MATURE CONTENT WARNING: This story contains descriptions of gruesome crime scenes.
When Mary Fleszar's mutilated body was found on Aug. 7, 1967, it had been brutalized so severely she had to be identified from dental records.
Fleszar, a 19-year-old Eastern Michigan University accounting student, was the first of eight women and girls — one as young as 13 — whose lives were tragically taken and whose caseshave become known as the Michigan Murders.
Authorities suspected one man, John Norman Collins, killed them.
The slayings — all but one of which were in the Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor area — created terror,turmoil and a far-reaching police investigation full oftwists. They alsowould forever scar the twin university towns.
"It was a very, very scary time," said Marcia McCrary, a 70-something volunteer at the Ypsilanti Historical Museum and EMU alumnus. "We began looking at everybody and questioning in our minds all our casual acquaintances."
Law enforcement formed a multi-agency task force to investigatehundreds of tips anda dragnet that included a cross-country FBI search.The community, desperate for answers, even hired aninternationally known psychic.
Yetafter a two-year-long investigation, authorities could prove only that Collins killed one woman, the last victim, 18-year-old Karen Sue Beineman.
The trialleft families of the other victims yearning for justice and a definitive resolutionand a killer who denied knowing his victimand the possibility that there was still someone else — or multiple other people — out there who committed the other slayings.
Unsolved for50 years
Fleszar's case — and the cases of five other victims, Joan Schell, Dawn Basom, Maralynn Skelton, Alice Kalom, and Roxie Phillips — have remained unsolved for half a century or more, a long time to wait for families seeking justice.
The only other slaying case, Jane Mixer's, was solved in 2005. It was significantly different from the others, and the state used new DNA evidence to convictGary Leiterman, who died in the prison system earlier this year.
"Ourinvestigation into John Norman Collins remains open," Michigan State Police said in an email to the Free Press, adding that the agency"will continue to evaluate and examine any credible information received."
The tips, reports, and many of the clues from the unsolved cases are tucked away in filing cabinets and boxes and indexed on cards that were transferred this summer to Michigan State Police headquarters to be re-organized and digitized, a process that is expected to take months.
Fleszar was last seen alive near her Ypsilanti apartment. About a month later, two teen boys stumbled acrossher corpse in Superior Township on an abandoned farm.
In the photo of Fleszar that newspapers published withaccounts of her death, she is a short-haired brunette with a classic 1960s look.She's wearing stylish, cat-eye glasses. Her hair is done-up a little, almost in a Jackie Kennedy bouffant. She's smiling.
Butwhen authorities uncovered her body, she was unrecognizable.
Her feet had been cut offandwere missing — her flesh,ravagedby animals.
AtMoore Funeral Home in Ypsilanti, where her body was taken, there was more intrigue. News accounts saidan unidentified man — presumably the killer — walked in and asked a funeral home employee if he could take pictures of the body.
The funeral home turned the man away.
MORE IN THIS SERIES
THE EVIDENCE LOCKER: What police discovered at 7 Michigan murder crime scenes
CHAPTER 1: Never-before-published letters, interviews offer clues in infamous Michigan murders
CHAPTER 2: Murders of Michigan women still unsolved 50 years later — but cops had eye on 1 man
CHAPTER 3: 'Handsome' EMU student was unlikely serial killer suspect. Letters, interviews reveal dark side.
COLLINS' LETTER: John Norman Collins — one of Michigan's most notorious killers — pens letter to the Free Press
A young woman with dreams
Fleszar's surviving relatives — including her father, who is now in his 90s — declined to speak publicly about the tragedy because they saidit is emotional and with each interview, retelling what happened is like reliving it.
Still, memorials and online tributes tell Mary's story.There are photos of her headstone in Saint Joseph Cemetery in Ypsilanti, and a website, MaryFleszar.com, that details moments of her life.The site is written as if she were telling her own story.
"My name is Mary Terese Fleszar, but my family calls me Chee Chee," it says, adding, "It is my hope that through this pictorial history of my life’s adventure you will get to know the real me. I was a young woman with hopes and dreams for my future."
A section called "Farewell" features a photo of nearly 40 family members, "most of whom I did not have the pleasure of knowing or them knowing me," and includes a poem that begins: "When tomorrow starts without me ..."
To catch Fleszar's killer, detectives created a psychological profile.
