The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (24 page)

It was almost seven months before another victim’s body was found, on 6 July 1968. This was another college student, Joan Schell, aged 20, who had last been seen alive on 30 June, hitchhiking in front of the student union building, around 10.30pm. She had been sexually assaulted. Her throat was cut and she had been stabbed five times; her miniskirt was twisted around her neck. She’d been killed in a different place from where she was found.

On 21 March 1969, the body of another college student, Jane Mixer, 23, was found in a cemetery in Denton Township. She had been shot twice in the head with a .22-calibre gun. She too had been killed elsewhere. A stocking was twisted around her neck and her tights pulled down, but a sanitary napkin was still in place, which indicated no sexual attack.

On 26 March, the body of Maralynn Skelton, 16, was found.
She had last been seen the previous day hitchhiking in front of a shopping centre. Her skull was fractured; she had been whipped with a belt and sexually assaulted. She had also been killed elsewhere and dumped. A suspender belt was found wrapped around her neck.

The body count was now starting to rise and police searched for clues to the identity of the serial killer. On 15 April 1969, Dawn Basom, aged 13, was last seen leaving a house near the college campus. She was found dead the next day. She had been strangled with a black electrical wire and stabbed, and her breasts and buttocks were viciously slashed. A handkerchief and a piece of her blouse were stuffed in her mouth. She had been killed elsewhere, possibly in a deserted farmhouse where items of her clothing were later found.

Alice Kalom, 23, was the next victim. On 7 June 1969, she went to a party and was seen dancing with a young man with long hair. Her body was found near an abandoned barn. She had been raped and shot once in the head and stabbed twice in the chest. She had been killed elsewhere and her clothing was scattered around her body. Her shoes were missing.

Roxie Phillips, 17, disappeared on 30 June 1969. She had gone out to post a letter and meet a friend. A pair of boys looking for fossils found her body on 13 July in Pescadero Canyon just north of Carmel, California. She was badly decomposed and naked, except for a pair of sandals and a red-and-white cotton belt wrapped tightly around her neck. The body must have been carried to where it lay amid poison oak (Collins was treated in California that same week for poison oak). Some of Phillips’s possessions were found strewn along Route 68. A friend of hers mentioned she had met a ‘John’ driving a silver Oldsmobile, who was going to college in Michigan and who rode motorcycles. She didn’t think Roxie knew him, but she did admit that she had met him while he was cruising near Roxie’s house.

Karen Sue Beineman, 18, was last seen on 23 July getting on the back of a motorcycle with a young man. She was later found,
strangled, in a ravine. Her face was badly battered and she was naked. A piece of material was stuffed into her throat, her torn knickers were stuffed into her vagina and there were human hair clippings stuck to them. She had been killed elsewhere. Vital evidence found on her would ultimately lead police to her killer.

The witness told police that the young man with the motorcycle was John Norman Collins (b. 1947), who, at the time of the murder of Karen Beineman, was living at his uncle’s house. His uncle just happened to be a police officer and on learning that his nephew was possibly a suspect looked around the house and garage. He acknowledged that something was amiss. He went into his basement and scraped up some of the paint, finding a stain that looked like blood. Immediately he called in forensic experts. The stain turned out to be varnish. However, they were soon to be rewarded in their search; one of them noticed hair clippings near the washing machine. The uncle explained that his wife had cut the children’s hair. Aware of the odd clippings found on Beineman’s knickers, the police gathered some from the basement floor to compare to those already at the lab. Then they noticed tiny droplets that looked like blood. When tested, they did indeed prove to be blood. After later tests revealed that the bloodstains were human and that the hairs might be consistent with those on the knickers, blood was found on Collins’s car seat, even though his car had been thoroughly cleaned. A red-and-white piece of cotton fabric was also found. Forensic tests proved that the hair found in the garage was consistent with the hair found in Beineman’s knickers. The blood from the car was found to match the blood of Alice Kalom. The police decided to arrest Collins. However, he denied any knowledge of any murders. He was, however, later charged with the murder of Karen Sue Beineman.

