Yet Keyes based his book on newspaper reports, police suspicions, and notes kept by a professor at Eastern Michigan University. He did not speak to anyone in Collins’ family, Collins himself, or his attorneys. The book was as much speculative as factual.
Then former state trooper Earl James penned Catching Serial Killers, in which he described the physical, circumstantial, and testimonial evidence that tied Collins to each murder. Yet there were rumors that some evidence had been planted so that if Collins managed to get through the Beineman trial they could prosecute him for others. (I was personally told this by a reporter who said that a state trooper had said it to him while they were drinking together. I don’t know if it was true.)
The investigation relied on an innovative forensic technique (now discredited) called neutron activation analysis, in which a specimen was placed in a nuclear reactor and irradiated with a stream of neutrons. This treatment purportedly allowed scientists to measure and identify the sample’s smallest constituent particles. Hair samples from the victim’s clothing and clippings from the floor of the crime scene (Collins’ uncle’s home, and his uncle was a state trooper) were subjected to this technique, which influenced Collins’s conviction. He received a life sentence. He protested his innocence, and still does to this day. He was never charged in any other case.
Yet there were cold case developments. On November 25, 2004, more than thirty-five years later, Gary Earl Leiterman, 62, was charged with one count of murder in the death of Jane Mixer, the third victim. His DNA was lifted from the stocking found tied around her throat.
Leiterman’s trial began July 11, 2005, in Ann Arbor. The evidence from the cold case was controversial, and many trial watchers believed that there were too many problems for a conviction. Some of the police officers from the Collins investigation testified, and they admitted that three decades ago evidence had been poorly handled: Investigators did not wear gloves and some key items had been lost.
Leiterman's DNA had been included in the FBI's national database after he was convicted in 2002 of prescription fraud. When evidence from the Mixer case was tested, they got a hit. The odds that it had come from a Caucasian man other than Leiterman were calculated at 170 trillion to one. This alone would have been compelling, despite his denial that he knew Mixer, except for one thing: DNA from the body also connected another man to Mixer.
A spot of blood removed from Mixer’s hand had been tested and matched to John Ruelas, who was imprisoned in 2002 for the murder of his mother. However, Ruelas was only four years old at the time of the Mixer murder. It made little sense, aside from contamination in the lab while handling evidence, that he could have had anything to do with her murder. That's what Leiterman's defense team counted on.
The two-week trial ended on July 22 with a quick verdict, focused on the DNA. Five stains had been found on Mixer's pantyhose. They were of biological origin, but Stephen Milligan, who worked in the DNA section of the lab, said he was not able to identify them clearly as semen or blood, due to the way such evidence was stored in the 1960s. The samples from both cases (Leiterman and Ruelas) had been tested on the same day, but several technicians claimed they were analyzed in separate parts of the lab. To the charge that technicians had been careless, Milligan insisted that quality controls had been in place and it was not possible that they had somehow mixed the evidence. But the prosecutor never did explain how DNA evidence found on the victim could be linked to Ruelas.
Still, DNA was not the only issue. A documents expert had said that a phrase, "Muskegon — Mixer," found penned in a phone book in 1969 was most likely Leiterman's handwriting, although another expert contradicted this. It was also confirmed that Leiterman had owned a .22 handgun at the time of Mixer's death, but he reported it stolen in 1987, so it could not be fired for comparison tests. In addition, the bullet fragments were too degraded for a good comparison. Nevertheless, a merchant testified that Leiterman had purchased .22-caliber ammunition in February 1969, just before Mixer's death. How Leiterman came across Mixer was not clarified in media reports, but the assumption was that he’d noticed her ad requesting a ride and had arranged to pick her up.
Closing argument took up the morning on Friday, July 22, and at 4:15, the jury announced that they had a verdict: they found Leiterman guilty of first-degree murder. Leiterman received life in prison. All of his appeals have been denied. (I spoke with the judge involved and he was certain that justice was done.)
