THE ANN ARBOR MURDERS-II Strange Reluctance To Admit Existence Of Killer

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32073, 22 August 1969, Page 15

THE ANN ARBOR MURDERS-II Strange Reluctance To Admit Existence Of Killer

(from nrr PJCTtRTHY in Ann Arbor. Michigan) Joan Schell was a strikingly pretty young girl. At 20 she was tall and willowy, with shining long brown hair, and a smile which lit her whole face. And besides that she was intelligent. An art major at Eastern Michigan University (E.M.U.) Joan was interested in tapestry, and is remembered by her tutors as “an ideal student” Professor Dorothy H. Lamming recalls: “Joan was one of my very best students, she was very caught up in her work. She was ... so mature and quiet and completely lady-like at all times. “She wasn’t the hippy-type at all .. . she was very quiet and conservative in her makeup and her clothes.” How unlikely that such a girl would become the second victim in a chain of sex killings known as the College Town Murders. But late on the night of June 30, last year—almost a year after the desecrated body of another “quiet” girl —Joan Schell did a very uncharacteristic thing. She began hitchhiking in front of the E.M.U. student union building in Ypsilanti to try to get several miles across to Ann Arbor, the beautiful big sister of the twin university communities which houses the huge University of Michigan (UM.) campus. Murder was far from Joan’s mind at 10.30 o’clock on that rainy night, and the unsolved death of Mary Fleszar had been almost forgotten in the hubbub of campus life. Out Of Character Joan was bothered by something closer, more personal Her boy friend in Ann Arbor, Dale Schulz, 19, had been absent without leave from the army for more than a month —and she wanted to see him about it badly. Professor Lamming said: “Hitch-hiking was so out of character for Joan. She must have been very worried about herboy to do that. Butthen, they had been keeping company for three years. . . .” Joan did not see her boy friend that night She was picked up in a late-model red and white car containing three young men, and she was never seen alive again. Her body was found a week later by construction workers negr a country road in the same area as the first death scene. She. may have been killed in the old deserted farmhouse near where Mary’s body was found, as forensic scientists revealed that the killer had kgpt Joan's body in a cool place, probably a basement, for at least two days before dumping it beside the road. When found she was naked except for her blue mini-skirt which was twisted around her neck. She had been stabbed five times, her throat slashed, and she was sexually molested. Here, once again, the name off John Norman Collins—the popular E-M.U. elementary education student now in a basement cell at Washtenaw County Gaol, charged with the seventh and last of the College Town Murders—crops up in a seemingly mnbcuous, but under the circumstances, sinister manner. The picturesque white, twostorey boarding house in which Collins shared a room with Andrew Manuel, jun. (who is also being investigated for a link in the murders), is only several doors from the girl students’ rooming house where Joan lived with a girl named Susan Kolbe, who reported her missing.

Three In Car In fact, another student ' who lived in the same Ypsilanti house as Collins, Arnold Davis, claims that he, Collins and Manuel were the occupants of the red and white car which picked Miss Schell up the night she disappeared. Davis said they dropped the girl off, and later—as he and Manuel were getting out of the ear—Collins, the driver, said he was going back to find her. ’ - Davis’s account, however, has varied,in several tellings, and is regarded sceptically by some investigators. Davis did not come forward until after Collins was arrested several weeks ago. Around the time of the murders, however, the name John Norman Collins was not known to detectives at all. In fact, the university community was still resisting the first disturbing inkling that it was harbouring a fiend. Much more likely, they thought, a transient, or an outsider from Detroit, the nearby homicide-riddled industrial giant which has had 287 murders in the first seven months of this year alone. The Ann Arbor police chief, Mr Walter Krasny, the easy-going head of one of five police agencies which eventually became confusingly entangled in the investigations, rolled back on a swivel chair in his modem, airy office and said: ‘The way the people just refused to recognise that this thing was happening around them was incredible. “Even after the third, fourth and .fifth, killings, scores of yoU ng girls could still be found thumbing rides

between the two campuses at night

“They all knew three of the victims lost their lives soliciting rides—but either they ignored it didn’t care, or pretended it hadn’t really happened. I don’t know ... I couldn't understand it at all.”

After the killing of Joan Schell, Ann Arbor was again given a pause long enough to assure itself that it was all over.

Bizarre Events Then, in the early months of this year began a catalystic series of events too bizarre to be overlooked or ignored, and the terror and tension began to multiply—even if there were some young girls still foolhardy enough to hitchhike along the roads. The third victim, Jane Mixer, a highly intelligent 23-year-old law student at U.M., was killed—shot twice in the head with a .22 calibre rifle, on March 20. ’ Jane bad wanted to return to her home town in Muskegon, Michigan, for her mother’s birthday, and had placed a notice on the student bulletin board asking for a ride. That night the dentist’s daughter told her boy friend, an economics graduate, Phil Weitzman, that a “David Johnson” was giving her a lift. _ ..

She went to meet “David Johnson” and her body was found on its back in a cemetery seven miles from Ann Arbor the next day, her suitcase and a brightly wrapped gift for her mother nearby. Unlike the other victims, she was fully clothed except for shoes placed neatly beside the body. A stocking, not hers, was twisted around her seek. “David Johnson” was never traced. However, John Collins once shared a room with a young man of that name.

' At this stage police were still not convinced that one killer was involved. The straight - talking county sheriff, Mr Douglas Harvey, said at the time: “It is unlikely that Miss Mixer was shot by the same man who stabbed and raped the other girls.” This statement, perhaps, was meant mainly to avert panic in the close-knit community. As an elected law enforcement officer. Sheriff Harvey—a part-time stock-car racing driver, could not afford to have any panic or suggestions that police did not have the situation in hand.

“The Same Man” As he bustled around his office adjoining the County Gaol last week, preparing his testimony as complainant against John Norman Collins, Sheriff Harvey admitted: “It was as plain as the nose on your face it was the same man all the time. “I mean I don’t reckon we got any other killers running round loose at the moment”

Only four days after the Mixer killing came another, perhaps the most vicious and sadistic yet and all the assurances in the world couldn’t quell the fear that was spreading in the community. Maralynn Skelton, 16, was unlike the other victims in that she was neither a student nor had shown much potential to that time of making something of her life. She was a high school dropout and both a user and “pusher” of drugs. In spite of her youth she had already graduated from marijuana to the “hard stuff”—heroin and “speed” (amphetamines). However, with the help of women police from the sheriff’s office she was trying hard to break the habit and move out of the hippy environment which had snared her in the drug trap so young.

She was a pretty girl, with long brown hair. Her already tragic life ended when she began hitchhiking between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti on March 24. She was found next day only yards from where the body of Joan Schell, the second victim, was dumped. Her skull had been crushed by a heavy wooden club and she appeared to have first been whipped sadistically with a belt and sexually molested. Her body bad been dragged through some bushes- from a road to the side, and her clothes were beside it—again the shoes placed neatly beside the body. A handkerchief was stuffed in her mouth, and ,a garter belt—not hers—was wrapped around her neck.

Demand For Action At this stage police had still had almost no concrete | leads to work on. Now a badly shaken public Wanted to see some action. The first police departments involved Michigan State Police, Ann Arbor City Police, Ypsilanti City Police and the East Michigan University Police—were still each conducting their 09m little investigations, separately, autonomously. The only mutual points of contact were a common use of the State Police Crime Laboratory, and “fact exchange conferences" arranged by the County Prosecutor, Mr William Delhey. Jealousies between the forces and the keenness of each to make the arrest, however, seriously hampered these communications. “There’s been a lot of talk about that,” Sheriff Harvey said, “I didn’t care if the Boy Scouts made the arrest. I just wanted to get him. We all worked well together.” In his nonchalant way,

however, the City Police Chief, Mr Krasny, may have been more direct “I think it was about the time of the fifth killing some sort of total investigation began to develop,” he said. The fifth killing claimed the life of Dawn Basom, a pretty prematurely mature 13-year-old eighth grade student, who was probably strangled in the same farm house connected with two of the earlier cases.

Her body, clad in only a torn blouse and a bra, a handkerchief stuffed in the mouth and a piece of heavy black electrical wire still twisted around the . neck, was found by a country road in the same seven square mile area as the others. Her sweater and the remainder of the electrical wire were found at the deserted farm house. Her blue stretch pants were missing, and she had been slashed across the breasts and buttocks.

Pattern Emerging Dawn had disappeared on the previous day, April 15, while making a half-mile walk back to her home after visiting a 14-year-old boy friend in Ypsilanti. Dawn may have been picked up or abducted as she walked along a desolate road between the railway line and a creek near her home.

A pattern in the murders was now becoming obvious to even the most non-receptive minds, and small similarities were beginning to emerge ... Each of the girls had pierced ears, and in some cases one or both ear-rings were missing. The fastidiousness with the shoes was a common factor in several cases, and the garments twisted around the neck. With the police inability to capitalise on these clues the public began to clammer for more concerted action. A loosely formed citizens’ committee of community leaders, academics and students began to search for ways to help the harried investigators, and a group of hippies working from a commune listed in the telephone book as “Translove Energies” formed the “Psychedelic Rangers” and began to conduct their own investigations.

Amateur Helpers Their leader, Skip Taube, explained: “The cops were making an incredible botch of the whole thing. There was just no co-ordination of effort or anything.” “We began asking around among the kids and taking the names of any girls who had ever been molested and passing them on to the police so they could be questioned to see if there was any connection with the killer. “We began checking back with the girls, and we found out time and again the police had ignored us. Usually they

didn’t even bother to follow our leads up. “We exposed this sort of thing by making information available to the public through meetings and the press ... and things really started to hot up.” Others tried to help in other ways. Sandra Flaszar, the beautiful, 19-year-old student sister of the first victim, advertised a dramatic plea to the public to come forward with information. She wrote: “Have you ever walked from class to class on campus without looking over your shoulder. I haven’t . . . Have you been able to sleep without waking in the middle of the night from an endless nightmare. I haven't . . .

Have you ever had a stranger smile at you and want to smile back, but been too afraid to. I have. . . . Have you ever driven down Geddes Road (which passes the murder farmhouse) without shedding a tear. I haven’t . . .“ Eventually the clamour reached the State Capital, and Governor John Milliken ordered State Police Director, Frederick David, to take over all charge of the investigation. At a local level the control was handed down to the County Prosecutor, Mr William Delhey. A “Crime Centre” containing elements of all the forces involved was set up in the Holy Ghost Missionary Seminary Building on Interstate Highway 94, which links the two university towns.

At least the next killing would be met with some semblance of organised force. And they didn’t have long to wait (To Be Continued)