Claudia Bidstrup, 19, and her friend Linda Clark were murdered in Kalamazoo County in the summer of 1972. On July 5 the two women had stopped at a gas station while en route to Ann Arbor. The attendant, 28-year-old Danny Ranes, sabotaged their car so it would stall and sent them to the rear of the station under the pretense of helping. There, Ranes and a 15-year-old accomplice, Brent Koster, threatened the women with knives, repeatedly raped them over several hours, then killed them.

The victims’ bodies were wrapped in a blanket, placed in a car and driven to a wooded area near Galesburg where Koster set the vehicle on fire. The burned-out car and human remains were discovered about two weeks later by a passing motorcyclist. Koster confessed to a police informant and was arrested on September 5, 1972; he implicated Ranes, who was arrested the same evening. Ranes pleaded no contest to second-degree murder in the killings of Bidstrup and Clark and received additional life sentences; Koster testified against him and was later convicted and eventually paroled in 2021.

Does anyone have memories, photographs, or information about Claudia’s life in Chicago or her travels through Michigan in July 1972?