Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders That America Forgot

by Michael Arntfield

  EPILOGUE

  SABOTEUR

  And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine’s portion—to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears.

  —Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

  While Niels Jorgensen was a consummate psychopath who spent much of his life knitting together lies about his various exploits, and even tried to take credit for being a Purple Heart recipient and vet of the Battle of the Bulge, there is a lesser-known story of real heroism from the final days of the Second World War that in many respects squares with the equally lesser-known story of Linda’s forty-year campaign. It was called Operation Gunnerside, or the Norwegian heavy water sabotage.

  Norway’s first hydroelectric plant in the small town of Rjukan had the capability to produce heavy water, soon to be determined as a key component in the creation of nuclear weapons. After the Nazis conquered Norway in 1940, Hitler began mobilizing troops and equipment toward the region with the intent of shipping heavy water to Germany to beat the Americans to the punch in the construction of an atomic bomb. Gunnerside was officially a British military campaign intended to sabotage such a shipment. A previous Allied attempt to infiltrate the plant had, however, failed miserably. It took the efforts of six novice Norwegian saboteurs, the true heroes of the day, for the heavy water sabotage mission to finally succeed. The six of them, all civilians with no official military or special ops training, relied on a certain brand of intuition, cunning, and patience not taught in any field manual, and pulled it off by detonating charges they had attached to massive heavy water drums awaiting shipment to Germany. That shipment would have provided more than enough heavy water for Nazi scientists to develop an atomic bomb and ensure global supremacy for Germany. It remains difficult to assess just how many lives they saved, but they no doubt prevented an atomic invasion of Britain and America and a much different future for the world. Yet no one has ever heard of them or their mission.

  Although military historians consider it one of the most successful acts of Allied sabotage of the Second World War, the story is virtually unknown outside of Scandinavia. Equally, Linda’s story and her forty-year dogged pursuit of Jorgensen—in fact, the larger story of Jorgensen as a serial killer no one else ever bothered to notice—has until now never been properly documented. As with the Rjukan saboteurs, a debt is owed to Linda. She was a woman on a quest imbued with a passionate urgency to track Jorgensen, to have him brought to account for Christine’s death, the murder for which he was undoubtedly responsible. Linda, beyond trying to do right by her friend, at the same time knew that psychopathic murderers, once started, seldom if ever stop. She left no stone unturned as she searched for possible linkages to Jorgensen in other cases. These included Jorgensen’s brother Søren, Donna Ann Lass, the Jane Doe known as Valentine Sally, Judith Williamson, and the disappearance of the mysterious Argentinean. Jorgensen’s bottom of the ninth decision to opt for cremation ensured that DNA evidence, if existing or later found, would never be matched. Just as it is unlikely that any conclusive connection will or can ever be made in these cases, so too will it never be known if Jorgensen, looking over his shoulder in later years, reined himself in on account of someone else watching. It is all bound to forever remain a matter of conjecture.

  Not unlike the heavy water saboteurs, Linda started out unskilled, untrained, and in way over her head—barely nineteen and traumatized to the hilt. Embarking unknowingly on an over-four-decade campaign for justice, it ended up being a matter of learning on the fly and playing it by ear, a perilous maze of twists and turns that she taught herself to navigate and negotiate. In so doing, she willingly forfeited much of her own life in the process, out of loyalty and as part of a debt she owed—a vow she had made—to her best friend Christine in death. It was, just as how the saboteurs had seen their mission, simply something of necessity that had to be done, a risky task with no material reward—one that few would ever know about.

  There would be no blue ribbons, no television deals, none of the electroplated plaques like the cops who ignored her efforts and ensuing tips were accustomed to getting. The mission came with no glory either sought or received. Linda never expected it to be otherwise. With this book, however, it is hoped that, through the lens of the past, we can start to look toward the future. With that in mind, once you’re done with this book, consider recommending or passing it on and spreading the word about those Madison cases still waiting to be solved, cases that it seems will otherwise remain condemned to the obscure footnotes in American history. Perhaps it will increase the odds that someone will step up to the plate with his or her knowledge about killers who have, until now, escaped justice. Perhaps something in these pages will jog something useful in someone’s memory. So many years on, this is the best we can hope for. Somebody always knows something.

  Today, Linda—the unsung saboteur of the countless other crimes likely to have been committed by Jorgensen—lives an overdue quiet life in suburban Fort Worth. Now well into her sixties, she is, at the moment, learning Japanese, following several years of part-time teaching English as a second language. With Jorgensen’s death, she now finds that she has more available time to devote to other projects that, being Linda, she will inevitably see through to fruition. Even today, Linda herself can’t explain what drove her—what the prime mover was, if any—that propelled her on her quixotic and, as some have said, foolhardy, thankless, and often dangerous journey pursuing a serial killer across Middle America and back again. The point is that she can’t explain it and that’s why it matters. More importantly, she doesn’t need to explain it.

