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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. Over thirteen
Speaker 5: months in nineteen seventy six seventy seven, four children were
Speaker 5: abducted in the Detroit suburbs, each of them held for
Speaker 5: days before their still warm bodies were dumped in the
Speaker 5: snow near public roadsides. The Oakland County child murders spawned
Speaker 5: panic across southeast Michigan, triggering the most extensive manhunt in
Speaker 5: US history. Yet after less than two years, the task
Speaker 5: force created to find the killer was shut down without
Speaker 5: naming a suspect. The case went cold for more than
Speaker 5: thirty years until a chance discovery by one victim's family
Speaker 5: pointed to the son of a wealthy General Motors executive.
Speaker 5: Christopher Bryan Bush, a four time convicted pedophile, was freed
Speaker 5: weeks before the fourth child disappeared. Veteran Detroit News reporter
Speaker 5: Marnie rich Keenan takes the reader inside the investigation of
Speaker 5: the still unsolved murders, seen through the eyes of the
Speaker 5: lead detective in the case and the family who cracked
Speaker 5: it open, revealing evidence of a decade's long cover up
Speaker 5: of malfeasance and obstruction that averted justice for the victims.
Speaker 5: The book they were featuring the Seising is the Snow
Speaker 5: Killings Inside the Oakland County Killer Investigation, with my special guest,
Speaker 5: journalist and author, Marnie rich Keenan. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you very much for this interview. Marnie rich Keenan,
Speaker 5: Thank you, Dan, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 5: This is an extraordinary book and an incredible case and
Speaker 5: incredibly disturbing. Let's get right to this. Give us your
Speaker 5: background and how you came to this story, when you
Speaker 5: became involved. Give us the particulars.
Speaker 4: Sure. I'm a journalist. I've worked for newspapers and magazines
Speaker 4: for several decades. The last twenty six years of my career,
Speaker 4: I was a reporter and columnist for the Detroit News.
Speaker 4: I grew up here in Oakland County, so I knew
Speaker 4: the crimes well and anybody who lived here during that
Speaker 4: time was deeply affected and had never forgotten it. The
Speaker 4: entire Metro Detroit area had been terrorized, and specifically Opening County,
Speaker 4: which is just northwest of the city. I think it
Speaker 4: had about a million residents at the time, was in
Speaker 4: a you know, a state of full panic. And so
Speaker 4: that you know, Opening County has long been ranked among
Speaker 4: the top five or ten affluent counties in the nation.
Speaker 4: It was it was home to auto barns and wealthy
Speaker 4: entrepreneurs who had built their summer homes and estate cottages here.
Speaker 4: So when these crimes occurred, families, you know, enjoyed nice
Speaker 4: neighborhoods and nationally ranked school and for something like this
Speaker 4: to happen was almost inconceivable, and in hindsight, many of
Speaker 4: us will agree that we were both naive and in denial. Really,
Speaker 4: I came to the case because I had interviewed Barry
Speaker 4: King over the years I was a columnist and interviewed
Speaker 4: him on anniversaries of the crimes. Of course, Barry King
Speaker 4: was the father of the fourth victim, and one night
Speaker 4: in October he called me and my editor to his
Speaker 4: to his house and we were there for three hours
Speaker 4: and He started the conversation by saying, the story I'm
Speaker 4: about to tell you started in a big white house
Speaker 4: right across the street. And when he ended the interview,
Speaker 4: he said, you know my family and I think we
Speaker 4: know who killed. And that of course was the story
Speaker 4: of Tech Coffee and Chris Bush. But maybe I should
Speaker 4: I should provide you with an introduction of the crimes.
Speaker 6: Well, you also do that in the book. You start
Speaker 6: off as January fifteenth, nineteen seventy six, but you say
Speaker 6: the story must begin a full month before the first
Speaker 6: victim was snatched. So in January fifteenth, this story starts
Speaker 6: with Cynthia Cadeou, sixteen year old high school student, tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit more about this and why this
Speaker 6: is necessary to know before we talk about the four
Speaker 6: murders that constitute the Oakland County child killings.
Speaker 4: Well, in this in the same time as our four
Speaker 4: keykids went missing, there were uh three young women. They
Speaker 4: were older, they were they were teenagers who were also
Speaker 4: wound up missing and and their bodies soon discovered afterwards.
Speaker 4: So UH this only in increased the fear and panic
Speaker 4: in the area. It wasn't too long before uh police
Speaker 4: decided that these three murders of these three girls were
Speaker 4: not related to our four Oakland County child killing kids
Speaker 4: because they were able to solve them quite readily, and
Speaker 4: because they were older and their uh kidnappings in and
Speaker 4: man of death didn't fit the pattern that our ford did. Nonetheless,
Speaker 4: there was a total of seven kids who went missing
Speaker 4: to begin with, and that only heightened the fear.
Speaker 6: So let's go to February fifteenth, nineteen seventy six and
Speaker 6: Mark Douglas Stebbens, which is twelve years old. I'll tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about what happens.
Speaker 4: So around lunchtime, Mark Stebbins was at the American Legion
Speaker 4: Hall in Ferndale with his mother and his older brother,
Speaker 4: and there was a pool tournament there. His mother worked there,
Speaker 4: and he wanted to go home to watch a movie
Speaker 4: on TV. And so he said goodbye to his mother
Speaker 4: and his brother and he started to walk the few
Speaker 4: blocks home on the sidewalk, but he never arrived home.
Speaker 4: His body was found four days later lying against the
Speaker 4: partition wall in a neighborhood shopping plaza, a strip mall
Speaker 4: in the nearby town of Southfield. And then this was
Speaker 4: followed by three days after Christmas, Jill Robinson, who was
Speaker 4: twelve years old, close to dinner time, had left her
Speaker 4: mom's house in Royal Oak She'd had a bit of
Speaker 4: a disagreement with her mom over making dinner. She left
Speaker 4: her mom's house in Royal Oaks. Her parents were divorced,
Speaker 4: and she jumped on her bike, presumably to ride to
Speaker 4: her father's house in nearby Birmingham, but she too disappeared.
Speaker 4: Four days later, the day after Christmas, Jill's body was
Speaker 4: spotted by a passing motorist along I seventy five in
Speaker 4: the pull off lane. I guess you would call it
Speaker 4: near an exit and she had been shot in the face.
Speaker 4: Only a week later, as it turns out, on January tewod,
Speaker 4: the day after New Year's Day, Christine Helleck, who was
Speaker 4: ten years old, to her home in Berkeley at about
Speaker 4: three in the afternoon. She wanted to walk up to
Speaker 4: the nearby seven to eleven store to buy a teen
Speaker 4: magazine for Christmas. She'd been given an album by one
Speaker 4: of her idols, Donnie and Marie Osmon, and his teen
Speaker 4: magazine that she was after had Donnie and Marie Osmon
Speaker 4: on the cover, and the clerk remembered you know, selling
Speaker 4: her a magazine, and Christine was seen walking home along
Speaker 4: time twelve mile road, but then she vanished. It seems
Speaker 4: hard to think of this, but Christine was gone the
Speaker 4: longest she was gone nineteen days. Grutable, Yeah, and you
Speaker 4: know it's her mother. Deborah Jarvis said to me that
Speaker 4: the reason she thinks Christine was kept so long was
Speaker 4: because Christine was so delightful and so sweet to be around.
