The Washtenaw County Murders--1967-1969

Photo credit: The Detroit Free Press

Over a period of three summers, the bodies of seven Michigan young women and a high school student from Oregon visiting in California were found discarded in the countryside. The prime suspect was a handsome, high school sports star from Center Line, Michigan, who began his killing spree at Eastern Michigan University in 1967. Part two of this three part feature recounts the murders.

The Victims 

Remembering Dawn Basom and Happier Times in Ypsilanti

Defunct Peninsular Paper Company hydroelectric plant on the Huron River, just south and across the street from Dawn Basom's home on LeForge Rd.

Working closely with the facts and circumstances of the Washtenaw County Murders has given me a concentrated view into the evidence against John Norman Collins. If I ventured no further than that, I would be able to present only one dimension of these young women - as victims. But they were much more than that.

It is their victimology that forever links them in death, seven women who had no knowledge of one another in life. It is this cruel irony that I have tried to mitigate by writing The Rainy Day Murders, which is currently undergoing an extensive rewrite before it goes off to an editor. I want to know more about these young woman as living human beings and not just the subjects of police reports.

Each of these girls was a unique person with hopes and dreams, strengths and weaknesses, joys and sorrows. Each had a family, be it good or bad, and each of the girls lives on in the memories of their family and friends. Each memory forever tainted by the senseless tragedy that befell each of them.

As much as I have learned about these girls as people over the last four years of researching their cases, I am forever an outsider when it comes to the aching memories of their loved ones. The efforts of my researcher and me to contact family members and friends for their testimonials has been only partially successful.

The pain is too strong, even after all these years. But in a few instances, some people have been able to overcome their emotions and rein in their grief to share their memories of happier times. Here is one such recollection of Dawn Basom's life by Elizabeth Kay Mann.

***

"I read a great deal of your information (Fornology posts) and was mesmerized and totally thinking what it was like for me being thirteen (Dawn's age when murdered) in Ypsilanti.

"Dawn and her brother were best friends of mine at Central Elementary School, I would say 1962 or so. I spent a lot of time with her family as I grew up on Ann St. not far from LeForge where she lived. We were in second grade and all of seven years old. I felt like part of her family.

"Our common denominator was the love of horses and horseback riding. Dawn had three palominos: Lady, the mom, and Joker and Ace. She and I rode nearly daily when our world was a softer, safer, much more gentle place. A time when folks looked out for the children that they saw everyday. 

Stock Photo - Not Dawn and Kay.

"We rode double on horseback in the fields near Peninsula Paper and Highland Cemetery, where it was peaceful, and along the Huron River in back of the Basom's land. A perfect childhood for two wonderful horse loving girls. It's all different looking today.

"As time marched on, I moved with my parents to the east side of Ypsilanti to Hickory Woods on Grove Rd., Dawn staying of course with her family on LeForge Rd. We invariably lost touch. She went to West Junior High School, and I went to East Junior High School. I never saw my childhood friend at Ypsilanti High School because her life was cut short.

"The atmosphere around Ypsilanti (during the murders) was one of fear and trepidation. Once the Washtenaw County Sheriffs' Department sent out information on the killings, and that perhaps Dawn was one of his victims, my parents locked me down. I was 5'5" tall with long brown hair, pierced ears, and I wore blue jeans. Everything I wore then told my parents to limit my life.

"There are so many questions in my heart about what may have happened to Dawn. I am sure I now know why I shared this with you. It is because I am now fifty-eight years old, the same age my second grade friend would be, and we still don't have answers about her death. I miss her so much.

"As grade school children, we had no fear and no worries. I will miss Dawn always. I will never forget the time when Ypsilanti lost its innocence and evil knocked on our doorsteps. My parents were terrified, as was the entire community. I so appreciate your mission to seek the truth. Thank you."

The LeForge Barn Fire - Murder Site of Dawn Basom - John Norman Collins' Youngest Victim

 

Barn next to abandoned farm house on Geddes and LeForge roads.

On Thursday, May 13, 1969, a barn only 100 feet from the abandoned farmhouse, believed to be the site of Dawn Basom's murder, was set ablaze at 3:17 in the morning.

