By Rich Retyi

ANN ARBOR, MI - Three ordinary boys from stable homes, all recent graduates of Ypsilanti High School. One studying in college and two with stable jobs. Not your typical killers.

That Sunday night in September 1951, the trio met a pair of girls and they got drunk on Miller High Life outside a cornfield in Milan. The girls weren't wild enough for the boys, so they dropped them off around 11 p.m. and went looking for something to do.

They headed for Ann Arbor, where one of the boys liked to cruise deserted streets and steal hubcaps. They stopped near St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, on a dark road where Pauline Campbell lived. One of them grabbed a rubber mallet out of the back seat.

Campbell was headed home from her shift as a St. Joe's nurse when the first blow knocked her to the ground. It's unclear how many more were delivered before the boys peeled off into the darkness, leaving her behind near death.

Driving back to to Ypsilanti, they ransacking the purse they had taken from Campbell. A cigarette lighter. A watch. One dollar and fifty cents.

She died in the hospital that night--probably around the time the three boys pulled into a truck stop in Ypsilanti, bought 94 cents worth of gas with the stolen dollar fifty, plus sandwiches and coffee to help them sober up.

One of the boys bragged about killing the nurse and word got to the police. The boys were arrested and by 4:30 a.m. each had signed a typed confession.

They were tried and convicted while former high school classmates watched from the gallery and their three mothers sat weeping in the courtroom.

Two of the boys were sentenced to life terms. A third got 22 years. The town of Ypsilanti was shocked by the news of the young killers and people in Ann Arbor and surrounding towns blamed lax parenting for allowing the trio to run wild.

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Editors Note: This post is part of an occasional series in collaboration with the Ann Arbor Stories podcast and the Ann Arbor District Library.