This conviction raised issues about the initial investigation and a possible assumption of guilt that might have caused police to overlook other suspects. Those same questions can be raised as well with the investigations of the other victims. In the event that investigators had decided at some point that the coed murders were all linked just because they were students on two closely related campuses, they might have failed to note how dissimilarities among the crimes (and there were some) might link them to different offenders rather than to a single perpetrator.
In fact, another case loosely linked to Collins was solved as well. Keyes had tentatively associated Collins with the murder of Eileen Adams, a high school freshman who was abducted from Toledo on December 19, 1967. Her frozen body was found in a field in Whiteford Township, Michigan, on January 30, 1968. It had been wrapped in a rug and mattress cover, and tied with an electrical cord. The girl had apparently been left alive but bound in such a way that her struggles to get free had tightened a telephone cord looped around her neck and tied to her ankles, which had strangled her. Her shoes and coat were missing, and she had been raped. Police believed that her abductor had held her somewhere for up to two weeks before leaving her in southeastern Michigan.
According to the Toledo Blade, Eileen’s father had dinner one day with an off-duty police officer, Sergeant Mike McGee. Under ordinary circumstances, they’d never have crossed paths, but McGee’s in-laws were in the habit of inviting the elderly from area nursing homes to join them; Eileen’s father was one of them, and he took the opportunity to tell McGee about his daughter’s still-unsolved murder. Shed been on her way by bust to her sister’s house, but never made it.
McGee alerted Lucas County cold case detectives, who’d received a grant to investigate murders and sexual assaults, so they decided to re-open the case. They looked at evidence from the crime scene and managed to isolate DNA from semen found on the girl’s underwear. They were also already aware of a potential suspect against whom to compare it.
In 1981, the former wife of Robert Baxter Bowman had alerted the police about her suspicions that he’d been involved. She’d seen the girl tied up, naked, in their basement. Bowman had also tried to drown their daughter. He was crazy! But she’d stayed quiet because he’d threatened to kill her, their daughter, and the girl. He’d then forced her to accompany him when he dumped the body in the field.
The police spoke with him, but had no evidence against him, so he was released. In the interim, DNA analysis was discovered and utilized in solving cold cases, many of them as old as this one.
In September 2006, cold case investigators found Bowman’s ex-wife and daughter in Florida, and since they had nothing of Bowman’s from which to acquire a DNA sample, they used a reverse paternity test to confirm the identification from the semen. Bowman’s last known residence, they then learned, was Riverside, California.
Charged with kidnap, rape, and aggravated murder, police from Ohio and California searched for him. His last contact with police in that state had been in 2003, when he was investigated for two warrants. A Michigan woman who saw Bowman’s photo in the newspaper told police that he’d tried picking her up when she was a girl, so it’s possible that he committed other crimes against children as well.
In 2008, Bowman was arrested near Palm Springs. He was homeless. Details indicated that Bowman had kidnapped Eileen and held her captive, bound like Christ, for several days in his basement. He had delusions about being Jesus Christ, and he had several dolls with nails in their heads, like Eileen. After a
mistrial, Bowman was finally convicted in 2011.
Since John Collins has been convicted of just one murder as of this writing, aside from Mixer the other cases remain officially unsolved.
THE BABYSITTER
MARK STEBBINS LEFT THE AMERICAN LEGION HALL in Ferndale, just after noon on a cold February 15 in 1976. It was a Sunday and the twelve-year-old wanted to go home and watch a movie. But Mark vanished somewhere along the three blocks between the American Legion Hall on Livernois and his house.
By 10 PM that night, Mark’s frantic mother had called the police. Officers asked for a description. When she last saw him, she said, he was dressed in blue jeans, a hooded blue parka, rubber boots, and a red sweatshirt. He had blue eyes and blond hair.
A search was launched. By the time morning arrived, everyone believed that Mark had been kidnapped.
