[19] Schell hailed from Plymouth and had recently moved into a house on Emmet Street in Ypsilanti; she was last seen by her roommate, Susan Kolbe, at a Washtenaw Avenue bus stop on the evening of June 30.

[21] Despite tracing and eliminating more than 150 registered owners of red-and-black vehicles in the state of Michigan, and establishing the alibis of numerous individuals whose physical features bore a likeness to the composite drawing of the driver the police had obtained from Kolbe, all investigative lines of inquiry into the murder of Joan Schell failed to bear fruit.

Questioned by police, Collins flatly denied even knowing Schell, and insisted he had spent the weekend of June 29–30 with his mother at her house in the Detroit suburb of Center Line, and had not returned to Ypsilanti until the morning of July 1.

[26] On March 20, 1969,[26] a 23-year-old University of Michigan law student named Jane Louise Mixer disappeared after posting a note on a college bulletin board seeking a lift across the state to her hometown of Muskegon,[27] where she had intended to inform her family of her engagement and imminent move to New York City.

Her fully clothed body, covered with her own raincoat and with a copy of the novel Catch-22 placed by her side, was found the following morning atop a grave in Denton Cemetery in Van Buren Township.

Welt marks upon the chest and shoulders indicated the killer had also used restraints to hold the victim prone as he whipped her torso and upper legs with a leather belt[37] before tearing a branch from a nearby tree and inserting this instrument eight inches into her vagina.

[36] However, the dramatic increase in savagery exhibited against the victim and the fact that Skelton was a known drug user, dealer and occasional police informant[40] as opposed to a university student[26] led some junior investigators to speculate her murder may have been drug-related.

Upon conducting a search of the basement of this farmhouse, investigators discovered a further garment of her clothing, a length of electrical flex of the same type used to strangle the victim, and fresh human bloodstains, indicating this location as being the site of Basom's murder.

[55] (The farmhouse itself was destroyed in an act of arson on May 13; when the fire was extinguished, five clipped lilac blossoms[56] were found arranged in an even row across the driveway to the building, leading investigators to theorize they had been placed there by the murderer to symbolize each victim.

[57]) Less than two months after the murder of Dawn Basom, on June 9, three teenage boys discovered a partially nude body of a young woman in a field close to an abandoned farmhouse on North Territorial Road.

Although Washtenaw County Sheriff Douglas Harvey conceded at a press conference that same month that investigators had little physical evidence to act upon and that the perpetrator had yet to make a serious error, he was adamant about the fact the murderer was still at large was due to pure luck, and not for lack of police effort.

She also recalled having observed a young man with short, side-parted dark hair, wearing a horizontal striped sweater, waiting on a blue motorcycle outside the shop as Beineman made her purchase.

As Davis opened the door for his roommate to leave the apartment, he observed that the contents of this box included a woman's purple shoe, rolled-up jean-like material, and a burlap purse.

[91] Upon their return from their vacation, Leik's wife, Sandra, had noted numerous paint marks covering the floor of the family basement, and that several items—including a bottle of ammonia, a box of laundry detergent, and a canister of black spray paint—were missing from the household.

[108][109] On August 3, two Washtenaw County detectives traveled to Salinas Police Department to review information and determine whether a connection existed between Phillips' murder and those which Collins was suspected of committing in Michigan.

Albrecht had provided Monterey County investigators with an identikit which, in addition to her descriptions of the suspect's possessions, circumstances and status, bore a striking resemblance to John Norman Collins.

[115] Upon questioning Manuel's grandfather, investigators were informed that his grandson and one John Collins had temporarily resided in the trailer—which they had hired from an Ypsilanti rental firm—between June and July, before both men had abandoned the trailer and (he believed) returned to Michigan.

After hearing six hours of testimony from nine prosecution witnesses, Judge Edward Deake ruled that probable cause had been established, and Collins was formally ordered to stand trial for Beineman's murder.

[81] In his opening statement to the jury on July 20, Delhey outlined the prosecution's contention that the evidence to be presented would form a clear pattern indicating that Collins had been in the company of Karen Sue Beineman at the time she was last seen alive by Mrs. Joan Goshe and her assistant; that he had taken her to the home of his own uncle, where he had tortured and beaten the girl before strangling her to death at this location; and that he had then discarded her body, before attempting to persuade his roommate to provide him with a false alibi.

Defense attorneys Neil Fink and Joseph Louisell, in their opening statement, labeled the eyewitnesses' identification of both Collins and his motorcycle as flawed and unreliable, and stated their intentions to introduce several witnesses who would provide an alibi for their client in the early afternoon hours the prosecution contended Karen Sue Beineman had been abducted and murdered.

[138] Although subject to intense cross-examination by defense attorney Neil Fink as to the credibility of her testimony, Goshe remained insistent in her identification of John Norman Collins as being the individual who had waited for Karen Sue Beineman to return to his motorcycle.

[139] (The prosecution had initially intended to question Davis in detail as to each of the contents of this laundry box upon the grounds that the contents Davis had previously described to investigators may include Beineman's missing cut-off blue jeans; however, Collins' attorneys successfully objected to this motion upon the grounds that Collins was solely on trial for the murder of Karen Sue Beineman, and this testimony could suggest a link to the six other victims of the Michigan Murders then linked to the same perpetrator.

[142] Immediately following the testimony of Walter Holz, a colleague of his named Curtis Fluker testified that the blood type of the tissue samples recovered from the Leik family basement matched that of Karen Sue Beineman.

Upon cross-examination, Dr. Guinn did agree with defense attorney Neil Fink that a statistical analysis of hair mixtures had never been attempted in a court of law,[143] although he remained firm that his applications had been performed via scientific principles.

[145] On August 8, Collins' attorneys introduced a renowned neutron analyst named Dr. Robert Jervis in an effort to discredit the earlier testimony of the forensic experts who had testified on behalf of the prosecution.

[160] His lawyers further argued that, at an evidentiary hearing in April 1970, shortly before jury selection had begun, Collins' indictment for the California murder of Roxie Ann Phillips had likewise received extensive media coverage in Washtenaw County—further reducing the chances of potential jurors being unbiased.

Furthermore, Collins' lawyers argued issues such as the admissibility of testimony relating to the microscopic analysis of hair samples presented at his trial, and the denial of defense motions to suppress prosecution witnesses testifying against their client.

[159] At his 1972 appeal hearing, Collins' lawyers did succeed in securing the partial striking of the testimony of Dr. Vincent P. Guinn, the final prosecution witness at his trial, who had testified as to the odds of erroneous matching of the hairs found upon Karen Beineman's panties to those in the Leik family basement being "more than a million-to-one.

[165] Just six months later, in January 1972, Monterey County District Attorney William Curtis formally announced, via a spokesman, the intention of California authorities to waive all extradition proceedings against Collins for Phillips' murder.

In the case of Joan Elspeth Schell, two separate witness accounts had placed the victim both entering a car with three men on the night of her disappearance, and walking alone in the company of a man believed to be John Collins later that evening.