Speaker 4: In any event, Christine was gone nineteen days. And on
Speaker 4: January second, the day after New Year's Day, a mailman
Speaker 4: was delivering mail to in a residential area in nearby
Speaker 4: Franklin when he saw something blue in the snow bank,
Speaker 4: and it turned out to be Christine's jacket. Of course,
Speaker 4: after Christine, law enforcement knew they had child serial killer
Speaker 4: on their hands. Christine's parents appealed to their captor on TV.
Speaker 4: They organized citizens searches on foot CEBE radio club members.
Speaker 4: I don't know if people were even know now with
Speaker 4: CB radios are, but they joined in the effort and
Speaker 4: the case was all over newspapers and TV. And that's
Speaker 4: Berts warned that if the maniac was not you know, apprehended,
Speaker 4: he would surely strike again. And so now, as I said,
Speaker 4: police knew they had a serial killer on their hands.
Speaker 4: So Robert Robertson, who was then commander of the Criminal
Speaker 4: Investigative Division of the Michigan State Police, had phoned several
Speaker 4: police chiefs from jurisdictions where you know, either the kids
Speaker 4: were snatched or where their bodies had been found, and
Speaker 4: he pulled them all together in an auditorium and that
Speaker 4: was meeting, the meeting where they uh uh became known
Speaker 4: as where they formed the Olkon County Child Killings Passforce.
Speaker 6: Okay, so they have they have the three children, and
Speaker 6: they find evidence of sexual assault. They have actual sperm
Speaker 6: found in the vagina and rectum. They also have you
Speaker 6: have you talked about Michigan State Police Lieutenant Robert Robertson
Speaker 6: organizing other police from other jurisdictions and Oakland County as well.
Speaker 6: You also say that the effort that they did at
Speaker 6: that time, including Detective Sergeant Increase, which was of the
Speaker 6: day to day operations he was in charge of. What
Speaker 6: are some of the things that they did to try
Speaker 6: to search for these potential offenders.
Speaker 4: Well, they were they did an amazing amount of things
Speaker 4: that they This is of course before Tim went missing,
Speaker 4: but they shed their postal carriers on come all together,
Speaker 4: and they developed a profile of the suspect and delivered
Speaker 4: that profile to anybody and everybody. The one of the
Speaker 4: problems was since none of the kids, there was no witness.
Speaker 4: Nobody had heard any screams from these abductions, nobody had
Speaker 4: seen any kid forced into a car. And as a result,
Speaker 4: everybody became The police thought the children must have gone
Speaker 4: with their captor willingly, they must have have recognized who
Speaker 4: it was. And as a result, you know, everybody became suspect.
Speaker 4: Members of the clergy, teachers, coaches, They went into schools
Speaker 4: and UH police officers had teachers quiz children to see
Speaker 4: if there was anything, you know, untoward going on in
Speaker 4: the kids' lives that they wouldn't necessarily bring up to
Speaker 4: to their folks. Some kids were even fingerprinted. It was
Speaker 4: a massive, massive search. But as one and they and
Speaker 4: tips came in and they they started UH they I
Speaker 4: think they pulled the records on all the known UH
Speaker 4: sexual offenders at the time, and but every one of
Speaker 4: them had had alibis. And then a couple of months
Speaker 4: months passed after Christine and and and then Tim King
Speaker 4: on March sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven, Tim, who was the
Speaker 4: youngest of marrying and Barry King's four children. He was
Speaker 4: eleven years old and he bowed thirty cents from his
Speaker 4: older sister Kathy to walk two blocks up to a
Speaker 4: nearby pharmacy at drugstore called the Hunter Maple Pharmacy to
Speaker 4: buy a candy bar. And you know, of course Tim
Speaker 4: had been wild schooled in stranger danger. Everybody knew what
Speaker 4: was going on and it but Tim, I should say,
Speaker 4: Tim had also been seeing his folks for a long
Speaker 4: time to be able to stay home long. He was eleven,
Speaker 4: and Kathy really thought it would be fine for him
Speaker 4: to you know, walk the two blocks up to about
Speaker 4: a candy bar, so she loaned in the thirty cents.
Speaker 4: It was, I think a Wednesday night. His parents had
Speaker 4: gone out to dinner at a nearby restaurant which was
Speaker 4: actually kitty corner from where Tim would be abducted. Barry,
Speaker 4: who was a well respected attorney, and his wife Marian,
Speaker 4: were going to have a will signing with a client
Speaker 4: couple and then have dinner. Tim's brother Chris, who had
Speaker 4: just turned sixteen, was babysitting and Mark his other brother
Speaker 4: was at a play practice at middle school and Kathy
Speaker 4: was getting ready to go to see Jerry Lewis do
Speaker 4: a stand up routine at a hotel. So Kathy told him,
Speaker 4: you know, she'd leave the front door locked for him
Speaker 4: to be able to return, and she told him to
Speaker 4: be very careful crossing Adams Road. And Tim left it
Speaker 4: about seven I think in Cathulus. Fifteen minutes later, Marian
Speaker 4: and Marian were arrived home at nine pm. They were
Speaker 4: followed by Mark and Chris, and Tim was nowhere to
Speaker 4: be found. They called their friends and neighbors. Chris King
Speaker 4: told me a story about getting in the car with
Speaker 4: his guy friends' houses and scan backyards and by now
Speaker 4: was late and and said they drove up to one
Speaker 4: house and it was you know that it was pitch black,
Speaker 4: and he said, Mom, I'll just go up and knock
Speaker 4: on the door anyway, and she said no, you know,
Speaker 4: she said it's no use. And Chris said, you know,
Speaker 4: from that moment on, it was horrible because you knew
Speaker 4: what was going on.
Speaker 6: There was a witness that was said that somebody he
Speaker 6: saw a man speaking to Tim, and from that description,
Speaker 6: what was the description, but also the description of a
Speaker 6: potential vehicle, yes, uh, which.
Speaker 4: Which turned out to be one of the cases worst
Speaker 4: red herrings. But a day or so after Tim disappeared,
Speaker 4: a woman had told police that she had just finished
Speaker 4: grocery shopping for the night, I mean the night tomb
Speaker 4: was missing, and she was loading her groceries into her
Speaker 4: car and she said she saw a kid she identified
Speaker 4: as Tim because he was wearing his red hockey jacket.
Speaker 4: And Tim, she said, was talking to a man who
Speaker 4: she described in detail. He had long, dark hair with sideburns.
Speaker 4: He was I think she said, he was between twenty
Speaker 4: five and thirty years old. And she said they were
Speaker 4: both standing by a blue AMC Gremlin with the white
Speaker 4: hockey stripe. Of course, thereafter the entire area, you know,
Speaker 4: was blanketed by posters, you know, showing up the police
Speaker 4: composite of the sketch of the suspect and the Gremlin,
Speaker 4: and uh, police thereafter, you know, just sought out every owner.
Speaker 4: I think they they they got a list of every
Speaker 4: owner of nearly every owner of a Gremlin in the state.
Speaker 4: It was something like eight thousand owners. Uh. They ended
Speaker 4: up pulling over three thousand Gremlins, but it would take
Speaker 4: a long time to learn that the group blue Gremlin
Speaker 4: was was probably not the car they should be looking for.
