The Washtenaw County Release of Double-Murderer Ralph C. Nuss

Washtenaw County Detectives Chester A. Wilson and Stanton L. Bordine taking Ralph C. Nuss for a ride to Ionia State Mental Hospital.

One of the most disturbing events in the history of the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office was the release of Ralph C. Nuss for the strangulation murder of seventeen-year-old Arlan Withrow of Ypsilanti, Michigan on October 16, 1966. His body was found on October 20 in a shallow creek near Port Huron, Michigan with a cement block tied to his leg. Nuss was also charged with the strangulation/shooting murder of eighteen-year-old Thomas Brown of Windsor, Ontario on November 10, 1966. A combination of prosecutorial delay and a change in Michigan state law regarding its "criminal sexual psychopath (CSP)" statutes combined to release Nuss on February 9, 1979 after eight years of detention without being charged. 

Thirty-year-old Nuss was arrested on November 14, 1966 on a warrant charging him with "gross indecency between males." During an early morning interrogation the next morning, Nuss tearfully confessed to Washtenaw County sheriff's detectives that he molested both youths after killing them. When asked for a motive, all Nuss said was "I just had to  kill them." Detectives said Nuss "wept so much that the tears flowed off his chin."

On November 16th, Nuss led detectives to a creek near Harland in Livingston County where they found Brown's body. Nuss initially told detectives that the Withrow murder occurred on federal property outside Milan Federal Prison, which brought a federal charge carrying a death penalty sentence. Nuss was held in the Washtenaw County Jail.

A glaring irony of this case was that Nuss was a respected supervisor at Milan Federal Prison where he managed the prison's work release program for eligible inmates. Warden Paul P. Sartwell said, "Nuss' confession is shocking to me and all of his fellow employees. He began working at Milan Prison on May 25th, 1965 and had an excellent work record during his tenure here."

Nuss' landlady in Augusta Township, Mrs. Dubik, told investigators that her tenant was "very polite and considerate. He took me to church every Sunday, drove me to the grocery store, and helped me around the house. He didn't smoke or drink either." Further investigation revealed Nuss attended St. Joseph Catholic Church in Whittaker, near Ypsilanti where he taught Sunday School catechism class. When Mrs. Dubik was asked if she noticed anything unusual about her tenant, she said he entertained male friends who sometimes left early in the morning. Dubik also mentioned that sometimes she visited her family for several days giving Nuss free reign of her home.

Nuss' admission of leading a double-life set off an Ypsilanti police investigation of a young-adult underworld in the Ypsi area. Nuss used the psydonym "Ken Nichols" and regularly associated with teens on the fringes of the youthful underworld he met on street corners and teen hangouts. Police say they uncovered drug trafficking, a car theft ring, a pornography market, and homosexual activities.

Nuss was acquainted with several youths involved in illegal activity. Investigators found that the name Ken Nichols kept turning up with some of Withrow's known associates. After a month-long investigation, Nuss was arrested for gross indecency on November 14, 1966 by Washtenaw County Sheriff detectives Stanton L. Bordine and Chester A. Wilson. Nuss used the pseudonym Ken Nichols when apprehended. 

Thirty-year-old Nuss admitted he met Arlan Withrow through a "mutual friend." He telephoned Withrow on the evening of October 16th after Withrow returned from a movie date with his girlfriend. Later that night, he met Withrow and drove him to his rented room on Tuttle Hill Road in Augusta Township. Nuss said Withrow fell asleep (passed out?) and he bound Withrow's hands.

Nuss initially told police that he took Withrow to a secluded area near Milan Prison and strangled him with a rope. Then he threw Withrow's nude body in the trunk of his car until the next evening when he drove the body outside the Port Huron area and threw Withrow's body into a shallow creek.

Twenty-four days later on November 10th, Nuss took Thomas Brown to his rented room and tried to bind him also. Brown struggled, so Nuss shot him in the head with a .38 caliber pistol. He stored the body in the trunk of his car and took it to Harland in Livingston County, 40 miles north of Ann Arbor and threw Brown's nude body in a secluded creek.

Nuss was six-feet tall and 190 pounds with a receding hair line. He looked frightened and confused at the arraignment for the Brown slaying. A plea of not guilty was entered on his behalf and an examination was scheduled for 9:00 am on November 25th. As Nuss was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs and restraints, he unknowingly passed Withrow's father and the slain youth's girlfriend who were standing in the crowd outside the courtroom.

Arlan Withrow's murder case was problematic from the start. On January 10, 1967, an FBI investigation revealed that Nuss did not kill Withrow on federal property. Now, jurisdiction fell upon Washtenaw County, but Prosecutor William Delhey took no action on charging Nuss with Withrow's slaying. On March 14th, Nuss' defense attorneys filed a petition in the Washtenaw County District Court for a hearing to determine whether Nuss was a criminal sexual psychopath (CSP).

