Subsequent
developments
Waiver of California
extradition
At the time of his 1970 conviction, a grand jury indictment
against Collins remained outstanding in relation to the June 1969 murder of Roxie Ann Phillips in Monterey, California. The physical and
circumstantial evidence linking Collins to this particular murder was stronger
than any of the six outstanding murders then linked to him in Michigan, and authorities in Monterey did file several motions to
extradite Collins to California to
stand trial for Phillips' murder in 1970 and 1971. These motions were
repeatedly contested by Collins' attorney, Neil
Fink, who opposed and successfully delayed his client's extradition upon the
grounds of due process.
The state of California
postponed their requests to extradite Collins to face charges relating to
Phillips' murder in June 1971. Citing Collins' then-ongoing appeals against his
convictions in the state of Michigan as
the cause and their likely resubmittal should any of his Michigan appeals be successful. Just six months later, in January 1972, Monterey County District Attorney William
Curtis formally announced, via a spokesman, the intention of California authorities to waive all
extradition proceedings against Collins for Phillips' murder. This spokesman
indicated the reasoning being that, as Collins had already received a life
sentence in Michigan; the case
therefore was undeserving of "priority
attention" by California authorities,
in part due to the fact Collins would be returned to Michigan to serve his sentence if convicted. At the time of the announcement of this
decision, preliminary legal maneuvers between Michigan and California
authorities had been ongoing to extradite Collins to Monterey County to face trial for Phillips' murder.
Evidence of culpability
in remaining cases
Although never tried for the murders of Fleszar, Schell,
Skelton, Basom, Kalom or Phillips, physical and circumstantial evidence exists
in each case indicating that Collins had indeed committed these murders. For
example, in the case of Mary Fleszar,
investigators discovered that at the time of her disappearance, Collins had
worked part-time in the Eastern Michigan University administration unit, and
that his office had been located directly opposite the hallway from the office
where Fleszar had herself worked. One of the personal items missing from
Fleszar's body was an Expo 67 Canadian
silver dollar she is known to have worn around her neck; this item was
discovered in Collins' dresser when police conducted a search of his room. When
confronted with this finding, Collins reportedly denied any knowledge of the
existence of this item and insisted it had never been in his room; he had
apparently neglected to dispose of this item as he had the personal possessions
of other victims two days prior to his arrest.
In the case of Joan
Elspeth Schell, two separate witness accounts had placed the victim both
entering a car with three men on the night of her disappearance and walking
alone in the company of a man believed to be John Collins later that evening. One of the men in the car Schell
had entered was Collins' roommate, Arnold
Davis, who later informed police the girl had indeed entered the car he had
been driving, but that Collins had insisted he give Schell the lift she was
seeking to Ann Arbor in his own car.
Collins and Schell had alighted from Davis's car together, and he (Davis) had
not seen his roommate for almost three hours before Collins had returned to
their apartment, alone, referring to Schell as a "bitch", and claiming he had "dropped her [Schell] off" in Ann Arbor after being unable to obtain the sexual encounter he had
hoped to achieve with her. As he had explained this to Davis, Collins had been
carrying a red handbag, which he claimed Schell had left in his car. He had further informed his roommate he had
agreed to drive Schell from Ann Arbor
to Ypsilanti the following day.
Davis informed police he had long suspected Collins had murdered Schell, but
had been too afraid to report his suspicions. Although Collins had claimed to police that he
had been with his mother in the Detroit suburb
of Center Line on the weekend of
Schell's disappearance, police had never sought to verify his alibi.
The circumstantial evidence linking Collins to Schell's
abduction and murder was stronger than that of any other Michigan victim linked to him, and police would formally announce
this fact within days of his arrest. Nonetheless, the decision of the prosecution
at his 1970 trial was to try Collins solely with the murder of Karen Sue Beineman.
Arnold Davis also
informed police Collins had been in the company of victim Alice Kalom on the evening of her disappearance. According to
Davis, he had heard Collins and Kalom arguing behind closed doors before Kalom
had run out of his (Collins') apartment, with Collins chasing after her.
Collins had returned to their shared apartment shortly thereafter and asked
Davis to hide a knife for him. Davis had reported this incident to police, and
later handed them the knife Collins had allegedly asked him to hide.
Investigators determined the knife was consistent with the weapon used to stab
Kalom.
When Kalom's body was found, a distinctive boot print on her
skirt was found to be a perfect match to a boot Collins had owned, and although
Collins had evidently cleaned his car in an effort to destroy evidence prior to
his arrest, investigators would find bloodstains in this vehicle and upon a
raincoat he owned which were determined to match Kalom's blood type. Moreover,
although the prosecution at Collins' trial had been unable to question Arnold Davis in detail as to the
contents of the laundry box he had observed his roommate hurriedly remove from
their apartment and towards his car two days prior to his arrest, one of the
items he had seen within this laundry box had been a distinctive purple leather
shoe, which may have belonged to Kalom.
In the case of California
victim Roxie Ann Phillips, police
had discovered that, prior to her murder, the victim had told a close friend
she had met an Eastern Michigan
University student named John, who owned a silver Oldsmobile Cutlass and several motorcycles; her nude, strangled
body was found discarded in a patch of poison oak on July 13, with the
distinctive red-and-white floral patterned belt from her culotte dress knotted
around her neck.
Following Collins' arrest, a section of a red-and-white belt
bearing the same distinctive floral pattern was found in the trailer he and
Manuel had towed to Salinas on June
21. Moreover, a sweater found in
Collins' closet was found to contain 22 pubic hairs which had not originated
from Collins or any of the seven Michigan
victims. At the request of Michigan authorities,
Phillips' body was exhumed in Oregon
in order that pubic hair samples could be obtained from her for comparison with
those found upon Collins' sweater: The pubic hairs upon Collins' sweater proved
to be a precise match to those obtained from Phillips' body, and investigators
believe they may have transferred from her body to Collins' sweater as she was
carried to the location in which her body was discarded. In addition, prior to his returning to Michigan, Collins is known to have
visited a California hospital to
receive treatment for poison oak anaphylaxis.
Investigative error
Three days prior to Collins' July 30 arrest, in direct
breach of a Washtenaw County Prosecutor
order, two young Ann Arbor detectives had arrived at the Emmet Street apartment Collins shared with his roommate to question
him as to the circumstantial evidence then-obtained against him. Collins had protested his innocence on this
occasion, and insisted the eyewitnesses' identifications of him had been
erroneous, although he refused to return to the police station to take a
polygraph test. No search warrant had been sought prior to Collins being
questioned on this date, and his apartment would only be searched on July
30—two days after Arnold Davis had observed Collins hurriedly remove a box of
women's clothing and jewelry from his apartment.
Had this violation of the county prosecutor's order not
taken place, Collins may not have realized how seriously he was considered a
suspect at that stage, and thus may not have disposed of the physical evidence
which would have assisted in linking him to other killings linked to the Michigan Murders.
Aftermath
In the years immediately following his conviction, Collins'
mother, siblings and several of his friends remained steadfast in their belief
that Collins had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. While incarcerated at Southern Michigan Prison, he received regular visits from family
and friends.
Collins' mother, Loretta, and his two siblings, Jerry and
Gail refused to speak with Sgt. David
Leik and his wife, Sandra, following their testimony against Collins at his
trial. Despite the evident distress of Sandra
Leik throughout her testimony, during which she had testified that Collins
had been as "close to me" as
her own sons, and that she had been uncomposed since his arrest, Collins'
family remained steadfast in their resolve to avoid contact with the Leiks.
For several years following his incarceration, Collins
refused to grant interviews to the media; but six years after his conviction,
Collins formally requested a personal interview with reporters from The Ann Arbor News. In this interview,
Collins vehemently denied his guilt in any of the Michigan Murders. He asserted that key evidence attesting to his
innocence had been suppressed by the prosecution team at his 1970 trial, which
the jury had been biased, and the scientific testimony related to blood and
hair comparisons had been invalid.
