Remembering the Children

“There is a host of persons of interest here who are in play at any given time. What it tells me is that this is yet another case that falls squarely within the era of the Team Killer in the 1970s.

“Team Killers, since about 1850 in the United States, are responsible for about roughly 15 percent of all serial murders. They tend to be very opportunistic. That, to me, is the most plausible scenario in this. [Having looked] at hundreds of similar cases involving Team Killers.”

—Michael Arntfield, Criminology Professor, Western University, on the Oakland County, Michigan child killings of 1976 and 1977, in Children of the Snow (second part, 02.19.2019, on Investigation Discovery)

✸ ✸ ✸

That is a quote from a non-involved, impartial observer of an infamous, unsolved murder case that is one of the most notorious in the history of my home state Michigan. 

The 1970s struck me as a decade, a period in time, in which the murders of children, of teenagers, became more prevalent in the American culture. (Some of it was hitchhikers who took too many risks and were murdered. Some of it was, well, something also shocking.)

During the 1970s, Michigan ranked the No. 7 most-populous state in the nation. It is now No. 10. Having since supplanted Michigan are Florida (now-No. 3), Georgia (No. 8), and North Carolina (No. 9). Oakland County, Michigan—with its county seat Pontiac—was then, as it is now, the wealthiest county in Michigan and one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. It is the No. 2 most-populous county in Michigan…following the No. 1-ranked Wayne County, with its county seat Detroit.

This year, 2022, I have in mind a few Progressives Chat blog topics which will observe anniversaries. In fact, one that is more pleasant is coming next week. This is one such anniversary topic—sad and sick.

✸ ✸ ✸

It was 50 years ago, in 1972, that perhaps the nation’s most infamous serial killer, Chicago, Illinois-based John Wayne Gacy, claimed his first murder victim as sources have cited his reign of terror began in 1972 and ran through 1978, the year Gacy was apprehended. (He was convicted in 1980 and executed in 1994.)

It was also 50 years ago, in 1972, that the very Michigan city I am from—one that I will not mention here because of privacy reasons (if any regular Progressives Chat reader wants to know more, you can e-mail me at ds081671@hotmail.com)—had a non-serial child murder. (The victim knew his killer, who was supposed to be friends with the victim’s oldest sibling, and it was a heinous, sexually-motivated crime.)

The children who are victims of a serial murder are often sexually violated. 

The children whose pictures appear above were the known victims of the Oakland County Child Killer, in Oakland County, Michigan, a.k.a. and here-after frequently referred to as the OCCK. Whether it was one or more Killers. (The boys, not the girls, were sexually violated.)

This was a reign of terror which played out from February 1976 to March 1977. There were three more victims, each were teenagers, from Oakland County, but they were not directly linked to the OCCK.

The 45-year anniversary of the fourth and known victim—and they will be mentioned coming up—is this Tuesday. In 1977, the calendar was the same as it is here in 2022. That March 22 was on a Tuesday in 1977. That March 22 is also on a Tuesday here in 2022.

Those known OCCK victims, the first three were from divorced families and they are pictured above from left to right, were:

• Mark Stebbins (09.13.1963–02.19.1976), age 12, who left his mother and brother at the Ferndale American Legion Hall, on Sunday, February 15, 1976, to walk less than a mile to their house to watch an afternoon movie. When his brother Mike, then-15, and mother Ruth returned home, Mark was not there. Four days later, his body was found placed next to a brick wall outside an office building in Southfield.

• Jill Robinson (12.02.1964–12.26.1976), age 12, left her home Wednesday, December 22, 1976 after an argument with her mother, Karol, over dinner preparations. Jill, who was in a sour mood, was told by Karol that she should go outside and think about her behavior. Jill took it further by grabbing a blanket, a book, her backpack, and got on a bike and left her house in Royal Oak to head to her father’s, a few miles north, in Birmingham. Her body was found four days later along I–75 near Big Beaver Road in Troy.

• Kristine Mihelich (04.25.1966–01.21.1977), age 10, asked her mother Deborah, on Sunday, January 2, 1977, if she could go a few short blocks from their house in Berkley to a 7–Eleven store on 12 Mile Road. Kristine, a fan of the showbiz siblings act of Donny and Marie Osmond, wanted to purchase a magazine. She managed to persuade her mother. Kept the longest among the four in captivity, for 19 days, Kristine’s frozen body was found in Franklin. 