Collins’s trial began on 30 June 1970 and, after deliberating for three days, the jury returned with a unanimous verdict that he was guilty of first-degree murder. He was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 20 years. He
went through three appeals and even changed his name to Chapman to get a transfer to Canada, where he would have been eligible for parole in 1985. He also tried to escape by tunnelling out of the prison. The murders of the other six girls remain officially unsolved. To this day, Collins still protests his innocence. Since then, a police officer involved in the case made public that there was other evidence never made public, linking Collins to the other murders. In the case of Mary Fleszar, missing from her effects was an Expo 67 Canadian silver dollar that she wore around her neck. Such an item was apparently found on Collins’s dresser, according to police, when his rooms were searched. He claimed that it was not his and denied that it had been in his room.

In the case of Joan Schell, she had last been seen getting into a car with three men. Collins’s room-mate, Arnie Davis, said that he was in that car with Collins and another man whose name he claimed not to know. Collins had allegedly told the girl that he would take her to Ann Arbor in his own car. Davis says that they left the apartment together and Collins had come back two and a half hours later to say that he had failed to have the sexual encounter with her that he’d hoped for. He had her red handbag with him, which he said she had left in his car. He went through the wallet, says Davis, and called her a bitch. There was also speculation by the police that Davis was actually there when Collins and the other man together raped and killed Schell in a car park. Later, Collins apparently asked Davis to hide a hunting knife; the type of knife that could have made the wounds found on Schell. Collins told someone that he did not know Schell, although several witnesses claimed to have seen them both together that night. He told someone else that he’d had a date with her but had stood her up. No one checked out his alibi of being at his mother’s that weekend, although someone said that he had overheard Collins on the phone to his mother, telling her that he was in some trouble. One person said that he talked obsessively about the wounds on Schell’s body, claiming that he
got the information from his uncle, a corporal on the state police force. However, Corporal Leik said he knew only what had been printed in the newspaper. He could not have told Collins the things he apparently knew.

The Dawn Basom murder was also mentioned. Young Dawn Basom lived across the street from an apartment complex where a girl whom Collins used to date lived. Dawn was strong and would not accept rides, even with men she knew. She was last seen near her home, walking along the road. A neighbour had seen two cars parked in front of a vacant house in their neighbourhood: a red Chevrolet and a blue Volkswagen. She had seen a young woman in the front seat of the red car sitting with a man with dark hair. Then both cars drove away. Many people believe that one man alone could not have forced Basom into a car, unless he had a gun. Glass particles on the soles of her shoes indicated that she was forced into the basement of an abandoned farmhouse, where it is thought she was killed. The link to Collins was his knowledge of the neighbourhood.

Collins was seen both on foot and on his motorcycle the day that Alice Kalom disappeared, not far from her apartment. Friends who stopped to talk with him claimed later to police that he had had a strange look on his face and seemed distant. He would not look them in the eye. Arnie Davis said that Collins had brought Kalom back to their apartment on 7 June. There was some commotion between them in Collins’s room and Kalom broke away and fled. According to Davis, Collins chased her. He returned later alone. When she was found, there was a boot print on her skirt that was later matched to a boot that Collins owned. Blood found later in Collins’s car and on his raincoat matched her type. The bullet found in her head could have come from a High Standard revolver, which Collins was said to have stolen a few months before in a burglary. The knife wounds were consistent with the hunting knife that Collins later told Davis to hide for him (as stated by Davis).

The body of Roxie Phillips had been dumped amid poison
oak; Collins had been treated for a case of poison oak. Also, 22 pubic hairs were found on one of his sweaters that were consistent with hers. If he had carried her over his shoulder in a state of rigor mortis, this would have accounted for the hairs being rubbed into his sweater. The one person who recalled the man that she and Roxie met gave the following information: his name was John, he was from Michigan, he was 5ft 11in tall with dark hair, he drove a silver-grey Oldsmobile, he was there with a friend in a camper, he was a college senior with the goal of being a teacher and he was in his twenties. That was a close match to Collins; too much to be coincidence.

