Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

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

Investigation

Upon retracing Beineman's movements on the day of her disappearance, police questioned the proprietor of the wig shop Beineman had visited immediately prior to her disappearance, a Mrs. Diana Joan Goshe. Goshe recalled Beineman visiting her store to purchase a $20 headpiece in the early afternoon of July 23. 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. Reportedly, Beineman herself insisted Mrs. Goshe observe the man with whom she had accepted a ride, stating that she had made two foolish errors in her life: purchasing a wig; and accepting a ride from a stranger, before stating: "I've got to be either the bravest or the dumbest girl alive because I've just accepted a ride from this guy." Mrs. Goshe then observed Beineman climb onto the motorcycle before the young man with whom she had accepted the ride drove away.

Although Goshe would initially—and incorrectly—describe the motorcycle as being possibly a Honda 350 model, when police questioned Carol Wieczerca, a clerk in the store adjacent to the wig shop, Wieczerca was able to state that the model of the motorcycle was actually a Triumph.

The description of the young man with whom Beineman had last been seen alive was heard by a patrolman named Larry Mathewson, who believed the person described by Mrs. Goshe and others may be one John Norman Collins: a former fraternity member of his who had previously been interviewed but eliminated from police inquiries, and who he had himself seen riding his motorcycle around the Eastern Michigan University campus on the afternoon of July 23. When Mathewson questioned Collins on July 25 as to his movements two days earlier, he admitted that on the date in question he had been riding his Triumph Bonneville in the vicinity and that he had stopped to converse with a former girlfriend of his while doing so (the point at which Mathewson had observed him). This former girlfriend was able to provide Mathewson with two recent photographs of Collins. When Mathewson showed these photographs to both Goshe and her assistant, Patricia Spaulding, both women were adamant the man in the photographs was the same individual with whom Beineman had last been seen alive.

Police had already established that Collins was a known motorcycle enthusiast who owned several motorcycles, including a blue Triumph Bonneville. He held a part-time job as an inspector at a firm which manufactured drum brakes and was currently majoring in elementary education at Eastern Michigan University. Prior to enrolling at Eastern Michigan University in the fall of 1966, he had been an honor student and football co-captain at his high school.

If a person wants something, he alone is the deciding factor of whether or not to take it, regardless of what society thinks is right or wrong ... if a person holds a gun on somebody—it's up to him to decide whether to take the other's life or not. The point is: It's not society's judgment that's important, but the individual's own choice of will and intellect.— Evaluation of individual will and moral restraints within society, written by Collins while enrolled at Eastern Michigan University.

Collins had established a reputation among his peers at Eastern Michigan University as a habitual thief who had once been evicted from a fraternity house for stealing from his roommates. Despite casual acquaintances harking as to his politeness around women, close female acquaintances who had dated Collins described him as an aggressive, short-tempered, oversexed individual who had occasionally engaged in violence against women, including one instance in which he had raped a woman who resisted his advances. Moreover, several of these female acquaintances divulged that Collins would become enraged upon learning a woman was menstruating: one woman revealed to police that on one occasion when Collins had begun groping her breasts, she had informed him she was experiencing her period; in response, Collins had yelled, "That is really disgusting!" before angrily walking out of her apartment.