Early the following morning, around 60 miles away in Elkhart, Indiana, service station attendant Charles Snyder had been shot twice in the head, also with a .22, and $100 was missing. Given the half tank of gas in Smock’s car, police estimated that it had gone at least 100 miles after being filled at 11:00 PM.
In less than a week, thanks to a tip from a local resident, they nabbed the perpetrator.
Larry Lee Ranes, 19, had spent three months hitchhiking across the country. On Thursday, June 4, he went to the home of an acquaintance, Arthur Booth, and confessed that he’d killed some people. He was going to go talk to a priest and then commit suicide. Booth alerted the police.
Ranes was arrested at Booth’s home wearing Smock’s stolen watch and shoes. He had just 15 cents on him. He admitted to the murders of both men and handed over his .22 caliber handgun. Ranes said that Smock had offered him a ride and Ranes had forced him to drive to a country road where Ranes robbed him of $3. Then he’d ordered Smock into the trunk of the car and instructed him to be quiet. When Smock had thumped to make himself heard, Ranes had tied him up and shot him. Then he’d shut the body into the trunk. Hungry, he’d bought a hamburger and then drove to Indiana. There he’d killed the gas station attendant, grabbed money, and returned to Kalamazoo. He’d gone through a police roadblock with Smock still in the trunk. He’d returned to the point at which he’d met Smock and abandoned the car, hitchhiking into Kalamazoo.
Ranes was bound over to Circuit Court and a psychiatric examination got underway before Eugene Field, his public defender, arrived.
Even before Ranes was caught, investigators had speculated over whether Smock’s killer had also shot and killed a service station attendant on April 6 in Battle Creek. Vernon LeBenne was shot with a .22 while working at an I-94 Interchange near where Smock had been driving. When asked about it, Ranes confessed to this murder, too. Then he added two more in two other states. One victim had picked him up near Death Valley on May 23 and the other was another gas station attendant in Kentucky.
RANES HAD NO CRIMINAL RECORD, but he’d been a troublemaker throughout his adolescence. He’d grown up in Woodward in an abusive and unstable home, and was a year younger than his brother, Danny. Their father was an alcoholic who got mean when he drank and would hit whoever was close by. Each of the kids took a share of the abuse before the man finally walked out, but by this time the damage was done. He’d modeled the use of violence to get through life, and the boys took out their frustrations on each other.
Ranes had tried the military but ended up in the stockade for the latter part of his stint before he was discharged. Then, feeling that his life would be short, he began to wander.
He was charged in only the Smock murder, with other charges in reserve pending the results of the trial. Mounted posses from the sheriff’s department combed the area west of Kalamazoo where Ranes had killed Smock to locate physical evidence, such as the flashlight that Ranes said he’d tossed from the car. They did not find it.
At the end of September, the trial began in Kalamazoo County Circuit Court. Assistant Prosecutor Donald Burge had prepared slides of Smock’s body. Eugene Field objected to their graphic nature, but the judge admitted twelve.
The courtroom battle centered on the question of Ranes’s sanity. Several psychologists testified that he’d committed murder during periods of temporary insanity from rage against a father who’d beat him mercilessly. Ranes’s father had once been a gas station attendant, which supported this defense, as did the fact that his victims had closely resembled his father.
The jury didn’t buy it. Ranes was convicted of Smock’s murder and given a life sentence. He appealed it, based on the fact that the prosecutor’s psychiatrists had started to examine him before he was properly represented by counsel, and he won a new trial. Yet when it became clear to him that his insanity plea was weak, he pled guilty and received a new life sentence.
BY THIS TIME, OLDER BROTHER DANNY was acting out. He’d served a prison term for assault and was paroled early in 1972 when he was 28. Within a month, he committed another crime. Most of the details came from his accomplice, Brent Koster, who was 15 at the time. Koster said that shortly after he met Danny Ranes in June, Ranes described the incident to him and showed him where it happened.