The profile, according to "Terror in Ypsilanti: John Norman Collins Unmasked," a 2016 book on the Collins case, concluded that the murderer was likely a religious man who probably had a traumatic experience in his life — and, most ominously, would kill again.
Another deathandan alibi
And almost a year later, just as the profile predicted, there was another slaying.
This time, construction workers found a body near Ann Arbor at Glazier Way and Earhart. Like Fleszar, this victim was disfigured. Police identified the woman as Joan Elspeth Schell, a 20-year-old EMU student.
According to various news accounts of the investigation, a roommate said Schell missed a bus to Ypsilanti to see her boyfriend in Ann Arbor, and then hitchhiked a ride, precisely what their mothers warned their daughters not to do.
Authorities had reason to believe the slayings were connected.
Fleszar and Schell were bothstudents at EMU, living near each other. Both women frequented the university's McKenny Union. Both were stabbedandtheir bodies were dumpedin remote areas.
Investigators made another connection: Collins also lived near the twovictims.
Campus police questioned Collins.
Asupervisor from the university's alumni relations office, where Collins worked, said Collins would torment a coworker with graphic details of Schell's damaged body,according to "Terror in Ypsilanti." But, after questioning, policedismissed Collins as a suspect.
Hehad an alibi for his whereabouts: He said he was at his mother's house in Center Line.Hesaid he got details of the slaying from his uncle, a Michigan State Police trooper.
Authorities stoppedpursuing Collins. He just didn't fit the profile of a killer.
More slayings, more questions
Nine months later, in March 1969, a third woman's body turned up.
This one had been placed on a grave in Denton Cemetery in Van Buren Township.It was Jane Mixer, a 23-year-old University of Michigan law student. She soughta ride home to Muskegon.Butunlike the other two victims, Mixer had been shot twice in the head with a .22.
Investigators found pantyhose tied around her neck.
Some accounts said a copy of the novel "Catch-22" also was left nearby.
It's unclear whether the book — which was popular in the '60s and deals with the notion of sanity and mentions the rape and murder of ayoung woman — was intended to be left by the killeror just a coincidence.
Mixer's case would not be solved for more than three decades. To document the slaying and the investigation, Mixer's niece, Maggie Nelson, penned two books —"Jane: A Murder," and "The Red Parts: A Memoir."
Then, just days after Mixer's body was found, the body of Maralynn Skelton, a 16-year-old girl from Romulus, was uncovered behind a vacant house on Earhart Road, which is also on the outskirts of Ann Arbor.Her body was left naked,covered with bruises.
The youngest victim
Then, in April, the youngest victim, a 13-year-old girl, turned up.
Dawn Basom, an eighth-grader, was dumped along a desolateYpsilanti road. She was strangled with electrical wire. She also had been slashed.
Ray Blank, now 66, of Ypsilanti, remembered taking the bus to school with Dawn and her brother. Blankalso recalled that the day she was found, he pedaled his bike to the crime scene.
"Someone — I'm not sure who it was — had found her," Blank recalled. "All the cop cars, ambulances, and everything was flying by the house, so we knew something was up."
Authorities later uncovered clothingthat belonged to Basom in a nearby farmhouse.
The farmhouse burned down a month later. The cause: arson.
Blank said Basom didn't look like "a typical 13-year-old," butafter her death, he started to worry about his younger sister's safety.
Then, when Collins wasarrested later that yearand his photo appeared in the newspapers and on television, Blank said he recalled something else about him. Hetold his mother he saw that face before, driving by the house.
"I told her, 'I've seen him drive by here three or four times at least,' " Blank recollected. "My mom just gave me this look like, 'Really?' And, I said, 'Well, yeah, I've seen him in a couple of different cars.' "
A public plea for help
With each new slaying, public pressure to catch the killer mounted.
Sandra Fleszar, the first victim's sister, wrote an open letterto the Ypsilanti Press inApril 1969 asking the public to come forth with information "not only for myself but for all young girls who are forced to live in this constant fear for our very lives."
Newspapers across Michigan republished the letter.
In June, there was the sixth victim.The body was found in the grass off a trail in Ann Arbor. She had been stabbed andshot in the head with a .22 handgun. Her body was so damaged, it, too, was challenging to identify.
But, when Dorothy Kalom saw an artist's sketch of the victim, she knew who it was:Her daughter.