• Timothy King (07.09.1965–03.22.1977), age 11, and right at the average age (140.5 months) of these four victims. In a family of six, Tim was trusted to stay home the evening of Wednesday, March 16, 1977 while his parents, Barry and Marian, were at a nearby restaurant. His father was a lawyer having dinner with clients. Tim’s older brothers, Chris and Mark, were also out. Tim asked his sister, the first-born Cathy, if he could borrow some money to go buy candy at a nearby pharmacy store during the hour of 08:00 p.m. With Cathy leaving for a concert, Tim also asked her to leave their house’s front door ajar for his return home. Tim never did. His body was found six days later outside Oakland County and in Wayne County in the northwest border-city Livonia.

The murders of Mark, Kristine, and Tim were suffocation. For Jill, it was a shotgun blast to her face.

During the period this was happening, the search for the OCCK was the largest manhunt by a police task force in United States history. The disappearance, and the murder of Tim King, catapulted the serial murders to national news coverage. (Hezakya Newz & Films had a video on this, titled “The Babysitter Killer”—one alternative name commonly given to the OCCK—but the channel, which included highlights from broadcast-network news sources, most recently removed much of its prior content.) The task force was disbanded after December 15, 1978, reportedly due to budget limits, as many police forces needed their detectives back.

Cory Williams, born in 1961, was 15 when he answered a call from Tom Bell, a retired cop, in January 1977. Tom was grandfather to Kristine. Tom’s daughter, Deborah, who is alive and in her mid-70s, is his daughter and Kristine’s mother. Cory gave that phone call to his father, Lee Williams, who was a Berkley detective with that police department. After that call, Lee helped Tom and Deborah.

In the 2000s, Cory Williams, by then a police detective in Livonia, received a call from Cathy King Broad, the sister of Tim King.

Cathy, born in 1959 and who began in 2013 her own blog site (https://catherinebroad.blog), let the detective know her brother’s childhood friend who lived across from them, Patrick Coffey, received information which may be a break in the OCCK case. Patrick, who along with his childhood friend Chris King was born in 1961, was anguished over Tim’s 1977 murder enough that he grew up to become a polygrapher. 

In the 2000s, Patrick attended a seminar in Las Vegas, Nevada, and encountered Larry Wasser, a fellow polygrapher. Both men shared the fact they have history in Michigan. Patrick brought up the OCCK case. Wasser, loose in that moment, revealed to Patrick that not only is he familiar with the OCCK case—he tested a man in 1977 who confessed, during the polygraph, to having murdered Tim King. Wasser also revealed, without naming the person specifically, that both the suspect and his attorney are dead. Afterward, Patrick contacted Cathy, who in adulthood moved to Boise, Idaho and is now in an area near Chicago, Illinois and, like her father, is an attorney. 

Cathy did not let her father know right away. Barry, for a period of 30 years by that point, generally trusted the Oakland County Police Department and the prosecutor's office. Any information Barry would come across…he would let them know. Cathy had it figured by then that the Oakland County Police Department—as well as the Michigan State Police—were not helpful. That they were not really investigating. And that they had become a barrier.

In 2007, when Cathy King Broad contacted Cory Williams, she and her brother Chris (the only King sibling residing in Oakland County)—and, later, Barry—found the detective to be trustworthy. And helpful. Since that point, going forward, no detective has been on the case longer than Williams. 

In February 2019 were two separate television documentaries: Child Killer, locally produced by WDIV, Detroit’s NBC-affiliated station (WDIV has since published its series to YouTube); and Children of the Snow, from Investigation Discovery, which is now available on Hulu, a two-part (125 minutes each) examination of the case. Cory Williams is in both. So is Barry King. Likely due to no longer being a Michigan resident—in her early adult life, she wanted and moved out of the state—Cathy King Broad appears with her brothers in Children of the Snow.

Cathy made connection several years ago with Boise, Idaho-based author J. Reuben Appelman (https://www.jreubenappelman.com). He was seven or eight, living in Oakland County, Michigan, when there was an attempted abduction of him at age 7 or 8. He spoke of this in a NPR interview about that experience, revealing he suspects that person may have been the child killer. Cathy King Broad reached out to J. Reuben Appelman. Over the years, they have been going over the case. (Podcast: https://www.jreubenappelman.com/podcast.) Appelman, author of 2018’s The Kill Jar, is much a focus in Children of the Snow.

