John Ransom

Boyhood friend of Timothy Underhill, well-off, athletic, exploratory. An admirer of the Special Forces legend, Captain Franklin Bachelor. Ransom flirted with Indian mysticism after the war, was banished by his 17-year-old female spiritual guru, returned to America and earned a Ph.D. in Religion at Arkham University. Married his teacher’s daughter. Committed murders, among them that of his own best student, in imitation of the Blue Rose killings as camouflage for the murder of his wife, who was on the verge of leaving him. A heartbreaking case, a world of loss and sorrow. Ransom killed himself, when drunk, by driving at great speed into a freeway piling.

Fingerprints from an early drunk-driving arrest in the mid-70s.