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Speaker 3: Plus, you are now listening to True Murder, the most
Speaker 3: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 3: have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 3: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 3: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 3: your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good evening. During the depths of the Great Depression. In
Speaker 6: yipsul Aante, Michigan, a seven year old boy is found
Speaker 6: frozen to death under the Frog Island Footbridge and Depot
Speaker 6: Town after being reported missing the night before by his parents.
Speaker 6: Bons examination the Washingtonawk County Corner discovers the child is
Speaker 6: the victim of foul play. After three years of investigation,
Speaker 6: Ypsilante and Michigan State Police are no closer to making
Speaker 6: an arrest than they were when Richard Striker Junior's body
Speaker 6: was discovered. Local gossips and many police are convinced they
Speaker 6: know who the guilty party is, but proving it in
Speaker 6: a court of law is a different matter. Who stabbed
Speaker 6: Richard Striker Junior to death? The book that we're featuring
Speaker 6: this evening is The Richard Striker Junior Murder, Ypsilanti's Depot
Speaker 6: Town Mystery, with my special guest, journalist and author Gregory Fournier.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 6: this interview. Gregory Fournier, Thanks very much.
Speaker 7: I'm anxious to be able to talk about this book.
Speaker 7: This will be my first interviews, so let's have at it.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much for that. Let's go to a
Speaker 6: little bit of the background that you provide in your
Speaker 6: book about Yipsilante, how it became this hub of economy
Speaker 6: and manufacturing, and just tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: depot Town. As we mentioned in the introduction.
Speaker 7: Yeah, a man named, let's call him a pioneer named
Speaker 7: Mark Norris brought his family west, I think it was
Speaker 7: eighteen twenty eight and they settled just east of the
Speaker 7: here on river that cuts through Ippsilani. And he's a
Speaker 7: very industrious, shrewd businessman. Anyway, he convinced the Michigan Central
Speaker 7: Railroad to make Ypsilani a scheduled stop on the rail line,
Speaker 7: which they did, and the town within a town, depot
Speaker 7: town as it's called, was built right off the side.
Speaker 7: They had a loading deck of freight warehouse and it
Speaker 7: became an economic and agricultural hub for the area. And
Speaker 7: it was at a time when ipsil Ani was a
Speaker 7: real going concern in the county and ann Arbor was
Speaker 7: still a small little village. The time would change that,
Speaker 7: but the first train arrived in eighteen thirty eight, and
Speaker 7: sometime around the eighteen fifties, Mark Norris again seems to
Speaker 7: be the depot town mover and Shaker built a water
Speaker 7: powered flour mill and just off of what was called
Speaker 7: the Cross Street bridge, and that sometime in the early
Speaker 7: I believe in nineteen thirty two, was destroyed and there
Speaker 7: was a fire. They took it out of there, and
Speaker 7: the Depression was hot on the heels of Ipsulani and
Speaker 7: the work WPA work program during the depression, public works
Speaker 7: program hired lots of people men, primarily to give them
Speaker 7: a salary, and they paved Cross Street and they also
Speaker 7: built what is called the Frog Street or actually the
Speaker 7: Frog Island Bridge, and it was a footbridge that led
Speaker 7: off of the main bridge to a little island recreation area.
Speaker 7: Ifsulin High School a couple of blocks up the street
Speaker 7: would use it for the gym classes and there was
Speaker 7: you know, their football of was played there and so on.
Speaker 7: So the bridge was a real Frog Island Bridge was
Speaker 7: a real convenience, and that went in about nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 7: That takes us right up to the story. My book
Speaker 7: is about the murder of Richard Striker Junior and nineteen
Speaker 7: thirty five March March seventh, I believe nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 7: His body was found under the Frog Island Bridge, frozen
Speaker 7: to the ground, and police, you know, once they broke
Speaker 7: the body free and took it to the funeral home
Speaker 7: and what it thought a little bit. They cut the
Speaker 7: boys frozen clothes off his body and they found that
Speaker 7: there were four Jean stab wounds on the body. So
Speaker 7: he had been murdered and then carefully placed under the bridge.
Speaker 6: So let's talk about Let's talk about Richie Striker. His
Speaker 6: father's Richard and his mother's Lucia. Tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit about him as a student, and also just what
Speaker 6: happened according to police when they questioned him the next day,
Speaker 6: what had happened to Richie that afternoon and where were
Speaker 6: the parents at that time?
Speaker 7: Well, Richie, as far as school was concerned, we would
Speaker 7: call him a special education student today special needs student.
Speaker 7: And you know, it's hard in retrospect to really know,
Speaker 7: but he was put into a special school with many
Speaker 7: studenttudents who had recovered from severe respiratory illness and you know,
Speaker 7: other handicaps. There was a you know, a special ed
Speaker 7: school on Eastern Michigan University's campus called the Open Air School.
Speaker 7: And just from people being interviewed after his murder, the
Speaker 7: school of people, you know as school people were going
Speaker 7: to do basically said, oh, he was a lovely boy.
Speaker 7: You know, he was a great student. We're going to
Speaker 7: miss him so much. You know, they don't want to
Speaker 7: say anything negative about the kid. But neighbors who really
Speaker 7: knew the boy a little bit better than the people
Speaker 7: at school said that he was a kid who often
Speaker 7: fought with other kids, he didn't get along with kids,
Speaker 7: and was somewhat of a problem child. And again those
Speaker 7: people aren't necessarily qualified to make an analysis of the
Speaker 7: boy either, but he probably was a hyperactive kid and
Speaker 7: the only child of Lucia and Richard Striker, and the
Speaker 7: relationship with the parents, I think what was a strained
Speaker 7: one from again retrospect accounts, but the boy came home
Speaker 7: from school, the mom said, you're now full of snow,
Speaker 7: doesn't go out and play for you know, until dinner time.
Speaker 7: And he went out and he was playing across the street,
Speaker 7: sledding down a hill with an older boy, thirteen year
Speaker 7: old boy, and after a while, the thirteen year old
Speaker 7: had to had to you know, move on home. So
Speaker 7: Richie was standing out there by himself in the snow
Speaker 7: and decided to go home, and he was never seen
Speaker 7: alive again. So what happened to him between going home
Speaker 7: and ending up at the bottom of that bridge, you know,
Speaker 7: is the mystery that my book is based on. So
Speaker 7: the parent.
Speaker 6: You have, the police contacted the night before and did
Speaker 6: you talk about the discovery in the early morning by
Speaker 6: a couple of boys. But the night before, after dinner,
Speaker 6: around seven thirty or so seven twenty, father had boarded
Speaker 6: a car because they didn't have one, and went to
Speaker 6: the police station to report the sun missing. What happened
Speaker 6: as a result in terms of police well, he got
Speaker 6: home from.
Speaker 7: Work at six and that's when dinner was whereas Richie,
Speaker 7: his wife says, oh, he didn't come home, that darn kid.
Speaker 7: He's always you know, being light apparently, and so she
Speaker 7: went out on the front porch and started you know,
Speaker 7: calling his name, which is a common thing that people
Speaker 7: did in those days. You'd yell out your kid's name,
Speaker 7: and he should in most instances be within hailing distance.
Speaker 7: And he didn't show up. And it wasn't until seven
Speaker 7: seven thirty that the father had checked all around the
Speaker 7: house and across the street in the park and had
Speaker 7: come back home and said he was going to borrow
Speaker 7: his sister's car, which he did and drove over to
Speaker 7: the police station and told the Ipsilani police that his
Speaker 7: boy was missing. And so the police, every officer who
Speaker 7: was on duty, began to search for him and the strikers,
Speaker 7: you know. After the police had searched for a while,
Speaker 7: one of the officers took the squad car over to
Speaker 7: their house. He had returned the sister's car by that
Speaker 7: and he said, you know, I'll keep looking if you,
Speaker 7: you know, kind of give me some clues where to go.
