As she jogged on the base of the Naval Air Station in Millington, Tennessee, approximately fifteen miles northeast of Memphis, Suzanne Collins was likely bubbling with excitement. It was late in the evening of July 11, 1985, and the following day was to be the greatest day of the nineteen-year-old’s life. Suzanne was a United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal undergoing training at the base and was scheduled to graduate from avionics training.

Many try out of for the Marines, but few make it. Only a scant few of those who do make it are women. Suzanne Collins was slated to be one of the few and the proud. No one had any doubt she would do her country proud, if she had only had the chance.

July 12, 1985, was supposed to be a day of elation for Suzanne Collins and her family. Instead, the day brought a lifetime of mourning.

United States Marine Lance Corporal

Suzanne Collins

Two other marines were also jogging near the Millington base on the evening of July 11. As they neared Edmund Orgill Park, they heard a woman scream. When they reached the area, they saw a car racing away.

The marines reported the incident to base security and accompanied officers on a tour of the base, looking for the car. Unsuccessful, they returned to their barracks but were soon called back to the security office. Officers had stopped a car, and when the marines arrived on the scene, they said the sounds made by the car’s muffler matched those they had heard after having heard the woman scream.

The car’s occupant gave statements to the base security personnel accounting for his whereabouts. The security personnel were satisfied, and, over the protest of the marines, allowed him to go. The personnel later said they did not detain the driver because no one had been reported missing at the time.

Edmund Orgill Park

Millington, Tennessee

After Suzanne was reported missing by her roommate on the morning of July 12, fellow marines and Shelby County police officers conducted a search for the missing Lance Corporal. Later that morning, Sheriff’s deputies discovered her body in Edmund Orgill Park, just off the marine base.

After word of the discovery of Suzanne’s body reached base the following morning, the military police arrested the man they had stopped the previous evening.

Suzanne’s Body Is Found

Twenty-nine-year-old heating and air conditioner repairman Sedley Alley lived on the Millington base; his wife, Lynne, was in the Navy. He had a history of alcoholism, drug addiction, and physically abusing women, having beating both Lynne and his first wife.

Under questioning, Alley admitted he had had killed Suzanne but claimed it was an accident, as his car had accidentally struck her as she was jogging. As he was trying to help her, Alley claimed he accidentally killed her when she fell on a screwdriver he was holding.

No one was buying Alley’s claims.

Sedley Alley

No screwdriver wounds or wounds consistent with being hit by a car were found on Suzanne’s body. An autopsy revealed the heinous manner in which she had lost her life.

Suzanne had been raped and her skull fractured by repeated beatings. Her death was caused from blunt force trauma to the head and internal hemorrhaging, caused in a grossly appalling manner. A tree limb had been shoved up her vagina with so much force that it penetrated her abdomen and tore a lung.

Suzanne Was Tortured

After Alley learned of the findings, he admitted his screwdriver story was a lie and confessed to Suzanne’s murder. He took police to the tree from which he had broken the limb he had put into Suzanne. Police said he seemed proud that he had remembered the tree’s location.

I did not find this in my research, but a member from my Facebook group said Alley was mad at his wife for going to a Tupperware party that evening and leaving him home alone. According to her, Alley, apparently angered at women in general, took his ire out on Suzanne, probably the first woman he saw afterwards.

An Ire Toward Women

At his trial, Alley did an about-face, claiming he had a multiple personality disorder and that his confession was coerced. Once again, his sale skills failed.

Alley Recants

Sedley Alley was convicted of first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated rape in March 1987. He was sentenced to death two months later, but it would take over two decades before the sentence was carried out.

After numerous appeals and stays of execution, Alley was finally put to death by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, on the morning of June 28, 2006.

Say Goodnight, Sedley

The amount of time between the murder and Alley’s execution (twenty years, eleven months, fourteen days) was longer than the life of Suzanne Collins (nineteen years, one month, four days).

Suzanne’s parents, Jack and Trudy Collins, grew frustrated with the lengthy appeals and continuing delay of Alley’s sentence. They became lobbyists for limitations on groundless habeas corpus appeals.

Mr. and Mrs. Collins also established the Suzanne Marie Collins Perpetual Scholarship, first awarded in 1996.

The Collins Family

Brother Steven, Parents Trudy And Jack

United States Marine Lance Corporal Suzanne Marie Collins was given a full military funeral and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

One Of The Few And The Proud

And Never Forgotten

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18543/suzanne-marie-collins

Suzanne ‘s Headstone At Arlington National Cemetery

In 2018, fifty-four-year-old Thomas Bruce, a former Missouri pastor, was arrested for the sexual assault of two women and the murder of another. He was alleged to have posed as a customer at a Catholic Supply store in St. Louis County and then raping the women at gunpoint. He plead guilty to multiple charges including murder, kidnapping, and sodomy and was sentenced to life in prison in 2021.

Bruce had no prior criminal record, but authorities believe he has likely committed other crimes. Some who believe Sedley Alley’s confession was coerced contend Bruce should be investigated as the possible killer of Suzanne Collins because, at the time of the murder, he was enrolled at the same avionics school she had attended in Memphis, not far from where her body was found.

Thomas Bruce

In April 2019, lawyers representing Sedley Alley’s estate petitioned the Tennessee courts to have additional DNA testing conducted in relation to the 1985 murder of Suzanne Collins, arguing a pair of men’s red underwear found in the vicinity of where her body was found should have earlier been submitted for testing.  The request was denied in November, with a judge upholding the lower court ruling that the estate of a deceased person cannot ask for DNA testing under the Post-Conviction DNA Analysis Act.

Had this request been granted, it would have been the first time such evidence was used to potentially exonerate an executed person under the Post-Conviction DNA Analysis Act.

DNA Requests Rejected

The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization established to exonerate individuals it believes have been wrongly convicted of major crimes, is, at the request of Sedley Allen’s daughter, April, attempting to clear his name.

In May 2021, lawyers filed a petition with the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, arguing the physical and eyewitness evidence used to convict Alley was weak, claiming the tire tracks and shoe prints found at the crime scene did not match his car and footwear, and that witnesses reported seeing a man not matching Alley’s physical stature in the vicinity. The man reportedly seen was between five-feet-six and five-feet-eight inches tall with a medium complexion and short brown hair. Alley was six-feet-four-inches tall with a light complexion and medium red hair.

Suzanne was dating two men at the time. One of them, John Borrup, fit the description of the man seen by the witnesses, and he did not know she was dating another man.

The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals denied the petition in May 2021.

April Alley,

Sedley Alley’s Daughter

SOURCES:

• Daily Memphibian
• The Tennessean
• Journey Into Darkness” by John Douglas
• “Law & Disorder” by John Douglas
• Murderpedia
• Nashville Scene