MATURE CONTENT WARNING: This story contains descriptions of gruesome crime scenes.

The DNA matched.

Investigators had long suspected John Norman Collins of killing young women and girls in the Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor areas in the late 1960s. But back then, DNA profiling didn't exist, and authorities only proved Collins killed 18-year-old Karen Beineman.

So when DNA matching Collins turned up on Alice Kalom's clothing, it was significant.

The DNA evidence, combined with what Collins said in his prison interviews with detectives and what he wrote in never-before-published letters to his second cousin in Canada, refocused attention on Collins as a suspect in some of the unsolved cases.

Photos including booking and evidence files of John Norman Collins. Michigan State Police

And when two now-retired Michigan State Police detectives questioned Collins face-to-face, his denials began to unravel.

“I didn’t go into it thinking that he’d admit to the murders," retired Sgt. Eric Schroeder, 54, said in extensive interviews with the Free Press. "But what you want him to do is admit things that you can investigate. You want to get him to talk."

Yet, investigators added, as Collins and any other potential suspects age, the window of time is closing on whether the cases can be prosecuted to bring justice and resolution for the victims and their families. Moreover, they added, the evidence from two Michigan victims had yet to be DNA-tested.

In a new twist just this week, Collins revised his story yet again. In an email to the Free Press sent this week, Collins maintains he is innocent. He also tries to discredit his cousin for disclosing his private letters, suggesting what he wrote is mostly fiction.

Collins adds: "I like to believe that I still have some 'INTEGRITY.' "

Still, in interviews with detectives, Collins described meeting Kalom, 21, of Portage, and taking her on a motorcycle-riding date just before she was slain. He also had a new story to tell them about Beineman.

And, Schroeder said, when they mentioned Dawn Basom, the 13-year-old victim killed in 1969, it touched a nerve. An enraged Collins responded by forcefully asserting: "I didn’t kill that baby!"

On top of that, Collins, in two 2013 letters to his cousin John Chapman, revealed in his own words what he said "really happened" all those years ago, confirming details from the cases and recanting his claim that he never knew his victim.

"I may be off on the day/time etc. because it didn't happen as you would think it did," Collins wrote to his cousin, setting him up for a lengthy explanation that revealed he had lied for years. "It all began the day before I met Karen B."

MORE IN THIS SERIES

THE EVIDENCE LOCKER: What police discovered at 7 Michigan murder crime scenes

CHAPTER 1: Never-before-published letters, interviews offer clues in infamous Michigan murders

CHAPTER 2: Murders of Michigan women still unsolved 50 years later — but cops had eye on 1 man

CHAPTER 3: 'Handsome' EMU student was unlikely serial killer suspect. Letters, interviews reveal dark side.

COLLINS' LETTER: John Norman Collins — one of Michigan's most notorious killers — pens letter to the Free Press

Hints of a dark side

John Collins, by most accounts, grew up to be a good student and a great athlete.

Born in Windsor, Canada, Collins is the youngest of three, with an older brother and sister, Jerry and Gail. Precisely what caused his parents — Richard and Loretta — to split up is unclear.

Loretta Chapman, an American, then moved with her three children across the Detroit River. She married William Collins. The family took his surname. But, again, there were marital problems, and the couple divorced.

Show caption Hide caption Relatives of John Norman Collins, 22, charged with murder in the death of Karen Sue Beineman, arrive at his pre-trial hearing in Ypsilanti, Mich., Aug.... Relatives of John Norman Collins, 22, charged with murder in the death of Karen Sue Beineman, arrive at his pre-trial hearing in Ypsilanti, Mich., Aug. 7, 1969. From left: Jerry Collins, brother; Gail Mason, sister; and Loretta Collins, mother, escorted by an attorney, Hale Saph III. Detroit Tribune, Associated Press

She supported herself by waiting tables at a Detroit restaurant.

News articles described John Collins as a square-jawed, "handsome All-American who seemed to be leading a textbook college career." He wrestled, played basketball, baseball, football and skied. He planned to become a teacher.

Collins graduated from St. Clement High, a Catholic school in Center Line. He went to Central Michigan University, then transferred to Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. In college, he drank beer, joined Theta Chi fraternity and dated often.

He also did some modeling, appearing in a bodybuilding magazine bare-chested with rippling muscles. And Collins loved motorcycles — a detail that later would come up at trial and decades later in the prison interviews with detectives.