In October 1977, Collins was transferred from Southern Michigan Prison to Marquette Branch Prison, a more secure
facility, due to his repeated dealing in contraband drugs, and his conspiring
with a fellow inmate to escape. Collins was unable to participate in the actual
(successful) escape due to a broken foot. Another escape attempt at Marquette Branch Prison, via a tunnel with six fellow inmates, was
thwarted on January 31, 1979, and Collins and his co-conspirators were
transferred to a more secure cell block.
In 1980, Collins legally changed his surname to that of his
biological father, Chapman. The following year, he formally requested transfer
to a Canadian prison, in the belief
this would facilitate his prospects of eventual release. (Chapman holds dual
citizenship and under Canadian law,
would then have been eligible for parole after serving just nine years in Canada.) His application was granted and
then reversed in the wake of public outrage.
Despite repeatedly challenging the overturning of the 1981
decision to transfer him to a Canadian prison,
a federal appellate court ruled in May 1988 that Chapman should remain
incarcerated at Marquette Branch Prison.
In September 1988, Chapman agreed to participate in a live
interview conducted by the WXYZ-TV
talk show Kelly & Company, to
discuss his conviction. For security reasons, this proposed live interview was canceled, although Chapman agreed to submit to a filmed interview. In this
interview, he again denied culpability for any of the Michigan Murders and insisted the prosecution case against him was
flawed.
Chapman was transferred to the Ionia Correctional Facility in August 1990. Throughout his earlier incarceration at Southern Michigan Prison and Marquette Branch Prison, he had earned
a reputation as a troublesome inmate who repeatedly flouted prison rules, was
known to deal in contraband goods, and who had served several periods of
isolation for various breaches of prison rules. He would later be returned to Marquette Branch Prison.
**On July 11, 2005, a 62-year-old former nurse named Gary Earl Leiterman was charged with
the murder of Jane Louise Mixer, who
was once considered a possible third victim of the Michigan Murderer, although the modus operandi of her murder was
significantly different than that of the Michigan
Murders. He was convicted on July 22,
and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Leiterman had lived 20 miles
from the University of Michigan at
the time of Mixer's murder, and had never been considered a suspect in any of
the Michigan Murders. He was
convicted based upon advancements in DNA analysis after the case was reopened
in 2001; Leiterman's DNA was found on the victim's stockings. Leiterman's
conviction was upheld by the Michigan
Court of Appeals in 2007.
Chapman is currently serving his life sentence in Administrative Segregation at Marquette Branch Prison. He continues to maintain his innocence of the
murder of Karen Sue Beineman, as
well as other murders linked to the Michigan
Murderer, despite having refused a 1977 offer to submit to a further,
public polygraph test.
Media
Film
An unreleased movie, Now
I Lay Me Down to Sleep, draws direct inspiration from Edward Keyes' book, The
Michigan Murders. Filmed in 1977 and directed by William Martin, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep remains unreleased.
Books
Buhk, Tobin
(2011). True Crime: Michigan: The State's
Most Notorious Criminal Cases. Stackpole Books. ISBN 0-8117-0713-X.
Fournier, Gregory
(2016) Terror in Ypsilanti: John Norman
Collins Unmasked. Wheatmark. ISBN 978-1-627-87403-8.
James, Earl
(1991). Catching Serial Killers: Learning
from Past Serial Murder Investigations. International Forensic Services.
ISBN 0-9629-7140-5.
Keyes, Edward
(1976). The Michigan Murders.
Reader's Digest Press. ISBN 978-0-472-03446-8.
Marriott, Trevor
(2013). The Evil Within. John Blake
Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85782-798-9.
Wilson, Colin;
Seaman, Donald (1988). Encyclopedia
of Modern Murder: 1962-1982. Bonanza Books. ISBN 978-0-517-66559-6.
Television
Detroit-based
talk show Kelly & Company
broadcast an episode focusing on the Michigan
Murders in October 1988. This episode featured prerecorded prison
interviews with Collins in addition to live interviews with police and legal
personnel connected to the case.
The Investigation Discovery
channel has broadcast an episode focusing upon the Michigan Murders. This episode, A
New Kind of Monster, was first broadcast December 10, 2013, as part of the series
A Crime to Remember.
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