When Andrew Templeton moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 2018, he came across a copy of the 1974 book The Michigan Murders (reissued in 2010) sitting on the "Local Interest" shelf at the District Library.
The book is all about John Norman Collins (a.k.a. John Norman Chapman), a suspected serial killer known as the Ypsilanti Ripper and Co-Ed Killer, who has been serving a life sentence in prison since 1970. Between 1967 and 1969, seven girls and women between the ages of 13 and 21 were abducted, raped and murdered. Several of the victims were menstruating at the time.
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| John Norman Collins mugshot |
Collins was convicted of the final murder, which claimed the life of 18-year-old Eastern Michigan University student Karen Sue Beineman. Templeton spent six years researching and making his maiden feature documentary about the crimes, titled 1969: Killers, Freaks, And Radicals. After debuting in 2025, the film is rolling back out this summer with pair of screenings in Detroit on August 7th and Ann Arbor on August 8th.
"In a culture that is so big on true crime, this has mostly been forgotten," Templeton told Detroit's WXYZ-TV ahead of the twin screenings. "Traditionally, Collins has been looked at as a lone killer and this film really challenges that perception. I think there's significant reason to believe it was the work of a small group."
Coincidentally, not long after Templeton first became aware of the crimes, the Detroit Free Press published an in-depth investigation into the Michigan Murders in the fall of 2019. The main piece of new evidence, which the filmmaker came to in his own way via interviews, was that Collins wrote a letter to his cousin blaming the murders on a roommate.
One of the reasons the Michigan Murders case was quickly forgotten is that a week after Collins was arrested on July 31st, 1969, the Charles Manson murders rained down on Los Angeles August 8th-9th. In fact, it was the absence of any existing documentary that helped cement Templeton's desire to make his film about the case. Other than the killing for which Collins is serving, all of the remaining murders (five in Michigan, one in California) remain officially unsolved.
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