At the time of his arrest, his high school girlfriend, Burnadetta Hudak, described Collins as polite with "manners galore," opening the door for a lady and standing when a woman or older person entered the room.

She also hinted he had another side: Collins was moody and seemed "mad most of the time."

Stabbed in the heart

But in 2005, when DNA and other evidence convicted Gary Leiterman of killing 23-year-old Jane Mixer, it cleared Collins of suspicion in that case. It sent state police looking at the other unsolved cases.

They wanted to see whether they could find a DNA match with other victims. They focused on Kalom, who, like Mixer, also was shot; Basom, the youngest of the cases, and Mary Fleszar, the first woman slain.

While DNA matched in Kalom's case, no DNA was found on evidence connected to Basom of Ypsilanti or Fleszar, 19, of Willis. Evidence from Joan Schell, 20, of Plymouth and Maralynn Skelton, 16, of Romulus, has yet to be tested, the detectives said.

Alice Kalom, 23, of Portage went missing on June 7, 1969 and was found dead near North Territorial Road and U.S. 23 in Michigan, close to an abandoned barn. DFP file

There were no recent updates for the slaying of 17-year-old Roxie Phillips, who was slain in Salinas, California, law enforcement officials said. However, they acknowledged, DNA did lead to a plea in a nearly 30-year-old murder of a California teen.

Kalom, who graduated from the University of Michigan not long before she was killed, was described as a "wholesome-looking girl" with "a vivid imagination." Her birthday was on Christmas, and she sought to get into U-M's graduate school for social work.

Social work, she wrote in her application, would help her better understand social relationships.

But on June 7, 1969, she went out to a party in Ann Arbor and never came home. Her body was found two days later in a field. She had been slashed across the throat, shot in the head and stabbed in the heart.

Then-Gov. William Milliken promised to leave "no stone unturned" to find her killer.

What would Collins deny?

In the past decade, prison records show that Collins has had only one misconduct report.

In 2011, a search of Collins' cell uncovered shards of metal, one of which was shaved to a point. The next year, he started tutoring inmates on how to pass the GED exam, the test for a high-school equivalency diploma.

Detectives recalled that's about the same time when they visited Marquette to confront Collins about the new DNA evidence that linked him to Kalom and to try to turn over some new stones.

Retired detective Sgt. Jim Bundshuh — the 53-year-old detective whose name rhymes with gumshoe and goes by the nickname Bunny because it's easier to remember — said he interviewed Collins three times.

"We were trying to figure out — not just on the Kalom case but all the cases — was, was he to the point he wanted to talk?" Bundshuh recalled during interviews with the Free Press at his Adrian home. "Was he still going to deny everything?"

On one visit, the detectives brought Collins photos of his beloved motorcycle. That seemed to make Collins happy. The detectives made special arrangements to allow Collins to keep one of the pictures with him in prison.

John Norman Collins loved motorcycles, a detail that later would come up at trial and decades later in prison interviews with State Police detectives. Michigan State Police

But Bundshuh — who has a tattoo on his arm that says, unus veritas, Latin for "one truth" — noted that throughout their conversations, Collins seemed to have a lot of rehearsed answers, as if he had been thinking about what to say for years.

Collins talks to detectives

Bundshuh remembered Collins cried when asked about Kalom, saying they dated.

"He suggested they had met within a day or so before she was murdered, and they had gone out scrambling on a motorcycle," Bundshuh said. "What you have to remember is he had denied everything about this, knowing her before that."

Bundshuh added that the new information, along with the DNA match, supported that Collins was the "perpetrator in that case." It also fits with previously reported information: A witness said he owned a .22 and blood was found in his car.

It wasn't enough evidence for the state police to recommend new charges, but it was enough to convince Bundshuh.

"In my mind," the detective said, "the Kalom case is solved."

Collins also admitted to something else.

Mug shots and suspect sketches from the evidence case files on John Norman Collins. Michigan State Police

In the 1970 trial, Joan Goshe, the owner of Wig's by Joan in Ypsilanti, testified that she saw Collins and Beineman — the Eastern Michigan University coed from Grand Rapids — outside the shop. Beineman, she said, went in the store, purchased a brown hairpiece, and left with Collins on his motorcycle.

While they were in the store, Free Press reports at the time said Goshe heard Beineman comment: "I've done only two foolish things in my life — buy this wig and accept a ride from a stranger on a motorcycle."

In one of the prison interviews, Schroeder said Collins confirmed he picked up Beineman on her way to the shop. He took her there, waited for her — and then, they ended up at his uncle’s house.

