Coed Killer Composite Drawings and John Norman Collins

Shortly before midnight on July 23rd, 1969, another young woman from Eastern Michigan University was reported missing. Her dormitory resident adviser Verna (Ma) Carson called the EMU Campus Police and told the desk clerk on duty that eighteen year old freshman coed Karen Sue Beineman was last known to have been walking alone to Wigs by Joan in downtown Ypsilanti.

She left the dorm at about 12:20 PM after eating a small lunch with her roommates in the Downing Hall Dining Commons. Then she headed south across campus and strolled down Ballard St. to pick up and pay for a wig she had ordered the day before. The wig shop was less than a mile's walk, and it was a bright, sunny afternoon.

The next morning, two Ypsilanti City Police officers went to Wigs by Joan to interview the owner, Diana Joan Goshe, and her wig stylist, Patricia Spaulding. It was from their initial description that a composite drawing was made by a Ypsilanti Police artist. Both women agreed that "Yes" Karen Sue Beineman had been in their shop shortly after 12:30 PM. They remember the young lady because of something she said, "I've only done two foolish things in my life - buy this wig and accept a ride from a stranger on a motorcycle."

The hair on the back of their necks went up when they heard Miss Beineman say those words. Despite every effort of Washtenaw County law enforcement to discover the identity of the serial killer who they suspected had killed seven young women in the area, police were literally and figuratively clueless. The shop ladies tried to dissuade the young woman from getting back on the motorcycle. Mrs. Goshe even offered to drive Karen Sue back to her dorm, but Miss Beineman did not want to put the ladies to any bother.

While Karen paid for the wiglet and was shown how to wear it in her hair by Patricia Spaulding, Mrs. Goshe walked outside of her shop and squarely took a look at the handsome young man on the shiny motorcycle. He was parked only two car lengths away from the front of her shop, no more than thirty feet away. Goshe went back into her shop and again urged Karen not to get back on the motorcycle but to no avail. Karen left the shop, and after a brief conversation with the driver, hopped back onto the motorcycle and sped off.

The next day, the wig shop ladies gave the investigators the following description of the young man which was wired to every newspaper in the state of Michigan. The Ann Arbor News ran the description of the suspect, "a white male, about 22 years old, six feet tall with dark brown hair. The hair is curly in the front and extends down on the forehead and cut short with short sideburns. The suspect, of thin to medium build, wore a T-shirt with wide green and yellow horizontal stripes."

A composite sketch was drawn from that description and released to the press by the Ypsilanti City Police. Within days of Karen's disappearance, the Beineman family had four thousand handbills printed and distributed on the campuses of Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan. Of the seven unsolved murders in the area within the last two years, three were students from EMU and two were from U of M.

Looking over the newest composite drawing, an EMU official noted the similarity between sketches of a suspect in the death of Joan Schell a year earlier, drawn by an Ann Arbor police artist. The suspect in that case was previously described as "five feet, eight inches tall, about 20 years old with dark brown hair, and wearing a dark green Eastern Michigan University T-shirt." On Friday, July 25, the Ann Arbor News publicly noted the similarity and the fact that Miss Beineman's body was found in Ann Arbor Township, and Miss Schell's body was found on the outskirts of Ann Arbor.

***

Tony Hale was a sixteen year old Ypsilanti High School student who participated in Eastern Michigan's Upward Bound program on the EMU campus in July of 1969. Summer session dorm residents were required to attend a meeting where the handbills were distributed and young women were urged to carry them in their purses.

Some of the girls in the Upward Bound program were from the Warren/Center Line area where John Norman Collins was raised, so he would hang out in the lounge of Goddard Hall dormitory and mingle with the girls. Tony and her roommate Linda got to know Collins, and Linda took a couple of rides on his motorcycle and dated him. On one date, she reported that they went to his room to watch color TV, and he tried to get her skirt off.

"I could force you," he told her.

But the teenager replied, "But that wouldn't be good," and he relented.

Linda told a Detroit News reporter after Collins was arrested on July 31st that only two days before, she and Tony saw him riding his motorcycle on campus. Linda shouted out to him while waving the handbill, "Hey, John. You look like the picture," referring to the composite drawing of the suspected killer.

"You look like the other picture," he shouted back, referring to the photograph of Karen Sue Beineman on the handbill.

***

On July 30th, the day before Collins was arrested on suspicion of murdering Karen Sue Beineman, the Washtenaw County Sheriff released a more detailed, color composite drawing to the press from the description given by two wig shop ladies. This drawing was done in pastels but it came out after the handbill. The Detroit News ran the latest drawing with a psychological description of the probable murderer worked up by U of M psychiatrist, Dr. Donald J. Holmes.

