Today's episode is taking us back to the world of unsolved true crime. This episode deals with pretty tough stuff so consider this your trigger warning as the episode does talk about the killings of young children.
We are heading to the state of Michigan for this one. Oakland county to be exact. Oakland county is part of the metropolitan Detroit area, located northwest of the city. As of the 2020 Census, its population was 1,274,395, making it the second-most populous county in Michigan, behind neighboring Wayne County. The county seat is Pontiac. The county was founded in 1819 and organized in 1820. Oakland County is among the ten highest income counties in the United States with populations over one million people. The county's knowledge-based economic initiative, coined "Automation Alley", has developed one of the largest employment centers for engineering and related occupations in the United States. This county would spawn a serial killer. From February 1976 to March 1977 four children were abducted and murdered with their bodies left in various locations within or just outside Oakland County.
There were at least two other murder cases that investigators believe may have been victims of the “Oakland County Child Killer” or “The Babysitter Killer,” as some called him.
The ensuing murder investigation was the largest of its kind in U.S. history at the time. One suspect was even from our neck of the woods! We'll check out the victims and then get into the suspects. Again, this is definitely a touchy episode for some so if you're uncomfortable with this sort of thing, you might want to skip this episode.
Still with us? Ok so here we go.
Every 40 seconds, a child goes missing or is abducted in the United States. Approximately 840,000 people are reported missing each year in the United States and the F.B.I. estimates that between 85 and 90 percent of these are children. On a positive note, More than 99 percent of children reported missing in America in recent years have come home alive.
According to the Washington State Attorney General’s Child Abduction Murder Research:
In 74 percent of the missing children homicide cases studied, the child murder victim was female and the average age was 11 years old.
In 44 percent of the cases studied, the victims and killers were strangers, but in 42 percent of the cases, the victims and killers were friends or acquaintances.
Only about 14 percent of the cases studied involved parents or intimates killing the child.
Almost two-thirds of the killers in these cases have prior arrests for violent crimes, with slightly more than half of those prior crimes committed against children.
The primary motive for the child abduction killer in the cases studied was sexual assault.
In nearly 60 percent of the cases studied, more than two hours passed between the time someone realized the child was missing and the time police were notified.
In 76 percent of the missing children homicide cases studied, the child was dead within three hours of the abduction–and in 88.5 percent of the cases the child was dead within 24 hours.
Pay attention to your kids, folks. Be that parent. The one who annoys them constantly by asking where they are and knowing who they’re with. Protect the fuck out of them with every last fiber of your being. THAT is your number one job as a parent.
The First victim was 12 year old Mark Stebbins. Mark was from Ferndale Michigan and was last seen at 1:30 pm on Feb. 15 1976. His body was found three days later in Ferndale. He was sexually assaulted and suffocated to death.
Mark was last seen and heard from at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 15. He talked to his mother on the phone. He was letting her know that he was leaving the American Legion Hall to head home. He never made it and at 11 p.m. that night Mark’s mother called the Ferndale Police Department to report Mark missing.
At about 11:45 a.m. Feb. 19, 1976, a businessman named Mark Boetigheimer left his office building and headed toward a drug store located inside the New Orleans mall at 10 Mile and Greenfield roads. On his way something caught his eye in the northeast corner of the parking lot. He saw what looked like a mannequin dressed in a blue jacket and jeans. But as he got closer he knew he stumbled into a situation much more grim. It was a body, a human body. It was the lifeless body of 12-year-old Mark Stebbins.
Another person told police that they walked their dog around that parking lot, just so it could get some exercise. That was around 9:30 a.m. the same morning the body was found. The man said his dog was on a 20-foot leash and they walked that part of the lot. He said if that body was there at the time, his dog would have found it. If that’s true, Mark’s body wasn’t there at 9:30 a.m. But it was at 11:45 a.m. when Mark Boetigheimer found him. That means there was a 2-hour-and-15-minute window in which someone or some people dumped Mark’s body in the area.