Speaker 4: That myths became very hard to just fell. You know.
Speaker 4: I should note that that that night that Chris or
Speaker 4: that Tim went missing, Chris couldn't sleep, and so his
Speaker 4: elder brother, who was sixteen, so he grabbed the baseball
Speaker 4: that and he walked up to the high her Maple
Speaker 4: Pharmacy parking lot and there were three or four cars
Speaker 4: barked in the lot, and one of them listening and
Speaker 4: see gremlin with he was, you know, with a white
Speaker 4: hockey strike, and he remembered looking in the car and
Speaker 4: there was nothing. But when police came and interviewed the Kings,
Speaker 4: Chris had told them about how really the Gremlin couldn't
Speaker 4: be the suspects of Vehicke because he had seen it
Speaker 4: later that night, long after Tim had gone missing. But
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, the police discounted, you know, a sixteen
Speaker 4: year old version when you know, up against a person
Speaker 4: who had said she witnessed him.
Speaker 6: Now let's talk about let's talk about doctor Bruce Danto
Speaker 6: just briefly, because this is obvious lead to avail. But
Speaker 6: this guy offers to develop a profile of course free assistance.
Speaker 6: So he has a theory basically, what's his theory? And
Speaker 6: and you talk about this is day four, by day
Speaker 6: six people find the body of Kim King.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So Bruce Dantro was a psychiatrist and he loved
Speaker 4: the media. And his theory was that the killer might
Speaker 4: be trying to extract revenge on his family. And I
Speaker 4: think he thought he was a Vietnam veteran, and he
Speaker 4: Bruce Dantro really felt that he could he could possibly
Speaker 4: draw the killer out by communicating with him. And he
Speaker 4: had the a lot of different machinations and orchestrations to
Speaker 4: to try and draw the killer out. One of them
Speaker 4: was to go on the radio and dropped some some
Speaker 4: huts and and and he also wrote a letter to
Speaker 4: the killer that was published in the newspaper and said
Speaker 4: you can stop this now, and if you're reading this,
Speaker 4: please write me a letter. And indeed somebody named Alan
Speaker 4: wrote him a letter. They never found found out who
Speaker 4: the letter write, who Alan actually was. He had the
Speaker 4: newspaper print of fault weather report is a means to
Speaker 4: communicate with the killer the police. He was sure that
Speaker 4: uh something about nuts and squirrel road that the killer
Speaker 4: was was mining his victim squirrel searches for nuts, and
Speaker 4: later he put that out as a hint, and later
Speaker 4: police had a stakeout on Squirrel Road. It was. It
Speaker 4: was not very fruitful, but but interesting. Nonetheless, of course,
Speaker 4: you know, during this time, while while team was missing,
Speaker 4: the panic and fear was enormous. The the case became
Speaker 4: national news. It was. It was. It was on the
Speaker 4: cover of People magazine. It was covered by Walter Cronkite.
Speaker 4: And while Tim was missing, the Oakland County prosecutor at
Speaker 4: the time, Brooks Patterson, had authorized law enforcement to pull
Speaker 4: over and search every vehicle on the streets over that weekend.
Speaker 4: Tim was kidnapped on Wednesday. So the following weekend, Friday
Speaker 4: and Saturday and Sunday night, between two and six am,
Speaker 4: every vehicle on the streets was pulled over. It was.
Speaker 4: It was a huge effort. It was also unconstitutional. But
Speaker 4: the reasoning was because the kids were killed within an
Speaker 4: hour of being of their bodies being downe they were
Speaker 4: hoping to intercept the killer. They were driven by the
Speaker 4: urgency to possibly find King alive. I think I said
Speaker 4: that they pulled over over two thousand cars and one
Speaker 4: of the cops said, you know, no one complained.
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Speaker 6: Now you talked about the Tim King investigation and this
Speaker 6: panic that hits the community, the county and they're pulling
Speaker 6: over vehicles and then they find Tim King's body, yes,
Speaker 6: after six days. Yes, So now we're talking of bout.
Speaker 6: You have a task force that is organized and with
Speaker 6: Lieutenant Robinson as the commander and Detective Sergeant in Priest
Speaker 6: as his right hand man, and Lieutenant Joseph Kooning later
Speaker 6: is Robertson's successor. You talk about at that time that
Speaker 6: there at that time there was a theory that was
Speaker 6: espoused by these three people. What was that theory? And
Speaker 6: regarding this Oakland County child killings?
Speaker 4: That theory came after in nineteen seventy eight, after the
Speaker 4: task force had shut down because they believed that they
Speaker 4: had run out of money, and reporters who would circle
Speaker 4: back to their police sources, you know, the following winter
Speaker 4: when it snowed and on anniversaries circle back to their
Speaker 4: police sources and to ask them why the case was
Speaker 4: never solved and what they thought had happened in the case,
Speaker 4: And with striking similarity, all of the officers u spaun
Speaker 4: a theory that said, basically, you don't have to worry,
Speaker 4: it's been taken care of. Uh. The the our theory
Speaker 4: is that the killer was likely from a wealthy family,
Speaker 4: and the wealthy family had arranged to have the killer
Speaker 4: institutionalized for life, and so long as no other children
Speaker 4: went missing, ah, and nobody else would ever have to
Speaker 4: go through this again. It was put to rest. Some
Speaker 4: of the the the theories even went so far as
Speaker 4: to say that the families were aware that the killer
Speaker 4: had been institutionalized for life and rather than risk going
Speaker 4: through a public trial and having to you know, go
Speaker 4: through the agony of their you know, public reef beyond
Speaker 4: display or they were, they were okay with that and
Speaker 4: willing to put it behind them it. You know, of course,
Speaker 4: decades later, it wasn't no until decades later, how closely
Speaker 4: that theory aligned with what actually happened.
Speaker 6: You write in this book and you have a use
Speaker 6: this opportunity to educate and enlighten people in this book
Speaker 6: about the confluence of events as you describe it, the
Speaker 6: things that happened in the seventies, the laws that existed
Speaker 6: in the seventies, and the laws that didn't exist in
Speaker 6: the seventies, and then just the burgeoning growth of the
Speaker 6: child pornography industry given those lack of laws and just
Speaker 6: the confluence of events. So you talk about the cast
Speaker 6: Corridor in Detroit, You talk about Oakland County being one
Speaker 6: of the most affluent communities in the country, but Detroit,
Speaker 6: because of the recession, turns into a very murderous and
Speaker 6: crime ridden place, doesn't it. So tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit about the things you discuss.
Speaker 4: Sure, I most people don't realize, and certainly we didn't
Speaker 4: realize at the time that child prostitution and child pornography,
Speaker 4: uh was a multi million dollar industry and it completely underground,
Speaker 4: and it took off in part because there were it
Speaker 4: was highly profitable, and and it took off in this
Speaker 4: country because there were actually no laws, no federal protections
Speaker 4: for for children the books to prevent it. You know,
Speaker 4: outside of a Juvenile Delinquency Act, which you know took
Speaker 4: care of runaways, there just weren't any protections for children
Speaker 4: from from predators or and or you know, actual exploitation.