"He is taunting authorities thumbing his nose at them, mocking them, daring them. Whatever else he may be, the killer is a very arrogant character. This taunting feeds his ego and supports his sense of omnipotence. He gets the idea that he is controlling the authorities."

Law enforcement was closing in on John Norman Collins. He was arrested late Thursday night, July 31st when Sheriff Douglas Harvey brought murder charges against him. Collins would sit in the Washtenaw County jail for over a year until his case came to trial where he was found guilty.

Montreal's Canadian Expo 67, a Souvenir Medallion Necklace, and John Norman Collins

Remembered as a source of Canadian national pride, the Montreal Exposition 67 was Canada's first world's fair. It also marked its centennial year as a confederation. The exposition's motto was "Man and His World/Terre Des Hommes." Expo 67 became known as one of the most successful world's fairs of the twentieth century but not without overcoming many obstacles.

First, the Soviets were awarded the fair by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIA) on May 5, 1960. The Cold War was heating up and Moscow cited financial and security concerns, bowing out as the host country in April 1962. Six months later on November 13, the BIA changed the location of the World Exhibition to Canada. Despite an Ottawa government report showing the likely failure of such a project, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau convinced lawmakers that it was possible to prepare for the expo and have its grounds ready for the scheduled opening day.

It was Drapeau's idea to create two new islands in the St. Lawrence River and enlarge the existing Ile Sainte-Helene. The result would prevent wholesale land speculation which could rock the Montreal economy if the exposition was built on the northern reaches of the city as others had advised. The mayor's plan seemed far fetched at first, but it started to make more sense the closer Canadian ministers took a look at it. 

United States Pavilion - Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome.

Montreal was already in the midst of a huge public works project, the expansion of their Metro system. The rubble and excavations from that project would become back fill for the man-made islands. The first batch of twenty-five million cubic tons needed to create the islands was ceremoniously dropped on August 13, 1963.

Working around the clock, a legion of dump truck drivers and heavy equipment operators finished the job on time. The newly graded grounds were turned over to the Expo 67 Corporation by the City of Montreal on June 20, 1964. This left 1,042 days to have everything else built and functioning by opening day on April 27, 1967.

Expo 67 was politically and culturally seen as a landmark moment in Canadian history. In the six months it was open, the official attendance tally was 50,306,648 despite a thirty day transit strike in September. The exposition set the single-day attendance record for a world's fair of 569,500 visitors on its third day.

The Canadian Exposition was projected to have a deficit shared by the federal, provincial, and municipal governments, but the exposition performed better financially than expected. In 1967 Canadian dollars, Expo 67 took in revenues of $221,239,872 with costs of $431,904,683. That left a deficit of $210,664,811 for the Canadian taxpayers to pick up. In return, Montreal got some new public land and improved infrastructure, and Canada received unprecedented global media exposure, a boost in international prestige, and a feeling of national pride for a job well-done.

***

Nineteen year old Mary Terese Fleszar convinced her parents to allow her to drive the family station wagon to the Montreal Expo 67 with her sister and two friends. Mary had planned out the trip in great detail. She knew how far Montreal was from Willis, Michigan, how much gasoline it would take to get there, and all the costs they might likely incur. Her mother and father had confidence in Mary's judgement and wished the girls well as they left on Thursday, June 1. Mary had even planned to beat the weekend traffic.

While on their visit, Mary purchased an Expo 67 medallion necklace with the logo of the exposition on it. The logo for the exposition was designed by Montreal artist Julien Hebert. The basic unit of the design was a pictogram of two "ancient men" linked together in friendship. This basic icon is repeated in a circular fashion eight times representing "friendship around the world."

If the viewer looks carefully at the symbol to the right, an M for Montreal can be seen in each icon. The rest of the icon looks like a W, perhaps representing the World. The fair's logo did not enjoy unanimous support from Canadians who felt it was too vague and cryptic. The design didn't include the name of the event or any reference to Canada or Montreal. But a nationwide contest was held by a group of Canadian intellectuals, and they choose Hebert's design.

After Mary Fleszar's return from her successful excursion to Canada, she sublet an apartment in Ypsilanti to be near her job at Eastern Michigan University. At about 9:00 PM on July 9th, Mary was last seen taking an evening walk by two people sitting on their front porch. The man and woman reported to police that she had been harassed twice on Ballard St. by someone driving a blue-grey Chevy. She waved the guy off a second time and then turned the corner on Washtenaw Ave leading to her apartment building. She was never seen alive again.

