed. His female friends described him as aggressive and short tempered. And in August 1970, Collins, the “Ypsilanti Ripper,” was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. Written by the coauthor of The French Connection, The Michigan Murders delivers a harrowing depiction of the savage murders that tormented a small midwestern town.

In the bitter cold of 1985, two buddies embark on a hunting trip from suburban Detroit to rural Michigan, unaware they would soon become the hunted. Darker than Night tells the chilling true story of the mystery that haunted a community and baffled the police for two decades. The eerie silence surrounding their sudden disappearance is broken after nearly two decades when a relentless investigator inspires a terrified witness to break her silence. The witness narrates a haunting scene that had unfolded years back, pointing fingers at the prime suspects–the Duvall brothers. With no bodies unearthed, the justice system is riveted by the startling revelations during an electrifying trial in 2003. The brothers, Raymond and Donald Duvall, had bragged about the murders, evocatively explaining how they dismembered their victims and fed them to pigs. Despite the shocking confession, the case holds its ground purely on a single witness's account, taking the courtroom through a labyrinth of dark secrets and sinister acts. This gripping thriller presents a vivid tale of crime that reveals the devastating power of evil.

Storytelling at its fully imagined best." -Ben Hamper, bestselling author of Rivethead

Blanketed by forests, dotted by lakes, crisscrossed by rivers and surrounded by Great Lakes, Michigan is a good place to hide secrets, bury bodies and stash evidence. Dig deep enough and you will unearth something sinister. Is the suicide note of a prominent Detroit physician also a confession of murder? Were inmates unlawfully released from Jackson State Penitentiary to carry out a contract killing on a politician before he could turn state's evidence? Who silenced a fiery radio personality known as the "Voice of the People"? Did a notorious serial killer stalk women in Lansing during the 1970s? Join true crime author Tobin T. Buhk as he excavates some of the most vexing unsolved crimes in the history of the Great Lake State.

A Slayer Waits In September, 1955, Nealy Buchanan, a trustee at the State Prison of Southern Michigan, was denied parole. Because of his trustee status, he was assigned to pick up local trash from area farms in a prison truck, which provided the perfect opportunity to escape. Running out of gas near the small town of Stockbridge, Michigan and continuing on foot, he hid out inside the barn of Howard and Myra Herrick, an elderly farm couple. Buchanon was planning to steal their car to further his escape. Surprised when Howard Herrick returned early, he killed the elderly man by crushing his skull with a hand grinder. Hearing the commotion in the barn, Myra Herrick came in and was viciously bludgeoned her to death next to her husband. Their killer quickly hid their bodies under bales of hay. Unable to hot-wire their car, Buchanon hitchhiked to the small town of Mason, caught a cab to Lansing, and bought a Greyhound bus ticket, and fled to New York using Howard Herrick's identity. Thinking Buchanon was still in the area, fearful residents armed themselves, and looked upon strangers with suspicion. Ingham County Sheriff Willard Barnes led the hunt for the killer, searching for months, but the investigation came to a dead end. Harry Doesburg, a neighbor to the Herrick's, raised a $3000 reward, and he contributed much of his own money to find the killer. Doesburg sent wanted posters across the country, and paid for 'wanted' ads in various newspapers and magazines. Thirteen months after the murders, an informant in Baltimore, Maryland, recognized Buchanon from a wanted ad in a magazine and turned him in. Buchanon was quickly returned to Michigan, signed a confession, pled guilty, and was sentenced to life in prison, all within a 72-hour time period. Ten years after his sentence, Nealy began appealing his conviction on numerous grounds, including police misconduct, racial threats, and improper court proceedings. For twenty-five years, Nealy had never been represented

"The murder mystery that has confounded and fascinated people for over forty years has been given a whole new life. When Evil Came to Good Hart is a well-researched and well-written piece of nonfiction that holds the reader in its spell, just as it has the many writers, reporters, and law officers who have puzzled over it. My highest praise for Mardi Link's book is to say that it reads like a good novel, a real page-turner." —Judith Guest, author of Ordinary People and The Tarnished Eye In this page-turning true-life whodunit, author Mardi Link details all the evidence to date. She crafts her book around police and court documents and historical and present-day statements and interviews, in addition to exploring the impact of the case on the community of Good Hart and the stigma that surrounds the popular summer getaway. Adding to both the sense of tragic history and the suspense, Link laces her tale with fascinating bits of local and Indian lore, while dozens of colorful characters enter and leave the story, spicing the narrative. During the years of investigation of the murders, officials considered hundreds of tips and leads as well as dozens of sources, among them former secretaries who worked for murder victim Dick Robison; Robison's business associates; John Norman Collins, perpetrator of the "Co-Ed Murders" that took place in Washtenaw County between 1967 and 1969; and an inmate in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, who said he knew who killed the Robison family. Despite the exhaustive investigative efforts of numerous individuals, decades later the case lies tantalizingly out of reach. It is still an unsolved cold case, yielding, in Link's words, forty years worth of "dead-end leads, anonymous tips, a few hard facts, and countless cockamamie theories."

In 1963, Daisy Zick was stabbed twenty-seven times at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan—and locals are still talking about the unsolved case today. On a bitterly cold morning in January 1963, Daisy Zick was brutally murdered in her Battle Creek, Michigan, home. No fewer than three witnesses caught a glimpse of the killer, yet today, it remains one of the state’s most sensational unsolved crimes. The act of pure savagery rocked the community, as well as the Kellogg Company where Zick worked. Here, Blaine Pardoe offers a detailed chronicle of this shocking and mysterious crime. With long-sealed police files and interviews with the surviving investigators, the true story of the investigation can finally be told. Who were the key suspects? What evidence do the police still have on this cold case more than fifty years later? Just how close did this murder come to being solved? Is the killer still alive? These questions and more are masterfully brought to the forefront for true crime fans and armchair detectives.