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Seven years before Ted Bundy launched his one-man war against brunettes in Washington, attractive co-eds in the state of Michigan were targeted as victims by another human monster. In a two-year period, the hunter struck repeatedly, at random, savaging his prey with the abandon of a rabid animal. The killer's downfall, when it came, was more dependent on coincidence and carelessness than any slick deductions on the part of homicide investigators. First to die was Mary Fleszar, in July of 1967. Vanished from the campus of Eastern Michigan University at Ypsilanti, she was found by teenaged boys on August 7, stabbed to death and decomposing, with her hands and feet hacked off. Two days after her remains had been identified, a young man turned up at the mortuary, asking for permission to take snapshots of the body (which was angrily refused). Employees at the mortuary could not offer any clear description of the man. A year elapsed before the second victim was abducted, on July 1, 1968. Discovered five days later in Ann Arbor, student Joan Schell had been raped and stabbed no less than 47 times. Detectives learned that she was seen with fellow student John Norman Collins on the night she disappeared, but Collins was a personable youth, and the police accepted his alibi at face value. Another eight months slipped away before the body of a third co-ed, Jane Mixer, was discovered in a cemetery south of Ypsilanti. Mixer had been strangled with a nylon stocking, and a bullet had been fired into her brain at point-blank range before her corpse was found on March 21, 1969. It was the end of quiet times and the beginning of a ruthless siege in Ypsilanti, as the co-ed killer stepped up his attacks in both ferocity and frequency. On March 25, construction workers near the scene of Joan Schell's murder stumbled on another corpse. The victim, sixteen-year-old Maralynn Skelton, had been killed by crushing blows about the head; a stick had been rammed into her vagina, and police reported evidence of flogging with a heavy strap or belt before she died. Three weeks later, young Dawn Basom, just thirteen, was found half-naked in Superior Township, strangled with a black electric cord. Her sweater was discovered in an old, abandoned farmhouse roughly one mile from the point where Mari Fleszar's body had been found in 1967. Driven by some unknown urge, the killer now began to taunt police. Officers returned to search the empty farmhouse for a second time in early April, and discovered articles of female clothing which had not been there before. A short time later, someone torched an old barn on the property where lengths of black electric cord had been retrieved; lined up across the driveway, officers discovered five clipped lilac blossoms -- one for each of the outstanding murders on their books. On June 9, 1969, some teenaged boys found Alice Kalom, graduate of EMU, discarded like some broken plaything in a vacant field near Ypsilanti. She had been raped and stabbed repeatedly, her throat slashed, with a bullet fired into her brain before the killer's rage was finally spent. The final victim, Karen Beineman, went missing from her dorm at EMU on July 23. Her body was discovered three days later, in a wooded gully, strangled, beaten savagely, her breasts and stomach scalded with some caustic liquid. Karen's panties had been wadded up and stuffed in her vagina, as a sort of grisly afterthought; detectives found the garment to be thick with short, clipped hairs from someone other than the victim. Three days after the discovery of Karen Beineman's body, State Police Corporal David Leik returned to his home in Ypsilanti from a family vacation. He discovered black paint splashed across the basement floor, surmising that it had been spilled by his wife's nephew, John Collins, who had cared for the family dog in their absence. Checking in for duty after his vacation, Leik was told that Collins had been questioned as a suspect in the co-ed murders, whereupon he spent an evening scraping up the paint, uncovering peculiar brownish stains beneath it. Lab analysis reported that the stains were only varnish, but in scraping up the paint, Leik had been forced to relocate a washer in the basement. Underneath it, he discovered tufts of hair belonging to his sons, the relics of a family haircut session prior to their vacation. Curious, he turned the samples over to detectives, and a new report confirmed the clippings were identical to hair recovered from the panties left with Karen Beineman. In his apparent haste to cover what he thought were bloodstains, Collins led detectives to the evidence for which they had been waiting all along. Pretrial investigation showed that Collins was a chronic thief who sometimes suffered violent rages, usually directed toward some female who had managed to offend him. Intimate acquaintances described the suspect as an over-sexed and sometimes brutal lover who was "into" bondage and repulsed by any contact with a woman in her menstrual cycle. (Several of the victims had been murdered in their menstrual periods.) In June of 1969, he used a worthless check to rent a trailer which was later found in California, near the scene of yet another unsolved rape and homicide. At trial, he was convicted of the Beineman murder and consigned to prison for a term of twenty years.
