True Crime All The Time - John Norman Collins

Episode Date: January 29, 2018

John Norman Collins was a student at Eastern University on his way to becoming a teacher. He had been a popular high school student, on the honor role, and a team captain in multiple sports. In 1967, a student at Eastern Michigan would be found murdered. This would be the first in a series of murders that would become known as "The Michigan Murders". A serial killer was on the loose and he would ultimately be identified as John Norman Collins.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the childhood and early life of John Norman Collins. What happened in his formative years to make a seemingly normal boy/man commit such a terrible series of murders? And did Collins actually commit all of the murders that have been laid at his feet?You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com. We have new TCATT logo merchandise in stock.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

everyone and welcome to episode 63 of the true crime all the time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Give me what's going on today. What's happening, man. Man, I'm good. Are you good? I actually am. I'm feeling good. Not sick. Nobody in the family is sick. Even with this crazy weather going up and down, up and down. Yeah, negative all the way up to like 60 degrees. I don't know, man. I can't figure out from wearing my shorts today or? It's been crazy. Yeah. But nobody's sick. which is a good thing. How about you?

Good, man. Happy to be here. Jamming some tunes on my way over. Were you? Yeah. You ever do that thing when the, I don't know what it's called, when the music starts? It's called when the music starts? No, but you know, the lead in and then the lyrics come.

Okay. That gap? Yeah. It's, there's got to be an official name for it. I'm sure there is. I'm not a radio disc jockey. It's like almost every time I think the, I start, I start, because I know, you know the song, so you kind of singing with it and you start before the lyrics start.

You're like, shit. I've never done that. You never started before the X-A-was too soon? Now, what I have done is switch stations in the middle of a song. Yeah. And, you know, it'll be a song that has like verses that are similar, but just a little bit different. Oh, yeah. And so you get the words wrong because you don't know which verse you're singing.

I've done that. I get the words wrong all the time. You? Oh, that's not. No way. No. Mike Gibson? The famous one is Dream Weaver.

Oh, I love Dream. And I always thought it was Jane Weaver. You thought it was... Have you ever heard that? You remember, is it Robert Palmer? Did that Addicted to Love? Yeah. And I think the lyric goes, might as well face it.

I'm addicted to love. Right. Well, forever, I and myself and my friends, we were saying... We thought it said, my anus wears faces. My anus wears faces. That's what I thought it said. I didn't know what it meant. I was just singing.

Good thing you didn't get tattooed like that. Yeah. All right, Gibbs. We've got a lot of new Patreon supporters, which is awesome. Let's run through them. We have Fiona B. Just B? Just B.

The letter B. The letter B. No B. E. Nope. Stephanie Hood came out at our highest level. Yeah. Nina Markovic.

John Monica. John and Monica? No, just John Monica. Okay. Candice Payne. M. Kershaw. So that's our second M. E.M.

Yeah. Like I call my daughter. That's a good name to have. William Faltermeyer. Yeah, he's a vampireish person. Why do you think he's a vampire? Say the last name again. Fultmermeier.

There you go. Why do words like name stick with you as like, it's almost like you get a vision in your head when you hear a name? He's got relatives in Transylvania. That's what you're saying. Okay. We had Sammy Keneagle. Yeah, related to evil Knievel. Evil Kniegel.

Lauren Garcia. We had Jesus. Jesus. Or? No. Or? No. Keep it, Jesus.

Jesus. Oh, you went there. And if that's the case, we got that going for us. Well, but. Thanks, Jesus. My money is on Jesus. We had Sean Wozencraft, Nikki Thatcher. Nikki.

Elizabeth Wolfinger. We had Stephanie Gunderson came out at our highest level. Yeah, I've seen her name around. Molly Scurlock. Squirlock. Skirlock. Like squirly? No.

Skir. Skir. Skir. Or, skur. Like scurvy. Scurvery. Skir lock. Like Spongebob's skir pants?

I don't think so. Lindsay King came out at our highest level. There's the easiest name you had all night. That was very easy. There's no way I butcher... But you butcher that up. There's no way I butchered it. Yeah.

Why did I say, I say butchered? I think you did. No way I'd butchered that. No, ever. Cody Hutchison. Yeah. Zach Nelson and Miss World. Miss World.

She knows we love her. Yep. She does. Very, very active on my Twitter account. And then if we go back into the vault, this week for the Patreon vault, we selected Janice Liberts. Janice. Been a longtime supporter. So huge shout out.

We really appreciate that. And then on PayPal gives, we had Jane Hulie, Nick Fisher, and Samuel Wright. Wow. Great. Thank you. All support us. So big thanks to the new Patreon supporters, the people on Patreon that support us month after month, the people that donate on PayPal.

It's all awesome. How's my GoFundMe account doing? Zero. Okay. Just checking. Because you didn't tell anybody what you're trying to do. I just thought, you know. You just put your picture up there and said, go fund me.

Yeah. And clearly nobody wants to fund me. Yeah, it's funny. People are actually going to be searching for your GoFundMe page. We can't find gimmies. GoFund me. It doesn't exist. Yeah.

But it would be zero. It doesn't exist right now, but maybe after this, it will exist. I don't know. Maybe. Don't forget, we have new products out on. The True Crime All the Time store. I actually just ordered some, got him in the mail. Right.

And I will say the embroidered stuff, and you saw it today, Gibbs. Look sharp. It turned out amazing. I got the Dickie's work shirt. It's kick ass. I knew you wanted that Dickie thing. True crime all time. I got the V-neck like golf wind shirt.

Yeah. Embroiled. Embroiled. That looks really good. It's embroidered. Embroired. There you go. Yeah.

What is it? Embroyered. Anyway, it's really cool. Check it out. There's a lot of new products. I'm putting some new ones out every now and then. Yeah. Get them out there.

Try them out. Now, after you listen to this, don't forget, jump over. Check out true crime all the time unsolved. We've got an episode out right now on Bonnie Lee Bakely. She was married to Robert Blake, the actor. So going Hollywood. Going Hollywood. He went on trial.

He did. For her murder. But obviously was not convicted because it's an unsolved case. That's right. All right. Gibbs, you ready to get to our subject for today. I was born, ready. John Norman Collins.

Yes. And this guy, I mean, he is a piece of work. Now, we're going back away. We're going back to the late 60s. But some of the nicknames that the media would give to this guy, we're talking about the Ipsilani Ripper, the Michigan murderer. They even called him the co-ed killer, which, you know, that obviously makes you think of Ted Bundy. Yeah, it's like pre-Ted Bundy stuff. This is. This is pre-Ted Bundy. It's several years before

Bundy would be operating. But Collins would target young females. And it's thought that he was responsible for the murders of, you know, at least eight or nine women and probably suspected in many more. I mean, I've seen the number as 15, maybe even higher. But one thing about John Collins, and we said, you know, we're talking about the late 60s, he was really overshadowed, or his murders were really overshadowed because it just so happened that, you know, in the time that he was operating and things were kind of winding down, you get into 1969, and that's when the Manson family. Yeah, and the media really sensationalized. Yeah, so I don't think that John Collins, I don't want to say got a lot of attention.

because he shouldn't get it. No, he shouldn't. And clearly out there, the attention because of being tied to Hollywood and stardom and stuff. And we're talking about Michigan here. Right. And it's not Detroit. It's more of the Epsilon area, Ann Arbor area. It's not Chicago.

