Tabloid-style crime scenes appeal to a certain type of Detroit voyeur, just as factory shells and crumbling homes do.
Karin Risko, a suburban entrepreneur, caters to crime buffs by leading tours billed as "Notorious 313" and "Friday Night Fright." Her website casts downtown as "eerily haunting at night" and "an ominous setting . . . [with] dimly lit streets."
This isn't just a Halloween season thing, Sandra McNeill reports at WWJ.
The tour business has gotten very competitive downtown, and Risko said she needed to come up with a hook for something different.
Guests on her $25 three-hour tour by foot and People Mover hear about wife-killers such as Lowell Amos who tried to blame his spouse's 1994 death at the Atheneum Hotel on a night of cocaine-fueled sex, and a man who murdered his wife on the Detroit-Windsor ferry.
The weekly events are called "Notorious 313 True Crime and Ghost" tours. Most are on a Friday, though she'll lead one on Wednesday, Oct. 30 -- "Devil's Night," her site says, dusting off a label for a night that has become far less notorious in recent decades.
“I don’t do this as a slap in the face because of Detroit’s reputation for murder," Karin Risko says. "I love Detroit."
Risko, who lives in Grosse Ile, wears black gloves and black velvet as she leads groups while holding a candle lantern. She knows her niche seems akin to a vulture picking at the city's underside, as these defensive comments to WWJ show:
“I don’t do this as a slap in the face because of Detroit’s reputation for murder. I do it because Detroit has a fantastic history. . . .
“I love Detroit and you know what, I’m just not the person who gets so embarrassed every time someone says something bad about Detroit. Frankly, I don’t give a damn.”
With amusing irony, the cape-wearing entrepreneur thinks WWJ's post on Tuesday is too sensational. Really.
"I call my tour a True Crime & Ghost Tour -- but reporter decides to call it a 'murder' 'tour. Not diggin' the article," she posted that night on her Facebook page.
For context, here's some of how Risko hypes her business online:
Ripped from the headlines of Detroit’s past, and not so distant past, this chilling look at the city’s sinister side reveals a reality that’s much more frightening than fiction. Join us – if you dare – and traverse a tragic trail of terror and unmask menacing tales of depravity, rage, retribution, corruption, sadism, torture and pure evil that lurk below the surface of this historic city. . . .
Expert guides will lead you down dimly lit streets, through shadowy back alleys and the heart of downtown Detroit and disclose gruesome true crimes of corruption, intrigue, passion, greed and sheer evil. Chilling stories of mob massacres, black widowers, serial murderers, defilement of the dead, killer cholera, morgue experiments and more!
Sure sounds like a murder tour, actually.