Mark was a 7th-grader at Lincoln Junior High School. He stood 4 feet 8 inches and weighed about 100 pounds. He had strawberry-blond hair. The autopsy showed the cause of death as asphyxia by way of smothering, but the report also showed rope burns on his neck, wrists and ankles. It appeared that Mark was also sexually assaulted.
L. Brooks Patterson, who was the Oakland County prosecutor at the time, said Mark’s body was washed by an autopsy team, washing away any fingerprints.
The second victim was also 12 years old. Jill Robinson was from Royal oak Michigan.
Karol Robinson had three daughters and was recently divorced. She and her oldest, Jill, would butt heads and on one occasion in December of 1976 they did just that. It was an argument that led to Jill running away from home. She was last seen at a hobby shop on Woodward Avenue, then the Donut Depot on Maple Road between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. Dec. 23. According to Karol, Jill’s mother, the two were arguing about biscuits. Jill was asked to help make them for dinner, she refused. Sometime after a heated back-and-forth, Karol told her to leave until she became part of the family. Jill went to her room, packed up her clothes and a plaid blanket into a denim bag. Before she left she dressed herself in blue jeans, a shirt, an orange winter coat and a blue knit cap with a yellow design on it, and then she would leave, just like her mother asked her to. She rode her bike away from her mother and her home.
Jill would later be seen by a family friend at a hobby shop on Woodward Avenue, just four and 1/2 blocks away from her mother’s home. The next morning, two witnesses said they saw her in the Donut Depot on Maple Road -- this was between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m.
Jill’s father, Thomas Robinson, made a call to police at 11:30 p.m. the day she left. Jill was found on the side of I-75, north of Big Beaver Road. She was laying on her back, fully clothed, not bound in any way, but a ring of deep dark red surrounded her head. The killer had transported her here, then shot her at close range in the head with a shotgun. It was later decided that Jill was fed and cared after for at least three days. She seemed to be washed, clean and with no signs of sexual abuse at all.
The third victim was 10 year old Kristine Mihelich. Kristine was from Berkley Michigan. She was last seen on January 2nd, 1977. Her Body was found on Jan. 21, 1977 -- she was missing for 19 days -- she was found in a snowbank along Bruce Road in Franklin Village, Mich. The cause of death was suffocation -- she was not sexually assaulted.
Police said there were no signs of violence and that she was in the same clothes she was last seen in. Her body was on its back, knees drawn up. That’s when a Franklin Village mailman, Jerry Wozny, saw her. He saw her blue jacket in the snow on the same route he’d been driving for eight years. State police Sgt. Robert Robertson supervised the removal of the girl’s body. Thirty-five officers from nine different departments made a task force that Prosecutor Patterson called “the strongest effort I’ve ever seen in this county.” The task force was headquartered in Southfield. Police Sgt. Joseph Krease was charged with tracking down Kristine’s abductor.
Kristine’s mother, Deborah Ascroft said “people keep talking about the Royal Oak girl (Jill Robinson) but I’m just not even going to think about that.” Ascroft said that in an interview on Jan. 5, 1977. At the time, Kristine had two younger brothers and according to her mother they kept asking “when is she coming home?”
Shortly after Kristine’s disappearance, a child from the elementary school she attended was missing, which set off a panic at the school. A frantic search went on for about 20 minutes and the child eventually was found on school grounds. Tensions were at an all-time high.
Parents at Pattengill Elementary School were lined up outside school to pick up their children -- many of them used to walk home, but not now. When Kristine’s body was found in a snowbank at the end of a dead end street in Franklin Village, it was so frozen officials had to wait until the following day to perform an autopsy, because of the body’s frozen state.
Wozny -- the mail carrier who found her -- said: “I saw a hand ... It scared the hell out of me.”
Kristine was the fifth young person from Oakland County to die within the year. As of late January 1977, Patterson had no evidence to link Mark and Kristine’s deaths.
11 year old Timothy King was the fourth victim. He was last seen on March 16, 1977 and his body was found on March 23, 1977 in a ditch along Gill Road, about 300 feet south of 8 Mile Road in Livonia -- He was missing for seven days. The cause of death was again suffocation -- he also was sexually assaulted.
