John Norman Collins and the Michigan Murders

John Norman Collins and the Michigan Murders refers to a series of seven killings of young women in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti area between July 1967 and July 1969, and to the Eastern Michigan University student who was convicted of one of them. Collins was arrested on July 31, 1969, and on August 19, 1970, a jury found him guilty of the first-degree murder of 18-year-old Karen Sue Beineman. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Investigators linked him to as many as seven local murders, but he was tried for only one.¹²

Who Collins Was

Collins was born on June 17, 1947, in Center Line, Michigan. He grew up around three different father figures and significant domestic violence; his stepfather physically abused him, and his parents reportedly left him and his siblings alone in a car for hours while they drank at bars.³

Outwardly he presented well. He was an honor student and captain of his high school football team. As a child he strangled a cat with a clothesline; as a teenager he burglarized houses and was accused of cheating and stealing. Women who dated him in high school described him as angry and sexually aggressive.³

He enrolled at Eastern Michigan University in 1965 to study education, joined Theta Chi, and was later expelled from the fraternity on suspicion of stealing. His grades slipped, a professor accused him of cheating, and he committed petty thefts. After discovering his pregnant sister with another man, he beat the man unconscious and physically assaulted his sister. He also reportedly set fire to several barns during the years the killings were happening. At the time of his arrest he was 24 credits short of graduating.³

His clean-cut appearance as a college athlete, and a family connection to a Michigan State Trooper, made investigators reluctant to focus on him early on. They preferred to look at what one account described as “freaks and radicals.”⁴

The Seven Victims

Between July 1967 and July 1969, seven young women connected to Eastern Michigan University, the University of Michigan, or the surrounding community were murdered. Author Greg Fournier later described the community as experiencing “collective shock,” with residents afraid to speak to one another knowing a serial killer was operating among them.¹

Mary Fleszar, 19, who disappeared in July 1967 and was found near the Eastern Michigan campus.
Joan Schell, 20, who died on June 30, 1968, and was found near Glacier Way and Earhart Road in Ann Arbor.
Jane Mixer, 23, a University of Michigan law student found in a Wayne County cemetery in March 1969.
Maralynn Skelton, 16, who died on March 24, 1969, and was found in the Earhart subdivision of Ann Arbor.
Dawn Basom, 13, who died on April 19, 1969, and was found at Gale and Vreeland Roads.
Alice Kalom, 23, who died on June 7, 1969, and was found near North Territorial Road and U.S. 23.
Karen Sue Beineman, 18, who disappeared on July 23, 1969, and was found the same day in Ann Arbor Township. This is the murder Collins was convicted of.²

How He Was Caught

Collins first drew police attention by September 1968, after Joan Schell’s murder. Two eyewitnesses placed him with Schell on the night she disappeared, but when police interviewed him, they accepted his denial.⁴

The case broke open after Beineman disappeared. Collins had been house-sitting for his uncle, Michigan State Police Sergeant David Leik, who returned from a family vacation and noticed suspicious activity in the home. Five police agencies were meanwhile searching a 100-square-mile area between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and a rookie Eastern Michigan University campus police officer, Larry Matthewson, identified Collins through a photo lineup. Collins was arrested on July 31, 1969, at age 22.¹²

The Trial and the Hair Evidence

Collins was charged with the first-degree murder of Karen Sue Beineman. Judge John W. Conlin presided; Washtenaw County Prosecutor William F. Delhey led the prosecution with Assistant Prosecutor Booker T. Williams, and Collins was represented by Joseph W. Louisell and Neil H. Fink. Jury selection alone took six weeks.⁵⁶

DNA testing did not exist at the time, so the case rested on circumstantial and forensic evidence. The most important evidence came from the basement of Sergeant Leik’s home, where Collins had been staying. More than 500 clipped blonde hairs were found on Beineman’s clothing, and the prosecution argued they came from that basement.¹ Curtis Fluker, a forensic analyst with the Michigan Department of Health’s Crime Detection Unit, testified that he received a bottle containing roughly 300 to 400 strands of hair, ranging from blond to dark brown and no longer than one inch, which had been cut by scissors or clippers.⁷ The New York Times reported at the time that the case hinged on a “complicated scientific controversy” involving the hair evidence.⁸

Blood evidence played a smaller role. Fluker testified that Beineman’s blood was type A, though on cross-examination he acknowledged that about 40 percent of Americans share that blood type.⁷⁵⁴

On August 19, 1970, the jury found Collins guilty of first-degree murder. He received life without the possibility of parole. He has never been charged with any of the other Co-Ed killings, and evidentiary materials from those cases remain in Michigan State Police cold storage.¹⁴

The Jane Mixer Case Was Someone Else

One of the seven killings turned out not to be Collins’s. Investigators had long noted that Jane Mixer’s murder differed from the others: the killing lacked the same degree of brutality, and the perpetrator had carefully arranged her belongings and covered her body.⁹

In 2001, Detective Eric Schroeder began reinvestigating. DNA extracted from pantyhose, a bloody towel, and a nylon stocking found with Mixer’s body matched Gary Leiterman, a retired nurse who had been 26 and living near Ann Arbor at the time of the murder. Leiterman had entered the DNA database after a 2001 conviction for writing fraudulent prescriptions.⁹

Leiterman was arrested in November 2004. His defense argued Collins was the real killer and that the DNA match resulted from laboratory contamination, pointing to a spot of blood on Mixer’s hand that matched the DNA of John Ruelas, who had been four years old in 1969. Prosecutors countered with additional evidence, including a forensic handwriting expert who said it was “highly probable” that Leiterman had written Mixer’s name and the word “Muskegeon” on a phone book in a dormitory phone booth. A former roommate of Leiterman testified that he had found a collection of newspapers in Leiterman’s closet featuring reports about Collins.¹⁰ In 2005, a jury convicted Leiterman of Mixer’s murder, and he was sentenced to life without parole.⁹

The Oregon Victim California Did Not Pursue

Collins was also considered a strong suspect in the murder of 17-year-old Roxie Ann Phillips of Milwaukie, Oregon, who was strangled in June 1969 while visiting near Salinas, California. Collins had been in the area at the time.² The Monterey County prosecutor’s office obtained a first-degree murder warrant, but California authorities decided not to pursue extradition, citing the estimated $100,000 cost of transporting him for trial and returning him to Michigan, where he was already serving life. Washtenaw County Prosecutor Delhey and Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey criticized the decision, with Harvey calling it “justice with a dollar sign.”¹¹

Where He Is Now

Collins remains in prison in Michigan, serving life without the possibility of parole for the murder of Karen Sue Beineman. The Mixer conviction prompted the Michigan State Police to begin reexamining other unsolved murders from the original series, but no additional charges against Collins have followed.⁹

1
Fox 2 Detroit. Michigan Murders: 50 Years Ago Terror in Ypsilanti Ends
2
Ann Arbor District Library. True Crimes: The Co-Ed Murders
3
Radford University. Serial Killer Case Study: John Norman Collins
4
Ann Arbor District Library. Collins Case Investigation
5
Ann Arbor District Library. John Norman Collins
6
Ann Arbor District Library. Was Seating of Collins Jury a Prosecution Victory?
7
Ann Arbor District Library. Hair, Blood Test Data Presented at Collins Trial
8
New York Times. Hairs Key Evidence in Murder Trial
9
CBS News. Deadly Ride
10
CNN. Leiterman Trial
11
Ann Arbor District Library. Local Officials Irked by California Decision