Speaker 7: So he got in the car and asked, you know,
Speaker 7: the wife if she wanted to come along, and Lucia
Speaker 7: seemed unperturbed and indifferent about coming along, but eventually they
Speaker 7: did get her to go in the car and they started,
Speaker 7: you know, driving around, and they went right towards uh,
Speaker 7: the Frog Island Bridge, and both of the parents discouraged
Speaker 7: the policemen they were with from crossing the bridge and
Speaker 7: you know, looking in the park because they said they
Speaker 7: had already done that earlier on foot. And when they
Speaker 7: went there there there weren't any footprints or anything. They
Speaker 7: didn't see a body. They you know, they in other words,
Speaker 7: they checked and we don't need to check there. Let's
Speaker 7: don't waste time. Let's go someplace else, which, on the
Speaker 7: face of it, you know, might not sound too bad,
Speaker 7: but in retrospect, I think it was very damning. And
Speaker 7: right from the get go, the police the next day,
Speaker 7: when there was a further her investigation, the police already
Speaker 7: suspected that the parents knew more than they were were
Speaker 7: telling them.
Speaker 6: Right away. In these questioning Lucia has ideas as to
Speaker 6: whether or even she's been asked yet, but she's already
Speaker 6: offering suspects in this, isn't she.
Speaker 7: Yes, uh huh, And that continues through the story.
Speaker 6: She even implicates her brother in law.
Speaker 7: She implicates her brother in law. And there's bad blood
Speaker 7: in that family on the Striker side of the family,
Speaker 7: because the father, Richard Striker Sr. Was going with a
Speaker 7: woman they really the family really liked, and so on
Speaker 7: and so forth. And then all of a sudden, Richard
Speaker 7: shows up with Lucia and they had eloped. They went
Speaker 7: out and got married, and the reason for the hasty
Speaker 7: wedding was that she was pregnant with Richie, and so
Speaker 7: there was bad blood in that family, and she accused him,
Speaker 7: and she before the story ends, she accused six different people.
Speaker 7: Of them, you know, everybody is guilty but me, And
Speaker 7: of course that looked very suspicious to the police as well.
Speaker 7: But the state of investigation in those days, especially in
Speaker 7: a small town, you know, a small rural town, they
Speaker 7: were not really equipped to conduct a thorough investigation, and
Speaker 7: a lot of the police were not particular trained to
Speaker 7: be police and investigators. So it was a bumbling affair.
Speaker 7: But Lucia really had apparently nerves of steel, because whenever
Speaker 7: she would get in a situation where people would suggest
Speaker 7: that maybe she was the guilty party, she would get very,
Speaker 7: very defensive. And she must have been a forceful woman,
Speaker 7: because it seems to me that the police, the prosecutor,
Speaker 7: everybody connected with the case did not want to have
Speaker 7: to deal with her. She was hard to deal with
Speaker 7: person volatile.
Speaker 6: So you talk about the autopsy by doctor Stacy Howard.
Speaker 6: There was something that you said that was very irregular
Speaker 6: for a homicide case, and that was how they dealt
Speaker 6: with the body in this case. Tell us what was
Speaker 6: this irregular? So irregular for a homicide case.
Speaker 7: Well, you don't do an autopsy at the funeral home.
Speaker 7: You do it in the hospital at the county morgue.
Speaker 7: So that was the first problem with the first autopsy,
Speaker 7: because there were two. But well, getting ahead of myself,
Speaker 7: and they found the body around eight o'clock. They prided
Speaker 7: it from the ice at nine am and they took
Speaker 7: it and it was frozen solid. They took it to
Speaker 7: a funeral home, local funeral home, and the autopsy was
Speaker 7: not performed until nine o'clock at night. The clothes were
Speaker 7: cut off the body. One thought enough, that was just
Speaker 7: the easiest way to just robe the body. So they
Speaker 7: cut the frozen clothes off and they threw it in
Speaker 7: a cardboard box and off to the side, which you
Speaker 7: know had evidence on it, but they weren't thinking of
Speaker 7: that for some reason. They just threw everything in this
Speaker 7: cardboard box and they examined the body and found fourteen
Speaker 7: stab wounds, eight shallow punctures on the top of the
Speaker 7: skull that didn't go through to the cranium. But Richie
Speaker 7: was wearing a knit hat. You know, it's wintertime, so
Speaker 7: he had a winter hat on. And actually it wasn't
Speaker 7: in it. It was a kind of like an aviator
Speaker 7: sort of hat with wool inside and so on, so
Speaker 7: it had some substance to it. So uh, they found
Speaker 7: eight shallow punctures on the skull, two superficial slash wounds
Speaker 7: across the throat, and neither one of them would have
Speaker 7: been fatal. Again very superficial. But they did find four
Speaker 7: stab wounds on the boy's chest and three of the
Speaker 7: four entered Richie's heart, and that's that's what killed them.
Speaker 7: And of course everybody was outraged and shocked at the murder.
Speaker 7: This is a you know, it was a small town
Speaker 7: and you know, things like this just don't happen in
Speaker 7: our town, but of course they do. So that was
Speaker 7: the autopsy and the extent of it. They didn't check
Speaker 7: bodily fluids and I don't think they did a full
Speaker 7: autopsy and for whatever reason, and that was a critical
Speaker 7: flaw in the case. And it was nine months later
Speaker 7: that they had to exhume the body as if he
Speaker 7: hadn't endured enough, and it wasn't ghastly enough, and he
Speaker 7: was exhumed again and they cut up into his elementary
Speaker 7: elementary canal. But I'm not an unanimous but they were
Speaker 7: looking for pineapple shreds in the boy's stomach that may
Speaker 7: have indicated that he had been poisoned, because that was
Speaker 7: not even an issue in the first autopsy. So you know,
Speaker 7: it's just a real sordid, sortid case.
Speaker 6: You talk about in the first autopsy though, that they
Speaker 6: what they did realize too, was that where they found
Speaker 6: the body, there was no blood pool found under or
Speaker 6: near the body. So the conclusion was that he was killed,
Speaker 6: not killed there where the body was found, and the
Speaker 6: wounds were made by a specific slender sharp cutting instrument
Speaker 6: like a double edged stiletto or like a like a shear,
Speaker 6: like a sewing shear, so something unique in terms of
Speaker 6: a weapon. Now you write also that the police had
Speaker 6: some strange theories initially before they put anything together, before
Speaker 6: they had very much information at all, but they had
Speaker 6: some theories. One was about that he was a victim
Speaker 6: of a hit and run accident, so tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit about just briefly about these theories that they had.
Speaker 7: Initially, Well, I've got three, and that hit and run
Speaker 7: would have been a fourth, but that was I won't
Speaker 7: dignify that with the theory because it was the first
Speaker 7: thought that came to one of the detective's minds, and
Speaker 7: there was absolutely no evidence. But the first theory was
Speaker 7: that it was a pervert, depraved moron, or a sex maniac.
Speaker 7: And I would put that in the category of round
Speaker 7: up all the usual suspects because there was absolutely no
Speaker 7: indication that there had been any kind of violation of
Speaker 7: the boy's body whatsoever. But I guess it made the
Speaker 7: public feel good that the police was out there rounding
Speaker 7: up all the deviants in the namehood. Remember this is
Speaker 7: nineteen thirty five, and you know, political correctness had yet
Speaker 7: to be invented. And then a curious theory. A transient
Speaker 7: train passenger came into town, decided he was going to
Speaker 7: kill somebody, found richie, kill them, and then left town.
Speaker 7: Now that's a convenient theory for the police. But there
Speaker 7: and in fact that they said that perhaps it was
Speaker 7: somebody who got on and off trains and killed people
Speaker 7: that got a charge out of killing people in different times. Well,
Speaker 7: there had been no other murders up and down the line,
Speaker 7: so that and there was also somebody came up with
Speaker 7: a real whacked out, kind of a vampire type theory,
Speaker 7: and that was in a crime magazine, and I believe
Speaker 7: that was in the imagination of a crime writer. But
Speaker 7: some vampire like a character, you know, it was in
Speaker 7: the area. And then the only reasonable theory was that
Speaker 7: somebody close to Richie, a friend or a family member,
Speaker 7: may have killed him because it was not a crime
Speaker 7: of well, if it was, may have been a crime
Speaker 7: of passion that brings in other connotations and that's not
Speaker 7: the word I want to use here, but because of
Speaker 7: you know, the careful placement of the body under the
Speaker 7: bridge is a classic undoing behavior. And if somebody was
Speaker 7: just a psychopath and killed the kid and took off,
Speaker 7: he'd kill him. He wouldn't try to carefully place the
Speaker 7: kid's body under the bridge. And it was at the
Speaker 7: top part of the bridge, It wasn't it wasn't you know,
Speaker 7: on the ground on the river level. But there was
Speaker 7: a little abutment built under the bridge, concrete abutment that
Speaker 7: held the bridge in place. And the boy had to
Speaker 7: be carried up a snowy hill and placed up there,
Speaker 7: and his clothes we're pretty much closed up around his body.