Timothy King left his Birmingham home with 30 cents he borrowed from his older sister, Catherine, and headed to the corner store. He wanted some candy and it wasn’t rare for him to make this trip of about three blocks. He left with his skateboard and football, headed toward the Hunter-Maple Pharmacy.
Tim’s older brothers -- he had two -- were not around. One was babysitting a neighbor’s kids while the other was rehearsing for a school play. Tim’s parents were out to dinner at a nearby Birmingham restaurant.
A clerk, Amy Walters, said she sold Tim candy and he left through the back door into a dark parking lot around 8:30 p.m.. Birmingham Police Chief Jerry Tobin said “whatever happened to Tim happened between the time he left the store and before he got home. It doesn’t look particularly good at this time.”
This was now the seventh child that had gone missing in the area. The six prior to Timothy had been found -- murdered. Tim was only the second boy. The hysteria was at an all-time high. According to Catherine, Tim’s sister, Tim asked that she leave the front door ajar, so when he got back from the store he could get back in easily.
Catherine also left for the night. It would have been the first time little Timmy would be home alone at night for any period of time. Timothy’s parents got back to the house around 9 p.m. to find the door ajar, but there was no sign of Tim.
The King family searched everywhere for Tim. They called his friends, searched the neighborhood and surrounding area. By 9:15 a.m. the next day, Chief Tobin called on the task force, requesting their full involvement. By the afternoon -- the day after Timmy went missing -- headquarters were established in the Adams Fire House, just a few blocks from the King family home. Door-to-door searches were conducted and classmates questioned.
Tim was abducted on a Wednesday. By Thursday, 100 lawmen from Oakland County, volunteers, Oakland County Sheriff’s investigators, the county helicopter and the special Oakland County Task Force all were scouring the area. That Thursday the Kings stayed behind closed doors most of the day, but did say “we very much want Tim to come home.” That was Barry, Tim’s father.
“We love him very much. He had a basketball game Saturday and missed practice today (Thursday). He’s active in a school play. He’s an achiever and a participator. We just love Tim and want him to come home.” Barry said.
Barry told reporters that the week before Tim told his mother that he wouldn’t speak to strangers, that “he’d run away from them.”
“It’s awful,” said a neighbor of the King family who also had an 11-year-old daughter. “When it happens to other people, you feel sympathy. When it strikes your neighborhood, you’re scared.”
Other possible victims
Cynthia Rae Cadieux was 16 years old from Roseville Michigan. Last seen: 8:20 p.m. Jan. 15, 1976
Body found: 1:05 a.m. Jan. 16, 1976 in Bloomfield Township, Mich.
Cynthia Cadieux lived with her mother and stepfather. She attended Roseville High School, which was within walking distance from her home. Even though the school was close, one of her friends, Rose DeStesafano, offered to give her a ride home. On a cold January day in 1976, Rose offered Cynthia a ride.
“Cynthia refused, just like she always does,” said DeStesafano.
That decision may have been a fatal mistake.
The date was Jan. 15, 1976, and Cynthia walked, not to her mother and stepfather’s home, but to a girlfriend’s house. It was a planned visit. In fact, her parents thought Cynthia was spending the night there, but the girls didn’t think so. Cynthia planned to go home that Thursday night. Police were able to verify that she’d made it to the friend’s house that evening. They were also able to figure out she’d left her friend's home around 8 p.m., presumably heading back to her home. Her body would later be found that night -- technically morning in Bloomfield Township, which is about 26 miles away.
At 1:05 a.m. Jan. 16, a driver noticed something on the side of the road. What the person saw was the naked, lifeless body of Cynthia Rae Cadieux. It appeared that her skull was crushed by a blunt instrument. Police revealed Cynthia was raped and sodomized -- possibly by more than one person.
This case was looked at under a proverbial microscope that was designed to find the link or links between several other dead children in the Oakland County area.
Sheila Srock was 14 years old and from Birmingham Michigan. Last seen: 8:20 p.m. Jan. 19, 1976
Body found: Jan. 19, 1976
Birmingham is “the place” most consider to be the model community in southeastern Michigan. It’s a place everyone wanted to live, but most couldn’t afford. Those who knew of Birmingham would never have associated it with violence or crime, but that would change Jan. 19, 1976.