Speaker 4: The Cast Corridor was a ten block area just northwest
Speaker 4: of the city. It was once densely populated with immigrant
Speaker 4: families who had moved north to work in the auto factories.
Speaker 4: But as you said, the recession of the early seventies
Speaker 4: hit the city and the cast order even harder, and
Speaker 4: the area became a haven for the drug trades and
Speaker 4: sex workers and kids ran wild. It became a quote
Speaker 4: unquote predator's mecca, and a lot of child pornography took
Speaker 4: off there. Detective Williams, whom I'll get into later, but
Speaker 4: the lead detective in the case, spent three years unraveling
Speaker 4: the child prostitution and pornography rings that were operating really
Speaker 4: under our noses. And it's amazing that he was able
Speaker 4: to identify several hundred men that they belonged to a
Speaker 4: very structured organization and it was broken up into you know,
Speaker 4: hidden sells, much like I would think the terrorists health
Speaker 4: we think of today. And the leaders of the cells
Speaker 4: had organized seconds and lieutenants and targeants, and and he
Speaker 4: was able to identify quite a few, you know, politicians
Speaker 4: and labor leaders and auto executives who were who were
Speaker 4: involved in sharing kids.
Speaker 6: So you talk about go ahead, Sorry, you say, it
Speaker 6: wasn't until go ahead, you say, it wasn't until the
Speaker 6: summer of seventy six that the first threat of the
Speaker 6: nationwide child porn ring started to unravel. And it began
Speaker 6: in Michigan with the arrest of a gym teacher at
Speaker 6: a Catholic school in Saint Clair County who had connections
Speaker 6: to the case, Gerald Richards, and that led and that
Speaker 6: led to real estate developer. He told them about real
Speaker 6: estate developer Francis D. Sheldon, who had purchased North Fox
Speaker 6: Island in La Michigan. So what did he tell authorities?
Speaker 6: What did he tell authorities about Francis D. Sheldon and
Speaker 6: North Fox Island?
Speaker 4: Gerald Richards worked for Francis Sheldon. Francis Sheldon was a
Speaker 4: wealthy real estate developer from Growth Point, which is east
Speaker 4: of Detroit. And he came from one of the espetially
Speaker 4: one of the country's most prestigious families. He was you know,
Speaker 4: his his his grandfather was a founder of the Package
Speaker 4: Motor Company. His father was a land developer who was
Speaker 4: responsible for two of Detroit's most prestigious subdivisions. And you know.
Speaker 4: Francis of course went to the best school and he
Speaker 4: was immensely wealthy. In nineteen seventy six he was worth
Speaker 4: several million dollars. But he led a double life, and
Speaker 4: turns out that he was the financier behind these child
Speaker 4: pornography rings. He was. He financed the the ring that
Speaker 4: we were talking about in the cast Corridor, and he
Speaker 4: also created his own child pornography ring on North Fox Island,
Speaker 4: as you said, he purchased it in nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 4: and he built it, built an airstrip and several cabins,
Speaker 4: and then he recruited young boys to come to his
Speaker 4: so called nature camp. It was called Brother Paul's Children's Mission,
Speaker 4: and he had it incorporated and it was funded by
Speaker 4: our tax dollars, but instead it was a tax dodged
Speaker 4: and kids up the island were filmed, but and then
Speaker 4: the home. The film was then shipped the Amsterdam or
Speaker 4: it was developed and mass produced and then sent through
Speaker 4: the mail. So in July of nineteen seventy six, Gerald Richards,
Speaker 4: who was Francis Sheldon's underling, he was a photographer and
Speaker 4: he was incorporated in the pit and the Brother Call Mission.
Speaker 4: In those legal papers. Gerald Richards was the director, but
Speaker 4: he was also a school teacher in import Huron and
Speaker 4: he got picked up on a charge for molesting a
Speaker 4: young boy. And at that point he tipped out Francis Sheldon,
Speaker 4: and just merely by coincidence, Francis Sheldon, I think, called
Speaker 4: Gerald Richards wife at the time, and she informed Francis
Speaker 4: Sheldon that Gerald had been picked up by the police.
Speaker 4: And immediately Francis Sheldon emptied his condo in ann Arbor
Speaker 4: and and fled the country. And sadly, he was never extradited.
Speaker 6: So go ahead, do you talk about the Also, what
Speaker 6: Arthur's had said is that there was a filing cabinet
Speaker 6: that Sheldon would carry, would move from place to place.
Speaker 6: And then when they you know, he had ample time
Speaker 6: to take off covers, tracks, and they went and of
Speaker 6: course no filing cabinet whatsoever, no evidence left.
Speaker 4: Behind, right, But of course you know, Gerald had pictures
Speaker 4: and he was able to alert the Saint Clair Police
Speaker 4: all of these other child pornography rings across the country,
Speaker 4: and so the Michigan State Police and the Saint Clair
Speaker 4: Police here notified authorities in Tennessee and and in Illinois
Speaker 4: and UH and in other places. So police then became us,
Speaker 4: you know, it became a cross country race.
Speaker 6: Now tell us why it was called the Snow Killings.
Speaker 6: And then introduced detective James Williams and then Corey Williams.
Speaker 4: Sure, there are there are two what I like to
Speaker 4: think of as really momentous things that happened in this
Speaker 4: case that that that I guess I call were serendipitous
Speaker 4: or providential planets aligning, you know, however you want to
Speaker 4: think of it. But one of them is this, uh,
Speaker 4: Corey Williams. He grew up in Berkeley where where Christina
Speaker 4: Hellick was from. His father, Lee Williams, James Lee Williams,
Speaker 4: as you said, was a police officer, and he not
Speaker 4: only worked on the case. Lee Williams was very good
Speaker 4: friends with Christine's grandfather, and Corey remembers the night Christine
Speaker 4: went missing because her frantic grandfather called called Lee Williams
Speaker 4: frantic saying Christine is missing. Yeah, uh, you know. Corey
Speaker 4: remembers being afraid and talking with his brothers at night
Speaker 4: about what they would do to get away from the
Speaker 4: killers that they had to and it was interesting because
Speaker 4: his dad, you know, worked the case like mad and
Speaker 4: decades later, Corey would run across you know familiar names,
Speaker 4: which were the names of cops that his dad had
Speaker 4: worked with. In any event, Corey joined the army and
Speaker 4: became a US paratrooper, and when he came home, he
Speaker 4: joined the police force in Lavonia. And Livonia is this
Speaker 4: city where Tim's king body has had been found. But
Speaker 4: in two thousand and four, Corey Williams was assigned to
Speaker 4: re examine a fifteen year old cold case. It was
Speaker 4: the homicide of the owner of the Detroit Cap Company.
Speaker 4: His name was Avier Giller, and he'd been shot dad
Speaker 4: in his dragway after arriving home from work in ninety
Speaker 4: eighty nine, and the killers stole killers, you know, cash
Speaker 4: he would every night he would bring home the day's earnings,
Speaker 4: and the killers took off driving across the country. So
Speaker 4: Corey is reading these old records and he found that
Speaker 4: the killers and or the suspects at that time, had
Speaker 4: been arrested in Pennsylvania on their cross country trip, and
Speaker 4: he'd been arrested for armed robbery. His name was Richard Blowson.