Mary's family believes she was abducted from the parking lot in front of her apartment building. One month later, her body was found by two teenagers among the weeds near the barn of an abandoned farm on Geddes Rd, one-third of a mile from LeForge Rd.

Early in the investigation, police asked Mrs. Fleszar to take an inventory of Mary's things to see if anything was missing from her apartment. Mary's purse and wallet were there, but her keys were missing and her light-blue Comet automobile was parked across the lot from Mary's assigned spot. Mrs. Fleszar thought that was very odd.

Mr. Fleszar removed the ignition switch for evidence before selling the car in case a set of matching keys was ever recovered. The front door lock to Mary's apartment was also removed and turned over to police as potential evidence for the same reason.

In addition to her keys, there was one other missing item. The Montreal Expo 67 medallion necklace Mary had purchased at the fair a month earlier. It was conspicuous by its absence. As a piece of jewelry, it had no value beyond a keepsake souvenir.

Two years later, after John Norman Collins was arrested for the sex-slaying of Karen Sue Beineman on July 31, 1969, Michigan State Police had probable cause to obtain a bench warrant to search his room. Found on top of his dresser was an Expo 67 medallion necklace that was entered as evidence with about one hundred other items collected by police from Collins' room and Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Items not directly related to the Beineman case were returned to the Collins family. The only item they refused to accept on John's instructions was the Expo 67 medallion. Collins denied owning or having any knowledge of the medallion and accused the police of planting it as evidence against him. The necklace was placed in an envelope and stored in an evidence vault in East Lansing, Michigan where it presumably lies today.

For more information about Expo 67, check out the following link:
http://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP16CH1PA3LE.html

John Norman Collins Associate - Andrew Julian Manuel, Jr.

Andrew Manuel's Arraignment in Ypsilanti.

It wasn't until Andrew Julian Manuel helped John Norman Collins fraudulently rent a seventeen foot house trailer in June of 1969 that his association with Collins made Andrew Manuel a person of interest to Michigan State Police.

Seventeen year old Oregon resident Roxie Ann Phillips was murdered while visiting Salinas, California. The prime suspect was someone named John, last name not known, who drove a silver colored car and was studying to be a teacher. He and a friend had driven a house trailer out from Michigan.

A search by the Salinas police found the abandoned trailer parked in the alley behind the home of Silver Manuel, Andrew's grandfather. Police soon learned that it was reported stolen from Michigan.

With only sandals on her feet and strangled with her own belt, Roxie's nude body was found at the bottom of Pescadaro Canyon in Monterey, California on Sunday, July 13, 1969 only two weeks after she was reported missing. Several weeks after that, a Salinas detective familiar with the Phillips case, sat down to his evening meal and turned on the national news. A university student, John Norman Collins, had been arrested for the murder of Karen Sue Beineman in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Miss Beineman's nude and strangled body, wearing only sandals, was found in neighboring Ann Arbor at the bottom of a gully off Huron River Dr.

The similarities between the two cases were striking and a call was placed to the Michigan State Police. Michigan sent two State Police detectives and a forensic crime lab specialist to California to share information they had on Collins. A Monterey County grand jury was looking into the particulars of the case of Roxie Ann Phillips.

Before John Collins and Andy Manuel left for California, they told their landlady that they would be in California for two months picking fruit. They asked that she hold their rooms for them. When they returned early from their California trip a few weeks later, she was surprised. Then Manuel fled Ypsilanti again on Saturday, July 26, 1969, the day Karen Sue Beineman's body was found.

A nationwide FBI search was instituted for Andrew Manuel on a fugitive from justice federal warrant. He was charged with larceny by conversion when he and Collins fraudulently rented the house trailer in Ypsilanti, Michigan with a forged, stolen check. The trailer was found abandoned in Salinas, California. By the time the FBI went looking for Manuel, Collins was already in Washtenaw County police custody for the Beineman murder.

The subsequent police investigation revealed that Andrew Julian Manuel was born in Salinas on May 13, 1944. He was described as twenty-five years old, 6'1" tall and weighing 235#. He was dark complected with dark hair and eyes, and he had a tattoo of an eagle on his left forearm. Initially, Manuel was described as Mexican-American, but soon he was found to be Filipino-American.

Manuel moved to Michigan around 1965, taking a job at the Ford Motor Company in the Detroit area. Over the summer of 1968, he worked at Bond Warehouse before moving to Ypsilanti in September. There he took a job in the machine department at Motor Wheel Corporation where he met John Collins, a twenty-two year old Eastern Michigan University student who had worked part-time there since August.

