Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

The Michigan Murders: Ypsilanti Ripper (John Norman Collins) Part I

The Michigan Murders was a series of highly publicized killings of young women committed between 1967 and 1969 in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area of Southeastern Michigan by an individual known as the Ypsilanti Ripper, the Michigan Murderer, and the Co-Ed Killer.

All the victims of the Michigan Murderer were young women between the ages of 13 and 21 who were abducted, raped, beaten and murdered—typically by stabbing or strangulation—with their bodies occasionally mutilated after death before being discarded within a 15-mile radius of Washtenaw County. The perpetrator, John Norman Chapman (then known as John Norman Collins) was arrested one week after the final murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for this final murder attributed to the Michigan Murderer on August 19, 1970, and is currently incarcerated at Marquette Branch Prison.

Although never tried for the remaining five murders attributed to the Michigan Murderer, or the murder of a sixth girl killed in California whose death has been linked to the series, investigators believe Chapman to be responsible for all seven murders linked to the same perpetrator.

Murders

First known victim

The first known victim linked to the Michigan Murderer was a 19-year-old Eastern Michigan University accounting student named Mary Terese Fleszar, who was last seen alive on the evening of July 9, 1967, by a neighbor walking towards her Ypsilanti apartment. This neighbor twice observed a young man in a blue-grey Chevrolet slow to a halt beside Fleszar and begins talking to her: each time, Fleszar had shaken her head and walked away from the car. Her nude body was found by two 15-year-old boys on an abandoned farm at Superior Township on August 7, and was formally identified via dental records the following day.

The corpse was badly decomposed, although the pathologist who examined Fleszar's remains was able to determine she had been stabbed approximately 30 times in the chest and abdomen with a knife or other sharp object, that her feet had been severed just above the ankle, the thumb and sections of the fingers of one hand were missing, and that one forearm had been severed from her body (these severed appendages were never found). Despite the advanced state of decomposition, the pathologist was also able to locate multiple lineal abrasions upon the victim's chest and torso, indicating that Fleszar had been extensively beaten before her death. Although police theorized that Fleszar had been raped, the advanced state of decomposition of the corpse had erased any conclusive evidence of a sexual assault.

A detailed examination of the crime scene revealed that the body had been moved three times throughout the month it had lain undiscovered: initially, the body had lain upon a pile of bottles and cans obscured from view by elder trees, before being dragged five feet from this location into a field, where it had remained exposed throughout much of the time it had lain undiscovered. Shortly before the body was discovered, the murderer had again returned to the body and moved the body a further three feet.

Two days after the remains had been identified as those of Mary Fleszar, a young man claiming to be a friend of the Fleszar family arrived at the funeral home holding Fleszar's body prior to her scheduled burial. This individual had asked for permission to take a photograph of the body as it lay in the coffin as a keepsake for her parents. When informed his request was impossible, the young man had replied: "You mean you can't fix her up enough so I could just get one picture of her?" Sternly informed a second time he would not be allowed to view the body, the young man had wordlessly exited the funeral home.

The receptionist could not offer any clear description of the man beyond that he was a handsome young white male with dark hair, that he had driven a blue-grey Chevrolet, and that he had not been carrying a camera.