Speaker 4: And Cory's reading these records and reading where Richard Lawson
Speaker 4: was trying to work out a plea deal, and he
Speaker 4: told these small town Pennsylvania cops that he had first
Speaker 4: hand information about Michigan snow killings. Of course, you know
Speaker 4: the pencil they need. The detectives had no idea what
Speaker 4: he was talking about, but Williams knew instantly what he
Speaker 4: was talking about. The Open County child killings had also
Speaker 4: been called the snow killings because the killings had occurred
Speaker 4: in winter in their abductions had often occurred when they
Speaker 4: had snowed. So now Williams is not only eager to
Speaker 4: solve the cold case of the cab killer, but he
Speaker 4: also is really anxious to find out what Richard Lawson
Speaker 4: knows about the snow killings. And since Richard Blossom was
Speaker 4: a prolific predator and new and awful lot he hung
Speaker 4: out that was his stopping ground was the Cast Corridor.
Speaker 4: Richard Lawson was able to tell Williams that he, along
Speaker 4: with others, were prostituting children in the Cast Corridor to
Speaker 4: quote unquote rich executives in the suburbs during the time
Speaker 4: of the occ K case. So while investigating the Cast Corridor,
Speaker 4: Williams was able to secure a conviction and a lifetime
Speaker 4: sentence for Lawson, you know, for the murder of Xavier Diller,
Speaker 4: and he was also able to arrest and convict another
Speaker 4: pedophile who was Lawson's companion. His name was Ted Lamborghine,
Speaker 4: and he's now serving three consecutive life sentences, you know,
Speaker 4: for raping boys in the cast Corridor. All along, you know,
Speaker 4: the King family had been closely following the Losson and
Speaker 4: Lambergine court proceedings because of what Detective Williams was learning
Speaker 4: about they Elton County child killings and their connection to
Speaker 4: the Cast Corridor, and they had been deeply impressed by
Speaker 4: Detective Williams. And of course this now leads us to
Speaker 4: Kathy King calling Corey Williams in July of two thousand
Speaker 4: and seven because she said she had something of enormous
Speaker 4: importance that she wanted to talk to him about it.
Speaker 4: And this is what I consider to be kind of
Speaker 4: like the second providential part of the story, because what
Speaker 4: she had to tell him was a story that Bary
Speaker 4: King told me that night about about that big white
Speaker 4: house across the streets from the King's. What she told
Speaker 4: Cory Williams was that Pat Coffee was a young boy
Speaker 4: who grew up across the Street in that big white
Speaker 4: house from the King's. He was a childhood friend of
Speaker 4: Tim King and was deeply affected by the murder of
Speaker 4: his childhood friends, so much so that he decided to
Speaker 4: become a polygraph examiner. And in two thousand and six,
Speaker 4: Patrick Coffee was at a convention in Las Vegas and
Speaker 4: he was giving a presentation to to you know, to
Speaker 4: the National group of polygraph Examiners about a specialized way
Speaker 4: of conducting polygraphs. And in the audience was a man
Speaker 4: named Larry Wasser. Larry was president of the Michigan Polygraphers
Speaker 4: Association at the time, and Larry Wasser was very impressed
Speaker 4: by Pat trick coffee presentation, and afterwards he went up
Speaker 4: to him and he said he asked him if he
Speaker 4: would be interested in coming to Detroit to give the
Speaker 4: same presentation, and Peraps said, well, of course, you know,
Speaker 4: you knew would be interested to know that. Uh, my
Speaker 4: career ambition was born out of the tragedy of my
Speaker 4: of my childhood friend who was murdered. And perhaps you
Speaker 4: know the case. It was called the Olton County child
Speaker 4: killing case. Mm hm and Wasser, uh I think you know,
Speaker 4: Pat told me Wasser's jaw dropped and and he said,
Speaker 4: I know the case very well, and for whatever reason
Speaker 4: lawyers have said it wasn't excited, I did utterance. But
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, Wasser blurreted out, well, I guess I
Speaker 4: can tell you this now because the suspect is dead
Speaker 4: and so is the attorney. But I tested the suspect
Speaker 4: who confessed to killing your neighbor boy, and in doing so.
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Speaker 6: me for interrupting you, and especially he's not a very
Speaker 6: very exciting admission. We now have this, as you say,
Speaker 6: this spontaneous utterance of something that he likely you know,
Speaker 6: didn't want to or didn't believe it was important to say.
Speaker 6: He just uttered it now when there was going to
Speaker 6: be confirmation for what he had just said. What was
Speaker 6: his response.
Speaker 4: He denied the conversation. And the reason he denied the
Speaker 4: conversation is because when he said that he had violated
Speaker 4: polygrapher client privilege right, which is the same thing as
Speaker 4: attorney client privilege. And sure, ah for for a you know,
Speaker 4: for a polygraph examiner who makes his life, you know,
Speaker 4: minding the truth, for him to have done that pretty
Speaker 4: much amounted to career suicide. But he did later deny
Speaker 4: the need that the conversation had ever even happened between
Speaker 4: him and Pat. And but when when Kathy called Detective
Speaker 4: Williams and told him about this conversation, Detective Williams was
Speaker 4: able to get an investigative subpoena and forced Wasser to
Speaker 4: come to the Wayne County Prosecutor's office and uh excuse me,
Speaker 4: Wasser you know, fought the the uh sebpoena and he
Speaker 4: later negotiates a deal with the Wayne County Prosecutor's office,
Speaker 4: whereby he didn't give hints to what the name is
Speaker 4: because he claimed he could not remember the name in
Speaker 4: exchange for not having to go under oath. And finally
Speaker 4: a name emerges, and that name is Christopher Brian Bush.
Speaker 4: Corey begins to investigate this name, and really an avalanche
Speaker 4: of evidence you know, came pouring down. Christopher Bush was
Speaker 4: the son of a prominent GM executive. He lived in
Speaker 4: Birmingham in Bloomfield village, which in a sprawling five bedroom
Speaker 4: home that was less than five milradius. Of all four victims.
Speaker 4: His father, h Lee Bush was chief finance officer for
Speaker 4: General Motors, a huge position, and Christopher Bush was a
Speaker 4: four time convicted pedophile and he but he'd never seen
Speaker 4: the inside of a jail cell. And that's because h
Speaker 4: Lee Bush hired a defense attorney whose name was Jane
Speaker 4: Burgess to defend his son. And h Lee paid Jane
Speaker 4: Burgess handsomely and flew her around in the family's private
Speaker 4: airplane airplane to plea bargain his son off of all
Speaker 4: these charges. So Detective Williams works alongside the Michigan State
Speaker 4: Police Detective Gary Gray, and together, you know, they amassed
Speaker 4: an incredible amount of evidence against Chris Bush. Chris Bush's
Speaker 4: companion and fellow pedophile, Greg Green, told police they were
Speaker 4: Greg Green and Christopher Bush were arrested at the same
Speaker 4: time in January nineteen seventies them and when they were arrested,
Speaker 4: Greg Green told police in a separate interview that Christopher
Speaker 4: Bush had murdered Mark Stevens, Christopher Bush's nephew, told Detective
Speaker 4: Williams that and Christopher Bush, unfortunately was abusing his nephew,
Speaker 4: and Christopher Bush's nephew told detective Williams that that his
Speaker 4: uncle Chris had taken him to the counter Maple pharmacy
Speaker 4: during the height of the killings, and he pointed to
Speaker 4: Tim King. I mean, what I mean to say is
Speaker 4: that the case was all over the papers, and so
Speaker 4: my nephew said, what is this And he took his
Speaker 4: nephew to the parking lot and said, you know, Tim
Speaker 4: King was standing right over there. He pointed to the area.