507 East Michigan Ave, Ypsilanti.

In August 8, 1969, Sheriff Douglas Harvey revealed to The Detroit News that Andrew Manuel had sold three guns, one shotgun and two rifles, to the owner of the Roy's Squeeze Inn on East Michigan Avenue, on the same day Miss Beineman's body was discovered in Ann Arbor. When Manuel's connection to Collins became known to the buyer of the stolen guns, he came forward with what he knew and turned the guns over to the police.

These were three of the four guns Collins was known to have owned. The sheriff showed the guns to Collins, who said they were his property and that Manuel must have stolen them from his room on Emmet St. So much for honor among thieves.

Sheriff Harvey's informant said he bought the guns from Manuel for $100, then he drove him to the Ann Arbor bus station where Manuel said he was going to California. Andy Manuel had offered to sell him a .22 caliber pistol, but he declined to buy it. The pistol has never been accounted for, said Harvey.

Andrew J. Manuel in FBI custody in Phoenix.

On a tip, FBI agents in Phoenix, Arizona seized twenty-five year old Andrew Manuel and arrested him on a fugitive warrant from Michigan on Wednesday, August 6, 1969. Manuel was arraigned before a U.S. District Commissioner in Phoenix shortly after he was arrested at his sister-in-laws apartment. A $10,000 bond was set and Manuel was taken to the federal detention center at Florence, Arizona to await his hearing.

It was reported in The Detroit News on Friday, August 8th, that Mrs. Ernestina Masters, Manuel's sister-in-law, said she would cooperate with authorities in any way possible. Manuel had stayed at her apartment with her and her roommate since the previous Saturday night. Manuel had called Ernestina from California and asked for some money. She sent him $50, and he traveled by bus to her Phoenix apartment.

"He was scared and afraid he would be sent to jail for something he didn't do," she said. "Manuel claimed that he knew Collins for only six months and was surprised and shocked when he learned of the murder charge against him."

 

Andrew Manuel was extradited to Michigan and convicted on the fraud and a burglary charge on November 17, 1969. He was in possession of a stolen diamond ring appraised at about $450 from a ransack burglary on March 14th, 1969 in Ypsilanti. Manuel pleaded guilty on the possession of stolen property charge. When District Judge William F. Ager, Jr. asked Manuel where he got the ring, he rolled over on his buddy and said, "John Collins." On the fraud charge, Manuel told the court that Collins had signed for the trailer, but he was with him and knew the trailer would not be returned.

Judge Ager gave Andrew Manuel the same sentence for both counts, five years probation, a $50 fine, and $300 in court costs. Additionally, the judge ordered Manuel to pay up to $1,500 restitution to Hendrickson Trailer Sales in Ypsilanti. Andrew's wife Betty Sue and his mother from Salinas attended the court proceeding. It was Manuel's mother who paid his fees and fines for him.

After the trial, Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter Krasny was quick to report to the press that no link had been established between Andrew Manuel and the other unsolved slayings in Washtenaw County. Chief Assistant Prosecutor Booker T. Williams made a point at the end of Manuel's trial to mention that there was no evidence to connect Manuel with the other Michigan murders.

Even after given immunity to testify against John Norman Collins, Manuel tried to skip out on his probation, was recaptured, and sent to the Washtenaw County Jail to serve out his term. When he was finally forced to testify against his associate in the Collins' trial, he had little to offer prosecutors in the way of evidence.

Finding any information on Andrew Julian Manuel has been almost as difficult as locating him. After lots of effort and false leads, Ryan M. Place was finally able to locate him in Yuma, Arizona. Andrew Julian Manuel died taking his secrets to the grave on Saturday, February 19, 2011, only three months shy of his sixty-seventh birthday.

John Norman Collins Playbook Formula

For over three years, Ryan M. Place and I have been actively looking into the unsolved Washtenaw County Murder cases from 1967-1969. We have interviewed countless numbers of people connected with these cases from friends and family of the victims who allowed us to speak with them, to law enforcement officials who were involved with these cases, to various people drawn into the investigation one way or another, and some few supporters of John Norman Collins.

My contacts with Collins supporters usually take the form of hit and run verbalism because their arguments in his defense are unsustainable. John's ability to inspire loyalty in his supporters says less about him and more about their willing suspension of disbelief on his behalf. It is particularly difficult for his teammates who played high school sports with Collins at St. Clements High School in Center Line, Michigan. It is a shame that this tragedy casts a long shadow.

Although Collins' high school girlfriend has denied this to me, I've discovered from several unrelated sources, Collins himself for one, that she has been corresponding with him since he was imprisoned. He speaks about her with adoration in some of the prison letters I have obtained. In any case, she has shown John loyalty and refused to speak with me about her on again/off again relationship with Collins. After all these years, he still exerts some influence over her. She is only one of a number of people who still grant John Norman Collins a certain amount of power and control over them.