Speaker 7: So it showed that somebody took some care placing his
Speaker 7: body there. And I think it's not too hard to
Speaker 7: imagine that probably somebody very very close to him put
Speaker 7: his body there. But that brings up more questions than answers. Also, basically,
Speaker 7: this case is full of questions that go un answered.
Speaker 6: Right, let's use as an opportunity to stop for a
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Speaker 6: Now you talked about more questions and answers, and you
Speaker 6: have the deputy sheriff clavator he returns to several days later,
Speaker 6: he returns to the Striker home and now is carefully
Speaker 6: questioning Lucia, and he asked if she had searched along
Speaker 6: the riverbank the previous night searching, and her response was no.
Speaker 6: What are some of the things that she admitted to
Speaker 6: and some of the strange things she just said off
Speaker 6: the cuff in this initial interview.
Speaker 7: Well, it was Richard Clavetter who was the Washington County
Speaker 7: Deputy sheriff, and Ralph Southard, who was the ipsil Any
Speaker 7: police chiefs. So they were working as a team and
Speaker 7: they both felt that and this is initially before the
Speaker 7: body was found, that Lucilla wasn't particularly distressed. She was
Speaker 7: sitting in a chair and knitting or crocheting, and you know,
Speaker 7: as if she was fully expecting Richie to walk in
Speaker 7: the door at any minute. And she was also according
Speaker 7: to I believe it was Claviator in his report, said
Speaker 7: that missus Striker was you know, sitting in a provocative
Speaker 7: manner and probably you know, flashing the cops and thigh
Speaker 7: as what I am thinking. He didn't stayed it that way,
Speaker 7: but he said, you know, it was very obvious that
Speaker 7: she was trying to distract them and be provocative. Yeah,
Speaker 7: she said that. Yeah, we went and uh we looked
Speaker 7: for the our son and uh, I you know, walked
Speaker 7: all over and and apparently the two boys who found
Speaker 7: the body kind of backtrack a little bit, said they
Speaker 7: thought they saw some woman's heels in the snow, and
Speaker 7: not not high heels, mind you, but you know, narrower
Speaker 7: one or two inch he'll kind of kind of shoe.
Speaker 7: But these were a couple of kids, so what do
Speaker 7: they know. By the time the police got there at
Speaker 7: the town knew of the murder and were romping through
Speaker 7: the snow and destroying evidence because it took the police
Speaker 7: almost an hour to get there after the initial call.
Speaker 7: So you know, they want to pick up the ground
Speaker 7: and they suspect that it's to see a striker, and
Speaker 7: so they, you know, ask her leading questions, and you know,
Speaker 7: she gets very upset with them, and you know, they
Speaker 7: forget exactly how it went, but something about her shoes
Speaker 7: and the boys upon the heel prints, and then she
Speaker 7: basically went ballistic and went to her closet and said, hey,
Speaker 7: I wrecked my shoes looking for him, and here they are,
Speaker 7: and if you want, you know, you want to arrest
Speaker 7: me because of my shoes or something to that effect. Anyway,
Speaker 7: they both backed off. She was very bold and and
Speaker 7: that was her style and and I guess the best
Speaker 7: way to describe her would be she was an alpha
Speaker 7: female and she ran the roost at her home and
Speaker 7: the same seemed to be true when she dealt with
Speaker 7: the police and the prosecutors. She wasn't real forthwith and
Speaker 7: so she had to be their prime suspect. And the
Speaker 7: husband wasn't rolled out either, but he just sat there
Speaker 7: and allowed Lucia to concoct her story.
Speaker 6: You talk about her defensiveness, but she was very aggressive,
Speaker 6: I mean from my reading of this where she says
Speaker 6: are you accusing? Twice she said are you accusing me
Speaker 6: of killing my son? So even clavittter backs off in
Speaker 6: this because she is so aggressive and defensive, and then
Speaker 6: other times says things that are just out of context
Speaker 6: than not necessary in this conversation as well.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm trying trying to recall exactly what happened, and
Speaker 7: it's a it's a little bit foggy just because it's
Speaker 7: been a while, but I do know that if Solanie
Speaker 7: is a small town, and I think it's worth noting
Speaker 7: that mister Striker, his father owned a tool and die
Speaker 7: business in town, and you know, hired a good number
Speaker 7: of local people, so it was well known and had
Speaker 7: some clout as far as Lucia Striker. When they look
Speaker 7: into her background, they found find out that she comes
Speaker 7: from a rather wealthy family. Her father, who is a
Speaker 7: Prussian immigrant, made good at Cadillac as an engineer and
Speaker 7: had a mansion on a lake, I think it was
Speaker 7: called Scott Lake around Mount Pleasant, and so a newspaperman
Speaker 7: went up there to interview him and it was quickly
Speaker 7: robuffed and knowing certain terms was sold. Never come back,
Speaker 7: I'll set the dogs on you. So Lucia came from
Speaker 7: a very autocratic family and she did not get along
Speaker 7: with her father at all, and so it's probably because
Speaker 7: she was very much the same way, and she saw
Speaker 7: how her father dealt with people, and that's how she
Speaker 7: dealt with people. And she was backed into a corner.
Speaker 7: And she was a fan of true crime magazines and
Speaker 7: quite a few of those were, you know, laying around
Speaker 7: the house. So she had a basic knowledge of investigative
Speaker 7: techniques and alibis and you know a whole lot of
Speaker 7: things that she's read in these magazines that are coming
Speaker 7: in very handy for her now, because she was able
Speaker 7: to withstand every interrogation that she went through, and she
Speaker 7: and her husband went through many. The first week it
Speaker 7: was eyes them together and she did the talking. After
Speaker 7: the first week it was eyes separately. But they seemed
Speaker 7: to know what the answers were back and forth. That's
Speaker 7: how well rehearsed they were.
Speaker 6: So you mentioned this journalist Harrington, and he went to
Speaker 6: see the grandparents of Richie and very Richie worked for
Speaker 6: the Cadillac Motor Corporation. But also when the two grandparents
Speaker 6: were there. Missus Mueller cries out, at last, she's done it.
Speaker 6: She's done it. Before the officer could ask who was
Speaker 6: or the journalist could ask who we should be referring to,
Speaker 6: mister Mueller entered the room as you write, and said
Speaker 6: and ordered his wife to shut her mouth, and then
Speaker 6: ordered this Harrington journalist to leave the property, already sick
Speaker 6: his dogs on him.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, So you know, I think that there's no
Speaker 7: shortage of circumstantial evidence, and it's all pointing in the
Speaker 7: same direction. And yet the police and by extension the
Speaker 7: prosecutor seemed to be reluctant to charge her with murder.
Speaker 7: And you know, it's hard to understand why.
Speaker 6: Now there was another character, and a very very important character,
Speaker 6: a local attorney who also has an office on Huron
Speaker 6: Avenue or Heroon Street. Pardon me, this is his name.
Speaker 6: His name is Clinton LaForge. So give us a little
Speaker 6: background on Clinton LaForge and his relationship or connection pardon
Speaker 6: me to Lucia.
Speaker 7: Clinton LaForge was the son of a frontier family, one
Speaker 7: of the original families that came and settled at Farmland,
Speaker 7: and his family was wealthy enough to send him to college.