In speaking about the OCCK case, with explaining partly why it still has not been solved in over 40 years, and why much of it was likely bungled, Cory Williams said the following in Children of the Snow:

“One of the things they [all responsible in the Oakland County child killings] did that was probably smart on their part was: They abducted a kid from one community; dropped him in a different one; involving eight different communities.

“Mark Stebbins, from Ferndale, was abducted February 15, 1976. His body, four days later, was found in Southfield. So, Southfield PD then became involved. And Michigan State Police were investigating, and they processed a suspect’s car. They started following some leads. So, you had those two agencies working together.

“[Ten months later,] Jill Robinson was abducted from Royal Oak. Her body was found in Troy. So, there’s four agencies now.

“[Seven days after Jill Robinson’s body was found,] Kristine Mihelich [was] abducted from Berkley. Nineteen days after that, on January 21, 1977, her body [was] found in Franklin, Michigan. So, now you have six different agencies.

“On March 16, 1977…Tim King’s abducted from Birmingham. Six days later, Tim King’s body [was] discovered on Gill Road, south of 8 Mile [Road], in Livonia. That’s the first time Wayne County became involved in the investigation.

“So, now you have two counties; eight different agencies; and a mess trying to coordinate things. And, at one point, there was over 300 detectives trying to work the case.”

The four children, the known victims, lived along the Woodward Avenue corridor. That area goes from Detroit, in Wayne County, northwest to Pontiac. (This is also M–1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-1_(Michigan_highway).) My maternal grandparents, who both died during the 1990s, lived approximately ten minutes in drive time from the Stebbins house. A few more minutes, continuing further out as one keeps traveling in that direction, were the residents of the rest of the children and their families.

Where Tim King’s body was found, in Livonia, Michigan, the second most-populous city in Wayne County, Michigan, is approximately fifteen minutes in drive time from where my paternal grandmother, who died in 2004, was living during that time in that city.

There is a lot more to the OCCK case.

✸ ✸ ✸

After making contact with Detective Williams, Cathy King Broad let her father Barry King know about the information from childhood friend and neighbor Patrick Coffey. This woke up Barry, born in 1931 and by then in his late-70s, to no longer trust the Oakland County Police Department, its prosecutor’s office, and the Michigan State Police. (His wife, Marian, also born in 1931, died at age 73 in 2004. After Tim’s murder, she wanted to stay out of the investigation. She did not want that to destroy their lives. This was also true of many of the surviving parents, and their families, especially so with the Robinsons. Father Tom Robinson appears but barely speaks in Children of the Snow. Alene Robinson, born in 1967, the middle of three sisters following first-born Jill, speaks of it in Child Killer—and she appears, for a time, like she may not being able to manage.)

In Children of the Snow, Barry King mentions: “Once we went public [in 2009]…Tim Number knocked on my door, introduced himself as a former hockey team mate of [my son] Timmy’s. And he sat down in my living room and he said: In the early-’90s, he was working at a clothing store, and he had a number of police officers as customers. And he asked one of them one evening: ‘What was the status in Tim [King’s murder] case?’ [Nummer said] The officer almost got to the front door and came back and said, ‘Don’t worry about it! It’s been solved. The murderer was the son of a prominent General Motors executive.’”

That “prominent son of a General Motors executive” is the same person who was tested by Larry Wasser. His name was Chris Brian Busch. He was born in 1951 and died in 1978. His attorney was Jane Burgess. She died, at age 55, from a heart attack in 1997.

Chris Busch’s father was H. Lee Busch. The elder Busch (1912–2002) was GM’s Comptroller for Europe and Asia. As noted by Marney Rich Keenan, formerly a Detroit News reporter for over 25 years and author of her 2020 book The Snow Killings (The Snow Killings), and who appears frequently in both docuseries, H. Lee Busch and his wife Elsie (1910–2003) were frequently in Europe on business. (Keenan was summoned by King to his house, in the late-2000s, to talk about the OCCK case and that the police and prosecutors were withholding information. She reported it and Detroit News published it in 2009.)