In a Facebook message I received on March 25, 2014, someone named Marcy Miller asked me if I had emailed her last year about John Norman Collins. I thought that sounded weird. I had no memory of contacting her, so I asked my Rainy Day Murders researcher to check his records of our contacts. Ryan was certain neither of us had made so much as a courtesy call to Marcy Miller, nor had her name ever come up in any of our research. That in itself made her contact with me interesting. Who is this mystery woman and what is her interest in this case?

But as I read on, I saw a pattern emerge from her message that I recognized from reading a number of Collins' prison letters from other people who have written to him. Collins was attempting to solidify his diminishing number of supporters and obfuscate the facts of his case with his own talking points. She began with an if this/than that statement setting me up for a straw man argument:

"Remember when I told you that (Collins) sends me a birthday card every year? [No!] Well, John said that you said some not so nice things about me. I can't imagine what you could have said to hurt my reputation. [Me either.]"

Not for the first time has John Norman Collins used a woman for a third-party proxy to shield himself from our direct inquiries and poison the well of truth. What Marcy wrote next put things in some perspective for me:

"When you said you were a friend of John [Those words have never left my lips.], you misrepresented yourself. [Really?] "(John) says you are not a friend and that I should stay away from you [Now I really want to meet her.] because you only want to do harm and not give your readers the option to think otherwise."

From reading Collins' prison letters I have been able to discern a formula that he uses in his personal correspondence. It is the only way he can vicariously assert himself into the lives of his supporters to perpetuate the mythology of his innocence and persecution at the hands of the State of Michigan.

"I also told you [I still don't remember.] that we [Who?] got a hold of Ted Bundy's attorney before his (Ted's) execution, and he admitted that he (Bundy) was in Ann Arbor during the time of the murders, but he didn't admit to any of them (the murders)."

Now I had something concrete to dispute with her. There is evidence that Ted Bundy did cruise through Ann Arbor one weekend in 1974 while evading law enforcement out West. But Collins had been behind bars since July 31, 1969. That's a five year gap, yet this myth still circulates out in cyberspace. Marcy also asserted that the murders didn't end with Collins. They just moved over to Oakland County. This is another Playbook myth that Collins takes every opportunity to perpetuate. After her two bogus examples, I was amused by her next sentence, "Are you sure you have all your facts straight? Call me!"

So I did. Marcy Miller and I spoke on the phone for about twenty minutes that morning. The conversation was cordial, and I found out some background. She was not an ex-girlfriend as I had suspected, but she was dating Collins when he was arrested. Marcy met Collins at a local Michigan lake when she was sixteen and vacationing with her family. Her parents thought John was a nice guy, and he soon attached himself loosely to their family.

When the Miller family discovered that Collins had been arrested as the prime suspect in the unsolved Washtenaw County murders, they fell into denial. It couldn't be John, he was so nice. I didn't hear from Marcy for almost three months, but on June 14, 2014, I got another message from her. She had checked out some of my blog posts on Collins and began to realize that what he had been telling her for over forty years was not strictly factual. Not even close.

"John sent me a birthday letter in March warning me about you. I have not written him back since we last talked. Knowing the truth is terrifying. I spent over forty years wondering. Fifty percent of me thought they had the wrong man. I knew in my heart that one day I would know the truth. I prayed for that day.

"I spent years talking to him about Jesus and how he would be set free if he only believed, but John just didn't get it. That's when I slowed down and only wrote him once a year. When DNA testing came out, I was so excited, but John didn't want to have anything to do with it. He said they would use it against him [Isn't that an indirect admission?] and mix it all up. After that, he was lucky to get a letter from me every five years. I talked to an old boyfriend who was locked up with him. He told me John was strange, but I defended him. Boy was I an idiot!"

"(John) called me LC for Linda Carter (TV's Wonder Woman). I looked like her clone. I heard that from everybody, but he really knew how to charm me. Even after forty years, I'm still his LC. I just want to thank you for writing this book, doing this investigation, and setting me free."

What prompted me to write and share this post was a contact I had last week with a Collins family associate who accused me of exploiting the family's pain for profit and insisted that Ryan and my efforts are harmful and will do nothing to help anyone.

Really? I have received many thank yous from people who didn't have a platform or a community to share their memories about this terrible time. Some are now able to articulate their feelings and come to grips with these cases and John Norman Collins.

Rather than run every piece of correspondence I get, I chose to post remarks from this one because it clearly shows the formula Collins uses in his correspondence to his dwindling numbers of followers. I wrote Marcy asking if I could run her story and use her name.