Later, Arnie Davis, Collins' roommate, showed up. Collins claims he left the house alone, but came back and found Beineman dead. The detectives said they tracked Davis to New York but were never able to interview him.

It seemed, Schroeder said, as if Collins was describing what "he had done himself."

Collins, in his recent letter to the Free Press, praised Schroeder as "a good man" who "kept his 'Word' to me." He added that he "liked him and thought well of him," but heard "he was having some HEALTH ISSUES" and asked, "if you ever come in contact with him again kindly tell him that I wish him nothing BUTT Good Health the rest of his retired years."

Letters to his cousin

Collins also wrote two letters in 2013 that gave specific accounts of how two of the victims — Kalom and Beineman — died, and his involvement with them.

In the letters, Collins accuses Davis.

Greg Fournier — who attended EMU and wrote a book, "Terror in Ypsilanti: John Norman Collins Unmasked," and blog, Fornology.com — spent years gathering information with his researcher Ryan Place.

Fournier said Collins' cousin, John Chapman, gave him the letters, but he decided against including them in his 2016 book. Fournier — who now lives in Santee, California, near San Diego — added he also was never able to talk to Davis, but is convinced Collins is guilty.

"He reveals himself by what he doesn't say, as much as by what he says," Fournier said of Collins. He added the letters appeared to be "a desperate attempt to convince his cousin of his innocence, and the ultimate end game would be to get a Canadian prison transfer."

Fournier, who offered the letters to the Free Press, speculated that Collins blamed Davis as revenge for testifying against him at trial.

Chapman said he and his cousin had been writing to each other since 1982 when Chapman was 10.

"We've never met," said Chapman, 47, of Mississauga, Canada, near Toronto. Until he was an adult, Chapman said, he didn't know the full extent of the accusations against Collins. "My parents never told me anything about the crimes."

After those two letters, they quit writing.

50 years later, investigation into Michigan Murders leads to DNA revelations Through interviews with John Norman Collins and DNA evidence, Michigan State Police look to solve the cold case Michigan Murders Kimberly P. Mitchell, Detroit Free Press

Clues in the correspondence

The typed, single-spaced letters Collins wrote to his cousin are sprinkled with words in all caps, perhaps for emphasis, and idiosyncratically misspelled words. Both letters begin, "Hello John, = : )," and Collins ends one calling Chapman "the Best Little Brother ever!"

In 30 years of letters, Chapman said, Collins exhibited a domineering personality, expressed misogynistic views, and seemed to have "underlying anger toward his mother."

Chapman said when he was a teen, he asked Collins for dating advice. Collins, Chapman recalled, give him explicit, sexually graphic instructions on what to do with a girl, including suggestions that some women "like it rough."

Chapman's theory: Collins was unhappy with his mother's marriage choices, blamed her for taking him away from his father, and took out his hatred for his mom on women like her: attractive, brunette, smart, independent and who rejected him.

The first letter, dated Oct. 22, Collins says he has much to reveal and doesn't "know where to begin." He tries to give his cousin a glimpse of prison life. He says he wasn't allowed to keep Polaroid photos of his late mother.

After a couple of pages, he hints at more.

"Okay John, let me give you a little prelude to the 'STORY' that ended with me in here for the past 45 yrs. When I was first arrested my Mother asked me if I had done this and I told her 'NO' and she never asked me about it again. I wasn't until our LAST VISIT together that I told her the WHOLE STORY."

A ride to the wig shop

After her last prison visit, Chapman said, his aunt told the rest of the family her son confessed to killing Beineman, and after she died, left instructions in her will to give Collins nothing "for reasons that John is all too well aware of."

In the first letter, Collins explains why he denied knowing Beineman

One reason, Collins says, is because, in prison, snitches and rats are killed.

Collins then offers a similar account, but in more detail, that he gave the detectives.

The Detroit Free Press on Sunday, November 2, 1969. Detroit Free Press

He writes he ran into Beineman, "she SMILED AT ME and WAVED her hand." He gave her a ride to the wig shop, and then she rode with Collins to his uncle's house to feed the dog.

But, the dog, Prince, had a "NOT SO FRIENDLY STREAK," and Collins warned Beineman he would bite her and to "STAY BACK."

Collins and Beineman chatted, and then they "started making out."

Collins writes he "got her shorts off, BUTT, no further," and he "did not have intercourse with her." She told him she had a boyfriend in Center Line. "We fooled around a little more and I ejaculated on her panties. She wasn't upset with me and we got dressed."

