The Medium.

Soon after McKinney’s murder, his widow went to a “fortune teller.” FOIA 496. The medium recounted a number of things known only to police at that time. As you can imagine, given the early stages of the investigation, the era, and the community, there was virtually no “inside” information about this crime in the press. (Really, there never was.) The police took notice and contacted her. FOIA 503-04. Not even going to try to summarize–check it out:

On October 31, 1977, police took the medium up on her offer of further assistance and detectives from Birmingham PD met her and her husband, who followed police over to the McKinney gallery. A summary will not do the report justice, so here it is, along with the notes taken contemporaneously:

Keep in mind what the medium told Yvonne McKinney and police as you read the FOIA response. Just a few observations–

1. The medium sees a connection with Ohio and Georgia. See FOIA 119 (interviewee suggests police check with a David Booth Cooper in Ohio) and FOIA 750 (interviewee tells police “a year or two ago [McKinney] spent some time on an island off of the Georgia or [redacted-??] or S. Carolina coast it is a funded thing where somebody suggest’s you to these people and they say we are gonna give you some money or two or three weeks time to come down here do what ever it is you wanted to do with your time and he was doing his writing on energy.”) FOIA 449 re: Georgia as well. See below.
   • Another possible Ohio connection–Maxwell Kincaid, an inmate at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, serving a sentence for bad checks, wrote the task force because “I myself know who killed the little Timmy King and also the Stebbins boy in your area. I know where the person is and all about him.” (See Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, page 216-17.) Robert Robertson wrote back expressing reluctance to visit but a willingness to speak on the phone or via a more detailed letter. The man, who wanted immunity, went dark.
2. “She stated that the business was a front for something else.” Consider marked paragraph at FOIA 459, below.
3. She stated that something was hidden.
4. She stated that she saw a boy by the name of Mark. The police report adds “this would have been John’s son.” His son was 19 in 1977, married and living on his own. I can think of another Mark who might have come through to the medium.
5. While in the back gallery area the name Paul came to her.
6. She asked if John was sadistic. Yvonne stated that “she thought possibly somewhat.”
7. The medium said that she could see McKinney and that he liked to see people suffer.
8. The handwritten notes say: “When Mrs. Edwards was leaving, I walked to the car w/her & Mr. Edwards & all of a sudden she stated “Arizona”–I want to go to Arizona–talk to the man in Arizona. Doug Webster was living in Scottsdale, Arizona and police do in fact go to Arizona to interview him .

While in the work room on the second level, she said “I feel heavy like I am going to be sick” and she wanted to get out of the room. As I said, my money’s on the medium.

Documents referred to in 1-8:

Before or after you read the FOIA response that follows, in addition to considering what the medium intuited in 1977 about McKinney’s murder and about him, you may want to read or reread Portraits in the Snow: The Oakland County Child Killings…Scandals and Small Conspiracies, by M. F. Cribari (2011), https://www.amazon.com/Portraits-Snow-Killings-Scandals-Conspiracies/dp/1432768026.  Just sayin.