It's not New York. Right. And the way that the Manson family was acting and, yeah, they were getting all the media. Yeah, there's definitely that background of the Manson murders. So because of that, Many people may not be very familiar with John Collins. But John Norman Collins was born on June 17th, 1947, and he was born in Windsor, Canada. That's all right.

Across from Detroit. Right. We just talked about it on a recent episode. I used to go over there. I did. Yeah. When I lived in Detroit, you know, this was pre-9-11, but you could just walk across the border or drive across the bridge.

You go there to casinos and other places? Yep. They didn't have casinos in Detroit when I live there. They do now. So we would go over to Windsor. Now, John's father left the family just after he was born. And his mother would remarry, but this marriage would only last a year. Both John's biological father and his new stepfather were described as violent alcoholics.

I mean, they were extremely abusive to John's mother. And there was a story that as a very small child, John's stepfather allegedly threw him across the car. He was upset with his mother. He was mad. And I mean, he's a baby. We're talking maybe two years old. Right. Chucks him across the car at his mom. It's like catch. Yeah. I don't know why he was mad at her, but. And then there's another story where he allegedly used John as a shield. And again, we're talking baby, a couple years old, small child, used him as a shield when a guy that was, pissed off at him for some reason came to confront him with a gun. That's a weak man right there.

Yeah. So this guy uses a two, three year old child, however old he was, as a shield. He was a drunk and he beat up on women. That's just somebody you walk up to and slap. Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. This is a type of guy that gives all men a bad name. This is the type of guy that if I could, I just want to line these guys up. and let you slap them with your oversized slapping hand, Paul Bunyan hand.

Yeah. I know you do some kind of weird exercises with that, with your Paul Bunyan hand. I squeeze something in my hand. Yeah, in case you need to. Yeah, never know. Exact vengeance on somebody. Got to be ready. But yeah, these kind of guys, they just, they drive me crazy.

The best slapping part in the movie was that thing with Wyatt Earp that had Goldie Hawn's Kurt Russell. Kurt Russell You had to go Goldie Hawn first before you could get to Kurt Russell? Yeah, that's what triggered me. Remember Kurt Russell? So Kurt Russell played Wyatt

and he was in the bar. Right. And that was when the guy married Angelina Jolie the first time. Bobby Bob Thornton. Bobby Billy Thornton. Yeah, that's when he first started getting an acting and he played that.

I thought he was a badass and then Wyatt Earp came up and just kept on slapping him and I think the guy pissed himself. but it was great. It was actually really good in that movie. Kurt Russell. He really was.

Yeah. I really did it. I enjoyed him in that movie. I thought he was good in that. I thought he was good in Tango and Cash. Yeah, that's a movie I haven't seen in a while. Yeah. Or is it?

No, Tequila Sunrise. He was good in one of those two. I don't remember which one. Whichever one he was in it. Yeah. They was Tequila Sudrise. Tango and Cash was Sylvester Stallone, but I can't think of the other person that was in it. Kurt Russell.

Was it for sure? Yeah. They played two opposing cops on different, on different departments or something. But you act like you were backpedaling away from Tango and Cash to go to Tequila Sunrise. Yeah, Tequila Sunrise was the better one. Okay. Yeah. So you're saying he was not good in Tango Gets. It was all right. You know, action movie, whatever. I just want to make sure he's in these movies. Yeah, he's in them. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, that's Ghibi's movie corner for the episode. May not be the only one. But when we get to John at four years old, his mom packs him up,

along with his two older siblings, and they move across the border to Detroit. And she marries a man name William Collins, who is eventually going to adopt all three of the children. So this is where John's going to get his last name from. But it's probably not a big shocker that William Collins turns out to be a very violent alcoholic as well. Where's she meeting these guys at the pub? I don't know. She's not a good picker for sure. But this marriage would last longer, would last five years. So you have to think about John Collins and his siblings, for that matter, but we're talking about John. By the age of nine, he's known three different father figures. Well, one, he was really, really young, but he's had three different father figures.

They've all been very violent alcoholics. Yeah, seems to be the norm to him. They've been abusers of women. Right. Because they all did that as well. He's seen it and he thinks that's what you do. So you have to figure he witnessed a lot. of domestic violence during the first nine years of his life. Yeah. And, you know, you and I talk about it

a lot, but what does that do on his developing brain, his psyche, his makeup, use whatever word you want to. It's got to have a big impact. Kids are visual learners. Now, does it explain everything that this guy's going to do? Probably not. But it sure is hell couldn't have helped. It sets the foundation. Now, there was a story. that his mom and stepfather, they would leave all three kids in the car for long stretches of time while they would sit in the bar and drink. Yep. Back in the day, I think a few people would do that. I mean, today, you know, people would break your window open and take your kids out and call the police. Yeah, and you'd be in jail. You'd be in jail. But back in the day, that happened quite a bit,

actually. More frequent than you would imagine. Probably more frequent than you would like to think. Yeah. I would agree with that. It doesn't make. It doesn't make. It doesn't make. it right. No. But it, I, I would, I would agree with you. It probably happened a lot more than we even, we even think. But John Collins, he was known to have tortured animals. He told other kids at school that he had strangled a cat with, uh, with a clothes line. He was a bedwetter. And apparently he wore diapers maybe into his early school years. I mean, I'm wearing a diaper right now, man. Well, yeah, but it's because you're at the other end of the spectrum. Feels good. You're wearing, they don't call them diapers at your age yet, and they call them depends.

Well, I got to depend on right now, and it feels wonderful. Hey, I'm depending on that to hold up, too, by the way. Well, I don't know, man. It's, uh, wait a minute. Okay. But again, just, you know, want to kind of throw that out there about John Collins, you know, as a kid. We always get a lot of emails about the bed wedding and what that means. And most kids wet the bed.

Yeah. And a lot, even up to ages older than what you would think would be the norm. Right. It doesn't really mean anything. No. But, you know, it is part of in the research some of the different triads and things that researchers look at. Get this and this one and that one. And it kind of adds, you know, adds up.

And speaking of that, you know, as he would get older, I don't think so much as a kid, but as he gets older, he would set fires. So, you know, he kind of exhibited. a lot of these classic traits that people think of of people that are going to turn out to be serial killers. Did you ever play with fire when you were young? No, I wasn't, I wasn't really fascinated with fire like some kids are. Yeah. I ate paper towels.

Have I told you that before? You ate paper towels? Yes. I mean, you literally. Eight paper towels. Uh-huh. I would sneak in. Yeah.

I would sneak in the house. Yeah. Rip off a paper towel, take it outside and eat it. Okay. I don't know why. You must like the glue that they had in there. I have no idea. But you've heard about, you know, people eat dirt. They eat strange things as a child. So when you see a paper towel today, do you get a little like, you know. No. No. Okay.

No. And I don't think it lasted very long. I'm not really sure why I did that. Yeah. That's interesting. But my mom always talks about it. She had to lock them up. Lock up the paper towels. Lock up the paper towels. So he didn't have a good childhood. That's obvious. And it's something that we see quite often in the stories that we talk about. But John Collins differs from a lot of folks. that we profile because number one, he was very popular in high school. He was an honor student. He was a stud football player, captain of the team. Sounds familiar. Star pitcher on the baseball team. Wow. So, I mean, we could be talking about you, Ghibie. Take out, take out the honor student, all the captain and all that. Yeah. We could be talking about you, but we're not. Could be. We're not. And he was very popular. You know, had a lot of friends. He was very popular with, with the

in school. He dated a lot of girls. Yeah, good for him. So we're definitely not talking about you. Is that what you're saying? But the problem is these girls, they would later come out and say that, you know, John Collins was very sexually aggressive and that they remember him as a person that displayed a ton of rage. They saw it. That's not healthy. So in 65, John graduates from high school. He's 18 years old. Okay. And he's going to eventually end up at Eastern Michigan University. And he's going down the path of becoming a teacher. All right. That's what he wants to do. Sounds good so far. Yeah. We need teachers. Got pretty good grades in high school, played sports, went to college, is going to become a teacher. Right. Where does it go wrong? Because we know it's going to go wrong.

Right. While in college, he joined a fraternity, but he would get kicked out for stealing. Don't steal from your brothers, man. No, you definitely don't want to do that. And John Collins once wrote in an English paper, and this is a quote from the paper, if a person wants something, he alone is the deciding factor of whether or not to take it, regardless of what society thinks may be right or wrong. That's, uh, it's true. It is true. So you have the right to take whatever you want, regardless of laws or, that's because that's basically what he's saying. The way he's saying it is, at the end of the day, it's up to you. You can have laws that tell you you can't do this or you can do this, but at end of the day,

there's only one person that's going to make that decision. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. That's you. Yeah, you're right. So to say it's true, it is. Yeah. But it's also maybe a bit of foreshadowing of what's to come because if you're the kind of person

that makes the decision that says, I don't give a shit what society. If you're not going to recognize your peers' laws. Yes. No, you're right. I was wrong in the way I was. looking at it, you were actually looking at it correctly. But obviously as we get into this, he's going to be the type of person that decides, no, I'm going to take what I want. And that's the problem is why did he put that in a paper, you know, and this is what he was feeling. So he knew

early enough that I don't care what you tell me. Only person I need the answer to is myself. He knows right from wrong. Well, sure. He's smart guy. He's saying it basically there. You have, you have the decision. Do you want to obey the law or take whatever you want regardless of the consequences? So in his sophomore year, he's attending Eastern Michigan. This is where things start to spiral because he had a professor accused him of cheating and he started committing thefts. And it's around this time that he also commits his first violent act. And the story goes that he caught his sister who was pregnant at the time cheating with another man. So John Collins beats the hell out of this guy, leaves him unconscious, but then he hits his sister and starts beating her, I mean, to the

point where he caused her to bleed. But it was said that as he was hitting her, he was calling her names. You know, these were names like whore, tramp, slut, things like that. So he was very upset with her, and we may or may not get into this, Gibbs, but how much of this goes back to his mother, being upset with her for, you know, maybe choosing these men that she did that he had to live with. Yeah, and the examples that he saw from these men. That's true, too. How they treated their women, yeah. So, but either way, we're starting to see this rage manifest itself in John Collins.

And it's just going to be a year later when he's thought to have. committed his first murder. So he starts murdering at a very early age. And we have to talk about the Michigan murders because this is what the press calls, you know, a series of murders that occurred in southeastern Michigan around the areas of, you know, Ipsilani, Ann Arbor, between the years of 1967 and 1969. And it's believed that John Collins was responsible for the majority of these murders. And I say believed. And the reason why I say it that way,

it's going to become clear as the story unfolds. I don't want to give everything away. But the first seven murders that we're going to talk about, they're considered to be part of this Michigan murder series. And there's some very strange similarities to these murders that I kind of want to talk about up front, Gibbs. You know, two in particular. You know, the first is that each of the females that is murdered,

was menstruating at the time of their death. For him to know that, he had to know them more on a personal level. So that's where my mind went. Yeah. Or it was just sheer random. There's no way, because I thought about that too. There's no way seven individuals get murdered and they would all be menstruating. I just think that is too much of a coincidence.

And he didn't work at the university O-B-Y-G-Y-N clinical place. Did you say O-B-Y-G-Y-N? That's what it is. It's O-B-G-Y-N. That's what I said. You said O-B-Y-Y-Y-N. Like O-B-1-K-N-O-B-N-A-N-N-A-N-A-R-B-A-Rs be with you. No, so he didn't have access to, you know, any type of medical records or anything like that.

Okay. But I was thinking about that. Way too much to be a coincidence in my mind. It's definitely strange. I don't know how you could pick somebody out. No, I go back to what you said. Does that involve more, you know, you're watching people, you're knowing their habits, you're going through their trash maybe.

That's the only way I could think of how that somebody would know something like that. And then the second is that, you know, it was basically raining each time, you know, one of these murders occurred for the most part. So I thought it was two kind of strange facts. to point out before we start talking about the victims and the murders. But the first victim in what would become known as the Michigan murders was a 19-year-old Eastern Michigan University student named Mary Fleser. So 19 years old, Mary's 5 foot to 110 pounds. Tiny.

She is a very, very small woman. Now, Mary was from Michigan. She was majoring in accounting at EMU. And she was working as a secretary while going to school. So ambitious person working, putting her way through school. But Mary's roommate said that she left their apartment on the night of July 9th, 1967 to go for a walk. And there were several people that would later say that they saw Mary that night.

One was a university police officer. And the other was a man sitting on his porch. And he would tell police that he saw Mary walking that night and that a younger man drove up beside her driving a blue, grayish Chevrolet. And what this guy told police is that he could see Mary shaking her head as if to say, you know, no, whatever it is you're asking me from the car. No, thank you. No, thank you.

So this guy would pull away, but he came up several times. And each time the guy said that they talked for a little bit, Mary shook her head, and the guy would go on. When in the end, the very last time, the guy took off, screeching his tires. and this person on the porch never saw the car or never saw Mary again, she turned the corner out of sight. But it is thought that it's this man on the porch that was probably the last person besides her killer to see Mary a lot. Mary Flesser's body was found on August 7th by a couple of boys working on a farm just a few miles north of where she lived, north of her apartment. What they would tell the police is that they were getting ready to work.

They were going to plow this field. They heard a car door slam and then they heard the engine start up. So they're kind of out in a field, right? So that would be strange for them. Right. They go over to investigate and they stumble upon a grisly scene. And we're talking about a badly decomposed body. Yeah, because it's been about a month.

It has been. So badly decomposed Gibbs that they didn't even know it was a human body. I think what they thought was maybe it was a deer or some type of animal. That's how bad of shape it was in. They couldn't recognize it as human. But eventually, I think they do. And from the research, I think I remember maybe they saw an ear or they saw some type of feature that let them know that, hey, this is a human being.

