ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In the late 1960s, coeds in this college town lived in fear of a serial killer.

Over a two-year period beginning in the summer of 1967, seven young women who resided on or near the University of Michigan campus or the campus of Eastern Michigan University in nearby Ypsilanti were murdered, and their bloody bodies left for discovery in public places.

In 1969, police arrested a clean-cut Eastern Michigan student named John Norman Collins for the murder of the seventh victim, an 18-year-old freshman who had been strangled and dumped on a hillside. The killings stopped, Collins was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, and the case of the Coed Killer seemed closed.

But 36 years later, authorities here are revisiting one of the murders.

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In a trial opening this week, prosecutors in Washtenaw County will try to prove that the third woman to die, a 23-year-old Michigan law student named Jane Mixer, was not the victim of a serial killer at all, but of a sexually dysfunctional young man who, in the decades after the murder, became a well-respected member of his community.

Gary Earl Leiterman, a 62-year-old retired nurse, former school board representative and Little League organizer, is accused of shooting Mixer twice in the head and leaving her partly clothed body in a cemetery on March 10, 1969.

Leiterman, then a 25-year-old pharmaceutical salesman in suburban Detroit, had no known association with Mixer and apparently was not considered a suspect by the investigators searching for a break in the murders.

State police first linked Leiterman to the killing after detectives examining cold cases began focusing on the differences between Mixer's death and the other slayings. All but one of the other victims were stabbed, beaten and strangled to death. Mixer died from gunshot wounds. The others were sexually assaulted. She was not.

Detectives sent the old crime scene evidence for DNA testing in 2002. Technicians at the state police lab found a hit on genetic material gleaned from Mixer's pantyhose in 2004. It matched Leiterman.

Building a case

The hit initially provided little for police to go on. Leiterman was in the database because he had recently pleaded guilty to forging drug prescriptions. But he had entered a drug program and appeared to be leading a blameless life.

He was married to a Filipino woman, and they had adopted her niece and nephew after their parents died. The couple was also caring for his aging parents and had taken in a teenage exchange student from South Korea. Leiterman was also active in youth sports programs and was hardly trying to elude detection.

He "has maintained a home and the same telephone number since 1973," his wife, Solly, noted in court papers.

As police dug deeper, however, they found evidence of a darker side.

A search of Leiterman's home turned up pornographic Polaroid photos of the Korean exchange student. According to prosecutors, the teenage girl appeared to be unconscious and her clothing was pulled up towards her head and down towards her feet to expose her genitals.

Police noted that the positioning of the clothing was similar to the way Mixer was found. The girl told investigators she did not remember taking the photos.

Detectives also found a vial in Leiterman's shaving kit containing a mixture of valium and a sedative, a combination that would put users in a deep sleep, nearly to unconsciousness.

Detectives turned up a 1987 police report in which Leiterman reported a .22-caliber pistol had been stolen from his house. Mixer was killed by a .22-caliber weapon.

Police interviewed Leiterman's associates from the time of the murder. One former girlfriend said he was sexually strange. But the biggest break came in interviews with his roommate, Paul Esper.

Esper told police that he was highly suspicious of Leiterman because he collected news clippings about the coed murders and kept them in a closet. He said Leiterman, then selling prescription drugs to hospitals, bragged about a particular medication he had that would render a woman unconscious with just one drop.

He also told police that Leiterman had a makeshift shooting range in his basement where he fired his .22 pistol. Esper claimed that Leiterman had rather suspiciously nagged him to shoot the gun in the range.

"Esper fired the weapon on one occasion. Afterwards, the defendant lost interest in having Esper shoot the gun," Deputy Chief Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Steven Hiller wrote in court papers.

Based on this evidence, police arrested Leiterman and charged him with open murder, a count that could carry a life sentence.

Lab error?

If the strongest evidence at his trial, expected to last three weeks, is DNA, it is also the strongest evidence for the defense.

At a preliminary hearing last winter, prosecutors revealed that technicians at the state police lab had detected the DNA of a second male on crime scene evidence. Specifically, a spot of blood on Mixer's hand matched the profile of a man already serving a life sentence for murdering his mother.

The man, John Ruelas, is 40, however, making him just four years old at the time of the crime. There is no known connection between Ruelas and the victim, nor Leiterman, but evidence from the murder of his mother was tested in the state police lab on the same day evidence from the 1969 was examined.

The defense has suggested that Ruelas' DNA indicates contamination in the lab and calls into serious question the initial DNA match against Leiterman.

Leiterman, who is being held without bail, has maintained his innocence. He pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in the Polaroids of the exchange student, but has implied that the girl and a boyfriend took the photos and he was only holding them until he and his wife could decide how to handle the situation.

Testimony in the trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday.