ANN ARBOR, Mich. — When Jane Mixer, a 23-year-old law student, packed her bags for spring break on March 20, 1969, she was brimming with an exciting announcement for her parents: She and her graduate student boyfriend had decided to marry and move to New York.

But as jurors in Washtenaw County Circuit Court heard Tuesday, Mixer never got a chance to share her news.

The morning after she was due to arrive home, her body was found in a cemetery, two bullets in her head and a garrote of pantyhose around her neck.

Her father and fiancé were the first witnesses to testify in the murder trial of Gary Earl Leiterman, 62. The retired nurse was charged with the 36-year-old killing last year after a cold case investigation uncovered his DNA on two pair of pantyhose at the crime scene.

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As a faded black-and-white snapshot of Mixer smiling and holding a stack of schoolbooks was displayed on a large projection screen, the victim's 90-year-old father, Dan Mixer, told jurors that his daughter had arranged a ride for the three-hour trip home to Muskegon with a stranger who answered her posting on a campus bulleting board.

When she did not arrive that night, Mixer said, he became concerned, calling her boyfriend and police. Ultimately, he said, he and his wife learned her fate when they interrupted their panicked search to eat at a diner.

"And there was the Ann Arbor newspaper with my daughter's picture in it, a victim," he said.

Leiterman, then a 25-year-old pharmaceutical salesman, had no known connection to Mixer.

His DNA was in the police database because of a felony conviction for forging prescriptions. Mixer's murder was long suspected to be the work of a serial killer blamed for the slayings of seven young women in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti between 1967 and 1969.

Mixer's fiancé, Phillip Weitzman, testified that she did not hesitate in accepting a ride home from a stranger, a man she identified as David Johnson.

"The concerns [she had] were about the weekend with her parents and not the trip home," Weitzman said, noting that both were worried about how her family would greet the news of their nuptials and her decision to transfer to Columbia University law school.

Weitzman, who now lives in London, said Johnson was to pick her up at 6 p.m., but when he called her at 6:15, she was still waiting for him.

He never spoke to her again, he said.

The roommate of a man named David Johnson who lived nearby and was listed in the phone book said he fielded a call from a woman at 10 p.m. that night enquiring whether Johnson still intended to drive her to Muskegon.

The witness, Joseph Katulick, said he told her Johnson, his fraternity brother, was on stage in a campus Gilbert and Sullivan production at the moment.

"She said, 'Well, in case this is the right number, tell him that Janie Mixer called,'" Katulick testified.

Other witnesses who took the stand Tuesday included a young mother who found Mixer's body in a cemetery and the Michigan State Police detectives, now retired, who investigated the string of killings.

One detective, Kenneth Taylor, said that although Mixer's murder was investigated by a task force examining the series of murders, officers noted differences in her slaying.

The bodies of the other women "were relatively hidden in brush or trees ... whereas Miss Mixer was laid out in a completely open space in a cemetery," Taylor said.

Other officers are expected to testify that Mixer was also the only victim not sexually assaulted, and that while she died of gunshot wounds, all but one of the other victims were stabbed, beaten or strangled to death.

Testimony in the trial is set to resume Wednesday morning.