So obviously they call the police, police come out and investigate. they find some clothes at the scene that would later be identified by Mary's parents as her clothes, and eventually she would be positively identified by dental records. Now, some of this is rough, but we have to go through these details. So her body was found nude. A part of one arm was completely missing. The fingers from the other, the opposite hand were all missing. Her feet had been cut off at the ankle.

I said this is grizzly. It is grizzly. This is a very, very horrific murder scene. You know, the fact that he murdered this woman, but then he goes to the extent to do what he's doing, it's just a, it's a whole other person, man. A whole other, what's the word I want to say, Mike? It's a whole other...

You've got to be at a certain level, Gibbs, to take someone's life. Right. You have to be at a different level than to get into the dismembering and the... Yeah. That type of...

It's a whole other world. It is. Not that the murder is good, right? No, it's all terrible. I'm just like a whole other realm. I get what you're saying. I really do. When they do the autopsy, they can tell that Mary was stabbed at least 30 times.

So again, that's a lot of stab wounds. It's violent, man. So we're talking about violent. Yeah. Rage. And then obviously the cutting of arms and fingers and feet. But that wasn't it. I mean, she had been beaten severely.

Her legs had been crushed. Like the bones had been crushed. Her feet were already gone. And then somehow, you know, he crushed her legs. As the police were investigating the scene, one of the things that they could tell was that the body had been moved several times. And this is something we're going to, we're going to see in some of these murders. And what they theorized was that whoever was in that car was the person that murdered Mary. but they thought he had dumped her body sometime in the past and he was actually coming back to

visit the crime scene when the two boys heard his his car door slam and they heard the engine start up. But then even after the murder scene is discovered, something very, very strange happens. And it's at the funeral home where Mary's body is prior to the funeral. People at the funeral home report that a young man driving a blueish, grayish Chevy comes into the funeral home. And he told them that he was a friend of the family. He wanted to take a picture of Mary. It's a sicko. Well, obviously, they don't let him do this.

They turn him away. And police quickly think, hey, this was probably the murderer. This was the man that murdered Mary coming back for one last souvenir. So to your point, Gibbs, this is a sick individual. The problem was the people that saw him, they weren't able to give like a very good description to police. So the second woman to be murdered in this series was a woman named Joan Schell, 20-year-old art major, also studying at Eastern Michigan University.

Now, Joan was from Plymouth, Michigan. And on June 30th, 1968, she was seen getting a. in a car with three young men in front of the student union at the school. Her body would be found a few days later at a construction site in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So this is about a year after the murder of Mary Flesser and Joan Schell, she had been raped. She was stabbed at least 25 times. I actually saw a couple of, you know, several different numbers of how many stab wounds. nude, her clothes had been wrapped around her neck.

So again, another student from the same university, similar in age, murdered in a similar fashion, police quickly learned that there was an Eastern Michigan University student by the name of John Collins that had recently been seen with Joan. He actually lived across the street from her and they go to question him. But when police questioned John, he said that he'd never even met Joan. And he gave the police an alibi saying that he'd been at his mother's house in Detroit the weekend that she had gone missing. So the next victim in this Michigan series is a woman by the name of Jane Louise

Mixer. And she was a 23-year-old law student. Now, she was studying at the University of Michigan. And her body is going to be found in March of 69. So again, it's spaced out quite a bit. You know, there's some time between the first and second and third murders. And Jane Mixer's body would be found in an Ipsilani cemetery. She had been shot twice in the head and she had been strangled with a nylon stocking.

Now, police would also determine that she was not killed at the murder scene. She was killed somewhere else. Her body was dumped in the cemetery. and police would learn that she was scheduled or supposed to meet a guy named David Johnson. That's the name that they were given. And this David Johnson was supposed to give her a ride home. The problem was when they started to investigate, they couldn't figure out who this David Johnson was, which would be strange.

You know, if he's a student, that'd be pretty easy to figure out. They just couldn't find this mysterious David Johnson. So was it a fake name? I think that's kind of, you know, maybe the thought behind it. The thought that they went with. But you got to look at the timing of these murders, right? We kind of pointed out. They've been spaced out, these first three.

But all of that is going to change because the murders are going to start happening much more frequently. So things are going to escalate rapidly. So the next victim is a 16-year-old named Marilyn Skelton. she was a high school dropout from Romulus, Michigan. And Marilyn was last seen on March 24th, 1969. And this is where I said, right, we're ramping up. Right. We're like days later.

This is days after Jane is found. And Maryland was last seen on March 24th, 1969 while hitchhiking. So a couple of things to talk about, Gibbs. And I think we've touched on it in at least one episode. You know, hitchhiking was much bigger deal back then. Absolutely. A lot of people did it, even though it was still dangerous. And I think people knew it was dangerous, but it was fairly common. Yeah, much more common than it is today. And the other thing that I want to talk about is this is just a few days after Jane Mixer's body is found. So we talk about this

escalating. It's escalating. The first three murders happen in three different years, right? 67, 68, 69. Now we have two murders essentially in the same month in the same week almost. Exactly. Now, her body would be found the very next day and it's going to be found in the exact same place where Joan Shell's body was found at this construction site. And what happened was a construction worker actually tripped over one of her arms that was sticking up out of these weeds. Freaky.

For that would be traumatic, I would think, for that gentleman. Yeah. Very traumatic. At least he found it, not somebody just frolicing through the field. Why is it better for him to find it than somebody frolicing? I don't know. Where are you using the word frolicing? What's wrong with frolicing?

I don't know. Don't you frolic? I've never heard you use that word before. But we'll go with it. You don't think I have a vocabulary deep enough? No, I was not saying anything about your vocabulary. It's just the choice of word. You don't seem like a frolicer to me.

I don't frolic. Oh, okay. People frolic. Some people do. But Marilyn Skelton, you know, unfortunately, she had been sexually assaulted. She had been beaten severely. And police thought that possibly based on the markings on her body that she had been beaten with maybe a belt that had a large buckle on it.

That's the type of markings that they thought maybe. Where they came from. Where they may have come from. Her skull was cracked in multiple places. And again, she was found nude. almost displayed is how it was described. And this one's tough, Gibbs, but a branch had been inserted into her vagina

and a piece of cloth had been stuffed into her mouth. And when I say brutal, I mean, these were very brutal murders. Police again determined that she had been killed someplace else and then her body was dumped at the construction site. So a couple of things. We're going to get into, to more. more of the murders, but two victims dumped at the same construction site, that's got to be a tie-in. It has to be.

So then we get to April 15th, 1969, just a couple of months later, the body of 13-year-old Don Bassem is found on the side of kind of a country road in Ipsilani, 13 years old. She's found half-naked, and this poor girl had been raped, stabbed, and she had been strangled with a black electrical cord. But that was not enough for this sick son of a bitch. He proceeded to cut her breast to the point where they were almost completely cut off. I don't get that. It flashes me back to the Chicago Ripper crew. We've done a couple with breast mutilation. Yeah. I don't get it, but, you know, I never, I would never understand it anyway. I mean, how many times we talk about? How are you and I going to

sense of some of this stuff that you just can't make sense of. No, you can't. If you're a person that would never do anything like this, like 99.9% of the population, you're not going to get how these sick people can do these. And just like Marilyn, Dawn had some type of cloth, some type of material stuffed into her mouth. So we're seeing a lot of patterns here. And this is why police start to put everything together as this is a serious. of connected murders. Now, Don had been reported missing because she failed to return home after visiting a house near the Eastern Michigan University campus. So again, tying in Eastern Michigan University. Now, she's only 13 years old. But this is 1969. And maybe she was allowed to, you know,

kind of go off on her own and visit people. And we know some of that stuff happened back then, much more so than it does today. I mean, I was walking in the neighborhoods and going up, going up town and stuff when I was 12. Yeah, I was too. You know, staying out from the midnight coming back, whatever. Yeah. He just can't do it today. Now, the local sheriff is a man by the name of Douglas Harvey.