Around 11:45 AM on February 19, a businessman walked to a Southfield mall to visit the drugstore. He crossed through a parking lot and spotted something that looked like a kid lying on the ground in a fetal position. He was dressed in jeans, a red sweatshirt, and blue parka. The hood was pulled up. The man called the police.
It was the missing Mark Stebbins. An autopsy found two lacerations on the boy’s scalp, at the back of his head, but he’d died from being smothered. From bruises on his wrists, it appeared that Mark had been bound in some manner, and this suggested he might have been held captive. The coroner estimated that Mark had been dead about eight hours. Oddly, he appeared to have been bathed and his clothing washed and ironed before he was dumped. Such behavior suggested that the offender might have known Mark and felt badly about the treatment.
The pathologist also found evidence of sexual assault. Mark had been sodomized, possibly with an object. The police believed they were looking for a pedophile.
Spring and summer passed without significant progress in the investigation. Winter settled in. Then on January 2, 1977, Kristine Mihelich went out during the mid-afternoon to visit a 7-Eleven store in Berkley. She did not come home. Her mother called around to Kristine’s friends, but no one had seen her. By 6 PM, the police were notified. Photographs of Kristine were copied and distributed. A clerk at the 7-Eleven on Twelve Mile Road recalled a pixie-like girl who resembled Kristine coming in. He thought she’d purchased a movie magazine, but he hadn’t seen her leave.
Days melted into a week. Leads dead-ended. Then a mailman was delivering mail in Franklin Village on January 21. There in plain view, in a snow-filled ditch, was the body of a young girl, face-up, with her arms folded over her chest. She wore the same clothes as the missing girl described in the papers. He notified the police.
Identified as Kristine, the body was partially frozen and the best determination indicated that she’d been in place for about a day. Cause of death was asphyxiation: like Mark Stebbins, she’d been smothered. There was an indentation from a car’s bumper in the snow bank near her body, but officers failed to take measurements. Someone did take a photograph. Car manufacturers looked at it and said it was the bumper of a Pontiac LeMans or Buick Skylark.
Kristine’s clothing indicated that she’d been undressed and redressed, because several items had been placed on her incorrectly. Kristine’s parents said that she usually tied her blouse in back, but her blouse was now tied in front. Her pants were tucked inside her boots, which her parents said she would never have done. Her clothes were clean, despite apparent captivity for two weeks, which indicated that her captor had washed them. She also seemed to have eaten well.
Police now wondered if there had been a third victim that they hadn’t included. Just two weeks before Kristine’s abduction, on December 22, another girl, also from Oakland County, had been killed.
JILL ROBINSON ARGUED WITH HER MOTHER that evening in their Royal Oak home. Furious, Jill put a blanket, some clothes and some toiletries into a small denim backpack. Retrieving her bicycle, she got on and rode away. Someone saw her, in her bright orange jacket and blue knit cap, on Gardenia Avenue, alone. It seemed absurd for a child to be out on a bike on a winter night in Michigan, but no one asked her what she was doing. She got as far as Main Street, where her bike was found the next day. But Jill had vanished.
On December 26, four days after she’d left, Jill’s body was found on a shoulder along Interstate 75, north of Sixteen Mile Road near Big Beaver Road, in Troy. This was fifteen miles from where her bike was found. There at the scene, someone had aimed a 12-gauge shotgun at her face as she lay on the ground to blow off the top of her head.
Because Jill had been shot instead of smothered, was female, and bore no sign of sexual trauma, detectives had not linked her murder with that of Mark Stebbins. With the murder of Kristine, they had to rethink this, especially because Jill’s clothing had been washed and pressed. It also appeared that she’d been bathed. From the time that had elapsed between her disappearance and murder, it was clear that her killer had held her alive for several days.
Journalists dubbed this killer “the Babysitter,” because of the care he seemed to take with the victims. Homicide detectives from several jurisdictions met with county and state officials to form a plan. The decision was made to organize leads and suspects via a mainframe computer.