On 25 November 2004, more than 35 years after these murders, there came a new development. DNA evidence came to light to connect a new suspect to one of the original murders. Gary Earl Leiterman, 62, was charged and convicted of the murder of Jane Mixer, the third victim in the series. Leiterman’s DNA had been found on Mixer’s knickers. There was now some serious doubt about whether Mixer had been one of Collins’s victims. When found, she was fully dressed, unlike the other victims. In addition, she had been shot twice in the head and not mutilated in any manner or sexually assaulted. However, other victims had been dumped within a few miles of the cemetery, so it still seemed possible; Mixer also had a stocking tied around her neck. Other victims were strangled as well. Leiterman was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. His lengthy appeal is still ongoing.

On 27 November 2006, it was announced that the same DNA technology had identified the killer of another girl, Eileen Adams, who had been linked to Collins. Semen found in the dead girl’s knickers was matched to the DNA of a man named Robert Bowman, already wanted by police in two states. He remained at large until April 2011 when, at the age of 75, he was finally arrested and charged with the murder. He came to trial in August 2011 and pleaded not guilty. The jury could not reach a verdict and a retrial was ordered. That took place in
October 2011; the jury in this trial found him guilty and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s (b. 1960) first brush with the law was in August 1982. He was arrested for exposing himself in public. Four years later, he was charged again with public exposure after two boys accused him of masturbating in public. This time he was sentenced to a year in prison, of which he served 10 months. In 1988, he was arrested for fondling a 13-year-old boy in Milwaukee. He served 10 months of a one-year sentence in a work-release camp and was required to register as a sex offender. He convinced the judge that he needed therapy and he was released on five-year probation on good behaviour. Shortly thereafter, he committed a string of murders that would not end until his arrest in 1991.

However, it later came to light that Dahmer had committed his first murder back in 1978, when he was only 18. He picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks when he was living with his parents in Ohio. They had sex and drank beer, but then Hicks wanted to leave. Dahmer couldn’t stand the thought of Hicks leaving, so he struck him over the head with a barbell, killing him instantly. To get rid of the body he cut it up, packaged it up in plastic rubbish bags and buried the bags in the woods. Several years later, he returned to where he had buried the body, dug it up and crushed the remains with a sledgehammer before scattering them in the woods.

It was not until September 1987 that Dahmer’s urge to kill manifested itself again. His victim was Steven Toumi. The two of them had been drinking heavily in one of the popular gay bars in Milwaukee, and went back to a hotel room. Dahmer apparently didn’t know how he killed him, but when he awoke, Toumi was dead and blood was on Dahmer’s mouth. Dahmer bought a large suitcase and stuffed the body inside. He then took the body to his grandmother’s basement, where he had sex
with it, masturbated on it, dismembered it and disposed of it in the rubbish.

Several months later, Dahmer selected his third victim, a 14-year-old Native American boy named Jamie Doxtator, who frequented the gay bars looking for sex. Dahmer’s MO was now firmly established. He would meet and select his prey at gay bars or bath houses. He would offer to take them home, and offer money for posing for photographs or they would simply enjoy some beer and videos. He would then drug them, strangle them, masturbate over or have sex with the dead body. He would then dismember the body and dispose of it, sometimes keeping the skull or other body parts as souvenirs.

Dahmer’s next victim, in late March 1988, was Richard Guerrero, a handsome young man of Mexican origin. Dahmer met him at a gay bar in Milwaukee. Guerrero met the same fate as the previous victims.

On 25 September 1988, Dahmer moved into an apartment on North 24th Street in Milwaukee. The very next day, he got into trouble. He offered a 13-year-old Laotian boy $50 to pose for some pictures. He drugged the boy and fondled him, but did not get violent or have intercourse with him. The boy’s parents realised there was something wrong with him and took him to the hospital where it was confirmed that he had been drugged. The police arrested Dahmer for sexual exploitation of a child and second-degree sexual assault. On 30 January 1989, Dahmer pleaded guilty, claiming that he had thought the boy was much older than he was. He later received a sentence of probation with a one-year sentence in a correction house with day release, meaning he could leave the prison in the daytime and go back at night. After 10 months, the judge awarded him an early release.