Speaker 4: When Chris Bush was interrogated in Flint, he was asked
Speaker 4: where he'd liked to pick up boys, and Bush recited,
Speaker 4: in chronological order, the three sites of the first three
Speaker 4: victims abductions. And I think it's it's interesting to note
Speaker 4: that greg Green, who did not come from a family
Speaker 4: of means like Chris Bush did, was arrested for the
Speaker 4: same charge with the same kid at the exact same
Speaker 4: time as Gregory Green. I'm sorry, as as Chris Bush,
Speaker 4: and he received a life sentence and Chris Bush walked.
Speaker 4: So money and power can get you a lot of things.
Speaker 4: One of Jose go ahead.
Speaker 6: You also have a witness that Williams finds and it's
Speaker 6: the first Flint, Michigan victim, Kenny Bowman. So he tells
Speaker 6: of Green and and also of Pardon Green and both
Speaker 6: of these people together. Yes, he told the both of them,
Speaker 6: and saying that Green was far more violent as well.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, of the two. And he was, uh, he was,
Speaker 4: he was very violent. And and one of the other
Speaker 4: victims he was violent with. We suspect is Vince Gunnel,
Speaker 4: who was a friend of Kenny Bowman. He was a
Speaker 4: friend of Chris Bush's nephews. They had all grown up
Speaker 4: in Flint together. And Vince Gunnel's we we think must
Speaker 4: have been severely beaten by Greg Green, because he Greg
Speaker 4: Green when asked about I think he was asked, ah,
Speaker 4: who his enemies were or who was the person he
Speaker 4: would most likely like to see dead, and he said
Speaker 4: Vince Gunnelds that one. When Vince Gunnelds was interviewed and
Speaker 4: interrogated by by Corey Williams, Uh, Vince Gunnelds refused to
Speaker 4: say that he ever even knew Greg Green. So interestingly enough,
Speaker 4: Vince Gunnalds was found to be a mitochondrial DNA match too,
Speaker 4: or what they'd rather call He shared the same profile
Speaker 4: consistency DNA profile consistency see of excuse me a hair
Speaker 4: that was found on the sweater of Christine Mahellick. He
Speaker 4: also failed a polygraph on the case. And to me,
Speaker 4: Vince he was a victim of Chris Bush City, he
Speaker 4: had no idea how how he could have been connected
Speaker 4: to the hair. He said, you know, maybe it was
Speaker 4: because I was in the car. I was in Chris
Speaker 4: Bush's car. Uh. And you know he also lied about
Speaker 4: knowing Greg Greg Green, which was which was very curious.
Speaker 4: I should say. The most damning evidence I think that
Speaker 4: detectively inspired was in Chris Bush's suicide scene. He was yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: and it was hostage that not many people believe that
Speaker 4: it was a suicide. But Chris Bush was found dead
Speaker 4: in his bedroom of his parents' home in November of
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy eight. Kim King was the last victim, so
Speaker 4: that would have been in March of seventy seven, so
Speaker 4: a little more than a year, and he was found
Speaker 4: dead from a hunting rifle wound that curiously enough, was
Speaker 4: shot right between his eyes. He had a blood alcohol
Speaker 4: level of point forty one, which I understand his kne
Speaker 4: lethal and so it's it's really questionable as to how
Speaker 4: he could have managed to, you know, shoot himself with
Speaker 4: a hunting rifle. There was no blood fetter on the wall.
Speaker 4: And also a police found when they responded to the scene,
Speaker 4: the drawing of a young boy who was Yes, it
Speaker 4: was a sketch and the young boy was screaming in
Speaker 4: anguish and he resembled Mark steven It was taped to
Speaker 4: the wall. There were ropes in the middle of the
Speaker 4: closet floor. There was a shotgun shell from a twelve
Speaker 4: gage shotgun that was left very conspicuously on the dresser.
Speaker 4: You know. Of course Williams wondered, he's looking at photos
Speaker 4: of all this, She's wondering where the ropes that are
Speaker 4: and could they possibly have been used to have found
Speaker 4: Mark Stevens and Timothy King. It was a twelve gage
Speaker 4: shotgun that had been used to kill Joe Robinson, but
Speaker 4: of course by nineteen seventy eight they in nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: eight police had tossed all that evidence and the body
Speaker 4: was cremated days later. So in any event, Williams presented
Speaker 4: the entire case to Jessica Cooper, who had taken office.
Speaker 4: She was the open County prosecutor and she an office
Speaker 4: in March of two thousand and nine. I'm sorry she'd
Speaker 4: taken office in January of two thousand and nine and eight.
Speaker 4: He first presented all the evidence to her, but she
Speaker 4: was nonplus. She was not moved at all, and she
Speaker 4: said come back when you have more evidence. I think
Speaker 4: it's important to remind you. You know that Corey Williams
Speaker 4: works in Wayne County and his boss is Wayne County
Speaker 4: Prosecutor Kim Worthy.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: Whatever Jessica Cooper's motivations were, and some have said that
Speaker 4: Pruss Peter Cooper was dead set against the Bush lee
Speaker 4: because she was friends with both Chris Bush's attorney Jane
Speaker 4: virgin who had passed away, and or Larry Wasser, the
Speaker 4: disgraced polygraph examiner, or whether she waged war with her counterpart,
Speaker 4: you know, Wayne County Prosecutor Kim Morthy, a pure political ambition,
Speaker 4: whatever the case was, she eventually got detectively and skilled
Speaker 4: out the passport. She lied about critical evidence that was
Speaker 4: found in twenty twelve, and she repeatedly discounted the the
Speaker 4: Chris Bush lead. She she treated Bary King horribly and
Speaker 4: and you know, thereafter just dismissed the Bush lead and
Speaker 4: said that it was a non start.
Speaker 6: We have to we have to ex we have to sorry,
Speaker 6: we have to explain though that the Barry King, his
Speaker 6: wife didn't want to have anything to do with this.
Speaker 6: She wanted to just have the memories of Tim and
Speaker 6: that's it. But he was a fighter, and so he
Speaker 6: always pressed the authorities for information and he is the
Speaker 6: one he and his family Kathy broad King, who also
Speaker 6: brought the first lead, the lead about Chris Bush to
Speaker 6: authorities exactly. And so a part of this is you say,
Speaker 6: I'm not really you're not really sure how big a
Speaker 6: role politics plays in there, But also just the ego
Speaker 6: that you see many times between jurisdictions where Cooper accuses
Speaker 6: Worthy of tipping off of leaking information or Williams leaking information, yes,
Speaker 6: whereas both of them just want to involve Barry King,
Speaker 6: who's an attorney and his family who have done good
Speaker 6: work and they believe deserve not only to know what's
Speaker 6: going on in this investigation and be apprized of it,
Speaker 6: but also that they that they're they deserve to know
Speaker 6: this information. And so has Cooper has issues with that,
Speaker 6: and also the King family said if we don't get
Speaker 6: the kind of answers that we're looking for, then we're
Speaker 6: going to go to the media. And so Williams warned
Speaker 6: Hooper that was the case. He didn't He wasn't threatening
Speaker 6: on behalf of them. He was just warning her, surprising
Speaker 6: her to the reality of the situation exactly.