  As Linda once told me, that moment in the dean’s office in the autumn of ’67, when she and Christine first met by chance, they were like surrogate sisters, perhaps even real sisters reunited. There is no single thing that can ever explain it. She saw Christine’s soul and who she really was, spot-on and no strings or prior assumptions attached. Neither of them, having lived amid rehearsed etiquette and false niceties, had ever met a real friend of their choosing before that day. It was, perhaps, their first autonomous act as adults. Most people can imagine this type of epiphany moment as a young adult away from home for the first time; most can remember in Technicolor the nostalgic and emotional resonance of happenstance friendships and adventurously liberating experiences first undertaken while in college. Yet, few if any can understand experiencing that, and then having it so summarily and mercilessly taken away—having it end in murder. And not just any murder. A murder like the one that punctuated Christine Rothschild’s brief, bright, and gentle life. Add to that a murder that went officially unsolved—not to mention trampled upon time and again. That’s why there will be people who understand why Linda did what she did—those who get it—and inevitably also those who don’t. Like so many of the tragicomic detectives—at least one a peeper himself—who bungled the case from day one, there are those who quite simply will never get it.

  Jillian Clair, on the other hand, following completion of the course during which she interviewed Jorgensen, has gone on to graduate school, and works as a music and talk show producer at an independent radio station. As the families of the other Mad City and UW victims wait for answers, many of the others mentioned in this book have died. Ezra Jameson, for legal reasons, is a pseudonym. As he was Jorgensen’s veritable bosom buddy, we can only hope that someone, like Linda, is keeping a watch on him for the rest of us.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE ON NAMES

  Some of the key or otherwise recurring secondary sources are listed in the selected bibliography at the end of this book; however, the multitude of newspaper accounts of events in Madison and elsewhere, obtained almost exclusively through records held by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Wisconsin State Journal, the Madison Capital Times, and the Stevens Point Journal, are not each individually indexed. Most of these sources are cited directly within the narrative. When inline references are not given for an account of a crime, in most cases it means that the de
tails have been obtained from primary sources both named and unnamed. Whether I named a primary source depended on a number of factors. Most primary sources expressly asked not to be named. Even if a person did not ask for anonymity, there may have been other factors that caused me to omit or change the source’s name. In fact, the need to strike a delicate balance between accuracy and the expectation of privacy that some of the historical bit players in this story still seek, whether rightly or wrongly, has strongly influenced how I crafted this narrative.

  When a living person did not grant consent, or could not be located to provide his or her blessing about being included in this story, I have provided anonymity, not because of any legal obligation, but because it was simply the ethical thing to do—another departure from a great deal of true crime. I also preserved the anonymity of a number of people I would describe as bit players—they had not previously spoken on the record and their names had not been recorded in any secondary source The exception is Ezra Jameson, as mentioned, whose name I altered for legal and investigative reasons—and who quite frankly doesn’t deserve his name in print. University and police officials, as well as those persons publicly associated with specific places and events discussed in this book are, however, named in every case, unless it was found to add nothing to the real objective of this book. For instance, the disgraced UWPD detective who was found to be surreptitiously recording students and victims of crimes for a sexual purpose and was sent packing doesn’t deserve to eclipse the other more honorable members of the department, and his name has thus been omitted. Readers who want to identify him can search for his name based on the information in this book, and it’s certainly a matter of public record. Once again, however, simply because I can provide names doesn’t mean I felt compelled to, in every case.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In learning of this book and its revelatory content, some people have expressed surprise that the story contained herein has never been properly told before now. There are actually a few reasons for that. Some of those reasons are underscored in the pages of the story that I’ve just told; namely, that until my students found Linda, the story’s real-life heroine back in 2011, no one had bothered to ask—much less care. Until now, keyboard cowboys on various online unsolved threads—which in many cases actually do boast some logical and earnest contributors—have hijacked the dialogue about what happened in Madison, Wisconsin, between 1968 and roughly 1998. They have indulged in some revisionist history that for years would obfuscate any chance of the actual story seeing the light of day. This was of course made possible in large part by what remains the most puzzling set of police investigations and associated media-relations policies I’ve ever seen with respect to unsolved homicides anywhere in North America, at least after 1900.

  Between indifference, recklessness, and a tragic interplay of incompetence and malevolence on behalf of everyone from elected officials to armchair detectives, getting to the bottom of what the hell happened in Madison and on and around its flagship college campus has not been easy. It’s been a five-year undertaking that never could have gotten off the ground if, in addition to Linda, I had not been the beneficiary of the support, source material, research assistance, guidance, and insight of a great number of remarkable people, most of whom I consider contributors to this book and its mission to set the history straight. Ideally, it’s a story that, now finally told as it happened, will begin a new dialogue on criminals and their victims, campus safety, investigative accountability, and the use of subject matter experts in stalled, inactive, or unsolved homicides that demand impartial analysis by those who know what they’re doing—and are prepared to do what’s necessary to begin thawing out cold cases.