***

Thirteen year old Dawn Basom was an eighth grader at West Junior High School in Ypsilanti and the youngest of The Rainy Day Murder victims.

Dawn was last seen alive on April 15, 1969, while walking down the Penn Central railroad tracks which was the short cut to her home on LeForge Rd. She had promised her mother she would be home before dark.  

Sergeant William Stenning of the Ypsilanti City Police Department received a call at 12:46 AM on April 16, 1969, from Mrs. Cleo Basom saying her daughter had been missing since late afternoon on Tuesday.

Mrs. Basom said that Dawn was given a ride by her uncle to the corner of Cross and River Sts in Depot Town early in the evening to meet a boy friend by the first name of Earl, last name unknown. She was last seen wearing a white plastic jacket, white cotton blouse, and blue stretch pants.

The next morning, Dawn's abused and naked body was found on the east edge of Gale Rd just north of Vreeland Rd, about a mile from her murder site at a barn on Geddes and LeForge Rds. 

Sheriff Harvey showing spot where Dawn's body was found.

During the subsequent investigation of Dawn's murder, State Police crime scene investigators found articles of her clothing in the cellar of the nearby farmhouse and other evidence linking the site to Miss Basom's murder.

Her murderer had to use a car to capture Dawn and take her away unnoticed. She was tom-boyish and liked to wrestle with her older brothers in the front yard of their house, so she would have probably put up a struggle and offered some resistance to being captured. 

It was unlikely she would accept a ride from a stranger so close to her home, less than 100 yards, though she was known to hitchhike. 

More likely, someone laid in wait for Dawn and overpowered and incapacitated her, or perhaps she knew or recognized the person she got into the car with. Either theory ends up with Dawn being held captive in a psychopath's car.

***

Twenty-nine days after Dawn's killing, the barn adjacent to the farmhouse murder site burned to the ground. The Michigan State Police arrested an Eastern Michigan University student from Harper Woods, Ralph R. Krass, 21, on Friday, May 15, at his apartment at 1431 LeForge Rd which happened to be near the Basom home on the same street.

He was arraigned by District Judge Rodney E. Hutchinson and stood mute when the judge set the bail at $5,000. Unable to post bond, Krass was taken to the County Jail.

Michigan State Police expected more arrests but were unable to confirm that the barn burning had any connection with the murder investigation. The arson was still under investigation.

Three days after the arrest of Krass, his roommate, Clyde Surrell, 19, of Ypsilanti, stood mute on a charge of aiding and abetting arson. He was released on $2,000 bond pending a hearing on the matter.

Police say that Krass admitted walking to the farm with two companions and setting some dry hay on fire in the barn's loft. The three young men ran away but returned while the Superior Township Fire Department allowed the fully engulfed barn to burn to the ground. They prevented the farmhouse and the cellar from catching fire but not from sustaining water damage.

When the last of the blaze was extinguished, a reporter looking over the smoldering ruins discovered five, fresh cut, purple lilac blossoms lying nearby. He theorized that someone left one for each of the five murdered girls. 

After an investigation, authorities charged the men with arson but cleared them of any involvement in the Basom murder. Mr. Krass gave no reason for burning down the barn. 

The Media, the Police, and the Washtenaw County Murders - 1967-1969

Before law enforcement and the public realized there may be a serial killer in their midst, three local coeds were found murdered and left scattered around the rural countryside of Washtenaw County outside of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Mary Fleszar (19) disappeared on the evening of July 9, 1967. She was an Eastern Michigan University student whose body was found a 150 yards from the road on an abandoned farm thirty-two days after she disappeared. In the absence of any real clues, police investigators surmised that she may have been killed by a transient and dumped there. The condition of her remains shocked detectives on the scene.

Just over a year later, on July 30, 1968, another EMU coed, Joan Schell (20) was hitchhiking and seen getting into a car with three young men. Her body was found a week later on the outskirts of Ann Arbor. Police determined that she had been killed elsewhere, and her nude body was dumped 12 feet from the road and covered with grass clippings. Little effort was made to conceal the body. 