Seven years before Ted Bundy launched his one-man war against brunettes in Washington, attractive co-eds in the state of Michigan were targeted as victims by another human monster. In a two-year period, the hunter struck repeatedly, at random, savaging his prey with the abandon of a rabid animal. The killer's downfall, when it came, was more dependent on coincidence and carelessness than any slick deductions on the part of homicide investigators. First to die was Mary Fleszar, in July of 1967. Vanished from the campus of Eastern Michigan University at Ypsilanti, she was found by teenaged boys on August 7, stabbed to death and decomposing, with her hands and feet hacked off. Two days after her remains had been identified, a young man turned up at the mortuary, asking for permission to take snapshots of the body (which was angrily refused). Employees at the mortuary could not offer any clear description of the man. A year elapsed before the second victim was abducted, on July 1, 1968. Discovered five days later in Ann Arbor, student Joan Schell had been raped and stabbed no less than 47 times. Detectives learned that she was seen with fellow student John Norman Collins on the night she disappeared, but Collins was a personable youth, and the police accepted his alibi at face value. Another eight months slipped away before the body of a third co-ed, Jane Mixer, was discovered in a cemetery south of Ypsilanti. Mixer had been strangled with a nylon stocking, and a bullet had been fired into her brain at point-blank range before her corpse was found on March 21, 1969. It was the end of quiet times and the beginning of a ruthless siege in Ypsilanti, as the co-ed killer stepped up his attacks in both ferocity and frequency. On March 25, construction workers near the scene of Joan Schell's murder stumbled on another corpse. The victim, sixteen-year-old Maralynn Skelton, had been killed by crushing blows about the head; a stick had been rammed into her vagina, and police reported evidence of flogging with a heavy strap or belt before she died. Three weeks later, young Dawn Basom, just thirteen, was found half-naked in Superior Township, strangled with a black electric cord. Her sweater was discovered in an old, abandoned farmhouse roughly one mile from the point where Mari Fleszar's body had been found in 1967. Driven by some unknown urge, the killer now began to taunt police. Officers returned to search the empty farmhouse for a second time in early April, and discovered articles of female clothing which had not been there before. A short time later, someone torched an old barn on the property where lengths of black electric cord had been retrieved; lined up across the driveway, officers discovered five clipped lilac blossoms -- one for each of the outstanding murders on their books. On June 9, 1969, some teenaged boys found Alice Kalom, graduate of EMU, discarded like some broken plaything in a vacant field near Ypsilanti. She had been raped and stabbed repeatedly, her throat slashed, with a bullet fired into her brain before the killer's rage was finally spent. The final victim, Karen Beineman, went missing from her dorm at EMU on July 23. Her body was discovered three days later, in a wooded gully, strangled, beaten savagely, her breasts and stomach scalded with some caustic liquid. Karen's panties had been wadded up and stuffed in her vagina, as a sort of grisly afterthought; detectives found the garment to be thick with short, clipped hairs from someone other than the victim. Three days after the discovery of Karen Beineman's body, State Police Corporal David Leik returned to his home in Ypsilanti from a family vacation. He discovered black paint splashed across the basement floor, surmising that it had been spilled by his wife's nephew, John Collins, who had cared for the family dog in their absence. Checking in for duty after his vacation, Leik was told that Collins had been questioned as a suspect in the co-ed murders, whereupon he spent an evening scraping up the paint, uncovering peculiar brownish stains beneath it. Lab analysis reported that the stains were only varnish, but in scraping up the paint, Leik had been forced to relocate a washer in the basement. Underneath it, he discovered tufts of hair belonging to his sons, the relics of a family haircut session prior to their vacation. Curious, he turned the samples over to detectives, and a new report confirmed the clippings were identical to hair recovered from the panties left with Karen Beineman. In his apparent haste to cover what he thought were bloodstains, Collins led detectives to the evidence for which they had been waiting all along. Pretrial investigation showed that Collins was a chronic thief who sometimes suffered violent rages, usually directed toward some female who had managed to offend him. Intimate acquaintances described the suspect as an over-sexed and sometimes brutal lover who was "into" bondage and repulsed by any contact with a woman in her menstrual cycle. (Several of the victims had been murdered in their menstrual periods.) In June of 1969, he used a worthless check to rent a trailer which was later found in California, near the scene of yet another unsolved rape and homicide. At trial, he was convicted of the Beineman murder and consigned to prison for a term of twenty years. |