  The first up for thanks are the fellow scholars and advocates currently working with me at the forefront of innovation, professional and technical collaboration, and data accuracy with respect to historical homicides, as well as advocacy on behalf of victims and their families—people all too often forgotten about and even revictimized by the various institutions within the criminal justice system. These colleagues also in many cases provided peer review of this manuscript ahead of publication, as they did with my earlier book Murder City. The peer review is of course commonplace in the case of scholarly and scientific texts, but is a rarity for true-crime books—titles that in many cases tend to unfortunately focus less on the expert analysis of crimes and proper sourcing, with the view to help solve murders, as much as they focus on indulging in the lurid recitation of gory details and a certain infantile and downmarket giddiness. These peers of mine meriting thanks include, in no particular order, Enzo Yaksic and James Fox, directors of the Northeastern University Research Group for Atypical Homicide in Boston, for which I’m honored to be an invited member; as well as members Dr. Eric Hickey of Walden University and professor emeritus at CSU Fresno; Dr. Joan Swart at the Eisner Institute in Encino; Dallas Drake of the US Center for Homicide Research in Minneapolis; and lastly, Detective Helena Pereira of the Hamilton Police (Canada) along with Detective Steve Daniels of the Wisconsin Homicide Investigators Association and Detective David Bongiovani, formerly of the Dane County Sherriff’s Office. I’d also like to thank Tom Hargrove, a fearless investigative journalist-turned-criminologist who founded and remains the head of the Murder Accountability Project (murderdata.org), as well as Detective Ken Mains, who founded and heads the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases, another two organizations with which I’m proud to have long-standing affiliations. In terms of my own unsolved crimes think tank, the Western University Cold Case Society, I acknowledge and thank Sharon Field-Brennan, as well as case managers Katherine (Kay) Reif, Professor Neisha Cushing, and Brikena Qamili. Particular thanks also to investigative members Jessica Karjanmaa, Cassandra Laperriere, Curtis Fisher, Ricky McDougall, and Ashurina Odicho. Their research and fact-checking with respect to many of the cases discussed in this book proved to be above reproach, and I wish them every success in their future endeavors after graduation, many of them moving on as practitioners in a criminal justice system that desperately needs men and women of vision and ingenuity like them. Special thanks also to Dr. Robert Barsky, Dr. Vickie Woolsley, and Dr. Martin Rapisadra at Vanderbilt University; Dr. Marcel Danesi and Dr. Paul Salvatori of the Victoria College Center for Research in Forensic Semiotics at the University of Toronto; Lisa Marine at the Wisconsin Historical Society; and Liz Mantz and her colleagues at the Western University archives collection.

  Turning to the crime reporters and media stakeholders of the world, special thanks to Ashley Matthews, formerly of the NBC affiliate in Madison, as well as Elisa Fieldstadt of NBC Universal in New York, Michelle McQuigge of the Canadian Press, Dwight Drummond and Nazim Baksh of the CBC in Toronto, and freelance stringer Jared Linzod—also a former cold-case student—all of whom not only assisted in one form or another with this book, but who have also demonstrated remarkable integrity and an admirable commitment to furthering public interest in unsolved crimes and assisting victims of crime. I’d like to thank Ms. Matthews in particular for brokering my introduction to Mickey Mraz, brother of Madison murder victim Donna Mraz, and express my heartfelt gratitude to Mickey for trusting me with his family’s story and providing the backstory to Donna’s brief life that touched many.

  I’d also like to thank my New York literary agent Grace Freedson, as well as Kevin Sullivan and Catherine Carnovale of Sullivan Entertainment in Toronto, two media aficionados swimming upstream in a world of socialized television, who seem determined to ensure—seemingly against all odds—that the cream can and will still rise. A special word also for my father, David G. Arntfield, Q.C., a retired prosecutor and tireless advocate for the law, who simultaneously instilled reverence for the power of language and the will to act where others will not.

  Lastly, I’d like to thank Vivian Lee and the entire editorial team at Little A Books for their collective vision for my work and for recognizing the timely importance of this book—for enabling me to tell this
story.

  With gratitude,

  Michael Arntfield, PhD

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Adams, M. (2003). Cold Case Squad: Partnering with Volunteers to Solve Old Homicide Cases (July 2002). In Subject to Debate (pp. 1, 7). Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.

  Aggrawal, A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-Legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

  ______________. (2010). Necrophilia: Forensic and Medico-Legal Aspects. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

  Agnew, R. (2011). Crime and Time: The Temporal Patterning of Causal Variables. Theoretical Criminology, 15(2), 115–140.

  American Psychiatric Association. (1968). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2nd Edition. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.

  ______________. (2013). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.

  Arntfield, M. (2014). Cybercrime and Cyberdeviance. In R. Linden (Ed.), Criminology: A Canadian Perspective, 8th Edition (pp. 500–516). Toronto: Nelson Education.

  ______________. (2015). The Monster of Seymour Avenue: Internet Crime News and Gothic Reportage in the Case of Ariel Castro. Semiotica, 207(1), 201–216.

  ______________. (2016). Gothic Forensics: Criminal Investigative Procedure in Victorian Horror and Mystery. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

  ______________. (2017). Necrophilia in Literature, Poetry, and Narrative Prose. In A. Aggrawal, E. W. Hikey, & L. Mellor (Eds.), Understanding Necrophilia: A Global Multidisciplinary Approach. San Diego: Cognella Academic Publishing.