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R. Barri Flowers is an independent literary criminologist and crime writer, with a BA and an MS in criminal justice from Michigan State University’s renowned School of Criminal Justice. He is the author of more than forty books, including the bestselling true-crime tale The Sex Slave Murders: The True Story of Serial Killers Gerald and Charlene Gallego and, most recently, Prostitution in the Digital Age: Selling Sex from the Suite to the Street.

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MASTERS OF TRUE CRIME

Prometheus Books

Contents

A Note from the Editor.........................................................................................................9Foreword: The Seduction of Why by Katherine Ramsland..........................................................................11Chapter 1. Terror in East Lansing: The Michigan State University Serial Killer by R. Barri Flowers............................15Chapter 2. Twisted Firestarter by Carol Anne Davis............................................................................29Chapter 3. Beauty Slain in Bath: The Titterton Tragedy of 1936 by Harold Schechter............................................43Chapter 4. The Evil at the Angel Inn by Linda Rosencrance.....................................................................61Chapter 5. Nightmare on Spanish Creek by Robert Scott.........................................................................73Chapter 6. The Grim Keeper by Katherine Ramsland..............................................................................83Chapter 7. The Alaska Mail-Bomb Conspiracy by Burl Barer......................................................................97Chapter 8. The Trophy Wife by Camille Kimball.................................................................................119Chapter 9. The Darkest Hour: Teenagers Who Kill for Love by Amanda Lamb.......................................................141Chapter 10. Invitation to Murder: The Brutal Murder of Arizona Heiress Jeanne Tovrea by Ronald J. Watkins.....................159Chapter 11. The World's Worst Woman by Laura James............................................................................179Chapter 12. Escape from Fort Pillow by Douglas E. Jones.......................................................................193Chapter 13. Matchbook by Michele McPhee.......................................................................................213Chapter 14. Murder on Minor Avenue by Lee Lofland.............................................................................223Chapter 15. Lost Innocence: The Murder of a Girl Scout by Phyllis Gobbell.....................................................243Chapter 16. Herbert Blitzstein and the Mickey Mouse Mafia by Cathy Scott......................................................263Chapter 17. Deadly Union by Patricia Springer.................................................................................277About the Editor...............................................................................................................302

Chapter One

by R. Barri Flowers

In the latter part of the 1970s, Michigan's Big Ten school Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing was the place to be for higher education, athletics, sexual experimentation, keggers, smoking pot, and expressing oneself. The school had a well-deserved reputation for partying. And MSU in the 1970s also turned out to be the place and time for a brutal serial killer to emerge, one who would take aim at young women, sexually assaulting them before violently ending their lives.

Donald Miller was not just another serial killer. The twenty-four-year-old graduate of MSU's renowned School of Criminal Justice once seemed to be on track for a totally different connection with the criminal justice system. But at some point, destiny took a deadly turn, and Miller achieved the distinction of becoming East Lansing's and MSU's only known serial killer—a distinction the community would prefer to forget. But Miller left a mark that seemingly makes such a thing impossible in the halls of academia and the surrounding area.

* * *

Michigan State University's School of Criminal Justice, founded in 1935, is the country's oldest continuous program for granting degrees in criminal justice. Originally known as the School of Public Administration and Public Safety, it followed the "land-grant philosophy" established by Michigan State Agricultural College. This philosophy is derived from the Morrill Act, signed in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln to provide a generous "grant of land to each state, the revenue of which was to be used for the development and support of agriculture schools."

Within this context, the land-grant institution became the first college in the nation to offer a bachelor of science degree in police administration, the intent being to use scientific education and training to properly prepare students for careers in law enforcement, in private investigation, and in other areas of criminal justice.

By 1977, MSU's School of Criminal Justice had presented undergraduate and graduate degrees to thousands of students under the direction and tutelage of such criminal justice and criminology legends as Donald Bremer, Arthur Brandstatter, Ralph Turner, Robert Scott, Louis Radelet, Zolton Ferency, Leon Weaver, Vincent Hoffman, and Robert Trojanowicz, among others.

Donald Miller was among those graduates to receive a degree in criminal justice from Michigan State. But rather than use it to pursue a career in law enforcement, government, or perhaps teaching, he took a decidedly different and dark path, turning into a psychopath, rapist, and serial killer.

* * *

Born on December 28, 1954, Donald Gene Miller was described as the "quintessential boy-next-door." Having grown up in a peaceful, middle-class area in the college town of East Lansing, Michigan, during the rebellious 1970s, it would have been quite easy for him to have gotten caught up in the type of crowd among which long hair, drug use, and sowing one's oats was fairly common. Instead, by all accounts, Miller walked the straight and narrow, respected his elders, kept his hair short, and was a youth minister at the local church. He attended Michigan State University, majoring in criminal justice. It seemed like he was well on his way toward finding a successful career in law enforcement or some other impressive occupation within the world of law and order.

Adding to this picture of apparent perfection, Miller had started dating a girl from his church, Martha Sue Young, who lived down the street and was friends with Miller's older sister. By the winter of 1976, Miller, twenty-one, and nineteen-year-old Young, who also attended Michigan State, were engaged. The couple seemed to be headed toward matrimony and a good life as two bright students in love with life and each other.

But that all changed rather abruptly. Just before New Year's Eve 1976, Young called off the engagement. According to her mother, Sue Young, there were a number of reasons her daughter did not go through with the marriage, such as "the fact that Don was twenty[-two] years old and never had a job," apart from a brief stint working in a resort community the previous summer.

The two also differed in their attitudes about education. Whereas Young loved college and was serious about studying and getting good grades, Miller felt just the opposite. "Don never studies, and his grades aren't good," Martha told her mother. Sue Young noted that her daughter enjoyed athletics and socializing in college but complained that "it's not only that [Don] doesn't, but he doesn't want me to either."

Whatever the reasons, or combination thereof, for breaking off their engagement, an embittered Miller had no intention of fading into the woodwork as Young sought greener pastures....