"Marcy, can I use your recent responses in a blog post? Your remarks will resonant with some women and maybe help someone else break free from Collins' grip. He has a letter writing formula which your posts clearly depict. I would like to reveal that equation to my readers because he uses the same approach with everyone."

"Yes, use my name and photo. My family and friends will be glad I finally came to my senses. I normally would never believe an inmate, but I knew him before he went in. I was a fool."

"Thanks, Marcy. There are people who suspect and accuse me of making this stuff up."

After reading many of Collins letters and/or speaking with people he has written to, a definite pattern emerges from his correspondence. First, he creates an exclusive nickname for his pen pals which creates a unique identity and a special bond with them. Marcy was called "LC" for Linda Carter. A woman he was courting by mail called Sandra was given the pseudonym of "My Georgia Peach." A British woman named Katie who wrote Collins for some time was given the sobriquet, "My Wild Irish Rose." A woman from Australia was called "Vix", and Collins' Canadian cousin was rechristened "Little Brother."

Collins always finds a way to interject himself vicariously into the personal lives and affairs of the people he is writing. He never misses sending people birthday cards/letters and Christmas greetings. They seem to be hooks that bind people to his claustrophobic circle of personal intimacy. He plays on their sympathies and complains about his prison treatment, the food, poor healthcare, the prison store, his family that doesn't write him anymore, and how he never has any money.

Within the last year or so, my researcher and I have been mentioned as bad guys to be avoided at all costs. Collins told his recent pen pal, Sandra, that my researcher Ryan had threatened John's Canadian cousin with a beating. I immediately called the cousin and told him what I had learned. He laughed and said, "Where does my cousin come up with this stuff?

It amazes me that some people still allow John Norman Collins the power to influence what they say and do. I can faithfully report that their numbers are declining as is his ability to manipulate people.

Staying in the Writing Zone

 

An entrepreneur from another age came up with an ingenious invention for eliminating distractions for writers called the Isolator. As the above photograph depicts, there was a mechanical solution for even the most human of behaviors, our inherent distractability. I had to laugh when I saw this product and wished I could go on the Internet and order it.

Whether this photo was originally a sight gag or a serious attempt to keep the writer distraction free and focused, the thinking behind the Isolator is as true today as it was in the past. Writing requires intense concentration over sustained periods of time. Even the slightest distractions can derail a writer's train of thought.

When writers are deep into the creation process, time and space seem to disappear, their creative juices begin to flow, and they write as if they could go on forever poring wisdom and enlightenment from the ends of their keyboard tapping fingers.

Then the doorbell rings, a telemarketer calls, or the neighbor's dogs start barking nonstop and the spell is broken. Being in the writing groove is nothing less than sacrosanct for writers. Not every writer is lucky enough to have a sanctum sanctorum immune from such distractions.

The image of the pastoral poet who creates beautiful verse next to a babbling brook amid warbling songbirds is stereotypical. Most of those cavalier love songs were written in noisy taverns by young bloods under the influence of the local grog. My point is that most writers create amid the distractions and cacophony of everyday life. 

As much as writers try to control life around them, writing doesn't happen in a vacuum. Dealing with interruption is a part of life and unavoidable. As annoying as distractions are, it is too easy for writers to get lost in their manuscripts and forget the greater world around them. For serious writers, the act of writing is a solitary obsession.
 

What drives every serious writer is the knowledge that when the muse strikes, she better find you working. Passion for the work trumps everything else. Without that, it doesn't matter what you write or how long you have worked on it.

Retrospective John Norman Collins Serial Killer Profile - Part Four of Four

Compiling a criminal profile after an offender has been captured is like forecasting yesterday's weather tomorrow. It takes little skill and runs counter to the purpose of profiling which is the apprehension of a prime suspect. Still, by reversing the process, I hope to develop a convincing profile of serial killer John Norman Collins (JNC).

JNC was charged and convicted of the sex slaying of Karen Sue Beineman in January of 1970. Karen was a freshman at Eastern Michigan University in July of 1969 when she willingly took a motorcycle ride from a handsome stranger who seemed harmless enough. She was never seen alive again.

Convicted of Karen's murder, JNC was believed by the court of public opinion to be responsible for the murders of at least six other women, though he was never formally charged with any of them. Washtenaw County Prosecutor William Delhey held the other cases in abeyance against the day that JNC would try to maneuver his way out of prison. He did not want to take a chance that Collins would ever get released without serving his full life sentence.

