Leiterman

GARY E. LEITERMAN

Class Of 1960

DNA reopens 35-year mystery

BY MARYANNE GEORGE
FREE PRESS ANN ARBOR BUREAU

December 2, 2004

A DNA sample taken from a southwest Michigan man convicted of forging narcotics prescriptions in 2002 was the key that led to his arrest in the 35-year-old killing of a University of Michigan law student, one of seven brutal murders of young women that terrified Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti in 1967-69.

Investigators said a link to the decades-old evidence might not have been made but for a law that took effect Jan. 1, 2002, requiring convicted felons to give DNA samples to State Police. The samples can be used to search state and national databases for possible links to crimes.

Gary E. Leiterman, 62, of Gobles, northwest of Kalamazoo, pleaded guilty to a felony on Jan. 4, 2002, three days after the law went on the books.

"He nearly missed being discovered ... he was one of the first people required to submit a DNA sample under the law," said one of the investigators. They spoke on condition that they not be identified, because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.

Leiterman was arraigned last week in Washtenaw County Circuit Court on an open murder charge in the 1969 killing of Jane L. Mixer after investigators matched his DNA with evidence taken from Mixer's body, they said.

The trail leading to Leiterman began with his arrest for shoplifting a forged prescription at a Meijer store near Kalamazoo on Oct. 3, 2001. Afterward, police in the town of Portage searched Leiterman's car and discovered dozens of blank prescription forms from Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, where Leiterman worked as a registered nurse, and several doses of prescription drugs.

Leiterman was charged with three felonies for stealing prescription forms and obtaining synthetic narcotics, including Vicoprofen and Lorcet. But in a deal with the Kalamazoo County Prosecutor's Office, he pleaded guilty to one felony count of fraudulently obtaining the drugs and was ordered into a drug treatment program, according to Kalamazoo Circuit Court records. After he completed the program, the case was dismissed in 2003.

Leiterman provided a DNA sample in February 2002 at the Portage Police Department, according to the court records.

His attorney, Gary Gabry, said Wednesday that Leiterman does not recall ever meeting Mixer. Gabry had no comment about any possible DNA link between his client and the dead woman.

Assistant Washtenaw County Prosecutor Steve Hiller also declined to elaborate on the case.

A preliminary examination scheduled for today has been postponed, Hiller said. Leiterman is being held without bond in the Washtenaw County Jail.

In 1956-60, Leiterman lived in the city of Wayne and attended Wayne Memorial High School, according to school records. The school is less than 10 miles from the Denton Cemetery, just south of Michigan Avenue in Van Buren Township, where Mixer's body was found March 21, 1969.

She was the third of the seven young women killed in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area in 1967-69. Most of the victims were beaten in the head, strangled, sexually assaulted and found nude or seminude in places where they could be easily discovered, according to investigators who worked the cases.

The killings stopped in 1969 after John Norman Collins, then 21, was arrested and charged with the death of the last victim, Karen Sue Beineman, an 18-year-old Eastern Michigan University freshman from Grand Rapids. Collins was convicted of her murder in 1970 and is serving a life sentence at the Marquette Branch Prison in Marquette.

The cases became among the most notorious serial killings in the country and were the subject of a 1976 book, "The Michigan Murders," by Edward Keyes.

Collins declined, through prison officials, a request from the Free Press for an interview this week.

From the beginning, police thought Mixer's murder did not match the pattern in the other killings, said Earl James, a retired State Police detective who worked on the cases. He would not comment Wednesday on whether Leiterman was considered a suspect in the original investigation.

Mixer's life was full of promise on March 20, 1969, the last day she was seen alive, according to police. She was close to completing her first year at U-M Law School and was going home to Muskegon to tell her parents that she was going to marry her boyfriend, Phil Weitzman.

She had posted a notice on the student ride board at the Michigan Union and told Weitzman that she had found a ride with a man named David Johnson. She told Weitzman when he called her at 7 p.m. that Johnson was 30 minutes late picking her up at her room at the U-M Law Quad, James said. When Weitzman called Mixer again at 8 p.m., there was no answer.

About 7 the next morning on his way to school, 13-year-old Mark Grow found a J.L. Hudson's shopping bag across from his house near the Denton Cemetery, on Cross Road, about three miles east of Ypsilanti, and brought it home. Nancy Grow saw bloodstains at the bottom of the bag and became alarmed. As she was pulling out of the driveway in her car to find her son, she saw Mixer's body, lying on a grave.

Mixer had been placed near the headstone of the grave of William Downing Sr., who had died in 1918. She was covered with her yellow raincoat and a grave blanket. She had been shot twice in the head with a .22-caliber pistol and a nylon stocking that was not hers had been wrapped tightly around her throat, James said.

Her shoes had been placed by her side and a copy of the novel "Catch 22" was lying next to her. Unlike the other victims, she had not been beaten or sexually assaulted.

"She had won awards for debating and it was clear that she had established a rapport with the killer," said James, who wrote about the cases in his book, "Catching Serial Killers."

"But he couldn't let her go because she could identify him. The killer was very meticulous. He covered her up with her coat and placed her in a cemetery at great personal risk to himself. He carefully laid out her book and her shoes."

The killer's method was in stark contrast to the murder of Beineman and the other victims, and it always bothered police, who believed Collins was responsible for the other slayings, James said.

"I know this case, and police have been very persistent hammering away on this one for years," James said. "They have strong evidence."'

Mixer's father, Dan Mixer, a retired dentist in Spring Lake, said reopening the case is like "picking a scab" for the family.

"We are only after justice if this person is guilty," he said.

Contact MARYANNE GEORGE at 734-665-5600 or mageorge@freepress.com.

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Saturday, July 23, 2005

MAN CONVICTED IN 1969 SLAYING OF U-M STUDENT

Associated Press

ANN ARBOR -- A 62-year-old Van Buren County man was found guilty Friday in the 1969 slaying of a University of Michigan student.

A jury found Gary Leiterman, 62, of Gobles, guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Jane Mixer, a 23-year-old law student from Muskegon.

"It's taken a long time to get justice, but it is justice," Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie said. "(Police and prosecutors) have fought very hard for a long time to get justice for Jane Mixer and now they've done it." A message seeking comment was left for defense attorney Gary Gabry.

Mixer's father, Dan Mixer, testified during the trial that his daughter was headed home from college on March 20, 1969, to announce her engagement and imminent move to New York City but never arrived. Her body was found the next day atop a grave in a cemetery near Ypsilanti. Jane Mixer was shot twice in the head and strangled with a nylon stocking. Her shoes and a copy of the novel "Catch-22" were neatly placed by her side, and her body was covered with her raincoat and a grave blanket.

She was the third of seven young women brutally slain in a string of murders around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti from 1967 to 1969.

Collins was convicted and is serving a life sentence at Marquette Branch Prison in Marquette.

The Mixer case, however, didn't fit the pattern of the other slayings.

Leiterman is a former surgical technology instructor and registered nurse at Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo. Before the trial, he denied knowing or killing Mixer. Genetic evidence led Michigan State Police detectives to reopen the investigation in 2003.

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