Con Man Ken Tranchida Murders a College Student
(“Deadly Knowledge,” Forensic Files)
Tina Biggar turned an academic research project about prostitution into a personal foray into sex work.
The Michigan college student quietly went to work for escort services and made a tidy sum to use toward the costs of school and housing. Sadly, one of her clients, a sleazy little ex-con named Ken Tranchida, murdered her after the two argued about a car loan.
Ken, who would ultimately give the court quite an original excuse for ending Tina’s life, pleaded guilty just weeks after the 1995 murder.
Gratuitous occupation. But the Forensic Files episode about the case leaves some questions not completely answered.
Why did someone like Tina take a chance on a wild card like prostitution? She was studious and came from a stable home with a caring father. She had a nice boyfriend and close girlfriends.
And she already made good tips serving up James Beard New England clam chowder and 22-ounce rib-eye steaks at a popular local restaurant.
Unsettling fact. Plus, once she took on high-paying escort work, why did Tina still need to borrow cash for a car? And how did the slimy Ken charm the intelligent Tina into believing he could be her personal hero?
Finally, what was the Biggars’ reaction when they found out that the tragedy of losing their daughter came wrapped in a salacious secret?
For this week’s post, I looked for some answers and also checked on Ken’s incarceration status. So let’s get going on the recap of “Deadly Knowledge” along with extra information drawn from internet research:
Military dad. Tina Suzanne Biggar was born in South Dakota on Dec. 31, 1971, the daughter of a Coast Guard commander and a registered nurse.
The Biggars moved around a lot, to Florida, Alaska, and Michigan. They educated their kids at Catholic schools and participated in church activities and community goings-on.
Friends would later describe Tina as a hard worker who was friendly and fun to be with.
As a teenager, Tina gave up a baby girl for adoption after her relationship with the father — a Coast Guard enlisted man — turned abusive, according to the Already Gone podcast.
Government project. Tina got her life back on track and started college at South Dakota State University, then transferred to Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, to be closer to Traverse City, where her father was stationed.
By summer 1995, the psychology major was getting ready to start her senior year in college and had plans to attend graduate school.
Although Forensic Files didn’t mention it, before Tina began her independent study about sex work, she was one of eight Oakland students who worked on a larger project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to educate prostitutes about HIV and AIDS, then follow up to gauge their retention.
Different world. Tina interviewed prostitutes both on the streets and in jail. A friend told the Oakland Post that Tina “put her all in this study.”
Her own separate project, “A Survey of Sexual History and Health Practices Among Women Employed as Escorts,” involved higher-priced prostitutes, the ones who don’t work on corners. Tina reportedly sought financing for the project, but the university declined.
While doing research, Tina lived in an apartment in Farmington with her boyfriend, Todd Nurnberger, who attended the University of Michigan and worked as a chemical engineer.
Plea for help. On Aug. 23, 1995, Todd returned home to find Tina gone despite that the two had plans together that night. “Since we’d lived together, that never happened,” Todd would later testify. He called the Rochester Chop House and found out that Tina had quit her waitress job four months ago. She’d been play-acting by ironing her uniform at home.
By Sept. 13, 1995, Tina was still missing. Her parents offered a $5,000 reward for help.
Back at Tina’s apartment, boyfriend Todd had discovered an “OMG, my girlfriend’s moonlighting as a call girl” bag. The red duffle contained thigh-highs, KY Jelly, condoms, and correspondence with the LA Dreams escort service.
Multiple employers. LA Dreams didn’t know anything about a Tina Biggar, but the service did have a popular escort named Crystal who matched her description — 5-foot-7 with blond hair and perfect white teeth.
Narrator Peter Thomas gently explains what an escort service is and, because even a tasteful show like Forensic Files can’t resist the myth that prostitution is sexy, the episode features visuals of women wriggling out of front-zipped miniskirts while anonymous customers watch.
It turned out that Tina also worked for two other escort services, Elite Desires and Calendar Girls, and had dozens of clients. She’d been in the biz for about a year.
Busy biz. According to the City Confidential episode “Detroit: A Coed’s Secret,” she sometimes freelanced by cutting out the agencies.
So what kind of wages did Tina snag as an escort?
LA Dreams charged its clients around $250 of which Tina got $150, according to author Fannie Weinstein, who appeared on Forensic Files. Max Haines, a columnist for the Times-Colonist, reported that Tina netted just $100 per date but sometimes did three a night.
A real lowlife. Phone records revealed she’d talked frequently to a 42-year-old named Ken Tranchida. He would later say that he met Tina by chance at a restaurant and she gave him the number of her escort service.
Ken, born in Detroit in 1953 and brought up in Southfield, was a drifter and con man who held a series of menial jobs. He’d served time for passing bad checks, embezzlement, and breaking and entering. After a gig working the front desk at an E-Z Rest Hotel, Ken helped himself to its cash and fled, leaving behind new jewelry and baby items in his room there, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Among Tina’s belongings, investigators found a love letter with a poem from Ken.
‘Lot’ of trouble. Ken told police he last saw Tina when he dropped her off at the airport. She had a business trip in Ohio and left her car at his place. Oh, and Tina liked him so much that she starting dating him free of charge, he said.
As for the car loan that played a role in the story, a Honda dealership told investigators that Ken and Tina together signed a contract for a $15,000 car. She put up her share of the money,$5,000, but Ken failed to produce his $10,000. He said the remainder was coming via his “ex-mother-in-law who was flying in from England.” Neither she nor the money materialized. Tina and Ken had a loud argument at the car lot.
But lacking forensic evidence against Ken —a tracker dog that searched the woods around his house came up with nothing — police released him.
Magnificent Five. Meanwhile, Tina Biggar’s father, Bill, launched into action in hopes of finding his daughter alive.
He put together a team of amateur sleuths consisting of escort-service co-owners identified as Donna and Debbie, tow-truck driver Jerry Holbert (who was friends with Ken but sympathetic to the Biggars), and Todd. They stayed close to Ken Tranchida in an effort to get information.
When Ken landed in jail for skipping meetings with his parole officer, Bill & Co. paid $250 to bail him out. They shadowed Ken while he was staying at the Pink Flamingo Trailer Park.
‘Trunkated’ evidence. Bill even took Ken out to dinner at a local Ram’s Horn. According to the Detroit Free Press, Ken offered various stories about Tina’s whereabouts: She was at a Hilton Hotel in Dayton or his friend knew where she was but he lost his number and would page him later.
But police soon made a grim discovery. During a second search of Tina’s Honda Accord, they found a pool of her blood under the carpeting in the trunk. It indicated too much bleeding for her to have survived.
On Sept. 21, Southfield police located the badly decomposed body of Tina Biggar behind a house once owned by Ken’s aunt.
Drama king. Sadly, the Biggars first learned about the positive ID of Tina’s body from a TV report.
The family buried Tina in a light blue and silver casket in Elkton, South Dakota. About 100 students attended a service for Tina at Oakland University and raised $500 for the Biggars.
Meanwhile, Ken Tranchida went on the lam. When investigators tracked him down in a rundown Detroit neighborhood, he made a pretense of committing suicide by slitting his wrists and drinking chemicals.
Really, euthanasia? His arrest came as a relief to law enforcement, but Tina’s grieving mother, Connie, told the media it brought her no comfort.
Ken, who said he was in love with Tina, broke down and told police that Tina died accidentally when she fell and hit her head during a scuffle in his rented room. After placing her on the bed, he blacked out and couldn’t remember what happened next, he said.
But a forensic examination didn’t find a fatal head injury, so Ken came up with a revision to his story: He purposely mercy-killed Tina because she was unhappy and worried about financial problems. Ken also said he would “switch places with Tina in a heartbeat.”
Press pain. Prosecutors alleged that Ken beat and strangled Tina to death on his bed and then hid the bloody mattress in the attic. (He had told his landlady that he got rid of the mattress because he threw up on it.) Ken put Tina in the trunk of her car, dumped her body in the woods, and drove the vehicle back to his place.
Ken ended up pleading guilty to second-degree murder in a deal that the Biggars agreed to in order to avoid publicity. Judge Rudy Nichols handed Ken Tranchida two life sentences, one for homicide, the other for habitually offending.
The family felt the court handled the case well but had no warm words for the media. Bill Biggar said journalists profit by others’ pain. “Put your name in the headlines,” he said to reporters. “Put your daughter’s and son’s names in the headlines. The sustaining hurt is right here.”
Prospective breakup. So, getting back to the question of why Tina needed money so badly, some insight surfaced. First off, although Oakland is a public school, it’s expensive. Today, tuition costs as much as $27,000 a year.
Second, Tina needed to replace her old Honda Accord — it would have required a huge cash outlay to fix it after a recent accident — and her credit cards were maxed out, said Fannie Weinstein, who co-wrote the mass market paperback The Coed Call Girl Murder. According to the Already Gone podcast, Tina’s 25-mile commute to school also strained her budget.
Third, Tina and Todd enjoyed wining and dining themselves at nice restaurants, and the apartment the two shared in Farmington was in a high-rent gated community. Forensic Files asserts that Tina was thinking about leaving Todd and getting her own place, another big expense.
Workin’ at the car wash. And fourth, Tina was the oldest of six kids and probably wanted to minimize any financial burden she put upon her parents.
But why did she choose work as a call girl? As part of the CDC study, she no doubt heard harrowing tales from drug-addicted prostitutes working for abusive pimps on the streets. Perhaps employment for an escort service looked like a safer, easier way to earn better money.
Tina was probably just young enough to believe at least a little bit in fairy tales, and maybe Ken was the closest thing to a Prince Charming/Richard Gere she could find among the escort-patronizing population. Ken could make a good impression when it suited him. Former employers described him as well-liked and conscientious. Although he was working as a laborer at the Classic Touch Auto Wash when he met Tina, it’s a good bet that he told her he owned the place and had a string of other businesses as well.
Eventual acceptance. As far as how the Biggars reacted to revelations about Tina’s work, at first Bill denied it. He said that “people of good heart can see through much of what’s printed” and that “escorts make more money than she had,” according to accounts from the Associated Press and Detroit Free Press. Likewise, coworkers from the Rochester Chop House believed that Tina worked for the service for research only, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Once it looked certain that Tina had indeed been a call girl, Bill said he loved his daughter regardless.
When some women from the escort service attended a funeral for Tina in Traverse City, the Biggars offered them a place to stay and gave them homemade food, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Benevolent words. According to an AP account, the funeral eulogy delivered at Christ the King Catholic Church was also kind-hearted:
“Rev. Edwin A. Thome noted that Jesus had spent time with prostitutes and sinners. ‘And he, too, suffered the consequences,’ the minister said. ‘The self-righteous did not understand. Eventually, they put him to death. Tina had that spirit of adventure, which took her into uncharted waters. And she died for something she believed in.‘”
Today, the client who ended Tina’s sabbatical into sex work resides in Muskegon Correctional Facility. Although one media source reported Ken won’t be eligible for parole until 2030, news recently broke that the Michigan Parole Board will have a public meeting on May 18 to decide whether he deserves early release. (Thanks to reader John Q. for writing in with the tip.)
I still believe it’s a good bet this killer will die behind razor wire.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
