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Easy, He Said

Joan Koerper

    “It was easy,” D.J. said.
    “Someday We’ll Be Together,” I crooned along with Diana Ross and the Supremes playing on the car radio. When the song ended, I crossed my right leg over my left, twisted my body to face D.J. in the driver’s seat and put my right hand on the dashboard of the white 1962 Chrysler 300 Coupe. “What was easy, Honey?” I queried.
    “Killing them,” he said.
    “What? What are you talking about? Killing whom? You didn’t have to go to Vietnam and you won’t have to. Did your mom have a swarm of ants at the house this morning? Killing whom?”
    “The women I’ve killed so far,” he said, without flinching.
    “Oh D.J., cut it out. I still don’t understand what you are talking about. Shaking my head in confusion, I went on. “Gee, D.J., we are on our way to Kensington Lake, it is a gorgeous summer day and I just don’t see why you are even mentioning killing. I thought we were going to have a day away just to ourselves.” Pulling both legs up under me on the bench seat I rattled off our picnic menu on my fingers. “We’ve got fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, soda and cherry pie in the Thermos Picnic Pack. It’s going to be a great day. Let’s just enjoy it,” I responded to my fiancé.
    “Okay,” he replied, taking a puff from his Viceroy. “But it was still easy.”
    “D.J., I am just going to sing along here, and I would really appreciate it if you would stop. Okay?”
    “Okay,” he said again. “It was still easy, you know. I’d just offer them a ride or invite them on a picnic, on a day like today, just like we’re having. Getting a date is easy. Making the most of it is even easier.”
    My heart rate swelled. I’d know D.J. for a couple of years, but it wasn’t a day-to-day relationship. I had met him through a friend and, for most of the year he was off to college in Illinois while I was at Mercy College of Detroit. At the end of the summer I was transferring to Michigan State University in East Lansing.
    I knew all too well what he was alluding to. The media had dubbed the man The Co-Ed Killer. I didn’t know one young woman of college age in Michigan who didn’t tremble at the thought of this savage serial killer.
    “Mary was pretty, you know,” D.J. started. Just a little younger than me; nineteen. It was hot that night and she had gone out for a walk. We struck up a conversation and I bought her food at her favorite pizzeria over there off the Eastern Michigan campus. She had a nice smile. She really liked my car so I told her I’d take her on a ride.
    We headed for the country north of Ypsilanti. I knew about the deserted farm house. Thought she’d never be found. Or thought at least that her bones would be bare before they were discovered. Too bad she surfaced so soon. Three weeks. Not long enough. Luck of the draw I guess. I had a knife with me but there was this butcher knife there at the house and it was so much better than mine. I lost track of counting. Just got into it, I guess.”
    If this was a joke, it was a sick one. It had to be a joke. But, there was already part of me trying to figure out how I could get out of the car speeding west along the I-96 at 75 miles an hour. Impossible. I tried to make light of it.
    “D.J., please. Stop! Now!” I begged, shaking my head and turning my body back in the passenger seat to face forward. The names of the victims were burned into my memory. Sisters I never knew. The body of Mary Fleszar, 19, was found on August 7, 1967 in an old farm house two miles north of Ypsilanti; missing since July 18, 1967. She was killed in a frenzy, stabbed 30-40 times.
    I shivered despite the warm wind. “You are ruining our day and this is not funny. I am not up for any practical jokes,” I pleaded, remembering the time he flipped a bowl of water in my face after I had just gussied up for an evening out so he could get a good laugh.
    “No joke. Just reminiscing,” he continued. “Now, Eileen, she was the youngest and would fall for anything, I swear. Girls can be so gullible. She really wanted it; she wanted it bad. I set her on fire all right.”
    Eileen Adams, 13, was found in January, 1968 in plain sight just south of Ypsilanti. She had been raped, beaten with a hammer, had a three inch nail pounded into her skull and was strangled with an electrical cord.
    Elivis Presley’s voice filled the car with his rendition of “Suspicious Minds”. Suddenly, I flashed on the knife, hammer and electrical cord nestled into the left side of the trunk of the car I saw when loading the picnic basket. I knew the victims to date had been strangled, shot, stabbed and partially dismembered. Still, these were ordinary enough items to have in a man’s car trunk, weren’t they?
