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Citizens Asked to Aid Murder-Suspect Hunt

Citizens Asked to Aid Murder-Suspect Hunt image
Parent Issue
Day
7
Month
July
Year
1968
Copyright
Copyright Protected
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

Purse Like Coed Was Carrying

Citizens Asked To Aid Murder-Suspect Hunt

Arm Arbor police today issued a public appeal for “citizen help” in locating three suspects in the stabbing murder of Joan E. Schell, Eastern Michigan University coed.

Senior Police Capt. Harold E. Olson and Assistant Prosecutor Thomas F. Shea said tips from persons who may have seen the red-and-black Pontiac Bonneville in which three youths were riding are vital if the homicide is to be solved. Miss Schell, hit hiking from Ypsilanti to Ann Arbor where she was to meet her boyfriend, Dale Schultz, 19, of Plymouth, was picked up in front of Welch Hall on Washtenaw Ave. and driven off in the 1966 or 1967 car. Five days later her body, riddled with stab wounds, was found behind a clump of hickory trees on Glacier Way near Earhart Rd. in Ann Arbor.

A composite drawing of one of the three youths in the car which picked up Miss Schell has been distributed throughout Michigan, but no substantial leads have resulted.

“Someone, somewhere in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area has seen this red car,” Capt. Olson and Prosecutor Shea said. “If each person would just check their block, their neighborhood and call the nearest police agency with any information on such a vehicle, it’d be a big help.”

Olson pointed out that the identity of any citizen calling in with information on possible suspects will be “fully protected.” He said if persons with information wish, they may remain anonymous when calling. Whatever their desire in that respect, their identity will not be revealed under any circumstances, he added.

While local police were ask-

ing help from private citizens they plodded through a number of preliminary leads, all of which have proven useless so far. City Police Capt. Walter V. Hawkins has assigned four detectives full-time to the case, and all officers are on the lookout for the red Pontiac and the youth whose composite likeness has been published.

The office of Prosecuting Attorney William F. Delhey released today a photograph of a red burlap hand bag similar to the one Miss Schell was carrying on the night she disappeared.

The bag contained a purse, identification, cosmetics and some underclothing, Delhey said. The handbag is bright red in color with purple beads on it.

Anyone in the Washtenaw County area seeing such handbag is asked to contact the nearest police agency.

At a meeting held yesterday and attended by members of all area law agencies, Delhey and Shea, it was agreed that all reports on investigative progress in the murder probe would be filtered through Delhey's office. The move is to prevent the leaking of information which might hinder the investigation, officials said.

When the murder investigation began last Friday, it was

almost immediately linked to the killing a year ago of Mary Fleszar, 19-year-old Eastern Michigan University coed from Augusta Township. Her body, stabbed a dozen times, was found on a Superior Township farm.

Today the hunt for the killer of the two EMU coeds branched out to Wisconsin and Illinois where police have compiled foot-thick files on two similar murders.

One of those killings occurred last May 26 on the University of Wisonsin campus at Madison where Christine Rothchild, 18-year-old freshman, was stabbed 17 times. Her partially disrobed body was found in a clump of bushes.

Ralph Hanson, chief of the Wisconsin campus police, said his men have interviewed 700 persons and have cleared five suspects with lie-detector tests. But the murder remains unsolved.

The second murder gained national attention because it involved the daughter of U. S. Senator Charles E. Percy, Valrie. She was stabbed to death in the family home near Chicago over a year ago. Although a number of rewards for the apprehension of her killer have been offered, the murder remains unsolved.

Illinois State Police investigating the Percy murder visited the University of Wisconsin campus when the Rothchild homicide occurred, and an Illinois police officer said at the time there were ‘‘striking similarities” between the two murders. State Police detectives in Chicago handling the Percy murder case said this morning there are no plans at this time to visit Ann Arbor in connection with the Schell-Fleszar killings.