Crime: The Rainy Day Murders

Karen Sue Beineman, 18, a freshman at Eastern Michigan University, was a cautious and sensible girl. On July 23, in Ypsilanti, Mich., she told clerks in a wig shop that she had done only two foolish things in her life. One was to buy herself a wig. The other: to accept a ride from a stranger, who was wait ing outside for her on his motorcycle.

Three days later, Karen Beineman’s nude body was discovered in a roadside ditch west of Ann Arbor. She had been stran gled and so brutally battered that fin gerprints were needed to identify her.

Karen’s murder was the latest in a grisly skein that has claimed the lives of seven young women in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area in the past two years —five since March. Most of the victims had been sensible, intelligent girls like Karen. Ranging in age from 13 to 23, they included three Eastern Michigan students, two from the University of Michigan, a junior high school student and a high school dropout.

Pattern. Karen’s murder followed what is by now a pattern: the victim, usually walking alone, accepts a ride and disappears. Her body is found several days later. All the girls were brunette Caucasians, and all were murdered in rainy weather. Six of the seven were either strangled, stabbed in the neck or left with something twisted around their necks. The exact official causes of death: two by gunshot, two by strangulation, two by stab wounds and one by skull fracture.

Jane Mixer, 23, who was shot last March, was the only girl not sexually molested, mutilated or left nude. The other victims* were subjected to intense brutality; most were raped, stripped and tortured. One girl was found with several fingers, her feet and part of one forearm severed.

The local campuses have become increasingly security-conscious. Dormitories have instituted checkout procedures, and Eastern Michigan has imposed a curfew. The University of Michigan has increased its cross-campus bus service and installed lights on major streets and walkways. Campus police have stepped up night patrols.

Arrest. In a college town, where casual relationships with strangers are common, security precautions are of limited value. Sorority girls who live on Washtenaw Avenue, for example, still hitchhike rather than walk the two miles to campus, and campus bulletin boards abound with notices of girls seeking weekend rides. Once the fall session starts, campuses will again bustle with mixers, where young men and women traditionally seek to meet strangers. One coed said last week: “We’re not talking about the creature from the Black Lagoon. We’re talking about a smooth guy −or guys−who can pick up girls, take them somewhere and kill them.”

The police investigation had proved fruitless until last week. Friction among some of the five police agencies working on the case impeded progress, causing Governor William Milliken to observe that the departments had displayed only “passive cooperation” with one another. He ordered the state police to take over. The state cops played an important but unanticipated role in the first major break in the case. State Police Corporal David Leik returned from a vacation to find his house “disturbed.” Leik’s nephew, John Norman Collins, 23, had a key to the house. Going on Leik’s report and other evidence, police arrested Collins, an Eastern Michigan senior, and charged him with the first-degree murder of Karen Sue Beineman. At week’s end police were investigating to see if Collins, a student in good standing, could be tied to any of the other murders.

* Aside from Karen Beineman and Jane Mixer, the victims were Mary Fleszar, 19, Joan Schell, 20, Maralynn Skelton, 16, Dawn Basom, 13, and Alice Kalom, 23, An eighth girl, Margaret Phillips, 25, was shot to death in her Ann Arbor apartment July 6, but a suspect has been arrested and police do not connect her death with the others.