    My brain forged on, making unwanted associations like someone playing hopscotch jumping from neuron to neuron landing on a cluster illuminating another commonality between the victims to date and me. All were Caucasian with brown hair and between the ages of 13-23, just like me. And, they were all abducted. D.J. had the details to all the killings that had been released to the public. I memorized the details trying to make sure I wouldn’t fall into the killer’s trap. D.J. must have memorized the details as well. This was my fiancé. He was not a killer. Still, he’d gone too far. Denial is a convenient defense mechanism.
    “Stop, D.J. I mean it. Stop it. Now!” I demanded.
    D.J. turned his head, slowly and deliberately and looked me straight in the eyes. His lips twisted into a sneer. He started on the next account. “Joan—ah, now there’s a name that sounds familiar, eh Mary Joan? Anyway, Joan was like the others. She was hitchhiking in front of Eastern Michigan’s Student Union, and an easy pick up. She wanted a free meal and a good looking man. I gave her both.”
    The body of Joan Schnell, 20 was found on July 7, 1968 at a construction site in Ypsilanti, raped and stabbed to death.
    My good friend denial was quickly slipping away. Only a spider’s thread linked me to sanity.
    Was I in the car with the Co-Ed Killer?
    Was this D.J.’s idea of a horrible joke?
    Barely hiding my repulsion I was beginning to pant with fear.
    Not wanting him to see his effect on me, I turned my head to peer out the window, seeking comfort in the miles of dense woods that sped by on either side of the road; Red Maple, Yellow Birch, White Spruce and Black Ash trees I loved. Until I realized the forest could serve as a curtain to any murder. Pine cone needles, wind and traffic cloaking the screams. The flora and fauna of the forest floor concealing a disposed body while nature did its work, eventually absorbing it into the landscape. The forest was taking on ominous proportions in my mind.
    “Jane Louise, ah, I like those double names, don’t I Mary Joan? Anyway, Jane Louise was a law student at the University of Michigan, supposedly brilliant, but too trusting for her own good.”
    Jane Louise Mixer, 31 had been reported missing on March 21, 1969. It was too late. She had already been beaten, raped, shot and her stockings were twisted around her neck. Her body was found in the Ypsilanti Cemetery that same day.
    By now, I was biting the inside of my mouth so hard the iron taste of blood was inescapable. Had I ever felt so vulnerable? So threatened and petrified? Determined not to let him see how I was shaking uncontrollably on the inside, I began humming and rubbing my left upper arm with the palm of my right hand.
    “Now, Maralynn, she was good looking, but way too mouthy. Didn’t her mother tell her not to hitchhike, or talk like she did to men? If she did, she didn’t listen. There she was, just waiting for a ride outside the Arborland Mall. She got out of hand, though, especially for a sixteen year old.
    Maralynn Skelton’s body was found on March 25, 1969 at the same construction site in Ypsilanti as Joan Schell’s. She had been beaten savagely about the head to the point that her skull was shattered. She was raped and a wooden branch had been jammed into her vagina.
    “That girl, Dawn, she was stronger than she looked. She was a virgin, you know. Thirteen. She put up way too much fuss and paid for it. Not that the outcome would have been any different but I wasn’t in the mood for all her squealing and complaining.”
    The body of thirteen year old Dawn Bason was found on April 16, 1969 alongside a peaceful country road in Ypsilanti. Missing for only a day, she too had been raped, mutilated and strangled with an electrical cord. Her breasts were also cut off.
    Feeling the bile rising in my throat I focused on choking it back down. I was experiencing only a taste of the terror each of these women felt. This was war: psychological warfare and I wasn’t going to let him win. Steeling my eyes on the passing blur of the trees I kept quiet imagining and rehearsing escape strategies if this wasn’t some kind of sick performance. It was then I knew I would kill him if I had to in order to come out of this alive.
    “I needed someone a bit older after that,” he started in again. “Alice was a grad student at the University of Michigan. She was twenty-three. I promised her I’d let her go after I raped her but she found out I don’t keep my promises.”
    Three teenage boys found the body of Alice Kalom in an abandoned farmhouse on June 9, 1969. Alice had been raped, beaten, shot in the head, stabbed repeatedly, and her throat was cut.
    “Then, there was Roxy. Sounds like a stage name, doesn’t it? Like she would be a good dancer. She was disappointing.”