Chris Busch’s death at age 27 in 1978 was ruled a suicide. However, numerous believe the scene was staged. He was found Monday, November 20, 1978 with a gunshot to his head. His body was positioned with blankets wrapped snugly around him. One of the detectives of the OCCK, and in both documentaries, was Jack Kalbfleisch, now retired and in his 80s, and who appears in both docuseries. The scene, which included a drawing of a boy looking like he was being tortured, bared a resemblance to Mark Stebbins. His brother, Mike, said the drawing looks like it is his brother “being sodomozied.” The detective mentions in Children of the Snow that the strangeness of Busch’s death is that a suicide with use of a gun is usually the person shooting himself directly in the mouth or under the chin. That there was no gun residue. That there were no abrasions against Busch’s skin.

Adding to all this is that Chris Busch associated with Gregory Greene (1950–1995), also a known pedophile, who sexually violated children in California before relocating to Michigan shortly before the murder of Mark Stebbins. In one of her blog entries, a couple years back, Cathy King Broad mentioned she thinks Greene (who died, at 44, in prison) murdered Mark Stebbins, Jill Robinson, and Kristine Mihelich—while Chris Busch murdered her brother Tim King. (I don’t know if she still thinks this.)

Greene, more than Busch, better resembled a man a witness saw Tim King with outside the back of the Hunter–Maple pharmacy from where he was last seen. The drawing illustration frequently seen in reports—that Tim King was with a man closer to Gregory Green than Chris Busch—showed the two were standing in the parking lot next to an AMC Gremlin. 

That Gremlin became a Red Herring. Chris King, then-16, went later that same night to that parking lot and saw that Gremlin still parked outside. (It was later to be found as belonging to a man who left it parked there because he was having an affair with a woman who lived in the neighborhood.) Detective Jack Kalbfleisch, who was on the original task forces and at the scene where Kristine Mihelich was found, observed a car bumper impression in a snow bank. He made a drawing. The detective took that to all three U.S. auto manufacturers to see if they could help identify the model. It was likely a Pontiac LeMans or a Pontiac Tempest. Nevertheless, the Gremlin became legend. And the Oakland County prosecutor, later executive, L. Brooks Patterson (1939–2019)—an ambitious political star (he primary-challenged in 1978 Republican incumbent U.S. senator Robert P. Griffin who, in turn, was unseated in the general election by Democratic challenger and eventual six-term winner Carl Levin)—suspended the Fourth Amendment in Oakland County as police officers stopped Gremlin drivers, one by one, to search their vehicles. This was during Tim King’s abduction. And it wasted time.

Even more complicating was that Chris Busch was on the list of clients for Francis Shelden. During the 1970s, there was a pedophile ring in Michigan. 

Francis Shelden, born in 1928, was a business entrepreneur from Ann Arbor. He purchased in the 1960s the Lake Michigan area of North Fox Island. Shelden, with plenty of assistance, used North Fox Island as a Boys Camp. 

Many of the clients of Francis Shelden were people of wealth, power, and influence. Basically, what Francis Shelden was during that period was tantamount to what became the 2010s’ revelations about Jeffrey Epstein.

In 1976, with authorities were closing in on Shelden—who made child porn exploitation of the boys (and distributed it secretly through the United States Postal system)—and he evaded capture and fleed the United States and died at age 68 in 1997 Amsterdam.

Much of what happened at North Fox Island, located in Leelanau County (its county seat is Suttons Bay Township and is part of the Grand Rapids designated marketing area), likely trickled down southeast to suburban Detroit.

There is so much to the Oakland County child killings that it is no wonder I could cite those two books previously mentioned. That there were documentaries in 2019 timed with one author’s book and one whose was upcoming at the time by a former employee of one of Detroit’s leading newspapers. (Not much credit should go to Detroit News or Detroit Free Press on Francis Shelden and North Fox Island. That credit goes to the late Marilyn Wright and Traverse City Record–Eagle.)

This subject was not one I followed in years past. I was born in 1971. I was too young. I did not know about it until probably 1987, the ten-year anniversary of the murder of the last known victim, Tim King. I think I recall at least one of the local news (and network-affiliated) stations advertising an upcoming news report about the OCCK. I turned to my mother and asked, “What is this about?” My mother, to some effect, told me, “In the 1970s, there were a few children from Oakland County who disappeared and were murdered. It was not solved.” I sensed the topic was upsetting and that she did not want to go into details. So, I did not ask for more information.