Speaker 7: So he went to I believe it was the Detroit
Speaker 7: School of Law or something like that. Eventually it became
Speaker 7: University of Detroit and Clinton barely made it through to
Speaker 7: get his law degree, but he did, and he was
Speaker 7: a very good lawyer. But he wasn't that interested in
Speaker 7: farming per se, and I think he must have considered
Speaker 7: himself like a man about town. Now, he did have
Speaker 7: a wife, but she was stuck in, you know, their
Speaker 7: farm home of probably five miles out of town. In
Speaker 7: Clinton's office was here on Street, so he had a
Speaker 7: lot of time on his hands, and apparently he was
Speaker 7: having an affair with Lucia, and as the police were
Speaker 7: able to discern later that, in full knowledge of the
Speaker 7: husband and checking out the husband, he was also out
Speaker 7: with some of the women in town. So this became
Speaker 7: a very sordid affair, and it should have been investigated,
Speaker 7: I think, much more vigorously. You know, everybody denies that
Speaker 7: there was an affair, but there were people who had
Speaker 7: seen them together and heard Lucia talking about it, and
Speaker 7: so there is a feeling that Clinton LaForge may have
Speaker 7: been in the apartment when Richie got home, and that
Speaker 7: Richie may have seen something that he shouldn't have seen
Speaker 7: and there was no way for him to unsee it,
Speaker 7: and he was probably something dire happened to him. Now
Speaker 7: that's a theory also, But there are people in the neighborhood.
Speaker 7: There were was a group of several different women and
Speaker 7: I wrote him down here Missus Danike, Missus Horn, and
Speaker 7: Missus Freeman, who were neighbors, and they sent a letter
Speaker 7: to the prosecutor prosecutor rap and they said, yes, he
Speaker 7: was in the house with Lucia at the time. Now
Speaker 7: that's a letter. It's like hearsay. Evidence doesn't stand up
Speaker 7: in court. But so it was not only the police,
Speaker 7: but it was people in the neighborhood, people who knew
Speaker 7: Lucia in particular as a very volatile vein maybe narcissistic personality.
Speaker 7: And again, the pieces of the puzzle seem to be
Speaker 7: fitting together. So there's got to be a caveat somewhere.
Speaker 7: And she concocts a number of theories of who could
Speaker 7: be guilty, but there's one in particular that she uses
Speaker 7: as a scapegoat, and she hangs her freedom on that
Speaker 7: that guy.
Speaker 6: Before we get to Fred Leyton, who's the manager of
Speaker 6: a hatchery on hereon as well, and then the stories
Speaker 6: that were through the investigation of why this he could
Speaker 6: be a possible suspect. But Lucia is the one that
Speaker 6: floats his name almost immediately in this or shortly after,
Speaker 6: and then tells them as well later about something about
Speaker 6: following footsteps to the hatchery, which is something she didn't
Speaker 6: say initially to police. But let's talk a story, right,
Speaker 6: Let's talk about the questioning, the further questioning by police
Speaker 6: because they suspect that Lucia has something to do with this,
Speaker 6: is involved some way, so they at the time. And
Speaker 6: then while as I mentioned before this interview, it's interesting
Speaker 6: to see the birth of polygraph and trucerum and use
Speaker 6: in courts. So tell us about the use of polygraphs,
Speaker 6: and Lucia Richard and Clinton LaForge tell us about that.
Speaker 7: Well, the polygraph was a new invention, and I do
Speaker 7: explain rudimentary terms how it works. But she was given
Speaker 7: a polygraph test and asked some pointed questions and she
Speaker 7: passes the test. And then they put her husband on
Speaker 7: there and he passes the test, but not both of them,
Speaker 7: not in one hundred percent fashion. And because the analysis
Speaker 7: of the data is everything in a polygraph test, they
Speaker 7: were not able to establish clearly guilt by either party.
Speaker 7: And Clinton LaForge had to go in and also take
Speaker 7: the same test. And it wasn't just one test, it
Speaker 7: was three tests, you know, given over a period of time,
Speaker 7: so it took most of the day, and you know,
Speaker 7: they tried to trip you up on the questions in
Speaker 7: the second test and so on and so forth. And
Speaker 7: although Clinton didn't come out as good as the strikers,
Speaker 7: as far as the analysis went, he did not have
Speaker 7: there was nothing damning that they they could detect from
Speaker 7: his polygraph as well. So all three of them, you know,
Speaker 7: were able to convince the the data that the evaluator
Speaker 7: had that they were innocent. So it was in the
Speaker 7: early days the polygraph, and I'm sure that it got
Speaker 7: the procedure got better with time, but also with time
Speaker 7: it became clear that there's no corollary physiological corollary between
Speaker 7: what goes on and a person's mind and what goes
Speaker 7: on with your respiration and your heartbeat and your the
Speaker 7: different things that they would would test. And the United
Speaker 7: States Supreme Court basically has ruled against polygraphs as being useless.
Speaker 7: But it was an attempt to come up and use technology,
Speaker 7: full proof technology, and even from the get go, I
Speaker 7: think they discovered that it was not full proof. So
Speaker 7: that went nowhere, but it just became a part of
Speaker 7: the body of circumstantial evidence that that made the police
Speaker 7: hesitant because they felt if there was a good defense attorney,
Speaker 7: they needed a smoking gun. They needed some hard, fast,
Speaker 7: evident and so far they have hearsay accounts and not
Speaker 7: not much more.
Speaker 6: You also talk about that the investigators thought that Clinton
Speaker 6: LaForge may have known more and been able to offer
Speaker 6: more information. So that's all the basically of the conclusion
Speaker 6: that they had. But they tried to pin him down
Speaker 6: to an alibi, and he had a series of witnesses
Speaker 6: that he provided instantly, you know, the blacksmith, the tin man,
Speaker 6: various people that he said they were at his office,
Speaker 6: and he said he was in his law office that
Speaker 6: afternoon until about six thirty, and that he had witnesses.
Speaker 6: He said that we're there at five, five thirty, almost six.
Speaker 6: He had all these names ready. Then he said he
Speaker 6: went to dinner, and then he said these people were
Speaker 6: witnessed at the Continental Inn where I went and I
Speaker 6: met this person for supper. So all of those things
Speaker 6: seemed to.
Speaker 7: A couple of policemen too. At the Continental end, a
Speaker 7: couple of policemen were there and gave him an alibi,
Speaker 7: so he couldn't have, you know, taking the body and
Speaker 7: taking it and put it under the bridge. On the
Speaker 7: other hand, it seems like he's the only one with
Speaker 7: any answers. He's a lawyer, and he has it all
Speaker 7: lined up being being bang with these people. So I
Speaker 7: don't know if they're the most most reliable, but but yeah,
Speaker 7: he had what appeared to police to be an airtight
Speaker 7: alibi and despite.
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Speaker 6: That's Friends without the R Best Fiends. I was sorry
Speaker 6: to interrupt you, Gregory, but we were just talking about
Speaker 6: the case so far, and it looked like Clinton LaForge
Speaker 6: had access to information. It looked because he was a
Speaker 6: divorce lawyer at one time for Lucia and where they
Speaker 6: dropped that divorce apparently, and Richard and her reconciled. But also,
Speaker 6: which was what we didn't mention, is that the day after,
Speaker 6: the day after the boy was missing, at her request,
Speaker 6: Clinton LaForge cleaned everything out of that room, all the
Speaker 6: toys and everything from Richie's room. Isn't that correct?
Speaker 7: And then that's very curious because when that became known,
Speaker 7: there were you know, women in the neighborhood who said,
Speaker 7: you know that it's very odd because you would think
Speaker 7: she would want to keep those as momentous of her son.
Speaker 7: But of course you flip that over and the reminders
Speaker 7: of you know, this this ghastly murder, and which one,
Speaker 7: which one is it? And so he you know, she says, yeah,
Speaker 7: Clinton LaForge did remove my son's toys, and and it
Speaker 7: was like the day after. And you know why if
Speaker 7: that was a problem, why didn't the husband do it?
Speaker 7: Why Clinton the Forge? So there seemed to be somew
Speaker 7: of complicity there. And it wasn't long after that, you know,
Speaker 7: the police were, you know, closing in on Lucy about
Speaker 7: her affair with Clinton LaForge, and they inadvertently, the police
Speaker 7: inadvertently say well, Clinton LaForge is going around town implicating
Speaker 7: you in the murder, and she just turns on a dime,
Speaker 7: and she says a lot of unflattering things about Clinton
Speaker 7: la Forge and what a you know, terrible human being
Speaker 7: he is, and you know, he's unreliable and I haven't
Speaker 7: talked to that man, and you know since you know,
Speaker 7: nineteen twenty eight and all kinds of you know, fascion,
Speaker 7: false information, and the police at least had struck a
Speaker 7: nerve with her. So that indicates, I think to any
Speaker 7: buddy above the age of thirteen years old, that these
Speaker 7: people had a you know, a romantic relationship with one another,
Speaker 7: because you don't have that sort of ire, you know,
Speaker 7: for a person that you're indifferent to.