A couple of investigators familiar with the Fleszar case the year before thought that these murders could possibly be related, but Schell's murder was generally regarded as an isolated incident by most investigators.

A third coed was found murdered eight months later; University of Michigan graduate student, Jane Mixer (23). Her fully clothed body was laid out on a grave site just inside the gate of Denton Cemetery; a yellow raincoat covered her up. 

Detectives on the scene felt that this murder was significantly different than the previous two, but the press ran with the story and began linking the three murders together in the public's mind.

A self-perpetuating engine of public opinion was fueled by the public's desire for the latest news and the media's commercial and competitive interests. This relationship led to the breakdown of collective solidarity in the communities of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. A generalized fear gripped the public psyche, suspicion ran rampant, and faith in law enforcement efforts declined. Fear fed upon itself and magnified divisions already in the community.

To provide the community with a sense of psychological comfort and help contain the threat, the police floated the story that the killer or killers were a bunch of drug crazed transients. This well-publicized fiction was based on wishful thinking and may have prevented police from recognizing the killer when he was in their custody. Their suspect was clean cut and simply didn't fit the profile.

The universities attracted lots of non-student hippie types who always seemed to be hanging around causing trouble. After all, the murdered girls were college students, so the threat may be limited to EMU and U of M and not the general populace.

Only five days after the Mixer murder, Maralyn Skelton's dead body was found horribly abused along a roadside. She was a sixteen year old who recently had dropped out of Romulus High School and was last seen hitchhiking in front of Arborland on Washtenaw Ave. 

Twenty-one days later, Dawn Basom (13), a local Ypsilanti junior high school student was snatched less than 100 yards from her house. Now the frenzied community felt no one was safe. The time between slayings was decreasing as the death toll was rising.

When the police were powerless to capture the killer, the public appealed for divine intervention. The media reported on prayer vigils held in local churches, and some religious people believed that the deaths of the victims had some sort of sacrificial purpose and spiritual significance. 

Marjorie Beineman, the mother of the last victim, believed, "God must have sent Karen to find the killer." She was convinced that her daughter's sacrifice was according to God's divine plan to save others, precious little comfort for a grieving mother.

Still, others believed that the killer was thought to have a Svengali type of hypnotic, superhuman power to spirit his victims away without a trace. If God's divine presence can take human-saintly form, then the opposite must be true, the devils' disciples exist on Earth as evil incarnate.

The public was desperate for its deliverance from evil. Faith in the local police was at an all time low, and there were too many reporters chasing too little news. Something had to be done to move this case along.

Enter the psychic - Peter Hurkos. His presence gave the media something new to report on, but the police were not happy with this interloper. Assistant Prosecutor Booker T. Williams had a more proactive attitude, "What is there to lose? Maybe he can help break the case."

In the Shadow of the Water Tower - The John Norman Collins' Story

The Ypsilanti Water Tower

Forty-five years ago, a series of seven horrific sex slayings of young women began in the Ypsilanti, Michigan area. The first mutilation murder was of Mary Fleszar (19), an Eastern Michigan University coed majoring in accounting. On July 9, 1967, Mary went for a walk on a hot summer evening and never returned to her apartment. A month later her, body was found in a fallow field in an advanced stage of decomposition. It took dental records to identify her.

This was the worst sight most of the detectives called to the scene had ever witnessed. Everyone involved in this gruesome episode hoped that it was an isolated incident committed by a deranged transient, but it appeared that the murderer had returned to the scene twice, maybe three times.This suggested that the killer was someone local.

Almost a year passed before another brutal murder of an EMU coed occurred on July 1, 1968. Twenty year-old  Joan Schell was last seen just before midnight on June 30. When her body was discovered a week later, it had been mutilated and dumped not far from where Mary Fleszar's body had been dumped, just north of Ypsilanti. Police began to worry they had a maniac murderer on their hands - maybe two. Not wanting to cause the public to panic, law enforcement downplayed any connection between the two murders, but some police detectives believed differently.