Alice Kalom, 21, was a recent University of Michigan graduate.
Joseph Kalom, a pharmacist, and his wife drove across the state from their home in Portage to themorgue.
The grief-stricken fatherwas angryand critical of police, U-M administratorsand even the governor for not doing enough to prevent the killings. He lashed outand demandedthe governor "do something," because if he didn't U-M was "going to end up an all-boys school."
The'telepathic detective'
Frustration became so intense that residents — and even some law enforcement officials — were willing to try anything. They asked a psychic for help.
Peter Hurkos, a Dutch-born psychic living in Los Angeles, claimed he had extrasensory perception and could use it to help find the killer. He referred to himself as a"telepathic detective."
Hurkos worked on the Boston strangler case, the name given to the high-profile slayings of 13 women in Boston in the early 1960s.
Agroup of Michiganbusiness leaders raised about $1,000 tobring Hurkos to Washtenaw County.
Prosecutor William Delhey and Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter Krasny were skeptical of psychic readings.
They also were desperate.
Doug Harvey, who was Washtenaw County sheriff during the slayings, said he'd never forget — as long as he lives — watching Hurkos reach out and touch objects in the area where one of the victim's bodies has been.
Harvey said Hurkos then made several predictions that seemed outlandish, among them: "You are going to find a homemade ladder," and "you are going to arrest an individual who has foreign money in his possession."
As it turned out, Harvey said later, Collins was born in Canada, he had Canadian dollars in his wallet, and law enforcement found a homemade ladder where one of the victims was slain.
The California case
Harvey, 88, also recalled what he considered an essential aspect of the unsolved cases that many Michiganders have mostly forgotten, thevictim in Salinas, California, that Collins also was suspected of killing.
Phillips, 17, from Milwaukie, Oregon, near Portland, was strangled. A high school senior, Phillips was in Californiaand went missing on June 30, 1969. Her body was found naked on July 13, just days before Beineman's body was uncovered in Michigan.
According to police and news accounts:
Collins and afriend drove to California. They were towing a stolen camper. Collins had given Phillips' friend,also 17, a ride — and then made a date with her.The next day, Phillips disappeared.Collins never showed up for his date.
Californiaand Michigan authorities investigated Phillips' death. News reports said the Oldsmobile Cutlass that had towed the camper was registered to Collins' mother, Loretta Collins.The area where the body was left was near poison oak.
While in California, police said Collins was treated for poison oak.
Uncovering blood splatters
In atwist, it was Collins' uncle, state police Cpl. David Leik, who broke the case.
Beineman was the last victim. Her body was found naked in a mosquito-infested, wooded ravine along the Huron River parkway on the east edge of Ann Arbor.She had been strangled and brutally beaten.
On the way to buy a hairpiece at Wig's by Joan in Ypsilanti, a witness said Beineman got a ride from a guy on a blue motorcycle.She never came back to her dorm.
When authorities found her body, they didn't tell the media. They tried to set a trap.
Deputies replaced Beineman's body in the ravine with a J.C. Penney mannequin — and waited, expecting the killer to return. But, they messed up the snare. A man got close, then ran from the area. Deputies failed to catch him.
A trooper for 14 years, Leik went on vacation with his family to Wisconsin.
He left the family dog, aGerman shepherd, and gave Collins a key so he could feed it.
But, when the Leiks came home, they noticed some things weren't quite right.
On July 31, 1969, the Michigan State Police director made a big announcement: Thekiller finally had been arrested.He also revealed a shocking new detail no one expected: Beineman had been slain in Leik's basem*nt.
Collins' aunt,SandraLeik, discovered a few things missing and out of place. Bottles ofammonia and bleach were gone. There also wasblood spatteron the basem*nt floor.
The blood type matched to Beineman.Hair clippings left on the floor from trims with an electric razor before the family went on vacation also matched hairson panties found with Beineman's body.
At Collins' trial, a neighbor testified that she saw a young man who had been feeding the dog leave the residence with a box of soap and ride off on a motorcycle.
Sandra Leik testified that scuff marks were left on her kitchen floor near the stove and refrigerator. There also wasblack paint on the basem*nt floor. Leik called her nephew toask whetherhe had done any painting.
He had said no.
The makingof a Hollywood movie
After Collins was charged, some victims' relativestried to attend the preliminary examination, but, according to news accounts, they were not allowed in.
