The Michigan Murders were a series of highly publicized killings of young women committed between 1967 and 1969 in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area of Michigan by an individual known as the Ypsilanti Ripper, the Michigan Murderer, and the Co-Ed Killer.
All the victims of the Michigan Murderer were young women between the ages of 13 and 21 who were abducted, raped, and extensively bludgeoned prior to their murder before their bodies were discarded within a 15-mile radius of Washtenaw County. The victims were typically murdered by stabbing or strangulation and their bodies were occasionally mutilated after death. Each victim had been menstruating at the time of her death, and investigators strongly believe this fact had invoked an extreme rage into the evident sexual motive of her murderer. The prime suspect, John Norman Chapman (then known as John Norman Collins) was arrested one week after the final murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for this final murder attributed to the Michigan Murderer on August 19, 1970, and is currently incarcerated at Carson City Correctional Facility.
Although never tried for the remaining five murders attributed to the Michigan Murderer, or the murder of a sixth girl killed in California whose death has been linked to the series, investigators believe Collins to be responsible for all seven murders linked to the same perpetrator.
Murders
First known victim The first known victim linked to the Michigan Murderer was a 19-year-old Eastern Michigan University (EMU) accounting student named Mary Terese Fleszar, who was last seen by a neighbor walking towards her Ypsilanti apartment at approximately 9 p.m. on July 9, 1967. This neighbor twice observed a young man in a blue-grey Chevrolet slow to a halt beside Fleszar and begin talking to her; each time, Fleszar had shaken her head and walked away from the car. Fleszar was reported missing by her parents the following day, after they learned from her roommate that she had failed to return home the previous evening. Her nude body was found by two 15-year-old boys near an abandoned farmhouse in Superior Township on August 7, and was formally identified via dental records the following day.
The corpse was badly decomposed, although the pathologist who examined Fleszar's remains was able to determine she had been stabbed approximately thirty times in the chest and abdomen with a knife or other sharp object, that her feet had been severed just above the ankle, the thumb and sections of the fingers of one hand were missing, and that one forearm had been severed from her body (the severed appendages were never found). Despite the advanced state of decomposition, the pathologist was also able to locate multiple linear abrasions upon the victim's chest and torso, indicating that Fleszar had been extensively beaten before her death. Although police theorized that Fleszar had been raped, the advanced state of decomposition of the corpse had erased any conclusive evidence of sexual assault.
A detailed examination of the crime scene revealed that the body had been moved three times throughout the month it had lain undiscovered. Initially, the body had been placed upon a pile of bottles and cans obscured from view by elder trees before being dragged five feet from this location into a field, where it had remained exposed throughout much of the time it had lain undiscovered. Shortly before the body was discovered, the murderer had again returned to the body, which he had moved a further three feet.
Two days after the formal identification of Fleszar's body, a young man claiming to be a friend of the Fleszar family arrived at the funeral home holding Fleszar's body prior to her scheduled burial. This individual asked for permission to take a photograph of the body as it lay in the coffin as a keepsake for her parents. When informed his request was impossible, the young man replied: "You mean you can't fix her up enough so I could just get one picture of her?" Sternly informed a second time he would not be allowed to view the body, the young man—who had not been carrying a camera—wordlessly exited the funeral home.
The receptionist could not offer any clear description of the man beyond that he was a handsome, dark-haired young white male, approximately twenty years old, and that he had driven an old blue-grey Chevrolet.
Subsequent murders Almost one year later, on July 5, 1968, the mutilated and partially decomposed body of a 20-year-old art student named Joan Elspeth Schell was found by construction workers on an Ann Arbor roadside. She had been raped, then stabbed twenty-five times with a knife estimated to have measured four inches in length. Several of these wounds had punctured her lungs, liver and carotid artery, and one wound inflicted behind her left ear had fractured her skull. In addition, her throat had been slashed, and her miniskirt then tied around her neck. Although Schell had been dead for several days, her entire lower body was in a remarkably preserved condition, whereas her head, shoulders and breasts were in an advanced state of decomposition, leading the pathologist to conclude her body had been stored in a naturally cool environment, but with the upper third of her body exposed to natural heat.
The lack of blood beneath or near the corpse, plus the testimony of eyewitnesses, led investigators to determine Schell's body had lain in its present location for less than twenty-four hours. Her murderer had likely driven to the location to dispose of her body, before evidently making rudimentary efforts to conceal the corpse with clumps of grass. In addition, the "outstanding similarities" between the wounds inflicted upon her body and those inflicted upon Fleszar the previous year led investigators to establish a definite connection between both murders, and four detectives were assigned to work full-time on both cases.
