Harvey Collins

Harvey John Collins (October 5, 1925 – December 3, 1957) was an American serial killer who was responsible for three murders committed in Kentucky and Washington between 1953 and 1955, one of them committed while he was serving in the United States Army. Convicted and sentenced to death for one of the murders, he was subsequently executed in 1957.

Early life and first murder Harvey John Collins was born on October 5, 1925, in Portland, Oregon, one of several children born to Alfred and Mable Collins (née Tessier). Early on in his life, the entire family moved to Spokane, Washington, where Collins would grow up. According to one of his sisters, they all grew up in a stable, loving home, in which Collins was considered a mama's boy who got along with everyone. When he became an adult, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he served with distinction in the Pacific Theatre and fought during the Battle of Iwo Jima, from which he brought home a katana taken from a Japanese soldier he had killed in battle. For his fighting merits, he was promoted to the rank of Captain, and was generally regarded as an upstanding member of society.

However, after the war ended, Collins began to exhibit signs of psychological distress, possibly brought on either from PTSD or from the death of his father in a workplace accident years prior. In what appeared to be a friendly gesture, Collins offered to drive her home, but while driving back to Fort Knox, Collins stopped the car on an isolated road and attempted to make sexual advances towards Hall. She rejected him outright, causing the enraged Collins to kick her out of the car, then beat and finally stab her in the head with a screwdriver. On January 6, 1954, he left behind a suicide letter and then went to the base's air field, where he stole a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog and lifted off. For the next few hours, he flew aimlessly around the area until he eventually crashed the plane near some train tracks in Temple. While the wreckage was quickly located by other officers, there was no immediate sign of Collins himself. On March 21, he went to a motel in Milton and asked the proprietress, 67-year-old Anna Stolen, how much it would cost to stay overnight. After she told him it was $4, Collins told her it was too much and left. Some time later, he came back and knocked on the door, only to attack Stolen with a paring knife when she opened it. Later that same day, after he was determined to be sane and was interrogated by FBI agents, Collins confessed to the Hall murder, explaining it in details that only the killer could have known. To strengthen their case, he brought on two psychiatrists, Drs. Myron Kass and Harlan P. McNutt, who had previously examined Collins and determined that he was sane at the time of the killings. In response, defense attorneys Andrew L. Garnes and J. Houston Vanzant Jr. decided to bar their client from taking the stand at his trial. Two days later, however, he surrendered himself at the sheriff's office, claiming that he had "thought the situation through" and had decided to embrace his fate. As a result, Collins' execution date was set for December 3, 1957. On the aforementioned date, Collins was hanged at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. He was hanged at 12:05 a.m. before being officially pronounced dead 12 minutes later. He was executed in front of a crowd of 30 people. His final words were: "I ask forgiveness for everything I've done."