January in Michigan is a cold time and place, usually snow-covered. That’s why a resident on Villa Street was shoveling snow from his roof a little after 8 p.m. Monday. While he was up there, he saw something through a neighbor’s window -- something horrible.
Inside the next house over was 14-year-old Shiela Srock. She was babysitting her brother’s baby while he was out. Shiela and the baby were upstairs, likely playing. At the same time a dark figure slithered in and out of homes in the neighborhood, stealing anything and everything he could. Eventually this intruder found himself on the doorstep of Shiela’s brother’s house. He rang the doorbell, and there was no answer. From there he popped the lock open and made his way in. The neighbor was able to see him as he ran into Shiela, gun drawn. The robber was upset that he didn’t find anything of value and that now he’d been seen. According to police, the robber had Shiela remove her clothing. He then raped her, sodomized her and ultimately killed her.
The neighbor apparently saw most or all of these horrible actions. Obviously, he didn’t have a cell phone in 1976, so he couldn’t call for help right away since he was on the roof.
The assailant was described as a thin, white man between 18 and 25 years old, who stood about 6 feet tall. He had a prominent nose and a pointed chin, according to witnesses. The attacker’s car also was identified. He drove away in a 1967 Cadillac. People at the crime scene said the killer mingled and chatted with onlookers. He asked questions about what was going on as he subtly fit into the crowd.
Eventually a man did admit to this killing. In March 1976, Oliver Rhodes Andrews confessed to and later was convicted of the murder of Srock. He is serving a life sentence in prison. According to a March 4, 1976 report from the Ludington Daily News, Andrews was wanted for questioning “in some 200 burglaries in several states.”
“(He) admitted in a four-hour confession late Monday that he raped the girl and shot her five times when the babysitter surprised him as Andrews broke into a home he thought was empty,” reads the report.
Jane Louise Allan was a 14-year-old girl from Royal Oak. She was considered a runaway because she had done so five times before. She was last seen hitchhiking along I-75 in Pontiac on Aug. 7, 1976. Her body was found in a lake in Miamisburg, Ohio five days later. Police said she died from carbon monoxide poisoning after being kept in the trunk of a car.
The information about the victims was taken from a great article on clickondetroit.com.
Ok so now you're asking yourselves, well there must be suspects right? The answer is… Yes there are… And we're gonna talk about em.
Let's talk about the profile the police came up with.
All related killings happened on days that it snowed. All children were last seen within a mile of Woodward Avenue between 9 Mile and 15 Mile roads. All children were fed and cared for.
The killer(s) either bathed them or made them bathe. Both male victims had rope burns on his wrists and ankles.
A psychological profile created by police described the killer as fanatically clean, smart and sexually abnormal. The big lead police had -- even as of March 24, 1977 -- was the witness who saw TimothyKing speaking with a man inside a blue AMC Gremlin.
Speaking of the gremlin… Let's run through that real quick.
Eventually a woman came forward with some vital information. She said she saw Tim talking to a man in the pharmacy parking lot. She said Tim and the man were about two car-lengths away from her. She was able to describe the man she saw talking to the boy, whom she believed to be Timothy King. This witness also described the vehicle she believed the man to be driving; a dark-blue AMC Gremlin with a white stripe on its side, she called it a “hockey stick” stripe.
Police say the man described by witnesses was between 25 and 35 years old, white, with a dark brown hair cut in a shag style. He had muttonchop sideburns, a fair complexion and a husky build. He was driving a late model blue AMC Gremlin with whitewall tires.
Police also said they suspected Tim was abducted by one or possibly two men, and that person -- or people -- could have been involved in the other six cases of murdered children from the area.
The Oakland County Task Force released the following suspect profile on March 16, 1977:
Male
20-30 years old
Above average education
Above average intelligence
Caucasian
Ability and capacity to store child for at least 18 days
Homosexual
Plus mental problems
Compulsively clean -- fanatically so
No substance abuse involving drugs or alcohol
Different (stranger ranger)
Work -- schedule
December-January, vacation off work
Clean car, clean house
Single dwelling -- attached garage, cost above $30,000
Prior contact with police
Seeing psychiatrist
White collar job, 9-5 schedule
Area of southern Oakland County
Wants bodies found
A few weeks after King's murder, a psychiatrist who worked with the task force received a letter, riddled with spelling errors, written by an anonymous author ("Allen") claiming to be a sadomasochist slave of the killer ("Frank").[12] "Allen" wrote that they had both served in the Vietnam War, that "Frank" was traumatized by having killed children, and that "Frank" had taken revenge on more affluent citizens, such as the residents of Birmingham, for sending forces to Vietnam.[12] "Allen" expressed fear and remorse in his letter, saying he was losing his sanity and was endangered and suicidal, and admitted to having accompanied "Frank" as the latter sought boys to kill.[13] He instructed the psychiatrist to respond by printing the code words "weather bureau says trees to bloom in three weeks" in that Sunday's edition of the Detroit Free Press,[12] before offering to provide photographic evidence in exchange for immunity from prosecution. The psychiatrist arranged to meet "Allen" at a bar, but "Allen" did not show up and was never heard from again.
Suspects:
Ted Lamborgine
Ted Lamborgine, a retired auto worker believed to have been involved in a child pornography ring in the 1970s, was arrested in parma heights Ohio. Ted had transferred from Detroit to the Ford plant in Brook Park Ohio around the time the killings stopped. Before his arrest he moved from apartment to apartment like a man trying to escape creditors. Sometimes he'd stay for only a few months. Once he moved from an apartment in one tower of a complex to an identical apartment in another tower, for no apparent reason.
Even when he was in one place, he couldn't sit still. A neighbor who lived next to Ted in an Olmsted Township trailer park says he constantly moved his furnishings around. And he never once used his kitchen, eating out every day, even for breakfast.
Ted tried the stable life. He bought a little lemon-colored home in Slavic Village that had a tiny patch of front yard. His elderly mother and his sister even drove down from Detroit to see the place on a rare visit. It didn't last long though and he sold there house and moved again. He was running from his last in Michigan Theodore Lamborgine and his partner in crime, Richard Lawson, were part of a 1970s sex ring that preyed on young boys in Detroit’s Cass Corridor. According to Lawson,Cass Corridor was a six-block section of dope dealers, hookers, bars, and poverty. Big families had moved from the South to work the auto plants. Hundreds of kids ran wild in the streets. It was a pedophile's paradise. Those poor kids from the neighborhood had nothing. So the men put money in their pockets and food in their bellies. In some cases the men even helped the mothers out, taking care of those gas bills to get families through the cold northern winters. Back at their homes, in motel rooms, and in the greasy basement of a neighborhood bike shop, the men used the boys -- some as young as nine -- to enact their darkest fantasies. Lawson said they tried not to be too rough. After all, they wanted the boys to come back the next time they cruised up with a crisp 10-spot. And so the boys came back, some of them for years. Sometimes, though, Ted got a little carried away. On special occasions he'd bring kids from the hood up to mossy suburbs like Royal Oak for "parties" at other pedophiles' homes. Police suspect there may have been hundreds of men involved, networking like members of a book club. The parties were potluck orgies: Everyone brought a kid to share, and things were known to get wild. Kids were sodomized, photographed, then thrown in a bathtub and hosed off.
Then there was the time Ted scared even Lawson. They were at the apartment of Bob Moore, owner of the bike shop, when Ted whipped out a photo album Moore kept of their little sweethearts. Ted pointed to one picture of a little boy with a wing-cut and a cute, dimpled chin. The kid wasn't one of the Cass hood-rats the men usually settled for. This was a kid from the other side of 8 Mile Road, the dividing line between the dust and crumble of the city and the bird's nest of suburbs in northern Detroit. This kid was clean and had nice clothes. "Looks like the King boy, doesn't it?" Ted had said, winking. Lawson never forgot the moment. Out of the five men involved in their Lamborgine and Lawson were the only two living members of that ring when they were charged in 2006. Lamborgine faced 19 counts of sexually assaulting children, while Lawson faced 28 similar charges.