Speaker 4: But that's not the way she saw it, you know,
Speaker 4: she decried him as a leak. She and shortly, you
Speaker 4: know after in October two thousand and nine, I broke
Speaker 4: the Bush lead. And because as you say, Barry King
Speaker 4: followed through in a threat, because they were being stonewalled,
Speaker 4: nobody except Wayne County would give him any information on
Speaker 4: the lead, very lead. You know, his family was responsible
Speaker 4: for developing. You know, he mounted a years long foil lawsuit,
Speaker 4: which Jessica Cooper fought all the way to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: He he Bury King made it his mission in life
Speaker 4: to seek justice for his son. He would he talked
Speaker 4: to anyone who would listen, senior men's clubs, press conferences,
Speaker 4: and he felt sure that the reason law enforcement would
Speaker 4: not talk to him about the Christopher Bush k is
Speaker 4: because they didn't want the public to know that they
Speaker 4: had covered up Chris Bush long ago to say, faith I,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a really important point to be made here,
Speaker 4: and it's one that Chris King impressed upon me long ago,
Speaker 4: and that is that had that providential conversation never happened
Speaker 4: between Patrick Coffee, the the poligrapher who was also a
Speaker 4: family friend, and Larry Wasser. Had that conversation never occurred,
Speaker 4: we would not know about Christopher Bush. We wouldn't be
Speaker 4: talking about Christopher Bush. I wouldn't have written a book.
Speaker 4: None of this evidence would have ever come to light.
Speaker 4: And that's because it wasn't supposed to that. That's by design,
Speaker 4: and that's kind of the premise of my book. They
Speaker 4: I I think I found evidence in it, and the
Speaker 4: book lays there that at the sight of the suicide scene,
Speaker 4: the Michigan State Police and members of the Oapen County
Speaker 4: Task Force who reported to the to the scene realized
Speaker 4: at that suicide scene that they had you know, they
Speaker 4: had already arrested Christopher Bush at the height of the panic,
Speaker 4: but then they had let him go and they had
Speaker 4: released him. And only weeks after they released him, the
Speaker 4: fourth victim, Timothy King, was snatched and killed and Corey
Speaker 4: Williams said as much too. He said he believed that
Speaker 4: the officers who arrived at that scene, and you know,
Speaker 4: a scene that really just screamed child killer, what with
Speaker 4: the drawing in the in the shotgunshell and the ropes,
Speaker 4: they had to have gone back and ran Bush's name
Speaker 4: against their records and discovered that he was a suspect
Speaker 4: that had been cleared by a polygraph and freed, you know,
Speaker 4: only weeks before Kim King died. And so rather than
Speaker 4: expose the fact that they had had him and let
Speaker 4: him go, they decided to close the door on investigating
Speaker 4: you know, Bush's involvement when they had the chance.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: And I talked to a too who was at the
Speaker 4: scene and told me just that he's in Florida now.
Speaker 4: His name is James Spiker, and he said, yeah. They
Speaker 4: tried to keep it confidential, as I remember, it was,
Speaker 4: you know, guys, let's just be cool about this. They
Speaker 4: didn't They didn't want the public to know that they,
Speaker 4: you know, had let their guard down. And as time
Speaker 4: went on and the killing stop, that just gave more
Speaker 4: credence the fact that he was the killer. And Spiker said,
Speaker 4: you know, we've got sure the task Force was going
Speaker 4: to say, you know, they'd solved it and closed the
Speaker 4: door on the case, but instead they they they shut
Speaker 4: it down.
Speaker 6: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop for these messages.
Speaker 6: Now you talked about that they just shut this down.
Speaker 6: It's obvious and your investigation and Corey williams investigation that
Speaker 6: this was a cover up and that there was wealthy
Speaker 6: people involved. But what we haven't really described is that
Speaker 6: this Corey Williams, he was obsessed with this case. And
Speaker 6: it's amazing, amazing the links and the links that he did.
Speaker 6: That he explored all the links, all the connections, all
Speaker 6: the deviants and sex offenders that were connected and confronted them.
Speaker 6: And it's very fascinating to see him confront people, bluff
Speaker 6: them and just deal with them and express his true
Speaker 6: feelings about these people. Yes, yes, he's quite obsessed with
Speaker 6: this case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and yeah, there wasn't there was not one stone
Speaker 4: left unturned. There was, you know, not one lady did
Speaker 4: not chase And he retired, as you know, at the
Speaker 4: end of last year. And so he had investigated the
Speaker 4: case for fourteen years. I mean imagine trying to you know,
Speaker 4: solve the case. Your father could not. He was he
Speaker 4: was very close with the king family, you know, and
Speaker 4: it was I imagine, you know, it was very hard for
Speaker 4: him to retire. I know it was very hard for
Speaker 4: him to retire. But at least he could be secure
Speaker 4: in the knowledge that he put away for life several
Speaker 4: horrible evils who to ruined the lives really of scores
Speaker 4: of untold kids, you know, who were whose whose wives
Speaker 4: were really ruined by by at the hands of these
Speaker 4: of these evil men, I mean Richard Blowston and and
Speaker 4: Ted Lamborghin and and I think too, uh. In September
Speaker 4: of twenty eighteen, I was with them when he went
Speaker 4: to the Kings, and he was able to tell Barry
Speaker 4: and and Chris and Mark that indeed they've been right
Speaker 4: along that there was a cover up. To say face
Speaker 4: he had he had produced a three page from fourt
Speaker 4: that he compiled on the theory of his cover up.
Speaker 4: And he told them, you know, the bottom line was,
Speaker 4: you know, there were cops who covered their asses once
Speaker 4: they found Bush dead. And of course and he also
Speaker 4: both he and he and kim Worthy, nobody did more
Speaker 4: to advance this case than than Wayne County, kim Worthy
Speaker 4: and and Detective Coy Williams, and but they weren't running
Speaker 4: the show. The Michigan State Police and the Open County
Speaker 4: prosecutors were. And he was able to and of course
Speaker 4: the Kings knew this. He was able to tell them that,
Speaker 4: you know, the most garious decision was the decision to
Speaker 4: keep the King family in the dark about everything.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So you know, I have to say the Kings were
Speaker 4: not surprised and that there was little comfort in the
Speaker 4: recognition that, you know, I think Chris said, we've been
Speaker 4: victimized twice, you know, first by a predator and then
Speaker 4: second by assistant that, yeah, that played us. So the
Speaker 4: good news is in August this past year, Jessica Cooper
Speaker 4: was was voted out of office. Barry King passed away
Speaker 4: right before Thanksgiving this year, I was able to hand
Speaker 4: them the book, which was which was, which was wonderful
Speaker 4: for me because I you know, I hope, at least
Speaker 4: I know, I think I know that the book served
Speaker 4: as a sense of vindication for him. Yes, I'm and
Speaker 4: and I'm I'm happy to say that since the book
Speaker 4: has been published, uh, more than a few new leads
Speaker 4: of surface and some victims, some very courageous victims, have
Speaker 4: come forward, so you know the truth, the truth matters.