I did not know about the 1972 murder, in the city in which I am from, until 2020. I came across it as a topic of interest by someone with a Facebook page focused on the community—including a history of its people—which actually dated back to 2016. My sibling, born three years before me, did not know about it. So, I did a bit of research from old newspaper reports (including from Detroit Free Press). I did not get explicit details but rather these summaries in the reports. The type of information which is limiting. But, from that limiting information, I recognize it is also a disturbing case.

I think about my parents, both deceased, and that they were parents for the right reasons. They wanted children for the right reasons. And part of being a parent, who is responsible, caring, and loving, is with having good judgment. After all, they recognized my brother and I as human beings. 

That’s certainly not true of the person or persons who murdered Mark Stebbins, Jill Robinson, Kristine Mihelich, and Timothy King. It’s not true of pedophiles. It’s not true of Teen Killers. 

My sense of the case with the Oakland County child killings is that this is unsolved because it was due to money having been involved. There have been other cold cases, old as thirty or more years, which eventually became solved. (Like the Golden State Killer.) That Chris Busch was murdered. If he was alone the OCCK, ending it with Busch’s death was also ending the killings. (Serial killers don’t stop unless they became stopped. Not all. It’s applicable to most.) His death—whether it was a murder by his associates or by law enforcement—was an interesting timing. It came two days after the Jonestown Massacre of November 18, 1978. Jim Jones and his People’s Temple had moved from San Francisco, California to Guyana. This was where cult leader Jones murdered over 900 of his followers. The Reverend also orchestrated the murders of four more people, about to board a plane, which included the person who tried to help the members, congressman Leo Ryan of California. (Also at the scene was Jackie Speier, then-28 and an assistant in Ryan’s office, who survived having been shot and who would first get elected to Ryan’s U.S. House seat in 2008. She is retiring after this year.) That was big news in that timing. One week later, on November 27, 1978, former San Francisco supervisor Dan White (1946–1985) entered City Hall and murdered then-mayor George Moscone (1929–1978) and supervisor and LGBT rights activist Harvey Milk (1930–1978). Given the timing of that history: Chris Busch—and his suicide scene showing him apparently revealed to law officials as the Oakland County Child Killer (followed by the task force having disbanded after December 15, 1978)—paled in comparison. It didn’t compare. Like the Kings, and the other victims’s family members, I think this is a decades’-long coverup to protect people with money, power, and influence—and the case was actually solved, but not in the official capacity, all those years ago. In fact, father-and-daughter attorneys Barry King and Cathy King Broad spoke about this in their series, available on YouTube (but not embedded here), Decades of Deceit; The OCCK Investigation.

As of March 2022, I can give this update: Barry King died, at age 89, on November 19, 2020. That was one month before my father’s death. Both were in Hospice.… Mike Stebbins, born in 1960 and the only surviving member of the Stebbins household, died last year on my 50th birthday, August 16, 2021. (His parents Lester and Ruth were divorced since the late-1960s—the father attended Mark’s funeral before having left again—died in their 60s in 1997 and 1998.)…The divorced parents of Jill Robinson—Tom and Karol (now married to other people)—and the mother of Kristine Mihelich, are the only biological parents of the four known victims who are still alive.… Kristine’s former stepfather, Tom Ascroft, is also alive. His daughter, Erica McAvoy, half-sister to Kristine, was born in 1972. She was very young. Erica, and wonderfully so, has nothing good to say about Oakland County officials in the two docuseries. Understood.… To my knowledge: Kristine’s brothers, Matt and Mark, and Jill’s youngest sister, Heather, have never spoken publicly. (Kristine, Matt, and Mark have the same parents. Their father, Dan Mihelich, committed suicide in 2017. Their mother Deborah Jarvis, who sued in 2013 to try to get Oakland County off the OCCK case, is a widow from her third husband.)… With the exception of Barry King, who remarried in 2008, none of the family members stayed where the victims were living during the 1976 and 1977 Oakland County child killings.

✸ ✸ ✸

I will leave this blog topic, “Remembering the Children,” with three parts from the WDIV series, Child Killer. (Non-embedded link: WATCH HERE: 5-part Oakland County Child Killer docuseries.) The first part is about what happened at North Fox Island. The second part focuses on the first three known victims. The third part is centered on Timothy King. I also highly recommend viewing Investigation Discovery’s Children of the Snow. It is available to anyone who subscribes to Hulu. And, of course, the two books are excellent.