When Evil Came to Good Hart

"The murder mystery that has confounded and fascinated people for over forty years has been given a whole new life.When Evil Came to Good Hartis a well-researched and well-written piece of nonfiction that holds the reader in its spell, just as it has the many writers, reporters, and law officers who have puzzled over it. My highest praise for Mardi Link's book is to say that it reads like a good novel, a real page-turner." Judith Guest, author ofOrdinary PeopleandThe Tarnished EyeWhen Evil Came to Good Hartis a new look into an old story---the cold-case file of the murders of a wealthy Detroit-area family in their northern Michigan cabin in 1968.In this page-turning true-life whodunit, author Mardi Link details all the evidence to date. She crafts her book around police and court documents and historical and present-day statements and interviews, in addition to exploring the impact of the case on the community of Good Hart and the stigma that surrounds the popular summer getaway. Adding to both the sense of tragic history and the suspense, Link laces her tale with fascinating bits of local and Indian lore, while dozens of colorful characters enter and leave the story, spicing the narrative.During the years of investigation of the murders, officials considered hundreds of tips and leads as well as dozens of sources, among them former secretaries who worked for murder victim Dick Robison; Robison's business associates; John Norman Collins, perpetrator of the "Co-Ed Murders" that took place in Washtenaw County between 1967 and 1969; and an inmate in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, who said he knew who killed the Robison family.Despite the exhaustive investigative efforts of numerous individuals, decades later the case lies tantalizingly out of reach. It is still an unsolved cold case, yielding, in Link's words, forty years worth of "dead-end leads, anonymous tips, a few hard facts, and countless cockamamie theories."

Mardi Link is a journalist and the 2007 Betty Crumrine Scholar from the Antioch Writers' Workshop. She is the cofounder and former editor of ForeWord magazine and the former editor of Small Press magazine. She lives in Traverse City, Michigan