And they could not find Dawn's clothes at the crime scene. And so he widened the search. And they ended up finding the majority of her clothes at a deserted farmhouse not far from her home. And it's in the basement of this farmhouse that police are going to discover a length of the exact same type of black electrical cord that was used to strangle her. They find her blouse and an orange sweater that they're going to tie back to her. It's known to have been hers.

They also find some fairly fresh blood. And this is really what lets police know that this is most likely the place where she was killed in this farmhouse. And then later on, she was taken to the side of this country. Road where the killer dumped her. But again, Gives, I go 13 years old. She was an eighth grader. It's rough, man. It is rough. Now, on June 9th, 1969, so again, just a couple months later, there's three teenage boys, they're walking near this abandoned barn. And they find the body of a 23-year-old named Alice Kalem. And Alice was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. And what's known is that on

June 7th, she had attended a party in Ann Arbor. There were witnesses from the party that told police she had been dancing with a long-haired young man. Do you ever have long hair? No. I thought you meant now. No, no, no. Oh, I know not now. I could if I let the back. I could let the back grow out. Kind of like a business in front party in the back. Actually, I don't have a lot of business in the front. That's the problem. Yeah. I could do, I could party in the back. All day long. I just don't have any to to be business like in the front. You could flip it, you know, comb it from the back to the front and cover it up. I can't do that.

I just cut it short and just say, hey, just let it roll. This is what I've been given to work with, man. Well, you know, clearly it works for you. I'll pull it off. Yeah. But they do. They have some witnesses in this case where, you know, so far they haven't had a whole lot other than they did kind of already be introduced to John Collins.

Alice Calum had been shot in the head. she had been raped, she had been stabbed repeatedly, and her throat had been cut. And a piece of her shirt Gibbs, it had been ripped and tied around her head. So again, very similar. I mean, there are some things that are a little bit different, but for the most part, I mean, a lot of these are very similar. The one that has been different, and I didn't talk about it when we were actually talking about the murder, but it was really Jane Mixer so far of the ones we've talked about has been different. because she was shot in the head. And again, just like some of the other murders,

police were able to figure out that Alice had been killed in another location from where the body was found. She was also found nude, which is a tie-in to some of the other murders. But her clothing was actually found at the scene with the exception of her shoes. Her shoes were missing. But it's after this six murder that a task force was set up. And you kind of have to wonder, Gibbs, why did it take six? I think you and I maybe have asked that question in other episodes where eventually a task force

is set up. But there's quite a bit of time that has gone on. Maybe it's because these three kind of happened so close together where the other three were spaced out. Yeah, because I would think. Really four have happened. Typically by the third one, you'd want to start setting something up. You would think.

but they bring in police agencies from different areas and they start working together because they know they know at this point they have a serial killer that's terrorizing this part of Michigan but along with the police there is a group of citizens that band together because they want to catch this guy and the way that they set out to do it is they raise money and they hire a very famous psychic by the name of peter hercos is they're hoping this psychic is going to come in and help solve the case. This guy's pretty famous. Peter Herkos was involved in the Boston Strangler case some years prior to these murders. And it was said that he actually did provide some helpful information to police. But I also think that some of the things that he said kind of led them astray or led them in the wrong direction as well. But there's no doubt he did give them some helpful information. He didn't come out and say, hey, you're looking for John Norman Collins. Right. Have you seen a psychic? No. Would you ever see a psychic? No. Okay. That's it. I don't know what the level of psychic is. Is there different levels? Is there people that can only see certain things? I mean,

if you're psychic, why wouldn't you, can you not see the winning lottery numbers and then just play that and then no longer have to be a psychic? That'd be the way to do it. Well, yeah, I'm just saying. Is that not how it I don't really understand how it works to be. Yeah, I don't know. And I'm not making fun of it because I don't understand it. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't hung out with any psychic people.

No, I haven't either. Because they probably foreseeing that they didn't want to hang out with us. Well, that's what I'm saying. Can they only see things from the past? Are they seeing things from the future? I don't. They see future. That's what I thought too.

Yeah, but maybe they don't see like monetary future like that. But if you're bringing in a psychic to help you solve a murder or murders, they occurred in the past. Yeah. So I don't know. Well, I guess there's different. Somebody's going to write in. Give us all kinds of information about psychics. Yeah, some see in the past, some see in the future, some see on a different dimension.

But nobody sees the lottery numbers. Interesting. Or interesting for you. Exactly. Say it right now. No, but to answer your question, I wouldn't go see a psychic because I'm a little up in the air about, you know, the validity of it. Yeah. But I also wouldn't want to hear something that I didn't want to hear.

You're looking to be like that sign fell out episode. Which one was that? When George goes to see the psychic with Lane, Elaine pisses her off and he's getting ready to go on this trip and she's telling him something and she won't finish because Elaine makes her mad. And he actually goes to the hospital room when she's trying to deliver a baby to get the answer from her. Because he's worried something bad is going to happen. Yeah, yeah. I'm not the type of person that would ever want to know a bad future. So the next month, July 23rd, 1969, campus police at Eastern Michigan University, they receive a.

missing person's report. And it's on Karen Sue Benaman. She's an 18 year old freshman at the college, and she failed to return to her dorm room that night. So the Ipsilani police are called in. They act very quickly. And they learn that Karen was scheduled to pick up a wig from this wig store downtown. A wig, huh? A wig. You buy a warwick before. No, it would be a toupee. Yeah. Wouldn't a wig. Give it a try? No, I've never had one. Why don't I believe you? Why do you keep talking about my hair, man? I don't know, man. But you got to look on your face like maybe you did. But Karen had been headed, you know, around the middle of the day to this wig store. This was when she was last seen. So police go to the wig store and they talk to the manager and they show her a photograph

and the manager recognizes Karen said that she had left on the back of a motorcycle with a good looking young guy. There's another female student who was interviewed and she would also tell police that some good looking young guy on a motorcycle had tried to pick her up, tried to ask her if she needed a ride. Now, she refused, but she's giving the same type of description of this guy and the motorcycle. So police now have probably the best description that they've had to date of they're suspect, but they still have to find this guy. Now, several days later, when a doctor and his wife, they're out walking and they stumble upon the body of Karen Benaman. And this is in like a, it was described as like a wooded ravine, a gully, but Karen had been raped. She had been beaten and strangled.