The Ann Arbor Newsreported Chester Fleszar,Mary Fleszar's father,said:If guilty, Collins "must be sick."
Mary Fleszar's sister, Sandra, the same article reported, said thatshe knew Collins, but couldn't recall from where; and her brother, Jim Fleszar, said he and one of Collins' friends both worked at a local department store.
Chester Fleszaralso expressed a glimmer of hope he could put his daughter to rest: The grieving father just wanted to put his teenage daughter's body back together. He said he wished aloud he could bury all of her remains together — even the parts that were never found.
Buteven after the long trial, the public remained fascinated by the macabre cases.
A book, "The Michigan Murders," about the slayings was published in 1976, and Hollywood started production on a movie,"Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep," in 1977 In Michigan. Itaimed to show how the gruesome slayings had terrorized Ypsilanti residents.
Surfer-turned actor Bob Purvey would play the good-looking, motorcycle-riding Collins. Channel 7 anchor Bill Bonds was set to appear in the film, playing himself. And Peter Hurkos, the psychic, had a part,playing himself.
But, partway into filming, residents who supported Collins and thought that he had been falsely accused, started disrupting the movie scenes and making threats.The protesters, news accounts said, believed Collins and the town were being exploited.
Folks shouted at the actors, and a"large man with a beard" poked a finger into writer-producer-director William Martin's chest, according to the Free Press.
The man threatened Martin:"You're dead. We'll kill you."The movie was never finished or released.
A TVinterview from prison
In 1979, about two years after Collins was transferred from the prison in Jackson to the old, fortress-like maximum-security prisonin Marquette, in the remote Upper Peninsula, hetried to escape by tunneling his way out.
The effort failed.
Collins tried something else: He changed his last name back to Chapman, the surname of his biological father, who was Canadian. By then, with all the media attention, his full name — John Norman Collins — was infamous.
John Chapman also was the name of his younger second cousin, now 47, who, in the early 1980s, he began a decades-long correspondence with. They were both named John, the cousin said, as an homage to the slain — and only Catholic president — John F. Kennedy.
In Canada, Collins could be eligible for parole.
Initially, his transfer application was approved. Butafter news reports, officials backtracked.
Still, Collins didn't give up on his plan.
His legal challenges made their way through the courts until, in 1988, they came to an end. That's when the inmate agreed to his first televisedinterview, perhaps as a ploy to gain public sympathy and support to be transferred to Canada.
Denials and new evidence
"Kelly & Company," a popular WXYZ-TV morning show, intended to broadcast a live conversation with Collins form the Marquette prison. Officials decided thatthe show would be recorded instead.
In the interview, Collins was mostly calm.
He showed someemotion, however, when asked about his mother. He said he loved her very much, and just before she died, she visited him in prison. After that, he said, he became withdrawn.
"It's bad enough, being convicted of one thing that you didn't do," a shackled Collins said. He blamed the police and the media for his incarceration. "See, I think, what happened is after I was arrested, the media was willing to accept what the police said."
Collinsrepeated his claimthat he never met Karen Beineman.
It was a denial, the show revealed, that kept many people in Michigan wondering — even after the extensivetrial — whether Collins killed the teenager and any of the other victims.
Butdecades later, when confronted with new evidence, Collins would tell an entirely different story.
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
Up Next: John Norman Collins changes his story in never-before-published letters.
The Michigan Murders team
Frank Witsil is a staff writer at the Detroit Free Press. He spent five months reporting on the state police investigation;reviewing books on John Norman Collins and serial killers; interviewing dozens of detectives, witnesses, experts and others connected with the case; and sifting through hundreds of archived newspaper articles, police photos and records and court documents.
Melanie Maxwell has been a picture editor at the Free Press since 2018. She researched the key suspect’s past, dug through hundreds of evidence photos and newspaper clippings and worked with Witsil to uncover new details in the cases. She also orchestrated the evidence locker.
Kimberly P. Mitchell is a staff photojournalist who joined the Detroit Free Press in 2005. She worked alongside Witsil and Maxwell interviewing key figures into the investigation of the Michigan Murders cold case to produce a documentary video and portraits.
Maryann Struman is Freep Now director at the Detroit Free Press and project leader. A veteran Detroit journalist, she joined the Free Press in 2012.