Then, he said, Davis showed up in a car.

'I saw a naked woman'

Collins introduced Beineman and Davis and offered Beineman the option of riding home on his bike with him or going in the car with Davis. She chose the car. Then, Collins writes, he went to a bike shop to pay a bill, returned to his apartment, got a burger, and writes, "it gets a little FOGGY."

After 10 p.m., he claims an upset-looking Davis said he "needed to talk to me."

Davis "told me that 'SOMETHING' happened at my uncle's house and that I needed to see it. I asked him what was wrong and he just said something like, 'Come and see.' " Collins writes he figured Davis just "made a mess" at the house.

At his uncle's house, they went downstairs. Davis pointed to the laundry room.

Eastern Michigan University Ski Laufen club vice president John Collins, second from left, sits next to club president Arnie Davis in this club photo from 1967. Detroit Free Press file

"When I turned on the light and looked around, I saw a naked woman," Collins writes. "I looked at her for a moment. I walked over to see if he was playing a JOKE on me and had a dummy there to scare me. We have been known to play those kinds of PRANKS on each other in the Fraternity."

But it wasn't a prank. It was Beineman.

Collins says he vomited in the laundry tub. He cleaned the sink and washed his face.

Davis "told me that he tried to make a move on her and she resisted," Collins writes. "He said he kept trying and she said she was going to call the police and he SNAPPED and choked her. He told me that he tried to get her into his car, BUTT, he couldn't because of the dog barking in the driveway."

Collins writes he knew he "couldn't leave her in my uncle's basement" because "he was a State Trooper for God's sake." Instead, they put the body in the trunk, rolled it into a ravine, and returned to the house to clean up. But Collins says Davis did something that would "lead right back to me."

Davis put the panties — which, from Collins' account, had his DNA on them — inside Beineman's body.

'What really happened'

In the Oct. 27 letter, there was more.

Collins writes that Davis had a "twin brother" with a car fitting the description of the vehicle a witness saw giving another victim, Joan Schell, a ride in.

Collins adds Davis admitted to going back to Beineman's body the night the sheriff's deputies had it and quietly tried to set a trap for the killer by replacing it with a mannequin, which matches police accounts of the failed sting.

Collins also says he met Kalom at an Ann Arbor bar and made a date for Saturday morning to go for a motorcycle ride.

Crime scene photos from the Kalom case. Crime scene photos from the Kalom case. Crime scene photos from the Kalom case. Michigan State Police

They met at 11 or 11:30 a.m., in front of the U-M student union, chatted and went to Burger King for a bite to eat. Next, they went to "a really PRETTY SPOT that was on the outskirts of campus," which "led to sex."

Kalom invited Collins to a party in Ann Arbor, which Collins claims he wasn't sure whether he would go.

Instead, Collins said he lent Davis, who was having car trouble, his keys — and he went to Ann Arbor.

When Davis returned home, he told Collins he went to a party and had an accident in his car. He spilled a drink on the seat, reached for something to clean it up and grabbed a cloth wrapped around the .22 caliber pistol that "we had been shooting the day before."

But, a "cop car pulled through the driveway and he got nervous."

Davis wrapped the gun in a blanket and tossed them both into a garbage bin.

After Kalom's body was found, Collins writes, Davis "admitted to killing her."

Collins also writes state police saw him in prison because they found his semen was inside Kalom.

Collins ends the letter saying it is the first time he had written down his account of events, and if "I had it to do all over again I'd probably take a different route. You can't change the past, BUTT, you can HOPE for a better future."

'I knew he was guilty'

Former Washtenaw County Sheriff Doug Harvey said he wishes that he could have solved the other homicide cases. But back then, Harvey, 88, said there was no DNA profiling and just not enough clues for charges.

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There was a moment, though, Harvey recalled, he thought Collins would confess.

That seems to correlate with a memory Collins describes in his long letters. Collins details his discomfort at being locked up in the Washtenaw County jail before his trial and his steadfast refusal to "allow them to BREAK ME."

In Harvey's account, Collins came close.

"I started talking to him like a father would talk to his son," Harvey recalled, telling Collins: "You’ve got a serious problem, son, and we’ve got a good case. You need help desperately."

Collins became emotional.

"Pretty soon, John started crying," the former sheriff said. "He starts shaking."

Collins was ready to confess, but without a witness, the former sheriff said it might not stick.