Lawson, who was already serving a life sentence for murder, told WDIV in 2006 that he knows who the Oakland County Child Killer is. WDIV later obtained documents detailing molestations of many children in the 70s and 80s. Three new names of suspects in the investigation were listed and one of those names matched the one Lawson gave as the Oakland County Child Killer. The name Lawson gave was Bobby Moore, one of the deceased members of the sex ring. Investigators said they were looking into all of those people.
Investigators also said they did not believe Lamborgine or Lawson to be the killer, but they did think the men had valuable information that could help solve the case.
Lamborgine is serving a life sentence at Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Many people believe that Ted was the killer dealer investigators believing it was somebody else. At the very least it's send that Ted could have been involved in some way.
Archibald Edward Sloan:
In July 2012, Prosecutor Cooper discussed Archibald Edward Sloan and his 1966 Pontiac Bonneville. A hair found in the car is a DNA match to evidence at two of the crime scenes -- Mark Stebbins’ and Timothy King’s. The hair is not his but police believe it belongs to an acquaintance.
Sloan is reportedly the owner of the car where the hair was found. Prosecutors were considering him an accomplice to the suspect. He could be a direct link to whoever the killer is, prosecutors said.
It is believed Sloan worked at a garage or gas station near 10 Mile and Middlebelt roads during the time of the Oakland County Child Killer murders. Seven years after the death of Timothy King, Sloan was arrested again. He was charged with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. The offense took place in October 1983. He was sentenced to life in prison in January 1985. In February 2019, the Investigation Discovery channel aired a two-part, four-hour documentary about the killings. At this same time, WXYZ-TV investigative reporter Heather Catallo announced that Arch Edward Sloan had failed a polygraph test when he was interviewed by the Oakland County Child Killer Task Force in 2010 and 2012.
Sloan, 77, is serving his life sentence at the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian, Mich.
James Vincent Gunnels:
At one point investigators said James Vincent Gunnels was the best lead in the decades-old serial killer mystery. His DNA is a mitochondrial DNA match to a hair found on the body of victim Kristine Mihelich. A mitochondrial match means the hair belongs to Gunnels or a male relative on his mother’s side.
In 2012 Gunnels told WDIV that he had nothing to do with the child killings.
“I’m not guilty. There it is there. But at the same time, I know how the state police twist words to their advantage,” Gunnels said. “My heart goes out to those families. It really really, really does. I don’t feel that they were served justice through any of this.”
After WDIV spoke with Gunnels, he decided he wanted to speak to the victim’s family face-to-face. He reached out to the King family.
“When the request first came in, I was hesitant to go,” said Chris King. “I felt it would be too hard to be in the same room as a suspect in this case. It’s clearly theoretically possible that he somehow aided in (Kristine Mihelich’s) abduction, or killing.”
The King family contacted police who have questioned Gunnels on several occasions. According to police records, Gunnels failed a lie detector test. They wondered what Gunnels might say to the family.
“We weren’t sure what to expect,” Chris King said. “But we had just been told to ask open-ended questions, see what he says, listen to his story. Um, who knows. He might be able to shed some light on, or tell us something he hadn’t before.”
It wouldn’t be easy. Chris King took his father Barry King along with him to the meeting with Gunnels.
“It was grueling,” Chris King said. “My dad is a lot tougher than I am. I found it exhausting, you know, mentally and physically.”
Barry King said Gunnels’ story wasn’t off-the-wall, but not exactly promising.
“I believe that the story he told Chris and I was believable,” Barry King said. “But it was contradicted by previous stories that he has told other people.”
Gunnels told the Kings that Bush was a child predator who lived in Oakland County at the time.
“It seems clear that he must have had at least some knowledge of the crimes,” Chris King said.
However, Gunnels denied knowing anything about the Oakland County Child Killings.
“I say right now I have no idea what that man did to anyone else,” Gunnels said.