    The remains of seventeen year-old Roxy Phillips were found by two boys who were looking for fossils in Pescadero Canyon on July13, 1969. While she had been missing only two weeks, her nude body was badly decomposed and a belt was wrapped tightly around her neck.
    Having crossed over a line of sanity, I sat motionless, disassociating. From six feet above, I looked down at my body sitting in the car almost unrecognizable, crippled with fear.
    When the radio announcer broadcast the name of the next tune, Santana’s “Evil Ways”, D.J. reached over, turned up the volume and sang along with the tune at ear-splitting levels until it ended. Then, suddenly, he switched the radio off.
    “Evil ways. Karen Sue liked that song as well. I took her to buy a wig, you know. She got to wear it, too. Her debut was her finale.”
    On July 23, 1969, a doctor and his wife found the body of Karen Sue Beineman in a wooded gully with her panties stuffed in her mouth. She had been raped and strangled. Her face was beaten beyond recognition.
    The oratory ceased. It was Saturday, July 26, 1969. The last killing had happened Wednesday. We sat in silence until the green road sign announced the exit to Kensington Metropolitan Park, a mile away.
    Kensington Metropolitan Park was a place of joy for me since I was a toddler. It was there, on family excursions, I picnicked and played ball with my cousins, learned to swim in the lake and attended summer swimming day camp in elementary school. I loved it. But, suddenly, the safe familiarity of the 4, 337 acres of rolling hills and 1200 acres of lake was destroyed.
    It might be the last thing I saw before I was murdered.
    D.J.’s maniacal, deliberate, laugh began piercing the air as we pulled off onto the exit.
    He was hitting his hands against the steering wheel and lifted his head as if he was strutting.
    He beamed with pride. “I got you,” he said, poking his finger in my face. “I was so good you think I’m him, don’t you? The Co-ed Killer?
    “God, that felt great! Jokes on you, Mary Joan!”
    Infuriated to the point of near paralysis, my consciousness struggled to reenter my body; to make my hand open the now unlocked door My feet groped for, and clumsily met the ground. Reorienting myself took me a minute or two. Balancing against the open car door frame and the roof, I reacquainted myself with gravitational pull.
    Somehow putting on a good face, I tried not to let him know how alienated I was. I had stood my ground but the rage I felt kept writhing its’ way further and further into my being, drilling through my bone marrow and finally permeating my cellular structure screaming out against all the psychological abuses women endure. Manipulations providing warped men entertainment that we were supposed to sit back, take, and laugh off.
    Legally, in 1969, girls and women were still the property of men; our fathers, our husbands. My mother could not even open a bank account without the permission of her husband. All we females could hope for was someone who would treat their property fairly, with love, or at least, benevolence. The bottom line though was clear. We were chattels. Living dolls providing amusement and services. We were not persons. It wasn’t until 1971 that the Supreme Court of the United States finally declared women as persons under the law.
    Five days later, John Norman Collins, twenty-two, a good looking Caucasion senior at Eastern Michigan University, studying elementary education, was arrested for the murder of Karen Sue Beineman. The Co-Ed murders stopped. We all breathed a deep sigh of gratitude and relief.
    John Norman Collins was convicted of Karen Sue Beineman’s murder on August 19, 1970. Of the seven murders, it was the only one the Prosecution was able to prove against him in Washtenaw County Court. He continues to serve his sentence at Marquette Branch Prison in Michigan.
    No one had ever been as deliberately cruel to me as D.J. was that horrifying day. Committing my life to this man, or anyone else who pulled such stunts, was not an option. I simply would not accept this treatment as “normal.”
    It took a few months to find the right time to break the engagement. My parents and his partied well together, were of the same religion, socio-economic status, and both looked forward to the merging of families. Shelving substantial social pressure, I called off the wedding on Valentine’s Day, 1970. When I tried to give back the ring, an emerald in a gold setting I designed, D.J. declined to accept it.
    The next day I rode the bus to the edge of the Michigan State Campus, calmly disembarked and went to the closest jewelers. “I would like to have this engraved on the inside of the band,” I said, taking the ring box out of my purse and flipping it open.
    “Of course, Miss. And, how would you like it to read?” the jeweler queried.
    I didn’t blink an eye, “Freedom. MJK”.

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