In March, Patricia Howk, 29, left home with her seventeen-month-old son, Cory, to do some shopping. Ranes accosted her before stabbing her to death, leaving her son to wander aimlessly until an elderly woman found him the next day and called the police. The boy had blood on him, so they searched for his mother and found Howk’s body behind the Independent Elevator Company building. Her billfold was missing, so robbery seemed a possible motive.
Koster said that Danny had seen the woman go into a Topp’s department store, so he’d parked his Corvair van next to her car to wait. She came out with her son and buckled him in. Then she came around to the driver’s side, where Ranes was waiting. He pulled a knife and forced her to get into his van, where he bound and raped her. He left her bound as he forced her into the front. He tried to strangle her but she fought him, scratching his face. They struggled so hard they fell out of the van to the ground.
Danny stabbed her in the back but he said that “it didn’t seem to have much effect,” so he gave the knife a twist. “That did it,” he claimed. Somehow the child had gotten out of the car and was standing near the van, crying. Danny figured that the boy wouldn’t recall anything because he was too young, so he left him alone.
Danny suggested to Koster that they grab a girl, rape her, take her money and valuables, and kill her. Although Koster was just 15, Ranes said that his six-foot-six frame would be intimidating. Koster agreed to try it, so they put together a murder kit. The opportunity arrived quickly.
On July 5, Ranes and Koster were working at the Sprinkle Road service station when Linda Clark and Claudia Bidstrup pulled in around 1:30 A.M. They were on their way from Chicago to Ann Arbor. Koster filled the Opel Kadette’s tank while Ranes popped the hood. Ranes dismantled a wire to the spark plugs, making the car sound as if it had a problem. He directed the girls to drive it into the bay. When they were inside, the two men pulled knives. Ranes told the girls to keep quiet and they wouldn’t be harmed. He then instructed them to get into the backseat. He drove the car to a dark area at the back of the station and bound the girls.
Ranes assaulted both and told Koster to kill Claudia. Koster attempted to strangle her with a rope, but she struggled. Ranes held her down and together they killed her. Koster finished the job with Linda by himself. They put both women into the Opel, covered them with a blanket, and Koster drove the car to a wooded area near Galesburg. He poured gasoline over it and lit a cigarette on the floor of the car. He left before he knew if it had ignited the accelerant. Ranes then showed him money, two rings, a pair of earrings, and some photographs that he’d stolen from the victims. They celebrated together.
Nearly two weeks later, on July 17, motorcycle riders in the woods near Galesburg came across an abandoned blue Opel Kadette that contained the decomposed bodies of two young women in the back seat. The car’s registration was traced to a Chicago-area man, who had reported his daughter missing. Fingerprints identified Linda Clark and Claudia Bidstrup, both 19. One was the daughter of a Chicago police detective. Ropes around their necks indicated that they’d been strangled. The gas tank was full, so investigators surmised that they’d encountered their killer not far from there. Police looked for gas stations close by. The investigation was underway as Ranes and Koster struck again.
On August 5, they kidnapped eighteen-year-old Patricia Fearnow from the Western Michigan University campus. Koster tied her up in the back of the van, covered her with a sleeping bag, and then lay next to her as Danny drove. Over a period of six hours, both of them raped her. Then Koster placed a plastic bag over her head to suffocate her. They dumped her body in the woods.
On September 4, the police closed in. Koster and Ranes were arrested for the July double homi
cide. Koster was assigned an attorney, James Hills, who told him that if he offered details truthfully he would be allowed to plead to second-degree murder to one homicide, for a reduced sentence. The other charge would be dropped. Koster showed them Fearnow’s body, which had not yet found. He said that Danny Ranes had been the instigator. Shortly after this murder, he’d broken off with Ranes because Ranes wanted him to steal a car and go to Florida. Koster was afraid that Ranes had in mind to kill him, too. He also told detectives about Ranes’s confession of the murder of Patricia Howk. Ranes was subsequently charged with four murders in total.