Speaker 6: You talk about March fifteenth, nineteen thirty five, article about
Speaker 6: the case hits hits the stands and then Michigan State
Speaker 6: Police Captain Donald Leonard and his partner, Sergeant Hudson, interview
Speaker 6: Gerard Young. And this guy's thirteen years old, and we
Speaker 6: talked about him. He's the kid that was playing with Richie.
Speaker 6: I really didn't know him. When they talked to me,
Speaker 6: he said, well, I didn't really know the guy. We
Speaker 6: were just sledding together. So they asked him questions like
Speaker 6: did he say this, did he say that? But the
Speaker 6: important thing about what he did say was with he
Speaker 6: gave a description, and he's the person that said, oh,
Speaker 6: there was a man that called out in.
Speaker 7: An overcoat, an overcoat and a fedora, and he, I believe,
Speaker 7: thought the man was He recognized the man as Clinton
Speaker 7: the Forge. But he was the last to play with Richie,
Speaker 7: the last two as far as we know, to see
Speaker 7: Richie until whatever happened to him and Clinton la Forge apparently,
Speaker 7: and I forget what the time, I don't have the
Speaker 7: in the book open in front of me, but that
Speaker 7: the timing was very suspicious. But again, it's a kid.
Speaker 7: It's a thirteen year old kid, and I think especially
Speaker 7: you know, going back in those days, you know, kids
Speaker 7: were to be seen and not heard. And I don't
Speaker 7: think that the police adequately followed up on this. And
Speaker 7: of course the Clinton Forge had an alibi, which we've
Speaker 7: already discussed, and it seems a pretty airtight alibi. So
Speaker 7: Gerald Young's contribution to the investigation was that it helped
Speaker 7: the police tighten up their timeline. And because he knew
Speaker 7: five point thirty five forty five whenever he had to
Speaker 7: something he had to do, and he left and Richie's
Speaker 7: standing out there in the cold, nobody to play with.
Speaker 7: And you know, so he apparently went back home, but
Speaker 7: nobody actually saw him go in the house.
Speaker 6: So yeah, to be care to that, to be fair,
Speaker 6: the boy said that the man was far enough away
Speaker 6: that he couldn't actually see his face. It was like,
Speaker 6: you made a good description, a description of Lage in general.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you know, it's it's too bad that there
Speaker 7: aren't more people alive who I could interview. Nobody was alive.
Speaker 7: I thought, this is a little aside, until after I
Speaker 7: had first written the book a couple of years ago,
Speaker 7: and I'm doing a book talk and a guy comes in.
Speaker 7: His name's Paul Woodside, and he was the boy who
Speaker 7: walked home with Richie, walked home with him from school.
Speaker 7: And the man was like eighty six years old or ninety,
Speaker 7: I don't know. And he came because he wanted to
Speaker 7: see me, and he said, yeah, we knew that this
Speaker 7: terrible thing happened to Richie, but the adults never talked
Speaker 7: about it, and so we never knew and I never heard.
Speaker 7: And then I read your book, and you know, he
Speaker 7: wanted to thank me for writing the book. So a
Speaker 7: little aside. There are no living history people to talk
Speaker 7: to about this, because you know, they all were dead,
Speaker 7: so I had to use police reports, which were spotty.
Speaker 7: As far as the Truth Serum report, there was an
Speaker 7: account of the questions and the answers for Lucia, but
Speaker 7: not for Clinton LaForge or her husband. So there are
Speaker 7: lots of holes in the documentation and the story. And
Speaker 7: the two people from the Upsilony Historical Society that collected
Speaker 7: all this information took three years and repeatedly to get
Speaker 7: information and uh, and it's still is very spotty. H
Speaker 7: and I put together attacked as much of the information
Speaker 7: as I could find, uh into this volume and uh
Speaker 7: and the story is really very thick with details. But again, UH,
Speaker 7: you're you're left with the feeling that there was nobody
Speaker 7: left in this world to stand up for Ritchie. And
Speaker 7: that's what makes this story so poignant.
Speaker 6: Before we talk about Lucia and and Fred Layton, as
Speaker 6: we'd mentioned before the break and his and he's the
Speaker 6: owner of the manager of the hatchery down the street,
Speaker 6: and and why Lucia would point in how she points
Speaker 6: to Layton. But there's a very fascinating psychic that comes
Speaker 6: into this story, and unlike many other stories involving a
Speaker 6: psychic and the police utilizing or at least considering what
Speaker 6: the psychic has to say, or the vision that they
Speaker 6: have is that there's more to this psychic story than usual.
Speaker 6: Tell us about this Missus Gordon.
Speaker 7: Yeah, missus Brad Gordon, and that's all she's known by
Speaker 7: in the in the documentation, the police support of this.
Speaker 7: What is not unusual is that she contacted the police
Speaker 7: offering to help solve the case. And right, that's that's
Speaker 7: pretty common. And she thinks that she might be able
Speaker 7: to get enough from Lucia's unconscious mind implicator and the
Speaker 7: chiefs not to throw about doing this, but you know,
Speaker 7: the consensus is what we have to lose, and what
Speaker 7: they had to lose was fifty bucks because she wasn't
Speaker 7: doing anything until she got paid. So you know, they
Speaker 7: paid her fifty dollars and then Lucia. And this is
Speaker 7: even hard to talk about because this is like of
Speaker 7: a scam within a scam, the whole story of Gordon.
Speaker 7: So you know, how do you get Lucy. I'm going
Speaker 7: to try to approach it differently. How do you get
Speaker 7: Lucia to see this this psychic Missus Gordon and I
Speaker 7: think it was a friend of hers gave her the name.
Speaker 7: That was her right the alibi later, but so, you know,
Speaker 7: Lucia goes with the and that's the police who ask
Speaker 7: her if she would see a psychic and she says, well,
Speaker 7: you know, I don't have a transportation or time or
Speaker 7: one thing or anyway, they talk her into it, and
Speaker 7: I think, you know, she's probably thinking, oh boy, I've
Speaker 7: got the police hooked now. And so they bring her
Speaker 7: to the psychic and the police can't be in there,
Speaker 7: just Lucia and Gordon. And then it takes forty five
Speaker 7: minutes an hour or something, and finally Lucia comes out
Speaker 7: and she's all upset and emotional and crying and you know,
Speaker 7: making a big show and take me home, Take me home,
Speaker 7: right now, take me home. And you know, so they do,
Speaker 7: and you know, they try to find the story. You know,
Speaker 7: they asked Lucio of the interrogator after she calms down,
Speaker 7: and she concoct this whole alibi that it was Fred Lighton,
Speaker 7: who worked at the egg and chickatchery, which was half
Speaker 7: a block down the street from where they where the
Speaker 7: Strikers lived. The Strikers, the hatchery, the Huron River and
Speaker 7: then the bridge is on the other side of the river,
Speaker 7: so you know, she has a whole alibi worked out
Speaker 7: that Fred Layton was the killer. And this is the
Speaker 7: kind of back by the psychic. Well, the police decide
Speaker 7: that they want to go out and question the psychic
Speaker 7: a day or two later, and when they approached the house,
Speaker 7: they know that Lucia Striker is there, you know, and
Speaker 7: meaning I mean they're scheming together, you know. So that
Speaker 7: whole thing was proved to be a scam and the
Speaker 7: police now see that you know, Lucy is trying to
Speaker 7: not only concoct an alibi, but to involve other people
Speaker 7: in it, you know, into what would you know, be
Speaker 7: a conspiracy. So and that didn't work out, and then
Speaker 7: Gordon just basically she disappeared every time the police went
Speaker 7: looking for the neighbors that say, oh, she went shop
Speaker 7: and she'll be back in you know, five o'clock when
Speaker 7: you know the return bus comes in. And this was
Speaker 7: not in Ipsil any by the way, This was a
Speaker 7: psychic in Taylor, Michigan, which is about eighteen miles east
Speaker 7: of Ipsey. And as it turns out, Missus Gordon and
Speaker 7: Lucia Striker basically her friends and they were trying to
Speaker 7: work out, you know, kind of a scam and Gordon's
Speaker 7: incentive in all this was a possible job because Lucia
Speaker 7: was trying to get ten thousand dollars so she could
Speaker 7: open a bar with a man that she was involved with,
Speaker 7: you know, to take her away from all this misery.