Because Collins was charged and convicted of only one murder, he is not officially considered a serial killer in accordance with FBI guidelines. His case has largely escaped public notice outside of Michigan and fallen into obscurity. That does not change the reality that he murdered more than one woman in the Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor area.

In addition to the Washtenaw County murders, JNC was indicted by a Monterey, California grand jury for the murder of seventeen year old Milwaukie, Oregon resident Roxie Ann Phillips. This murder case had hard physical evidence to link Collins to the victim. It was the strongest case against Collins, but Michigan Governor William Milliken denied California Governor Ronald Reagan his extradition request and California dropped the case.

George Bush Sr, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and William Milliken

***

Of the four FBI Behavioral Science Unit classifications for serial murderers, the Anger-Retaliatory Rape/Murderer and the Anger-Excitation Rape/Murderer classifications provide the most revealing profiling characteristics relevant to JNC. Each will be handled separately. Serial killers who represent in more than one category are called "mixed." John Norman Collins is one of those.

Anger-Retaliatory Rape/Murderer profile traits:

• Violent sexual assault with elements of "overkill." (All seven victims.)
• The fatal hostility may be directed at a mother, wife, or some dominant female who has belittled, humiliated, or rejected the subject. (JNC may have had repressed anger towards his domineering mother, or he felt anger when he was rejected by his high school sweetheart. It was recently learned that Collins' first intimate girlfriend at Eastern Michigan University turned up pregnant by another guy, and she dropped him.)
• A substitute victim is chosen who usually comes from the general area where the aggressor lives or works. (Four of the seven murdered young women lived within blocks of JNC.)
• The substitute victim is chosen while the murderer is conducting his daily routine, as when cruising his neighborhood or a public place, the aggressor may find a potential victim who reminds him of his mother or girlfriend. (Five of the seven victims were local.)
• The scapegoating retaliation does not eliminate the direct source of hate, so it needs to be episodically repeated. (Six of the seven victims.)
• Often uses a ruse to get the victim inside an enclosed place. Once inside, the victim is isolated and the killer confronts her. (The Karen Sue Beineman murder.)
• Beating around the face and mouth in response to the victim's rejection. As the assault becomes more combative, weapons of opportunity are used to brutalize the body. (All of the seven murders.)
• The body is often placed in a submissive position. (Three of the seven victims.)
• The crime scene tends to be unorganized following the aggressor's intense anger venting. (Three of seven murders.)
• The perpetrator often takes a small trinket or souvenir. (At least five of the seven but thought to be more.)
• When the sexual assault and murder is deemed a success, the perpetrator walks away feeling cleansed and refreshed. He has transferred the blame for the murder onto the victim, and he will not experience any sense of guilt or wrongdoing. (Over the forty-seven years since these events took place, JNC has yet to show any feelings of remorse for any of the victims or their families.)

Anger-Excitation Rape/Murderer profile traits:

• The sexual assault and homicide are designed to inflict pain and terror on the victim for psychological gratification. (At least six of the seven known murders.)
• Unlike other types of murderers, the luxury of sadism is found in the process of killing, not the death. Prolonged torture satisfies a lust for power and control. (At least five of the seven murders.)
• The homicide pattern is characterized by a prolonged, bizarre, ritualistic assault on the victim. (At least four of the seven murders.)
• The killer may be attracted to victims who meet certain criteria. (JNC's victims were brunette with shoulder length hair, they were small of stature, all but one had pierced ears, most lived near him, they were all young - thirteen to twenty-three years old, and all students but one.)
• When encountering a victim, these organized offenders can invoke a disarmingly charming manner that dispels the immediate fears of the victim. (Most if not all of Collins' victims appeared to go willingly with him.)
• The perpetrator uses a con or a ruse to dupe the victim from the time of contact until the victim is isolated. (The Joan Schell and Karen Sue Beineman murders for certain, the others likely.)
• Bondage and domination play a significant role in the killing process. (Four of the six murders.)
• The body may be left in a bizarre state of undress after possibly cutting the clothing off the victim. (Four of the seven victims.)
• Takes clothing items as souvenirs. (One souvenir box was destroyed by JNC and one was found under his bed. The Michigan State Police have these items in evidence boxes.)
• This type of serial killer leaves few if any signs or clues at the crime scene. (It was the fourth murder victim before a crime scene was found.)
• The murderer often moves the dead body to a different location from the crime scene and dumps it in a familiar location within his comfort zone to conceal or reveal his work. (All but one of the bodies was dumped within a ten mile radius in the sparsely populated farm country of Washtenaw County.)
• To avoid detection, this organized offender tends to commit his offenses distant from his usual activities. (JNC chose his victims from people not in his circle of known acquaintances for five of the seven murders.)
• For added stimulation, the murderer may attempt to interject himself into the criminal investigation. (JNC was known to have breakfast and/or lunch at the Bomber restaurant in Ypsilanti across the street from the Michigan State Police Post. Because he was the clean cut nephew of State Trooper David Leik, Collins traded on his uncle's name and often sat in with the local police and listened to their conversations about local police matters.)
• The subject derives great satisfaction by avoiding and taunting police creating a phantom scenario where the police are publicly criticized by the press and the public. (Leaving five of the seven bodies where they could easily be found, and dumping Karen Sue Beineman's body less than a mile from police Task Force headquarters were defiant acts.)
• In his daily habits, he is often compulsive and structurally organized. Educationally, he may have two years of college and/or have graduated. (JNC was about to begin his last year of college to earn a teaching degree.)
• These murderers can successfully segment their criminal interest into a private world of protected ritualism. (Collins still publicly denies killing anyone while smugly guarding his closely protected secrets.)
• The killer's souvenirs are often contained in a private chamber of horrors. This specialty place may be a dark closet, room, basement, or a hole in the ground. He may also use an abandoned barn, cabin, or garage. (It is known that JNC collected crime scene souvenirs in a BOLD detergent box that he disposed of, and he kept another box under his bed which Michigan State Police have in their custody.)
• Generally, the timing between murders lessens with experience. The anger-excitation rape/murderer is a predatory jackal who refines his skills at hunting and learns from his mistakes. When the satisfaction from the killing becomes brief and situational, the killing rate increases. (JNC's murder chart indicates this phenomenon which statisticians call The Devil's Staircase.)

