The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial

Aimz Rushton brought this true crime memoir to my attention in WSIRN Episode 348: Don’t read widely (right now). Maggie Nelson’s twenty-three- year-old aunt Jane Mixer went missing from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1969. She was found brutally murdered the next day. Her case remained unsolved but she was assumed to be one of the infamous Michigan Murders, attributed to alleged serial killer John Collins. Then a 2004 DNA match uncovered a new suspect for Jane’s murder, just as Nelson was about to publish a poetry book exploring her aunt’s life and death. Here the author details what happened when the murder case was reopened, covering the trial and focusing on the impact on the victims’ families. She also interrogates her own childhood experience of her aunt’s death, from her mom’s concerns over her and her sister’s safety to her own fears about whether a killer was still out there. She also reflects on the cultural fascination with dead white women and the consequences for survivors.