And her underwear had been stuffed into her mouth. So again, very similar, right? Very similar emmoes to a lot of these murders. But as they're examining her body, they notice something very curious. And it's that there are some, what they determined to be, human hair clippings stuck to the underwear that is that is inside of her mouth. That's bizarre. Yeah. And they don't, they don't describe it as just like a couple of human hairs. They describe it as clippings.

Like if you were to cut somebody's hair and it comes off in, you know, more than just a couple of strands. Yeah, I know you don't know what that's. But when you go to the barbershop and all that hair falls down, it's clippings and, yeah. Mine just looks like little ants are screwing around. Yeah. There's just not much there. Yeah. But obviously they discover this and they know it's important.

They know it's strange. And as soon as the sheriff hears about this, he orders his staff, he wants a total news blackout. He doesn't want any of the details of this murder to get out. That's smart. Well, they had tried this before a couple of times and it didn't work. Some reporter or somebody in the media had gotten wind to some of the details and leaked them. But this time, he's trying real hard not to let anything out. Because what they're theorizing is that, and it's based off of some of the information we talked about in the previous murders,

that this killer is returning to the bodies and doing something, something macabre, something ghoulish, something that you wouldn't want to even know about probably. Right. But he's coming back to do something. And we know from others that we've covered that they like to come back. They do. Serial killers and they revisit the crime scenes, revisit the bodies while they're still there. So what the police decided?

to do is they get a mannequin from a department store and they put the mannequin where Karen's body was found. And then they're going to stake this area out. They're going to hide and they're going to wait and see if the killer comes back. And it's shortly after midnight, one of the police officers that's kind of staking out the area sees a man running out of this ravine where the mannequin is located. But there's some kind of police radio malfunction. He's trying to alert the other officers, but his radio's not working. And by the time

he's able to tell everyone, this guy's long gone. They don't catch him. And there's no evidence found on the mannequin. We had been trying to pull this off the theory that the killer always returned to it because of fact that

where the girls were dumped, that was not where the murder scene was. They were not murdered at that particular area or the site and we obtained a mannequin from J.C. Penny's and placed it where the body was and staked out with officers surrounding the area probably the worst area in the world. It was mosquito infested. The officers had nothing to protect themselves and I surmised to this day that they just wanted to get out there. They were there for about four and a half hours. and then someone shouted they'd seen somebody running

and what would somebody be doing running at this time of the night and someone said they think they went down and touched the body or the mannequin and of course that was proven false it just when you had the mannequin dusted for prints and so on there was nothing on it so that was an interview with the sheriff telling the story of this night where they're they're trying to trap this guy coming back to see the bodies

and how everything kind of unfolded. But we mentioned they had descriptions of the man on the motorcycle. And this would lead, it was actually a campus policeman by the name of Larry Matthewson to John Colin. Because he had questioned Collins before during one of the previous murder investigations. He was able to obtain a photograph of John and he showed it to the wig shop owner and to the female student. They both identified John.

Collins as the young man they saw. So now we're getting somewhere. So they go and question John Colin, but they just, they don't have enough evidence to charge him and they have to let him go. But there's a lot of people Gibbs that believe that this second questioning caused John Collins to get rid of any evidence that may have tied him to the murders. So basically I think what, what people believe is that they rushed. You know, they tried to get to him to talk to him too quickly. Yeah. And and should have built up the case a little bit more. Set him up a little bit better. Yeah, it's like they tipped him off because they didn't have enough evidence to hold him.

And one of John's roommates would later tell the police that after this questioning, he saw John take items out of the house. And these items included women's clothing, shoes, purses. Okay, why would John Collins have all of this female clothing and shoes and purses? To a true point. Why would he? Well, the police would never know because he got rid of him. Right. The other thing that this allowed John to do was to clean his car out.

He knows that the police are onto him. So he's getting rid of everything. He's making sure that his car is cleaned of potential evidence. Now, during this time, John had also been looking after the home of his uncle. It's a man named David Like. He was actually with the police. And he was on vacation with his wife and kids. and he returns home on July 29th, 1969, to find out that his nephew, John, is the prime suspect in the

Michigan murder. Now, he didn't believe it. It's probably not something you would believe when you hear that about a family member. But David Like is down in his basement and he discovers something that looks like blood. So he hears that his nephew is a suspect. He thinks he sees some blood in his basement where he knows John has been watching the house for a period of time. So he calls the police and has some analysts, lab analysts come in to check out this blood. But what he saw turned out to be some type of varnish. It wasn't blood at all. But while they were combing the basement, they actually uncovered some other evidence in the case. And what they found were hair clippings that turned out to be from Mrs. Like cutting the kid's hair. So they bagged this

evidence up because they know what was found, you know, at one of the crime scenes. It was very strange hair clipping. So they bag it up and they're going to test it. A little mistake like that, man, and that's all it takes to bring you down. No, it's a good point that you make because it's like a really fine line, right, between somebody getting away and them actually catching a killer. And they also find some other stains in the basement. And these do prove to be human blood. So the one wasn't. The one that they came out to investigate was varnish, but they ended up finding some other things. And it's that afternoon that they go to John's home and they tell him that, you know, he is their prime suspect. Now, the blood would test positive as human blood. But this is

1969. There wasn't a ton that they could do with blood evidence, right? There's no DNA. They don't have anything like that. I mean, I think back then Gibbs, probably the most they could do was like a blood typing. They could tell you what type it was and whether it matched, you know, a victim's type. But the big thing is that the hair clippings that they collect, they do match the ones that were at the crime scene, the ones that they have in evidence from Karen Beneman's crime scene. And apparently they would tell John Collins this evidence that they had against him. I think they were hoping that he was going to confess. And at one point, it appears that he's close to because he burst into tear.

But very quickly it said that he regains his composure. And during questioning, he denied knowing Karen Beneman, ever being with Karen Beneman. but they have the hair clipping evidence and they have the eyewitnesses, so they arrest John Collins. And we talked about him being able to clean out his car. But even with that, police were able to find some blood near the front seat of his car that would come back as the same blood type of Alice Kalem. It's not like DNA where they talk about one in however many billions. There's only so many blood types.

and a lot of people have them. You can never get your car clean, man. You just burn it from the inside out and be done with it. Well, we, you know, we've talked about that too. Very hard to clean up crime scene. Yeah. Unless you're like a professional, like we said, we were going to start that professional crime scene cleanup business.

Yeah. But as a lay person, very hard to figure out how to get rid of everything. Exactly. But that's not the only thing that they find in John's car. Because they also find some material that would, match a belt that was tied around a 17-year-old girl found murdered in California. So it's kind of mysterious. John's in Michigan. He's got something that is now tying him to a murder in California. And this murder victim was a girl by the name of Roxy Phillips. She was 17 years old from Salinas,

California. And she disappeared on June 30th, 1969. So this is not that long, maybe a month or so before they're on to John. And apparently she was going out to mail a letter and meet up with a friend. Her body was found on July 13th in Pescadero Canyon, which is just north of a town named Carmel. And it was found by a couple of boys out looking for fossils. That's the town that O'Clinth Eastwood was the mayor of. I think you're right. Yeah.

Carmel, California. Yep. Not at the time this happened. No, but there's a little factoid. A little factoid from the Gibby man. Yeah. Don't know why it popped up in my head like that, but there you have it. Dude, nobody knows why or what pops up in your head.