Without a hardcore confession from John Norman Collins himself, the full truth of these matters will never be known. With JNC securely locked away, it is unlikely that he will ever be charged with any of the other six murders his name is associated with. But once what is known about these other cases is revealed, the court of public opinion will have little trouble deciding on Collins' guilt or innocence in the murders he was never charged with.

***

If you missed this four part series on profiling serial killers, here is the link to part one. http://fornology.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-fbis-violent-criminal-apprehension.html 

What Serial Killers Look Like On Paper - Part Three of Four

After special agents from the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) took the data from their Victim Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) study of serial killers, they were able to adapt it to an existing framework for rape cases by adding provisions for rape/murder cases. It became readily apparent from the data that serial killers fall into two large categories, either organized or disorganized.

Organized murderers tend to plan and display control of the victim at the scene. Disorganized murderers may have a vague plan but generally react in a haphazard manner. This distinction does little to help investigators narrow down the field of suspects in an investigation.

When the data was compiled and analyzed within the four classifications of rape/murderers, profiling characteristics began to appear which described serial killer behavior that investigators could understand and utilize in their field work.

1. The Power-Assertive rape/murderer plans the rape but not the murder. He has a need for power and control that may escalate into violence and increasing aggression. The rape is an expression of his virility, mastery, and dominance over a vulnerable victim. The killing eliminates the threat of identification. The killer will brandish weapons of symbolic importance to him, a knife, handgun, rope, or anything easily concealed.
2. The Power-Reassurance rape/murderer plans the rape but not the murder. These killers want to act out some fantasy and seek reassurance from the victim. They are motivated by an idealized seduction and conquest fantasy. Perpetrators need reassurance of their sexual adequacy. When the victim doesn't yield to the killer's planned seduction, his failure and anger drives him to a murderous assault.
3. The Anger-Retaliatory rape/murderer plans the rape and the murder which involves overkill. This offender is usually in his mid-to-late twenties and he has an explosive personality that is impulsive, quick tempered, and self-centered. In dealing with other people, he is not reclusive but a loner in the midst of a crowd. Generally, his social relations are superficial and limited to drinking buddies. Although a sportsman, he prefers playing contact sports. The murder is an anger-venting act that expresses symbolic revenge on a substitute victim.
4. The Anger-Excitation rape/murderer is usually an organized killer and a normal-appearing person who is bright and socially facile with others when he chooses to be. Based on his ability to appear conventional and law abiding, he can cunningly deceive others because he has the ability to separate his general lifestyle from his criminal interest. The sexual assault and homicide are designed to inflict pain and terror on the victim for psychological gratification. Victims show evidence of prolonged torture and ritualistic carnage.

John Norman Collins

Each of the four areas of the rape/murderer classification above is much more detailed than my thumbnail summary indicates. Of special interest to me are #3 and #4. These are the most relevant to my study of John Norman Collins, the Washtenaw County coed killer. In the last entry of this four post series, I will detail more specific behaviors in those categories and relate them to the Collins' cases.