Speaker 7: You know, So she was trying to scam together ten
Speaker 7: thousand dollars. But that's an aside story that I can't
Speaker 7: speak authoritatively on.
Speaker 6: It was interesting how much credence the police had with
Speaker 6: the psychic initially though in fact bringing this is one
Speaker 6: of the most bizarre elements of this book is that
Speaker 6: because she had a vision again because she said it
Speaker 6: was independent, she came and said, well, I had this
Speaker 6: vision of this man at the hatchery and you know,
Speaker 6: Rich was in there and he discovered some baby chicks
Speaker 6: and they didn't like that. So she had this whole
Speaker 6: vision and so when the police said, okay, you have
Speaker 6: a vision, they took her to Fred Layton under police
Speaker 6: escort to look at him. And what does she conclude?
Speaker 7: That's the man, that's the man in my vision, and
Speaker 7: they put him Fred Lighten under interrogation several times, and
Speaker 7: every time they came out more convinced that he was innocent.
Speaker 7: But they were playing the game too, because they figured
Speaker 7: they could catch Lucia up in this story, you know.
Speaker 7: And and then once they broke through that that cast
Speaker 7: iron armor that she seemed to have, that that she'd
Speaker 7: fall fall apart like a house of cards. And it's
Speaker 7: if it wasn't so tragic, it would be laughable. How
Speaker 7: hard Lucia tried to implicate this innocent man and she didn't.
Speaker 7: And then she even will to say that for a
Speaker 7: little bit later, but she got to a point where
Speaker 7: she was even ready to eliminate him herself. And of
Speaker 7: course then he she could say he was guilty, and
Speaker 7: you know whatever, but she put all her eggs in
Speaker 7: that that bath.
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Speaker 6: Now you talk about Lucia and she just seems to
Speaker 6: be a very desperate person. And then another character comes
Speaker 6: because you would alluded to this, maybe she can help
Speaker 6: the police get the information that will let them allow
Speaker 6: them to arrest this latent person. So there's a neighbor
Speaker 6: of Lucia's name Francis Weimer. Now, so what does she do?
Speaker 6: What does she think she knows? And then what's the
Speaker 6: plan with their friend? And the police realize that they're
Speaker 6: watching Lucia's home and so they end up talking to
Speaker 6: her as well.
Speaker 7: Francis Squeamer was about the weeks and the months we
Speaker 7: are on Francis was just about the only person who
Speaker 7: would ever go to the Striker's apartment. So the police
Speaker 7: follow her home one day and they ask her what
Speaker 7: her opinion is if she thinks that Lucy is involved,
Speaker 7: and basically she does, but she's still under the guise
Speaker 7: of a friend. And so the police and we are
Speaker 7: come up with this idea that maybe we can you know,
Speaker 7: entrap Lucia, and Francis decides to go under cover, and
Speaker 7: so she becomes a you know, a trader to her friends,
Speaker 7: just for descriptive purposes. And she's I'm sure convinced that
Speaker 7: that Lucia is the guilty party, and I think most
Speaker 7: thinking people will come to that conclusion. So she says
Speaker 7: that she has a guy, uh who is a gangster
Speaker 7: phone number of a gangster who is really an undercover policeman,
Speaker 7: but she portrays him as a gangster. And so they
Speaker 7: come up with the idea that we're going to hire
Speaker 7: these two cops and they're gonna get fred Lytton and
Speaker 7: you know, kidnap them, put him in a room, beat
Speaker 7: him up, beat a confession out of them. That's what
Speaker 7: she's thinking, you know, right out of True crime magazine.
Speaker 7: So she falls for it, and so she calls a
Speaker 7: guy called Jack Miller and goes to see him with
Speaker 7: Francis too. You know a hotel in Detroit, the Leland Hotel,
Speaker 7: which is where all of the out of town athletes go,
Speaker 7: you know, they play the Tigers of the Lions and
Speaker 7: so on. They go to the Leyland and it was
Speaker 7: still a pretty decent hotel in those days. So she
Speaker 7: goes there and secretly the two women meet with Jack
Speaker 7: Miller and al hellicker I think it is, And those
Speaker 7: were the names that they were going under, but they
Speaker 7: were really two Wayne County Deputy sheriffs who were working
Speaker 7: on the behalf of the Washington County Sheriff and so
Speaker 7: Miller just to get the names out there, officer Howard
Speaker 7: Heinrich and al hellicker I was the officer Alfred E. Ferrell.
Speaker 7: But of course she doesn't know that. She just knows
Speaker 7: she's meeting Jack. They go in the room and then
Speaker 7: there's this other guy, Al. They all sai at a
Speaker 7: table and they talk and uh uh. Lucia basically says
Speaker 7: that there's this man who killed her son and and
Speaker 7: but he won't admit it, and the police are all
Speaker 7: over her for it and she's innocent and and uh
Speaker 7: so Jack Miller is the lead cop. Uh. And there's
Speaker 7: a dialogue that takes several pages. Uh, but essentially he says, well,
Speaker 7: how do you know he's guilty? What evidence do you have?
Speaker 7: He starts kneedling her, and uh, you know she's defensive
Speaker 7: and uh, what Jack, you you don't think I'm innocent? Well,
Speaker 7: you know, I don't know what to say about that,
Speaker 7: but blah blah blah. You know. She just goes on
Speaker 7: and on that and Jack keeps you know, after her,
Speaker 7: but but not not too much, just as far as
Speaker 7: they know, to scare her away. And they want, uh
Speaker 7: to know what Lucilla wants done, and that was to
Speaker 7: kidnap the guy and be a confession, as I've said.
Speaker 7: Uh So they go off and h it's several days later,
Speaker 7: and then there's a second meeting in the same room
Speaker 7: and so on. Uh and uh, Jack in particular starts
Speaker 7: telling her, Hey, we.
Speaker 9: Talked to this guy. He's uh, he's innocent. He claims
Speaker 9: he's innocent, and he's got this and how do you
Speaker 9: know just because you say, we just can't go bump
Speaker 9: off a guy because you tell us to and you know,
Speaker 9: like that, and so she knows that, you know, she's
Speaker 9: in a little bit of trouble. What she doesn't know,
Speaker 9: as far as we know, is that there is a
Speaker 9: microphone underneath the table where they're meeting in this hotel room,
Speaker 9: and there's a wire that goes under the carpet to
Speaker 9: the edge of the room and into the room next door,
Speaker 9: where there's a policeman with a newfangled dictograph machine and
Speaker 9: one of the first kind of recording devices out there,
Speaker 9: and it had a cylinder. The recording device had a
Speaker 9: cylinder that would record for about thirty minutes, and they
Speaker 9: were in there for about an hour. So when they
Speaker 9: changed the one cylinder to put the new one on,
Speaker 9: there's a little bit of a.
Speaker 7: Lapse in the narrative, which unfortunately I never heard, but
Speaker 7: I got a real sketchy transcript. In fact, I got
Speaker 7: two different transcripts, and it's amazing how different they are.
Speaker 7: But at any rate, so here's of an early use
Speaker 7: of a you know, not a wire tap, I wouldn't
Speaker 7: call it a wire tap, but using a dictograph recorder
Speaker 7: to try and gather incriminating evidence. And as far as
Speaker 7: we know, she had no idea that she was being recorded,
Speaker 7: and it was an early use of that technology as well,
Speaker 7: like what the Truth serum once again makes this case
Speaker 7: very interesting from that point of view. So basically, at
Speaker 7: the end of the second meeting, Lucia I think has
Speaker 7: come to the conclusion that she has no alternatives left.
Speaker 7: She doesn't want to go back and give herself in.