It's a mystery to myself. Don't even try to get in there. Don't want to hurt myself. But Roxy Phillips, her body was found badly decomposed. She was nude except for a pair of sandals. And there was a red and white cotton belt wrapped very tightly around her neck. And it's part of this belt. matching material of this belt that they find in John's car.

And one of the things that the police figure out is that the body was carried to where it was found and it was kind of in a field of poison oak. And when they are tracing the travels of John Collins, they figure out that he was treated in California that week for poison oak. So again, a lot of circumstantial evidence. And we're going to talk about that more as we get into the trial. And a friend of Roxy Phillips would tell police that she mentioned to her having met a man named John who was driving a silver Osmobile and said that he was going to college in Michigan. So the trial of John Norman Collins opened in Washington, All County in Ann Arbor, June 30th, 1970.

So basically exactly a year after Roxy Phillips decided. disappeared. But John was only charged with one murder, and it was the murder of Karen Beneman, because the prosecutors would come out and say that they just didn't have enough evidence to charge him with all of the murders. And they felt like if they tried to go after them all, they had a chance to lose everything. Whereas if they just went after him for the murder of Karen, they thought they had enough evidence to put him away. So they're making a calculated decision here. That might not have set very well with the families of the other victims, but I think that happens a lot, Gibbs, where prosecutors have to make very tough decisions.

Yeah, sometimes they got to go with what's best. The victims, relatives, parents, sit whatever, may not like it, but they know from their experience what they can do to make sure they can get the best charge against this person's stick to put them away. Well, and in the grand scheme of things, going away for one murder, versus getting off being charged with six or seven. Yeah. You got to opt for the one. Right.

If that truly is the best. And again, we talked about the evidence and the eyewitnesses and the hair. They really only had that in the case of Karen Beneman. So the evidence for the prosecution, and we've talked about most of it, but to a large degree was based on the hair. You know, the hair clippings that we talked about. They had a chemist by the name of Walter Horner. Poles from the health department testified that the hairs found on the basement floor were an

identical match to the ones that were found in the underwear that was stuffed into the mouth of Karen. So you have the prosecution setting out to establish their case that John Collins had been cruising around Ipsilani on the afternoon of July 23rd. He had been positively identified by witnesses as riding off with Karen Beneman between 12.30, 1 o'clock. They knew that the time of her death had been established no later than three that afternoon. They had trace evidence that confirmed Karen Beneman's presence in the basement of the home of David Lyke and his family, where they knew John Collins was staying or watching. He was the only one that at that point had access to the house. So they've got some pretty good evidence, right? They got eyewitness evidence.

They have physical evidence, a couple of different types of physical evidence. The defense strategy was to try to get this evidence and the eyewitness testimony thrown out. And they tried to establish an alibi for John Collins for that afternoon. But this was a pretty tall order for the defense, because the prosecution was able to find six or seven other women that testified that John Collins tried to pick them up as well on his motorcycle that day between 1130 to 1230. So you have that many witnesses testifying against you. Pretty hard to come up with a real solid alibi. Right.

To say that you weren't there in that area. Not looking good. The prosecution also had John's roommate testify about all of the items that he had seen John remove and to the fact that apparently John had pressured him to give him an alibi, make one up, essentially, is what he is what he said. So really, Gives, all you had was the defense challenging witnesses. I think of like a my cousin Vinny type moment, right? Could you have really seen this?

How far away were you? I don't know this to be exact, but that's kind of what I think, how I think of it playing out. Were you wearing your glasses? Do you need to change your prescription in your glasses? But what else could they do? It was really hard to combat some of these things that they had against John Collin. In all 57 witnesses were called 17 days of testimony. And it was on August 19th, 1970.

The jury had deliberated for three days. They found John Collins. Collins guilty of first degree murder. And then you get to the sentencing hearing and John Collins is allowed to say something. And what he does, he gets up from his chair and he says the following. I have two things to say. I think the jury consciously tried to give me a fair trial. The jury did not take its task lightly, but I think things were blown out of proportion. The circumstances surrounding this case prevented me from getting a fair trial. It was a travesty of justice that took place in this courtroom.

I hope someday it will be corrected. Second, I never knew a girl named Karen Sue Beneman. I never had a conversation with her. I never took her to a wig shop. I never took her to my uncle's home. I never took her life. So that was his statement. And he was sticking to it.

And as far as I know, and we're going to hear from John in a minute. But as far as I know, he has never wavered from the fact that he's totally innocent. And I think you could say that about a lot of killers, right? They've got their story and they're sticking to it. And there's no reason to change course and all of a sudden say, yeah, I did it. Ultimately, John was sentenced to life in a Michigan state prison, a minimum of 20 years. Now, Michigan doesn't have the death penalty. They abolished it in like the 1800s, I think.

And they're one of the few states to, I think, no. never have put somebody to death. Really? I believe so. Since they became a state, I don't think they've ever put anyone to death. John went through three appeals. One point he changed his last name to his mother's maiden name Chapman. And I don't know why, but he thought that was going to help him get a transfer to Canada.

Because remember, she was Canadian. He was born in Canada, technically. Because if he was able to get to Canada, he would be eligible for, parole in 1985. So earlier than 20 years, right, 15 years. Which is, to me, is crazy, but okay. Yeah. He would ever get paroled in

period. Period. Period. But I will say, if you have the option, take your chances in Canada. Right. We've talked about that on many an episode. Canada is just a much more lenient country when it comes to serious crime. Now,

he did also try to escape at one point. He tried to do little Shawshank Redemption action and tunnel out of prison. So I do want to talk about Roxy Phillips because they did have a lot of, I would just say a lot, but they had some pretty good evidence against John, right? They had the piece of the belt that she was, that was wrapped around her neck. They had him in California being treated for poison oak when they know her body was left in a field of poison oak. Those two things together, but the state of California declined to extradite John for trial,

even though a grand jury had indicted him. So again, they had enough evidence to get a grand jury indictment. They just didn't feel like whether it was the money or whether that it was worth it to extradite him and try him. Again, he had a life sentence, although he did have the eligibility for parole after 20 years. But John is currently serving out his. life sentence in a Michigan prison. Like we like I said, he continues to maintain his innocence. Um, not only in the murder of Karen, but, but all of the other murders linked to the Michigan

murder or, you know, what is called the Michigan series of killings. Yeah. There is actually one of the murders that cannot be pinned on John. And it turns out that it, it's, uh, Jane Mixer. And we talked about it a little bit, but Jane, when you look at the details of her murder, they do differ a little from the others. She was the one that was shot twice in the head. But originally, they thought she was connected with the Michigan murders. But in 2005, a man by the name of Gary Leiderman, he's 62 years old at that point in time. He was a former nurse. He was convicted of the murder of Jane.

mixer. So they found enough evidence to pin that murder on him. And so they know it couldn't have been John Collins. Now, you know, I mentioned it right up front. There are a number of other murders where John Collins is a suspect. And one in particular is a 13 year old girl named Eileen Adams. She was from Toledo, Ohio, and she was kidnapped in December of 1967. But her body was found the next month, January 68, just south of Ipsilani. And it's the details around her murder that really, and the time frame that make people think, you know, this is another one that was most likely committed by John Collins because she was raped. She was strangled with an electrical cord and she was stuffed into a sack. Her brawl was tied around her neck.