Schell hailed from Plymouth and had recently moved into a house on Emmet Street in Ypsilanti; she was last seen by her roommate, Susan Kolbe, at a Washtenaw Avenue bus stop on the evening of June 30. Schell had intended to travel to Ann Arbor to visit her boyfriend, and her roommate had accompanied her to the bus stop. Kolbe later informed investigators that Schell had informed her of her intentions to hitchhike when it became apparent she had missed the last bus, and that one of the first vehicles to pass when Schell had begun hitchhiking was a red-and-black Pontiac Bonneville containing three young white men. This vehicle had slowed to a stop before the driver had asked her, "Hey, you want a ride?" The driver had worn a green EMU T-shirt and been aged around 20, approximately tall, clean-cut and with short, dark, side-parted hair.
Kolbe later stated she had attempted to dissuade Schell from entering this vehicle, but that Schell had opted to accept the driver's offer, promising to call her roommate to assure her of her safety once she reached her boyfriend's Ann Arbor residence. Less than three hours later, at 1:47 a.m. on July 1, Kolbe reported her roommate missing after failing to receive any contact.
Despite tracing and eliminating more than 150 registered owners of red-and-black vehicles in the state of Michigan, and establishing the alibis of numerous individuals whose physical features bore a likeness to the composite drawing of the driver the police had obtained from Kolbe, all investigative lines of inquiry into Schell's murder failed to bear fruit. On August 18, investigators announced that all significant leads had been exhausted, and that the number of officers assigned to investigate the case had been reduced. Nonetheless, the inquiry into both murders remained active, and a reward then-totaling $7,800 (equivalent to approximately $ today). for information leading to the conviction of the perpetrator of both homicides remained.
Two months after Schell's murder, police inquiries produced two further eyewitnesses who stated they had observed Schell walking with a young man along Emmet Street on the evening she disappeared. Although neither eyewitness was certain, both believed this student to be John Norman Collins: a student at EMU majoring in elementary education, who lived directly across the street from Schell at 619 Emmet, and whose physical features bore a likeness to the composite drawing police had generated of the driver of the vehicle Schell had entered.
Questioned by police, Collins flatly denied even knowing Schell, and insisted he had spent the weekend of June 29–30 with his mother at her house in the Detroit suburb of Center Line, and had not returned to Ypsilanti until the morning of July 1. Initially, police took him at his word, and did not seek to verify his alibi.
Spring 1969 On March 20, 1969, a 23-year-old University of Michigan (U-M) law student named Jane Louise Mixer disappeared after posting a handwritten note on a college bulletin board seeking a lift from a fellow student across the state to her hometown of Muskegon, where she had intended to inform her family of her engagement and imminent move to New York City. Her fully clothed body, covered with her own raincoat and with a copy of the novel Catch-22 placed by her side, was found early the following morning atop a grave in Denton Cemetery in Van Buren Township. An autopsy revealed Mixer had been shot twice in the head with a .22-caliber pistol, then garroted with a nylon stocking which, the pathologist noted, had not belonged to her. The pathologist also stated that Mixer had not been sexually assaulted, that death had occurred at approximately 3 a.m. on March 21, and that she had not been killed at the location where her body had been discovered.
The note Mixer wrote requesting a lift to Muskegon had read: "Would appreciate hearing from anyone who might be driving to Muskegon or vicinity any time Thursday (3/20/69)" alongside her name, dormitory room number, and telephone number; further inquiries revealed she had attempted to telephone a student named David Johnson at 6:35 p.m., believing he had offered her a ride to Muskegon, although Johnson denied responding to Mixer's bulletin board message, and had a cast iron alibi for the evening in question. Despite the lack of sexual assault, the fact that Mixer's pantyhose had been pulled down to expose her thighs and sanitary napkin suggested a sexual motive behind the murder. Although she had not been beaten, stabbed or mutilated, her student status, the tying of a garment around her neck, and the proximity of her abduction and murder led investigators to tentatively link her murder to those of Fleszar and Schell.
Four days after the discovery of Mixer's body, on March 25, a surveyor discovered the nude, mutilated body of a teenage girl lying face-upwards on a blue jacket at the top of a wooded knoll behind a vacant house on a remote, rural section of Earhart Road frequently used by U-M students as a lovers' lane. The location was just a few hundred yards from where the body of Joan Schell had been discovered eight months previously, although in this instance the victim had intentionally been discarded in a sexually degrading position. Investigators called to the crime scene noted a dramatic increase in the savagery exhibited against the victim, with one investigator describing the injuries inflicted upon the victim as being the worst he had seen in thirty years of police work. A subsequent autopsy revealed the victim had died of numerous fractures covering one-third of her skull and one side of her face, all of which had been inflicted with a heavy blunt instrument.