Speaker 4: M hm.
Speaker 6: You talked about throughout this book the providence and or
Speaker 6: divine intervention in a couple key and a couple of
Speaker 6: key points. But what adds to the horror of this
Speaker 6: of these child, these innocent children being abducted and tortured
Speaker 6: and held and killed. And we didn't get into a
Speaker 6: lot of the graphic detail, but what was fascinating, and
Speaker 6: again this comes up over and over again, is the
Speaker 6: premonition by Jill Robinson with another of just months before.
Speaker 6: Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 4: Yes, she did. These parents have such amazing people, uh,
Speaker 4: Carol Felt. Jill's mother was divorced at the time, and
Speaker 4: she was the mother of three young girls, the oldest
Speaker 4: and she had said that Jill was having uh some
Speaker 4: just I guess, you know, teenage issues. She had recently
Speaker 4: moved to Royal to a new home, and uh, Jill
Speaker 4: or I'm sorry, her mother decided to send her to
Speaker 4: a therapist just to make sure she was adjusting well.
Speaker 4: And the therapist suggested that that they that Jill get
Speaker 4: a cat, and so Jill got a cat. And but
Speaker 4: Jill was really really almost wise beyond her years. From
Speaker 4: her mother's description, I would describe her as an old soul.
Speaker 4: She she not only read books, she read the newspapers.
Speaker 4: And she described one night saying prayers with Jill, and
Speaker 4: Jill broke down into tears and she said, Jill, you
Speaker 4: know it's madder, and she said, Jill said, I don't
Speaker 4: know why, but I've been having dreams and nightmares and
Speaker 4: I think, uh, I think I'm going to be killed.
Speaker 4: I think I'm going to be shot. And you know,
Speaker 4: of course I think it was after that, now that
Speaker 4: I think of it, that Carol took Jill to someone
Speaker 4: she could talk to. But you know, for as for
Speaker 4: as much as she could try to console her child
Speaker 4: and say that's that's not going to happen, of course,
Speaker 4: I can you know, I can't imagine the grief after
Speaker 4: the fact. Yeah, you know, knowing that your daughter had
Speaker 4: a premonition.
Speaker 6: It's interesting too that none of the other victims were shot,
Speaker 6: and so you just surmise or or suggest that there
Speaker 6: was a reason for that. But again adding to less coincidental,
Speaker 6: this could possibly be.
Speaker 4: There is a theory about about Jill being shot that
Speaker 4: I should mention because the other three were suffocated and
Speaker 4: it was thought that perhaps Jill was suffocated as well.
Speaker 4: But when they laid her down on the side of
Speaker 4: the highway, Jill at the time was wearing her backpack,
Speaker 4: the backpack she had been wearing when she disappeared, and
Speaker 4: it was thought that when they laid her down, perhaps
Speaker 4: the pressure of the backpack on her back and on
Speaker 4: her lungs made or expressed a hush of air, and
Speaker 4: perhaps to the killer they thought, oh, she's breathing, she's
Speaker 4: still breathing, she's alive, and then got the shotgun to
Speaker 4: shoot her in the face. But we don't know.
Speaker 6: We spoke about Francis Sheldon and the kind of motivation.
Speaker 6: We didn't really draw the lines to him, except to
Speaker 6: talk about that he was so worried that he fled
Speaker 6: the country. But you do talk about in the end
Speaker 6: of the book where he went. You follow him, You
Speaker 6: track him to find out where he went to and why,
Speaker 6: and how he was able to escape and stay out
Speaker 6: of the country. Tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 6: you found about Sheldon. Francis Fragis Sheldon, pardon me, Yeah,
Speaker 6: that's all right.
Speaker 4: There were numerous sightings of him reported in the in
Speaker 4: the years after he fled the country. He was cited
Speaker 4: in Amsterdam, who was rumored to have been married and
Speaker 4: was living in France. He I think he was cited
Speaker 4: in the West Indies. Even today, even as recent as today,
Speaker 4: Corey Williams gotta somebody sent him a photo of supposedly
Speaker 4: it's Francis Sheldon sitting in an orphanage in Africa with
Speaker 4: a bunch of world little kids around him. You know,
Speaker 4: the mysteries abound, But the Michigan State Police court files
Speaker 4: records say that he passed away. I believe it was
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety six. But he was never held to account.
Speaker 4: He was He sent letters to some of the kids
Speaker 4: that that he had groomed, letters of apology. You know,
Speaker 4: he fronted a lot of his favorite a lot of
Speaker 4: his favorites. He funded their college educations, and so he
Speaker 4: sent letters of explanation to at least one of them
Speaker 4: that I know, saying that he was sorry that an
Speaker 4: emergency had come up and he had to take a
Speaker 4: long trip. But you know, these people groom their victims
Speaker 4: so much so that they believe they have a real
Speaker 4: relationship with them, relationship akin to log and that that
Speaker 4: young man that I spoke of in CHARLDI boy ended
Speaker 4: up taking his life because of it. So and the
Speaker 4: other interesting thing too is and I won't go on
Speaker 4: about this, but so many people say when when talking
Speaker 4: about about the child pornography rings, and people like Francis Sheldon,
Speaker 4: how could this have happened? You know it we're so
Speaker 4: we're so appalled at at the horror of children being
Speaker 4: subjected to such things. And I, you know, I have
Speaker 4: to say, I think our own sense of denial is
Speaker 4: to be blamed. This was happening underneath our noses. And
Speaker 4: we have only to look at the Catholic Church or
Speaker 4: you know, Jerry Sandusky to know that many of us
Speaker 4: turn to blind eye because it was too abhorreant to
Speaker 4: be believed. But it goes on, and it goes on
Speaker 4: still into this day. It's called sexual trafficking. And you know,
Speaker 4: some people have said that Francis Sheldon was rather that
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Epstein is the modern day equivalent of Francis Sheldon,
Speaker 4: because you know, they're both on private island.
Speaker 6: So yes, what was once a very alarming situation got worse.
Speaker 6: In two thousand and eight, there was federal legation, legislation
Speaker 6: to stamp out child pornography. However, as you say, there's
Speaker 6: so many cases now that they simply just have to
Speaker 6: prioritize by age and if you know, and that just
Speaker 6: sounds like they got a prioritize by the youngest people.
Speaker 6: Children are being abused and you created and killed and sold. Yeah, yeah, incredible, incredible.
Speaker 6: I want to thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 6: and talking about the snow killings inside the Oakland County
Speaker 6: Child killer investigation. Has been fascinating. Is there a website
Speaker 6: or a Facebook page that people might take a look
Speaker 6: more information about this, Yeah, tell us about that.
Speaker 4: Sure, and thank you Dan for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 4: My website is called simply the snow Killings dot Com.
Speaker 6: Great. Thank you so much, Marnie Richard for the snow
Speaker 6: killings inside the Oakland County Child Killer Investigation. Incredible. Thank
Speaker 6: you so much. You have a great evening, good night.
Speaker 4: I appreciate it you too, Thank you Dan. Bye.