She was beaten with a hammer severely. And this part is tough, but a three-inch nail was driven into her skull. Her body was not hidden. It was placed in plain sight like a lot of the other victims were. And it appeared as though it was arranged, right? The body was arranged. And like a lot of the other victims, her shoes were missing. So there's a lot of tie-ins of this murder with a lot of the other.

murders that they had some evidence that John Collins was involved in, they just didn't have enough to, they were planning it safe by going after the one. And it worked. No, I think it was a smart thing to do. It was a sure thing to do. Yeah, I think it, I think they, it seems like they made the right decision because he got a life sentence. I don't see them ever giving him parole, ever. His crimes, I mean, even just the one that he was convicted on was so brutal. And the fact that they're very sure that he committed some of the other ones, I just don't think to ever let him out. Yeah, well, while we're ending this one, let's hear from John.

John, did you kill Karen Sue Bynman? No, I never met Karen Sue Byneman. I never picked her up on my bike, never took it to my uncle's house. Bad enough being convicted of one thing that you didn't do without being labeled or something that you haven't done. See, I think what happened was, after I was arrested, the media was willing to accept. but the police said, and the police who would candidly not have their name mentioned in the article would say things like, you know, well, we can't prove that he did it, but we know he did it.

And the media's picked up on this for 19 years. And all it did was take the monkey off of their back and put the monkey on my back. We always like to be able to hear the killer's voice when we can. Yeah. I think it adds an element to the episode. There's actually a lot of audio of John. calls. Okay. The problem is it's pretty much all the same. Him saying, whoa, is me. I was railroaded. Yeah. You know, the media was out to get me. The police were out to get me. It's just not that

interesting. And it's, it's, it's an acting job is what it seems like to me. Yeah, I'm not impressed by him. No, because I, I listened to a lot of it. And to me, it's, it's somebody putting on an act, trying to gain sympathy. Yeah. When this guy's a monster. Yeah, he's still crying about it. Yeah, he, yeah, he actually did cry in one of the interviews when he talked about his mom. Yeah, uh, poor, poor guy. Woe is me. Yeah. Yeah. So my, I think he is a despicable monster. I mean, the details of his crimes, they're horrific. I agree. And anybody that's able to do that, Gibbs, like we said, that's a, it's a next level. It's just, there's no place for, for somebody like that in this world.

In society. Yeah, I, I agree. agree with you. But that's it. That is the case of John Norman Collins. Slash Chapman. Slash Chapman. Love to line him up and just let Gibby just slap him right in the face. I love it, man. I'm a good slapper. I know. You got that big Paul Bunyan hand, man. It would just, slap her. It'll knock somebody out. Yeah. Watch out. Jack. I don't advocate slapping people. I would never slap anybody unless they did this is bad. This guy. This guy I'm totally fine with. Yeah. I try to...

Do the manslapped. I try to keep you from slapping most people. Yeah. Because most people are innocent. Yeah. This guy, I'd let you... Go at them? Yeah, I'd let you off the chain and...

Yeah. Take off the ankle bracelet. I'll wear it. Yeah. While you slap him around. All right, Gibbs, we've got some voicemails, so let's do those. Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Tamara calling you from Atlanta.

Just finished earlier today listening to the Shonda Shearer case. And it just broke my heart for her mother and her family, obviously. And actually, I'm about the same age as she would have been had she still been alive. And just the brutality of the whole crime was just horrible. But anyhow, I wanted to mention, I didn't know if you guys had any thoughts on doing the case on Natalie Wood. Because I know, I think Gibby had mentioned it. And it was just the circumstances behind her death. and she was found floating in the water, I believe, and just the whole thing is just crazy.

And I think they recently reopened that case, if I'm not mistaken. But anyway, I just thought that would be a real interesting one to do. I hope you guys are having a great day. Happy New Year and keep your own time ticking. Thanks. All right. Great voicemail from Tamara. She's left us a number of voicemails.

Yeah. She slid a happy new year in there because it's still January. Right. You can say happy new year for a few more days. And I actually do think that the Natalie Wood case could make a very good episode. Yeah, I remember hearing or watching something at one point, Christopher Watkins or whatever, how you pronounce it. Christopher Walken? Yeah, that's him.

He just said Watkins. Ah, you know, I just throw it around to see if you're paying attention. You had a T and an S. Yeah, I just, you know, just make sure you're listening to me. I'm always listening. So anyway, at one point that he might have had something to do. I guess they were, he was on the boat with Robert and Natalie and allegedly. Allegedly.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But let's do it. Yeah. Let's research it and we'll talk about it. Put it out there. Hey, Mike and Gibby. This is Kelly from Atlanta.

I'm showing up late to the party, but certainly enjoying catching up on all the episodes. You guys do a fantastic job. I look forward to catching up and listening to all the new episodes as well. Keep up the good work, guys. Wow. Back to back from Atlanta. Atlanta. Hey, you guys know Max?

He's from Atlanta. Yeah, I know it's a small little... Small little town. We got a lot of listeners from Atlanta, but we got a lot of listeners who like to leave voicemails from Atlanta. I don't know what that says about Atlanta, but...

That's cool. Hot Lana. Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Lauren from Houston. Just thinking about y'all, we have two snow days in Houston this week. So, therefore, I'm sitting here at work on a Saturday. The good thing is that my boss isn't out in town,

so I can listen to y'all's podcasts while I stare at the link codes without using headphones. Y'all don't know how happy that makes me. So I just wanted to let y'all know that I appreciate y'all and getting me through today's work agenda. Oh, and also wanted to let y'all know that my fiancé has fallen in love with y'all too. We often see who retains more information while listening to an episode. It's really funny to hear what guys retain versus girls.

So just checking in with y'all, and I hope you'll have a great day and weekend. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking. Very cool. Yeah, I love that Lauren loves us. And apparently her fiance does too. He probably loves you more than he loves me, but, you know. That's a really cool game, though, right? For a couple to listen to the podcast and then come back later and see who retained more of it?

Yeah, I like that. Very cool. And how cool was that she said she was snowed in down in Texas? Well, they'd get like a quarter inch probably. Yeah, probably they all got scared. Went out and got their milk and bread and stayed home. Yeah. No, that is funny.

But thanks for the voicemail. Absolutely. I absolutely appreciate it. Love it. All right, Gibbs. You got anything else? No. All right. All good. All right. We love y'all. We appreciate everything that you do for us. Social media. Y'all, y'all. Yeah, I didn't mention the y'all. I love the y'all. Y'all. I think that is awesome. I'm going to start saying that, y'all. Y'all. It just sounds so cool. Sounded cooler from her. Well, yeah. Doesn't sound as cool for me. No. Because I don't have the, I don't have the swagger to really pull it off. You don't have a swagger, period. Oh, so it's not.

that I don't have enough to pull that off. I don't have enough to pull anything off. You can't even say, you can't even say yaw. Y'all. Y'all. All right, everyone, we appreciate it. Thanks for listening. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.