Show caption Hide caption Former Washtenaw County Sheriff Doug Harvey, 88, of Whitmore Lake, Mich. reflects on his time as the sheriff when John Norman Collins was captured and... Former Washtenaw County Sheriff Doug Harvey, 88, of Whitmore Lake, Mich. reflects on his time as the sheriff when John Norman Collins was captured and convicted of the murder of Karen Sue Beineman in 1970 and suspected of seven other female killings, at his home on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019. Kimberly P. Mitchell, Detroit Free Press

So Harvey called the prosecutor and Collins' attorney. Then, he waited. About 20 minutes later, Harvey said, Collins' attorney arrived and consulted with his client, who, by then, had time to calm down and regain his composure. The moment for a confession, Harvey said, had passed.

Decades later, Fournier showed the former sheriff Collins' letters.

"I said, 'I knew it. I knew he was guilty as sin,' " Harvey recalled thinking when he read Collins' own words. "This is what I knew deep down in my heart, and I felt so good knowing, without question, this is our guy."

The killer's latest version

Still, in the police interviews and the letters, Collins steered clear of outright confessing to killing anyone, and in his email to the Free Press last week, he claims he has been exploited and wronged — that in a way, he is the victim.

Collins says he didn't expect the 2013 letters "would become such a 'FOCAL POINT' after 50 years," and accuses Fournier of using his cousin to "dig-up some dirt on me" and garner media attention for himself. Collins adds Fournier's scheme prompted him to think: "TWO can play this 'GAME!' "

John Norman Collins. Michigan Department of Corrections

Fournier denied Collins' accusations, noting that the Free Press asked him for the letters.

Collins criticizes former sheriff Harvey, accusing him of having an obsession with his mother. Collins asserts his innocence by saying that if the sheriff had caught the killer the night of the stakeout, "I wouldn't be here now."

The email, detectives said, is characteristic of Collins, full of denials and rationalizations.

It also makes verbal jabs.

The failed sting caused Harvey substantial public embarrassment, and bringing it up again, Harvey said, was Collins' way of mocking him, as if he were saying: "Ha. Ha. I was there and you didn't get me!"

Collins rejected any association with the slaying of the 13-year-old, just like in his police interviews.

"I would 'NEVER' hurt a CHILD...EVER!!!" he writes.

Collins ends his email, with a request: "You can say whatever you want about me" but leave "my Dear Mother" out. "I will ALWAYS Love her! She was a Kind & Loving person to all that knew her." He adds: "Now I hope that you will simply leave me alone."

What happens next?

This summer, as Bundshuh prepared to retire, he gathered the more-than-50-year-old files that he had become familiar with so he could ship them to the Michigan State Police headquarters in Dimondale so the state can digitize them.

The Michigan Attorney General and the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office confirmed no litigation is in the works, and to prosecute the cases, investigators would need more evidence. Moreover, if Collins believes he was wrongly accused, he can request a review.

Chapman said he is convinced of his cousin's guilt, and in his last letters, he was "confessing by not really confessing."

"The thing with my cousin, as much as I hate to say this, is, he is narcissistic," Chapman said. "He likes to have control over what is happening."

In his email to the Free Press, Collins acknowledged he has no control over what people say about him, and that's why he refuses interviews.

By asserting his innocence, Chapman said, Collins can deny the surviving family members — and the rest of society — a resolution. And as long as Collins denies he's a killer, he still has control — even from prison.

It's one thing, Chapman said, Collins can take with him to the grave.

And unless authorities uncover more evidence sometime soon, he just might.

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.

The Michigan Murders team

Frank Witsil is a staff writer at the Detroit Free Press. He spent five months reporting on the state police investigation; reviewing books on John Norman Collins and serial killers; interviewing dozens of detectives, witnesses, experts and others connected with the case; and sifting through hundreds of archived newspaper articles, police photos and records and court documents.

Melanie Maxwell has been a picture editor at the Free Press since 2018. She researched the key suspect’s past, dug through hundreds of evidence photos and newspaper clippings and worked with Witsil to uncover new details in the cases. She also orchestrated the evidence locker.

Kimberly P. Mitchell is a staff photojournalist that joined the Detroit Free Press in 2005. She worked alongside Witsil and Maxwell interviewing key figures into the investigation of the Michigan Murders cold case to produce a documentary video and portraits.

Maryann Struman is Freep Now director at the Detroit Free Press and project leader. A veteran Detroit journalist, she joined the Free Press in 2012.