Speaker 7: She's rolled that out. She doesn't want to go back
Speaker 7: to Ipsiulani at all all. But she does the two
Speaker 7: men that she was going to hire, you know, that
Speaker 7: didn't work out, and her friend and her or you know,
Speaker 7: cops say that's the way we were. You know, we've
Speaker 7: had enough, and they leave. Okay, they leave because they
Speaker 7: go into the other room to see to listen, uh,
Speaker 7: to hear if somehow Lucia says something incriminating when the
Speaker 7: police are out of the room, So it's her and
Speaker 7: Francis Weimer in the room, and Francis is Lucia, maybe
Speaker 7: you should just, you know, you should just give yourself
Speaker 7: in and throw yourself on the mercy of the court
Speaker 7: and h and Lucia just would not budget an inch.
Speaker 7: But by this time I think she's very wary and
Speaker 7: she doesn't reveal herself, you know, on the tape and
Speaker 7: saying anything incriminating. So, although it's an interesting episode, it
Speaker 7: really didn't provide any incriminating evidence other than she was
Speaker 7: determined to get revenge on Fred Fred Lytton. And she
Speaker 7: even offered said, Jack, give me your gun. You know
Speaker 7: where is Fred? Is he in a room in this hotel?
Speaker 7: Give me your gun. I'll shoot him myself. That was incriminating.
Speaker 7: But why that didn't result in her arrest, I have
Speaker 7: no idea.
Speaker 6: It's interesting what she does say while they're still tape
Speaker 6: recording just and Francis says, hey, if you plead insanity,
Speaker 6: they don't only hold you for a year. And then
Speaker 6: so Lucia asked only a year, and he says, but
Speaker 6: but she considers it. She says, after I gained my
Speaker 6: sanity to have to stand trial and then I'd have
Speaker 6: to take a wrap anyway, So she says no, late
Speaker 6: and has to confess we're going to have to pin
Speaker 6: it on him.
Speaker 7: We're going to have to have some way to prove,
Speaker 7: you know. And and then the police they damn up
Speaker 7: the Heuron river. Uh, and they're still going on this
Speaker 7: psychic story that there's a knife buried in the uh
Speaker 7: in the silt of the Huron River and so on,
Speaker 7: so they'd lower the level and you know, spend the
Speaker 7: whole day out there and found nothing. You know. So,
Speaker 7: I mean it wasn't because the lack of police effort
Speaker 7: at the crime wasn't solved. It was the lack of
Speaker 7: expertise and a very very cunning uh antagonists.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think she was real ahead of her time.
Speaker 6: You also, well, we didn't mention that when she was
Speaker 6: a true crime boff, and so was her friend Francis.
Speaker 6: But the book that investigators found or they saw, they
Speaker 6: didn't get to examine it, but they looked at it,
Speaker 6: and the title of the book was the perfect crime. Yeah,
Speaker 6: just more circumstantial evidence. Also, the investigators when she was
Speaker 6: spinning this tale along with Francis about the the gun,
Speaker 6: the police investigators posing as gangsters were pushing her to say, well,
Speaker 6: if you know where the knife is, then why don't
Speaker 6: you tell us where the knife is apparently was buried
Speaker 6: on the riverbank. They pushed very hard in this regard,
Speaker 6: didn't they.
Speaker 7: Yes, they did, And of course she came up with
Speaker 7: excuses and it's not coming to mind what they were
Speaker 7: but you know, she seemed to have an answer for everything,
Speaker 7: enough of an answer, even if you know, if it
Speaker 7: was a half truth, that's the best, you know, because
Speaker 7: it cast some shadow of doubt. And she was a
Speaker 7: very shrewd woman and educated in what we didn't talk about.
Speaker 7: And if I could really take a minute to talk
Speaker 7: about her background, she was a phys ed student at
Speaker 7: Eastern Michigan before she got pregnant and dropped out, and
Speaker 7: she had taken anatomy classes. And when the autopsy reports
Speaker 7: came out and you had the four stablings in the chest,
Speaker 7: well one of them nicked a rib and that one
Speaker 7: was not the fatal blow, but the other three he
Speaker 7: went straight into the heart. There were no ribs nicked
Speaker 7: at all. So it was not a frantic, you know,
Speaker 7: kind of Alfred Hitchcock psycho murder. It wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 7: like that. It was very precise and lethal. So it
Speaker 7: just perplexed the police, the corner, everybody. And then when
Speaker 7: it gets to the point of, well, do we have
Speaker 7: enough circumstantial evidence to arrest her, I think that the
Speaker 7: prosecutor was ready to do that. I don't know it,
Speaker 7: but you know, my feeling is that he was just
Speaker 7: ready to get on with it because it had strung
Speaker 7: on for three years. But he had a report and
Speaker 7: it was like a long report, and I had all
Speaker 7: of it. It was like sixteen pages, maybe more. And
Speaker 7: I didn't want to just drop sixteen pages into the
Speaker 7: book because some of the things were not that particularly
Speaker 7: compelling and interesting. But I took out information about Lucia
Speaker 7: and her personality, and it's kind of an armchair psychological
Speaker 7: evaluation of her and linking her aggression to her Prussian
Speaker 7: father and her submissive romany Gypsy mother and all this
Speaker 7: kind of crazy stuff. And it went on and saying
Speaker 7: and what about this, and what about that, you know,
Speaker 7: just knocking down the arguments one after another that the
Speaker 7: prosecutor would use in court. But I find it myself
Speaker 7: to be the most interesting part of the book. And
Speaker 7: it wasn't until I sent the book to the printer
Speaker 7: in one thing or another, and I was going through
Speaker 7: my materials and you know, boxing them up, and I
Speaker 7: came across that letter again. And it is not written
Speaker 7: on any kind of police official forms. There's no name
Speaker 7: attached to the letter, and it's it's a very rambling,
Speaker 7: unprofessional account. And then it struck me who wrote it,
Speaker 7: and it had to be that guy who worked for
Speaker 7: the Ford security department, because Ford had an interest interest
Speaker 7: in Ipsilani. And so this guy who worked with Harry
Speaker 7: Bennett's security department for the department, he was lent to
Speaker 7: the police as an investigator. So this guy may or
Speaker 7: may not have been a trained investigator. And by the
Speaker 7: use of his language and the way that the letter
Speaker 7: was written and much, you know, much of it is
Speaker 7: in the book, it was very obvious it was not
Speaker 7: a police report. I think it was. I'm trying to
Speaker 7: think what the man's name is, and I will get
Speaker 7: it here because I wrote it down. But he had
Speaker 7: to be the person who wrote it. And E. L.
Speaker 7: Squires his name comes up quite a bit. Squires, and
Speaker 7: he was investigating the fortune teller in particular, but you know,
Speaker 7: he was on every aspect of this case. And I
Speaker 7: think it's because of his letter that the prosecutor just
Speaker 7: threw his hands up. He says, I'm done with it.
Speaker 7: Brakers had moved away from from Ifsilani by then, and uh,
Speaker 7: they just let it go. Unfortunately, and uh, when he
Speaker 7: the boy was reburied, he uh, you know, he was
Speaker 7: the autopsy, there were two of them. Well he had
Speaker 7: to be reburied, and uh, we don't know what happened,
Speaker 7: but there was no headstone, no tombstone for him. And uh,
Speaker 7: you know, I went to the cemetery in FC and
Speaker 7: you know, asked them about it, to check their records,
Speaker 7: and they did and they said there was no record.
Speaker 7: H They know the where the boy's body uh is buried,
Speaker 7: you know, according to their their map, but uh, they
Speaker 7: didn't know anything about a headstone. Uh so whether there
Speaker 7: was one when he was originally buried and then he
Speaker 7: somehow got lost or fell into the hole when they
Speaker 7: exhumed the boy and reburied him, or if somebody stole
Speaker 7: stole it and it's sitting somewhere in somebody's basement or
Speaker 7: in their fatio somewhere. People are strange, they do things
Speaker 7: like that. And so everybody seemed to have forgotten about
Speaker 7: poor little Richard. And it wasn't until one of the
Speaker 7: docents at the if Slane of Historical Society was having
Speaker 7: lunch with one of his buds and started telling the
Speaker 7: story that about this seven year old boy who was
Speaker 7: found frozen to death under this bridge and the Frog
Speaker 7: Island Bridge Bridge and that when he was a boy
Speaker 7: of about seventy eight years old, his father and him
Speaker 7: were walking past that bridge and his father told them
Speaker 7: there was a boy murdered under that bridge, and I
Speaker 7: don't want you, you know, playing in Frog Island and
Speaker 7: hanging around the bridge and so on. Cautionary tale. And
Speaker 7: it stuck in the boy's head until he was a man.