Chris King asked him about two polygraph tests.
“My questions for him were, you know it’s hard to understand you tried to cheat on one polygraph exam and failed a second polygraph exam,” Chris King said. “So, if you had absolutely no involvement or knowledge of these crimes, why would you feel that you had to cheat in the first place and then why would you fail the second one? It doesn’t make sense.”
Gunnels told the Kings that he felt terrible.
“I couldn’t imagine having that happen and not knowing all those years,” Gunnels said. “I really really couldn’t.”
Chris and Barry King have been going the extra mile to try and solve the case, not knowing if they have done any good.
“It was kind of a long shot that it would help,” Chris King said. “But law enforcement said, ‘Who knows. Sometimes these guys have remorse and they end up telling you things.’ So, we went with that hope.”
Christopher Busch:
Christopher Busch was a convicted pedophile who lived in Bloomfield Hills and killed himself in 1978. For decades, victims’ family members had believed Busch could have been the killer.
In 1977, Gregory Greene, 27, was arrested on child sexual assault charges. Greene led investigators to 26-year-old Busch, telling them Busch killed Stebbins. However, Busch and Green both passed polygraph examinations. Greene was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting young boys. Busch first got probation for the same charges before ultimately killing himself.
However, in 2012 it was revealed that there is zero evidence suggesting Busch is the Oakland County Child Killer. His DNA does not match the physical evidence that investigators have.
“Whatever evidence that may or may not exist does not come back to Busch,” said Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper.
Police sources had told WDIV that Busch’s suicide scene was suspicious and may have been a murder. They know he had a drawing of a tortured boy that closely resembled victim Mark Stebbins. Ropes were found in his closest. He had a blue Vega car which looked like the infamous blue Gremlin spotted at one of the abductions.
It was later revealed by investigators that Busch was in custody while police investigated the killings and admitted he was a pedophile. Investigators wanted to keep him in jail but he was let go after he agreed to a plea deal.
However, none of that matters now after investigators said Busch did not commit the murders.
“There isn’t a piece of evidence that we can point to and say Mr. Bush killed Timothy King, Jill Robinson, Kristine Mihelich or Mark Stebbins,” said Paul Walton, chief assistant Oakland County prosecutor.
Chis King, Timothy King’s brother, said he thought Busch was involved because the suicide scene photos show potential evidence linked to the cases. One photograph shows the drawing that was pinned on Busch’s wall, which closely resembles Stebbins.
The photographs also show ropes that appear to have blood on them and a shotgun shell. However, the shotgun shell in Busch’s room cannot be matched with the caliber used to kill Jill Robinson.
“They even took it to NASA to try and see if they could get an identification of the caliber and there was no way in which they could do that,” said Cooper.
Prosecutors also said they tracked down the scientist who analyzed the ropes found at the home of suspect Busch.
“He conclusively told us that he was aware of these facts and that had there been any blood on that rope or ligature he would have sent it on to the evidence unit,” said Walton.
So there's the main suspects in the case. What do you guys think? Was it one of these guys? Did one of these guys have at least some involvement? We may never know.
Oh and one other quick note, John Wayne Gacy makes an appearance in this story briefly. One witness described two men he claimed to have seen abducting King. One of those men's descriptions bite a striking resemblance to John Wayne Gacy. Gacy was rumored to have been in Michigan at the time of the killings. It was found that gacy's DNA did not match DNA found on the victims however, and that was the end of that. But who knows… There's plenty of people that think there were multiple people involved, could he have been one?
Well that's almost everything, there were a few things that we found from around 2013 but they were just small nuggets that we could not find anything to really update the situations with. So we have left those out as well. There is also a side plot, if you will, involving a man using the alias Jeff claiming that he was part of an investigative team putting over 10,000 hours into their own investigations. They claim to know the identity of the killer but would not divulge the name unless they were able to set the information the police had to confirm the person's identity. The police would not share the info. There were lawsuits and other crap and the whole thing seems kind of ridiculous. You can check it out on your own if you'd like though.
So there you have it! What do you guys think?
To horror movies of the 70s