On the same day in a different courtroom, Nuss' lawyers filed a Demand for a Speedy Trial motion. Two weeks later, the court declared Nuss a CSP and ordered him committed to Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. On June 21,1967, Nuss entered Ionia and underwent a thorough mental evaluation and participated in psychotherapy sessions.

On July 13, 1973, Nuss was pronounced cured by Ionia's medical superintendent and remanded back to the custody of the Washtenaw County Detention Center. Prosecutor William F. Delhey reinstituted the original Brown murder charge and charged Nuss with the Withrow murder for the first time.

In the case of the People vs. Nuss, the Michigan Circuit Court decided on May 3, 1977 that the state was barred from trying Nuss on the determination that Nuss recovered from his psychopathy and was no longer a menace to society. Nuss' defense lawyers argued the state law that Nuss was arrested under had since been declared unconstitutional and abolished, and the Michigan Supreme Court decision was retroactive.

Nuss' attorneys contended that the eight-year delay in their client's prosecution of the Withrow slaying was prejudicial to a fair trial for the following reasons:

• the defendants' right to speedy trial was violated
  
• the defendant was denied due process
• original witnesses admit they could not remember many of the surrounding circumstances
• Dr. Alexander Dukay, who examined Nuss in 1967, was now deceased

The United States Circuit Court denied the Washtenaw County Court's appeal. Michigan Secretary of State Frank Kelley and Washtenaw County Prosecutor William F. Delhey argued the case to the Michigan Supreme Court on March 7, 1978. The high court upheld the lower court's rulings. The law stipulated that no person designated a CSP could be tried for that crime after successful, psychiatric treatment and release. Nuss could not be tried on the Brown murder. The Withrow case was also dismissed on the grounds that Nuss was denied the right to a speedy trial.

The Michigan Supreme Court case was decided on February 5, 1979. Four days later, Ralph C. Nuss was released and driven to the bus station by the same two Washtenaw County detectives who arrested him. Nuss was given a one-way ticket to his home state of Pennsylvania, where he died in 1991 at the age of fifty-five.

Terror In Ypsilanti videocast 

The John Norman Collins' Prison Papers

Blocking the facts and details of the John Norman Collins coed killer case, through the trial and sentencing, has been a time consuming and tedious process. But bringing out the voices of the past by reconstructing the dialogue of the witnesses' testimony from newspaper reports of the day has been insightful and fascinating.

Working with old information and with what we've learned about this case since the seventies, an account is starting to form which will give a more textured and resonant picture of the trial than the phonetically transcribed court transcripts would have, which incidentally were unavailable to me. The Washtenaw County Courthouse Records Department has "purged" this case from their files.

My researcher, Ryan Place from Detroit, and I are entering uncharted territory now - the John Norman Collins prison years. Using the Freedom of Information Act, we were able to secure a thousand prison documents from the Michigan Department of Corrections. 

Once we paid our tribute ($500), we were sent a box full of unsorted photocopies which had to be categorized, placed in chronological order, and thinned of duplicate copies. Of the one-thousand photocopies we purchased, only about three-hundred are useful to us, and many of them are routine paperwork of little or no interest to the general reader. 

The good news is that now I have a manageable amount of information to work with, and a picture of John Collins' years behind prison bars is beginning to take shape. 

When we saw the initial amount of prison materials, we hoped that we had received the full sweep of his four decades in prison at Marquette, Jackson, and several other Michigan correctional institutions, including a short stay at Ionia, which houses Michigan's mentally ill and deranged prison population.

But there are huge gaping holes in the chronology of his many years in prison. Still, there is some interesting factual information to be found among the routine and often sketchy paperwork. 

Something missing is any information on John Collins attempted prison breaks, especially a tunneling attempt he made with six of his prison inmates. They tried to dig themselves toward an outside wall of Marquette prison in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 

Discovered by a prison guard on January 31, 1979, Collins and six other convicts had dug nineteen feet toward an outside wall within thirty-five feet of freedom. They had been scooping out handfuls of sand since the previous summer. 

The prisoners were charged with breaking the prison's rules but little more is known about the incident. There must have been an investigation, but we don't have any evidence of any. Were escape charges ever brought against them? I'd like to know more and will pursue it further.

It would have been nice to get a well-organized and concise information drop from the Michigan Department of Corrections, but they aren't in the business of helping me do research for my book, In the Shadow of the Water Tower.

It is the search for knowledge that drives me and my researcher to uncover as much about these matters as we possibly can and to shed light on this dimly remembered and deliberately shrouded past.