Speaker 7: And they, you know, they're docents, historical docents, and they said, well,
Speaker 7: let's see what we have in our files on this boy. Nothing.
Speaker 7: Well that's not true. They had one obituary in their
Speaker 7: in their files and that was it. No other newspaper articles, nothing.
Speaker 7: So these two guys made it their business, their personal project,
Speaker 7: to find out everything they could. George rid Hour and
Speaker 7: Lyle McDermott and I say their names because they should
Speaker 7: get a call out, and they collected stuff for three years.
Speaker 7: But George died. He was in real ill health, in
Speaker 7: a wheelchair and everything. But he was great with working
Speaker 7: with officialdom because of his Air Force training, so he
Speaker 7: knew how things worked and got a lot of information.
Speaker 7: And he died and had just sat there and I
Speaker 7: got a call from Lyle and he said, hey, would
Speaker 7: you be interested in writing the story of Richard Striker.
Speaker 7: We've got the materials here, but none of us feel
Speaker 7: like we're up to doing it. And I had written
Speaker 7: the John Collins book, the Tarrying of Selani book with
Speaker 7: their help, by the way, and so I felt, you know,
Speaker 7: really I should do this for George. And it's a
Speaker 7: legacy project for the town to recover some of their
Speaker 7: hidden history. And this is what I found. And I
Speaker 7: wish I would have had I wish you would have
Speaker 7: gone to trial, because it would have been maybe a
Speaker 7: little bit easier to find newspaper accounts and so on.
Speaker 7: But I went back and looked, I have a Detroit
Speaker 7: Free Press subscriptions, So I went back in their archives
Speaker 7: and I checked everything I could, and the ipsil Ani
Speaker 7: Press that that ill fated newspaper had been burnt down
Speaker 7: over the years three times, so they had nothing in
Speaker 7: the way of you know, old issues to go back
Speaker 7: and get information. So I had to rely on state
Speaker 7: police reports and the letters, the letter from the sense
Speaker 7: of Take or the letters from the concerned ladies and
Speaker 7: so on, and frankly that made it for much more
Speaker 7: interesting reading than I think, you know, some dry police
Speaker 7: reports because that's what really started to bring the story alive.
Speaker 6: It's remarkable how you put this together. I know you
Speaker 6: mentioned it. It seemed that you didn't have complete but
Speaker 6: this book seems very seamless. And we're not wanting for
Speaker 6: any information, only that it would be fascinating to have
Speaker 6: a trial. But considering all the situation, the circumstances, that
Speaker 6: can see why it never did go to trial. In
Speaker 6: the theory by the MSP, the Washingtonaw County Sheriff's Department
Speaker 6: and yippsul Ani police, what was their overall theory on
Speaker 6: why Ricky.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Richie, you know, I already gave my theory. I
Speaker 7: don't have any answer collectively for what they were thinking,
Speaker 7: although it was very obvious that nobody liked dealing with
Speaker 7: Lucia and they felt like she was a formidable opponent
Speaker 7: for whatever reasons. But I believe that the people on
Speaker 7: the street, they thought that Richie came in, caught Lucia
Speaker 7: and Clinton LaForge, who knows, kissing on the couch something,
Speaker 7: and because the kid had no impulse control and whatnot.
Speaker 7: I think the mother, rather, Lucy had no impulse control. Uh. Frankly,
Speaker 7: I think she came up and hit the kid and
Speaker 7: knocked him out. And uh, I think maybe uh, you know,
Speaker 7: the the uh stabounds to the heart. Uh, those may
Speaker 7: have been to cover up, you know, a concussion of
Speaker 7: some kind, you know, to draw the police to to
Speaker 7: that conclusion. But something happened in that house.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 7: And there were only two people there of other than Richie,
Speaker 7: or at least alleged to be there, his mother and
Speaker 7: Clinton LaForge. And the interesting excuse me, the thing about
Speaker 7: Clinton LaForge is, you know, he was not a very
Speaker 7: good lawyer. He was a kook in his own way.
Speaker 7: He collected Indian arrowheads and different things, and that's not kooky. Uh.
Speaker 7: But and if Silani, a lot of Indian tribes gathered
Speaker 7: there and gis prehistory, and so Indian artifacts could be
Speaker 7: found in the farms. The farmers would dig him up
Speaker 7: when they plow and so on, and so he fashioned
Speaker 7: himself to be an expert in Indian affairs, and he wasn't.
Speaker 7: But he got to speak at the kawanist glob and
Speaker 7: the eagles glub and the different things. He had a
Speaker 7: headdress and all kinds of stuff like that. But later
Speaker 7: in life, you know, he had he had this farm, uh,
Speaker 7: and he leased the farm out because he didn't care
Speaker 7: for farm work. He was like a gentleman farmer by then,
Speaker 7: and quit practicing law. Uh, and he became a wood worker,
Speaker 7: and uh he would cut timber. Uh and he probably
Speaker 7: did it commercially and for his own use as well.
Speaker 7: But they had a a federal truck. It was a
Speaker 7: brand truck, and it was hooked up to the axle
Speaker 7: this saw sawmill a huge, huge blade, and the pulley
Speaker 7: was hooked up to the saw and then to the
Speaker 7: the wheel of the drive wheel of the car. And uh,
Speaker 7: you know, spun the blade around and you know, he
Speaker 7: cut wood, maple, oak, all these different kinds of woods, uh,
Speaker 7: furniture typeoids and so on. And while he's doing that, uh,
Speaker 7: the saw kicks back, pushing some wid through, and it
Speaker 7: kicks back, and it throws the wood into his chest
Speaker 7: and kills him false dead. And his wife, you know,
Speaker 7: about an hour or so later, you know, she hears
Speaker 7: this saw. It keeps running and running. And he'd never
Speaker 7: leave it running like that, you know, burning all that
Speaker 7: gas up and so on. He'd you know, use it
Speaker 7: and then turn it off. And and it was running
Speaker 7: and running, and and she could hear it. The saw
Speaker 7: was about one hundred yards from the house, and and
Speaker 7: he was supposed to come in for dinner. And she
Speaker 7: goes out there and she finds him dad laying there
Speaker 7: in a heap. So that was an interesting end. And
Speaker 7: the other two died of natural causes. The Strikers died
Speaker 7: of natural causes. But all those years and nobody ever
Speaker 7: thought to put a headstone on their boys grave or
Speaker 7: to go visit the boys grave. That's curious.
Speaker 6: Also, Yeah, I want to thank you so much for
Speaker 6: coming on and talking about the Richard Striker Junior murder,
Speaker 6: Ypsilante's Deepot Depot Town mystery. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Gregory for coming on and talking
Speaker 6: about this amazing story.
Speaker 7: Well, well, I really appreciate it. And you know, it's
Speaker 7: been a couple of years, a few years since I
Speaker 7: read it, so I need to reread it again. My
Speaker 7: memory is a little fuzzy, but I hope your your listeners,
Speaker 7: you know, can put all the salient parts together. So
Speaker 7: I really appreciate it. Thank you. Dan.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Is there a website or a Facebook page that
Speaker 6: people might take a look at for other work?
Speaker 7: Yeah, my web page is Gregory a foreigner and that's
Speaker 7: fo you are Ni e er or Gregory a foreign
Speaker 7: your if you like you all of that, and dot
Speaker 7: com will take you to my author page and uh
Speaker 7: my other books. I've got four books and uh uh
Speaker 7: I've got a project going uh uh now, so uh
Speaker 7: you know, check me out and uh uh if you
Speaker 7: like what you see, uh thereby buttons.
Speaker 6: Okay, thank you so much. You have a great evening.
Speaker 5: Ye