Since Koster was 15, Hills tried to keep him in juvenile court, but Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Donald Burge petitioned to waive him into adult court. His request was approved, because Koster had a previous criminal record of burglary and car theft. At the time, the Michigan Supreme Court was reviewing its policies about juvenile waivers, because the current law offered no guidelines. The concept under consideration was that the juvenile system could not hold an offender beyond the age of 19.
Danny Ranes ended up in a maximum-security cell in the same county jail where his brother Larry awaited his retrial (having not yet pled guilty). They were placed in cells #1 and #2. But unlike Larry, Danny would not capitulate. He insisted he was innocent.
Danny went to his first trial in February 1973 for the murder of Partricia Howk, with Koster the chief witness against him. Danny’s former wife also testified. She said that a few days after the Howk murder, she’d noticed a scratch on her husband’s face while they were riding in the car. His explanation had been lame. In addition, in January, a guard found a torn-up note in the toilet bowl of Ranes’s jail cell, in his handwriting, that indicated he was trying to find a woman who would lie for him for money and give him an alibi.
Danny Ranes was convicted of second-degree murder. Then he faced a second trial for the murder of Linda Fearnow. Koster was an even stronger witness for this one, since he’d participated. Ranes was convicted of first-degree murder. In August, Ranes pleaded no contest to reduced charges of second-degree murder in the double homicide. He received two more life sentences.
Still uncertain about his appeal, Koster offered the proposed guilty plea for his part in the murders and received life in prison. He could offer no reason why he’d participated in rape and murder. Without Ranes’s instigation, such acts would never have even occurred to him. “There’s a reason for everything, but I can’t pin one on that,” he said.
In 1981, the Michigan Supreme Court set aside Ranes’ conviction in the Howk case.
Several people who knew Danny surmised that his competitiveness with his brother might have triggered his own murder spree. Larry had gotten considerable publicity in 1964, and then with his successful appeal in 1971, he got more. It was right around the time that he was brought back to Kalamazoo that Danny had started his own spate of murders.
THE COED MURDERS
MANY READERS KNOW THAT I’VE PUBLISHED hundreds of cases about serial killers. Few are aware that I got my start with this one in the area of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. It was the first case that I wrote for Court TV’s Crime Library, because people I know had some involvement.
The late 1960s were chaotic years. Timothy Leary urged kids to try LSD and astronauts died violently as humans took their first steps on the moon. Hippies preached free love while Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated, the Chicago Seven spat demands at the Democratic Convention, and Ted Kennedy left a girl to drown. Manson led two massacres in California just before thousands of peace-lovers went to Woodstock. Detroit endured race riots, while forty miles to the west, a series of murders shook the Ann Arbor area.
In July 1967, Mary Fleszar turned up missing after going for a walk near Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. On Tuesday, August 8, 1967, the Ann Arbor News described a gruesome discovery: “A body found yesterday afternoon on a Superior Township farm was tentatively identified as that of a 19-year-old Eastern Michigan University coed.” It was Mary Fleszar.
Two guys were plowing a field when they heard a car door slam. Thinking they might witness a pair of lovers, they sneaked closer to look. The car door slammed again and an engine turned over, but by the time they reached the area, the car was gone. They noticed fresh tire tracks in the weeds and a putrid odor. Then they spotted a blackish form with leathery skin. A dead deer, they thought. The carcass appeared to have a head, but it was rotten and shapeless. Then one of them noticed that the ear looked human. They ran to get the police.
The responding officers recognized the body as human. It was nude, lying on its side, facedown. One forearm and hand and the fingers of the other hand were missing. Both feet had been severed at the ankles, and animal bites were evident on the skin. The medical examiner estimated that the victim had been dead approximately a month, and the summer heat had accelerated decomposition. The remains were identified from a pile of clothing nearby as those of the missing coed. She’d been stabbed in the chest approximately thirty times.
Police ran down witnesses and leads, but failed to identify Fleszar’s killer. One odd incident occurred at the funeral home where Fleszar’s body was sent. A young man in a bluish-gray Chevy came in and claimed to be a family friend. He wanted to take a picture. He was told no, so he left. No one could recall much about what he’d looked like. But it seemed strange that he hadn’t produced a camera.
