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The revelation is an emotional punch, if not really a surprise. Lisa told me several of the campers were related to people who were there during the original massacre, and a couple even claimed to be relatives of the victims. It will take some fact-checking to be sure of that considering how pervasive urban legends and myths about the case are in these areas. But it makes sense. The families in these small towns go back a long way.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I tellhim.
He nods. “It was pretty awful. I remember my parents being really upset. The doctor had to come and give my mother something that made her sleep for days. My father told me she would wake up and feel better, but she didn’t. She was just as frantic and despondent, maybe even more so, since she felt like time had been stolen from her. After that, my childhood was essentiallyover.”
“That sounds horrible. Why would you want to have anything to do with the camp after that?” Iask.
“It drew me in. I wanted to understand it and why it happened. I heard so many stories and so many people gave me their own explanations about it, but I wanted to know for myself. There was talk about bringing it back about ten years ago or so, and then a few years after that, people were saying they should just raze the entire place and make something else out of it. But even though I was just a kid, I wanted to volunteer to help. But nothing came out of it either time.
“I was disappointed, but figured there would be another chance. I thought for sure the twentieth anniversary would have something to commemorate it. It had to, right? So I waited for someone to announce something. But nobody wanted anything to do with it. Eventually, I decided that meant it was up to me to make it happen. It took a while, but I finally got permission to start it up again for a one-week session and to be thedirector.”
“You sound like you’re really proud of it,” Iobserve.
“I am,” Mike says almost like he had never really considered that before. “I think the camp deserved to be opened again. What happened there shouldn’t be forgotten. There are so many different stories about it and none of them get it right. That bothers me. I can’t change everybody’s thoughts about it, but I can make sure at least some people change their opinion. At least, that’s what I thought beforeyesterday.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and tell me about yesterday? What were youdoing?”
He tells me about his responsibilities directing the camp and the schedule he put in place. The campfires were clearly important to him. He wanted to make sure every camper was present and participating in them. No one was to be wandering around the grounds or in any of the buildings. The rules were that everyone came to the fires, and then went directly to shower and to bed.
“I was the only one who that didn’t apply to,” he explains. “I’ve been working on a proposal to reopen as a full-scale summer camp next year. I wanted to use the success of this session to bolster support and get permission to reopen for a full summer session. That meant I was working pretty constantly, and I wasn’t able to get to thefires.”
“And that’s what you were doing when you heard what was happening?” Iask.
“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “I was in my office working on the budget. Anthony and Holden, two of my counselors, came in and told me something was wrong, that Miranda was missing. Miranda was a counselor and also Holden’s girlfriend. They told me she was feeling sick earlier in the evening and was going to stay in her cabin for the night, but when they heard screaming, it sounded like it was coming from the area of her cabin and went to check on her. The door was locked and the only way they could look inside was through the window. That’s when they found the blood on the ground. Holden went inside and found the blood through the cabin and noMiranda.”
“What was your immediate thought?” Iask.
Mike shakes his head. “I just knew I needed to keep the rest of the campers and counselors calm. I didn’t know what was going on exactly or what happened to her, but I didn’t want anyone else to find out. I just wanted the situation kept under control. It was nighttime, there was a storm coming, and I couldn’t let almost forty people panic. Anthony and Holden said we needed to call the police, but the phone lines were dead so Icouldn’t call for help. I told the boys to take the camp truck and go into town to get the police while I gathered everybodyup.”
“The boys being Anthony and Holden?” Iclarify.
“Yes. They are two of the most experienced counselors I have. Holden is actually the head counselor. But I am responsible for them. I couldn’t leave the camp to find help. I needed to stay there with the rest of the counselors and campers, so I needed to send them. I thought they made it. But Anthony didn’t comeback.”
“We’re working with almost nothing,” I grumble as I walk into the conference room a couple hours later. “Unless one of you got somethinggroundbreaking.”
Each and every one of the campers and counselors who stayed at the station have been questioned and given their statements, and the ones who left have been located and contacted to make appointments to talk. Each of us has yellow legal pads full of notes taken from each of the people we spoke with, but I know mine have little in them that will make much impact on the investigation.
Including Mike, the three people I spoke with weren’t able to give me much. There are contradictions across the interviews with each of them reporting seeing and hearing things the others didn’t, or not hearing or seeing things the others did. I have several pages of versions of the legends surrounding the camp and the massacre twenty years ago, with one of the camper survivors I interviewed absolutely convinced it was the evil spirit of the original killer back to wreak havoc again.
“I’m pretty light in the way of evidence,” Sam admits. “I got some good stories and they gave me statements about what they experienced, but none of them saw the guy’s face or anything about him that was distinctlyidentifying.”
“Same here,” Garrison adds. “From what I got out of the people I talked to, most of them didn’t even see the guy up close, if at all. They heard what was happening and immediately went to the dining hall or hid somewhere and were gathered up by the counselors or Mike and brought there. A couple of them saw some of the bodies, and two of them did see someone killed right beside them, but they couldn’t give much of a description of the killer. One said he was tall with a bigger build. The other said he was average height or even on the shorter side and had a smaller build. There was noconsistency.”
“So, it wasn’t the same person,” Chance offers. “Obviously. There were two killers. There’s no way one person could kill that many people in that short of a timeframe without someone stopping him, anyway.”
He’s leaning back in his chair arrogantly, like coming together to talk about what we found is a waste of his time. I’m sure he feels like he could solve the entire thing on his own if we just got out of his way. But making that sort of a statement right out of the gate without enough information to base it off of is just another example of why he isn’t ready to lead up an investigation. He’s not just green, he is impulsive, and that can be dangerous when investigating one murder, not to mention more than adozen.
“They saw the same person,” Garrison tells him, a little irritation shining through his voice. “They weretogether.”
“And the first killer was one person who killed almost as many,” I point out. “One person is capable of doing a tremendous amount of damage. Far more than anyone wants tothink.”
“Without anyone stepping in to stop them?” Chance counters. He makes a sarcastic face that makes my blood boil and shakes his head, sucking his teeth dismissively. “No. I don’t buy it. The first guy killed two kids out in the woods, then surprised the rest around the campfire. They didn’t know what was coming and they panicked. These kids were talking about how they were sitting in buildings or hiding behind fucking trees like they were going to go invisible. You mean to tell me that all these people were just waiting around for this one guy to browse around the camp picking people off and no one did anything? That’s not how thingswork.”
“Richard Speck,” Isay.
Chance’s head turns toward me. He doesn’t even try to cover the clear disdain he has for me and the fact that I’m here. “Is that one of the kids?”
“No. He was a mass murderer. In 1966 he went into an apartment in housing for young nurses, collected eight of them into a room, tied their hands, and then one by one brought them into another room and brutally murdered them. The others waited in the front room while he did it, knowing what was happening and not doing anything about it. The only one in the apartment who lived had rolled under a piece of furniture and laid there while the rest were murdered. She didn’t try to stop him, either.”
