Washtenaw County has enjoyed low crime rates, but extraordinary criminal acts occasionally pierced its calm and quiet. A strange bank robbery at Dexter in 1894 and the 1897 murder of James Richards raised concerns. In 1937, the McHenry family suffered a terrible tragedy but found room in their hearts to forgive. After the murder of Eleanor Farver in 1970, detectives searching for suspect John Edward Burns probed his background, seeking clues to where he fled. They discovered that John Edward Burns never existed. Attorney Peter Kensler was shockingly murdered in front of his home near Manchester with two shotgun blasts to the face—the case has never been solved. Local historian James Thomas Mann leads a tour into some of the darkest corners of Washtenaw County’s past.
James Thomas Mann is a local historian at Ypsilanti, Michigan, and is the author of nine published books on local history. His works include Wicked Washtenaw County, Wicked Ann Arbor and Wicked Ypsilanti, and he is a frequent contributor to the Ypsilanti Gleanings, the publication of the Ypsilanti Historical Society. Mann is the host of the Highland Cemetery Lantern Tours every October.