Eight months later on March 20, 1969, a third murder was discovered neatly placed in a cemetery in Denton Township just inside the Wayne County line with Washtenaw County. Jane Mixer was a twenty-three year-old University of Michigan coed who had identification in her belongings. The coroner sent the body to University Hospital morgue in Washtenaw County. Now the press showed a deeper interest in connecting the three murders. But police thought things were fundamentally different about this murder.

Then a mere five days later, Maralynn Skelton (16) was last seen hitch-hiking in front of Arborland Shopping Center on March 25. When her body was found, there was such an overkill, that some cops felt her murder might have been a drug related message murder for talking with the police. Maralynn was a drug informant and may have owed money to some people. Her body was found approximately in the same area as the first two, north of Ypsilanti in Superior Township.

Dawn Basom

Dawn Basom, a local thirteen year-old Ypsi junior high school student, went missing while walking home on April 15 just before dark. She walked part of the way home on the railroad tracks which was and is the local shortcut. The next day, her body was found in the same vicinity as the previous three of four murders of young women in the area.

Only twenty-two days separated the killings of the youngest teenage girls. The public was officially panicked and outraged. What were the police doing? Did the area harbor a multiple murderer? Where and when would he, or they, strike next? Nobody felt safe.

Then seven weeks passed until Alice Kalom (23), a University of Michigan student was last seen on June 7,1969. She was supposed to meet some friends at a place called The Depot House who said she never showed up. Others at the Depot House said they thought they saw a girl who looked like her dancing with a young, long haired guy, but they couldn't be sure. Just another one of the many unanswered questions and conflicting evidence the police were struggling with.

Things were getting red hot for the killer, whoever he might be. A female accomplice might be involved or maybe a copycat killer or killers. The police had theories but no suspect. The reality was that the police were no closer to solving any of these cases than ever, but they were scouring the town searching for the maniac killer. By this time, most experts believed the killer acted alone in the commission of these power and control murders.

There was a pause of sixty-four days until another EMU coed disappeared from the area. On Thursday, July 23, Karen Sue Beineman was seen driving off on a motorcycle with a young man she had just met. She took a ride with a stranger despite all the warnings she had heard from the university and the appeals made in the local media by police. Her body was found laying face down in a gully three days later on Sunday, the 26th, only a mile away from the police task force command center. Law enforcement officials were desperate for a break in the case and were about to get two major ones.

John Norman Collins

A twenty-three year-old EMU student, John Norman Collins was arrested on August 1, 1969, for the mutilation sex slaying of Karen Sue Beineman. John Norman Collins was convicted of first degree murder on August 28, 1970 to life in prison.

But what of the other murders? These cases were shelved and never prosecuted. And an additional murder surfaced in Salinas, California, of Roxie Ann Phillips (17) of Milwaukie, Oregon. Roxie went missing on June 30, 1969, and her body was found on July 13, in Pescarado Canyon. Collins had been "visiting" in Salinas and was linked to her. A Monterey County Grand Jury brought an indictment against Collins on April 16, 1970, for her murder.

All of these cases are still considered open, so evidence is not available and is closely guarded by Michigan State Police in Lansing. The official Washtenaw County Courthouse case transcripts have been "purged" from their records, and understandably, family members of the victims are reluctant to talk, including the family of John Norman Collins.

Apparently there was a point of diminishing returns for more jurisprudence. One conviction was as good as seven. The police got their man off the streets, the rash of sex slayings ceased, so the other cases were never pursued. This was the most expensive case in Washtenaw County history. Some people may not want this story re-examined, but history demands a full accounting.

As a writer and researcher, I am left with archival news clippings and the memories of people who knew the victims and the alleged serial killer, John Norman Collins. Remember, he was only convicted of one murder and officially doesn't qualify for the title of serial killer.

If anyone has information pertaining to this case, photos, or other relevant information, please send me a message at www.gregoryafournier@gmail.com or write me at:

                                                       Fornology
                                                   PO Box 712821 
                                             Santee, CA 92072-2821

All replies will be held in strictest confidence. I want to collect as many facts about this case as I possibly can for the true crime book I'm writing entitled In the Shadow of the Water Tower. Here's your chance to contribute information.