Having two of the three murders so close together in time gave the task force a sense of urgency. This perpetrator apparently felt immune, since he’d gotten away with at least three murders and was dumping his victims where they – and he – could easily be seen.
Despite all the media attention that warned parents to watch their children, the Babysitter, or the Oakland County Child Killer (OCCK), found his next opportunity in the middle of March.
Timothy King was 11. Slender, with reddish hair and freckles, he’d borrowed some spare change from his sister before taking off on his skateboard just before 8 PM to buy candy at a drugstore on Maple Road in Birmingham. By one account, he asked his sister to leave the front door ajar so he could get back in, because he knew she was going out. Then he put on his red nylon hockey jacket and left. He arrived at the store, made his purchase, and went out the back door into a parking lot shared with a grocery store.
When Tim’s parents came home at 9 PM, they found the door ajar and the house empty. Tim’s sister was with friends and his older brother was babysitting. Aware of the danger to children Tim’s age, the Kings called around, but no one had seen him. They drove around the neighborhood, looking for him. Tim had vanished about six miles from where the third victim had been abducted.
The police sprang into action. They conducted a house-to-house search and set up roadblocks. A witness who’d been in the drugstore parking lot said that around 8:30, she’d seen a boy in a red nylon jacket with sports emblems. He’d been talking to a man who stood next to a dark blue compact car that looked like an AMC Gremlin with a white racing stripe along the side. The man had mutton-chop sideburns, bushy hair, and looked to be between 25 and 35. He was white, but with a dark complexion.
No other leads turned up and no blue Gremlin surfaced on the roads. The task force began to contact all local owners of this type of car.
Tim’s mother, Marion King, wrote an open letter to the kidnapper and published it in The Detroit News. She begged him to release her son unharmed. She also promised to give Tim his favorite meal: Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Six days after Tim had disappeared, his body was found in a ditch in Livonia. His skateboard had been placed nearby. The body was still warm, so it had not been there long. The autopsy, which determined cause of death to be smothering, turned up the remains of his last meal: fried chicken.
Once again, this pedophile had kept the boy captive for several days, as Tim had been killed about six to eight hours before his body was discovered. He’d been bathed, like the others. In fact, he’d been thoroughly scrubbed, including under his fingernails. It appeared that his wrists had been bound. There was also evidence of sexual assault with an object, like with Mark Stebbins.
Aside from the treatment of the victims, o
ther factors indicated that all four victims were in the same series of murders that could be attributed to a single perpetrator (although there was also talk of a possible “wolf pack” of pedophiles). The victims were around the same age and had all been alone when grabbed. Two had been kidnapped on a Sunday afternoon, and the other two on a Wednesday. All were taken during winter months and all had been kept for some period before they were killed. The boys had been sexually assaulted. Their bodies had been placed in areas where they’d be quickly found rather than left to decompose in a secluded spot. Three had been smothered. A few hair strands were found on the boys, along with white animal hairs, but the state of analysis at the time could do little with this potential evidence without also having a suspect for comparison.
There were no more leads. The task force was disbanded in 1978 without solving the mystery and arresting a perpetrator. However, this case has been revisited whenever new developments or technologies offer a means to look at it again.
SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED as persons of interest.
A key suspect was Chris Busch, the son of Harold Busch, an executive at General Motors who lived in Bloomfield Township. Chris had driven a blue Chevy Vega with a white stripe along the side. Just before Mark Stebbins’ abduction, Busch had been in police custody for possession of child pornography. He was part of a group of men who’d been assaulting boys. Among them was James Gunnels, who inexplicably continued to hang out with Busch.
Gunnels was involved in a number of property crimes and there is some suspicion that Busch might have used him to lure younger boys. Gunnels was 16 at the time of the OCCK murders. On March 19, while Tim King might still have been alive, a woman who knew that Busch was a sex offender called police to report that she'd seen him with several boys near his family's cottage on Ess Lake. Tim King’s body was found shortly thereafter.
The Murder Game (Michigan, Notorious USA) Page 4