Nearly a year went by before Joan Schell, 20, disappeared while hitchhiking near the university’s student union. A witness saw her get into a car with three men. Her body was found a week later on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, which bordered Ypsilanti. She’d been stabbed five times and sexually molested. Her throat was slashed.
Next was Jane Mixer, whose body was left inside a cemetery near Denton Road. She was a law student at the University of Michigan and had supposedly found a ride home on March 20, 1969, through a ride board. Someone named “David Johnson” was going to pick her up. Mixer had been shot twice in the head with a .22-caliber gun, and a stocking was twisted around her neck. She was fully clothed.
Within four days, a high school dropout, Maralynn Skelton, was killed and dumped just outside Ann Arbor. Her skull was cracked in three places, and she had been whipped with a belt and sexually molested. A garter belt was wrapped around her neck.
Less than three weeks later, thirteen-year-old Dawn Basom disappeared after visiting a friend on the EMU campus. She was found dumped along a roadway. She’d been strangled with a black electrical wire and stabbed in several places. She was killed elsewhere, possibly in a deserted farmhouse where items of her clothing were found.
Another University of Michigan student, Alice Kalom, was murdered in June 1969. Her body was found near North Territorial Road and U.S. 23, near an abandoned barn. She’d been shot once in the head and stabbed twice in the chest, as well as raped. Her clothing was scattered around her body, but her shoes were missing.
That summer, a citizens’ group invited famed Dutch psychic Peter Hurkos to assist, since the police seemed to be getting nowhere. He agreed to come, although he’d been discredited on several prior cases, including the Boston Strangler a few years before.
His method was to hold pictures of the murder scenes in closed envelopes, reciting reconstructions of the murders. Several times Hurkos insisted he could solve the case within the next day or two, only to recant. He said the killer was a genius who was playing with the police. He also called him, variously, a sick homosexual, transvestite, member of a blood cult, daytime salesman, and someone who hung around garbage dumps. He said the killer was about five-feet-seven, blond and baby-faced, 25-26 years old, and about 136-146 pounds. Hurkos added that the killer drove a motorbike and went to school at night. He predicted that the murder count would reach nineteen.
Hurkos went on television and stated that an arrest was imminent. He hoped the killer was listening, because he was going to describe him. Yet now he had an entirely new set of characteristics: the killer
was six feet tall and had dark brown hair. (One account holds that a girl came to Hurkos’ hotel, and in the presence of three police officers, said she suspected her boyfriend. His name was John Collins, he had brown hair, was six feet tall, and rode a motorcycle.)
Karen Sue Beineman disappeared on July 23 after leaving a wig shop and getting on a motorcycle with a dark-haired young man she said she didn’t know. This put pressure on Hurkos to deliver. A photo of her gave off no “vibrations,” although he believed that something bad had happened to her. He predicted that her body would be found by a roadway named Riverview or River Drive. It was found several days later in a ditch alongside Huron River Drive.
Just 18, Beineman had sent a letter to her parents to assure them she was being careful. Why she’d accepted a ride from a stranger is anyone’s guess. She knew that girls had been killed. Beineman had been sexually molested and strangled.
Upon hearing of the body’s discovery, Hurkos still could not name the killer. When taken to the site, he didn’t experience his usual “vibrations,” but said the man he “saw” was not an American and that he was associated in some way with a ladder.
Then Hurkos left the city, vowing to return a week later to wrap up the investigation. Before he did, John Norman Collins was arrested.
ULTIMATELY, COLLINS WAS CONVICTED of the murder of Karen Sue Beineman, whom he’d picked up on his motorcycle. Although Collins was convicted of only the Beineman murder, he nevertheless entered crime archives as a serial killer. This was due to Edward Keyes publishing The Michigan Murders, which implicated Collins circumstantially in each of the seven cases, as well as one in California and possibly a few in other states.
The Murder Game (Michigan, Notorious USA) Page 3
