Why are there no quotes from the MSP, the agency allegedly in charge of this cold case investigation? Were they asked for an update and refused comment? If so, what was a refusal based on? Doesn’t this strike you as odd?
Why no quotes from the current prosecutor, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald? Richard Thompson, chief deputy of that office in 1976/78 is still alive, what does he recall? Has the office of Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard worked the case at all?
What has been done substantively in the case since the tired old quotes rehashed from 2012?
Who should people contact with tips or information?
And the factual errors–can’t we get past this? You might argue that these details are no big deal, but they reflect on the work product.
–Mark was at the American Legion Hall with his mother and his brother when he spoke to his mom and asked to walk home so he could watch a t.v. show. He did not call her from the Hall.
–Statements about Jill being seen at the hobby shop and the Donut Depot are completely unsubstantiated. And the characterization of the disagreement between Jill and her mom–really??
–Kristine left from home after doing her chores and speaking with her mother, not from the bowling alley, to go to the 7-11.
–My mom’s name is spelled Marion. Not sure any witness saw Tim with his football and skateboard with him when he left the house for Hunter-Maple.
–My parents called the police at 9:15 pm, not 9:15 the next morning. Birmingham cop showed up that evening to take a report.
–“For decades victims’ family members believed Christopher Busch was the Oakland County Child Killer.” Despite a wealth of evidence implicating Busch in participation in these crimes, we did not learn his name nor were we ever asked about him until November 2007.
If that’s everything you know about the Oakland County Child Killer case, you didn’t do your background work.
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I believe they spelled Shelden wrong as well (Sheldon).
I also like how MSP has to be quiet because of all the active investigation going on in this case. However, there doesn’t seem to be an OCCK tip line anymore (or I assume since the article just said to call the MSP tip line).
Notice it was a ‘digital producer’ that wrote the story. No real investigative reporting here, it is so disappointing. Tons of errors, so disrespectful.
Very Sad, too little too late. I give WDIV credit for what they have done but, they can do so much more/
These mistakes DO matter. The more misinformation is reported, the more it becomes part of the narrative which is already false (well cared for, clinically cleaned) and muddies the truth. I feel like LE would like to see it thrown into quick sand.
Every time I see someone post something about “Polly’s Story” that leaps to conclusions, I feel obligated to correct it. I owe it to Polly and to the kids. To get the truth, it must come from truth.
I will forever believe that Ted Lamborgine knows!!!
Cory
Cory, you sat face to face with and breathed the same air as this monster. Why won’t the MSP detectives currently assigned this case paying this old, fucking POS another visit to lean on him one last time before he dies? Talk to his recent cell mates? Make his life miserable?
When I say I believe Ted Lamborgine knows, I’m definitely not saying Chris Busch & Greg Greene weren’t involved, nor am I saying Arch Sloan, Vince Gunnels & so many others weren’t connected and/or had an idea, or knew the players involved.
I still believe those suspects still alive, including Sloan, Lamborgine & Gunnels could provide information, but it would take an agency with an interest to take it further and a commitment to the truth!!! For the families.
I know, and/or at least “hope” there’s departments & detectives out there like that still?
Cory
Remember:
Lamborgine, first failure of a polygraph in the OCCK case & when offered a deal, pled guilty, “ straight up” to 17 counts of CSC with children in the Detroit area, instead of a chance for 10 years in prison for his cooperation.
Sloan: mitochondrial dna from a hair collected from his car February 20th, 1976, appears to match hairs collected during autopsy’s off the bodies of Mark Stebbins & 13 months later collected during Tim Kings Autopsy.
Sloan passed a polygraph in 1976 about Stebbins, but failed a polygraph in 2011 about Tim King.
Vince Gunnels: purposely tried to skew his polygraph in 2007. I interviewed his cellmate in prison & told me Vince had been asking how to beat a polygraph. When I confronted Vince later and arrested him in Montana he agreed to take another polygraph without messing around. He was polygraphed about Kristine Mihelich. He failed it miserably. When confronted with the results, he said, “ok.”
When confronted with why he failed he made statements like, “I didn’t know her name, and I’ve done a lot of drugs and pushed alot to the back of my mind.”
Cory
Wasn’t Gunnels overheard saying something to the effect of “but I didn’t kill her” on the phone to his sister?
I think he said, concerning her murder, “I wasn’t there. “
Cory,
The hair in Sloan’s car seems to be a match to Ruth (therefore Mark) Stebbins. (I think this was even mentioned in the FOIA documents.) If that is the case, isn’t the whole “Sloan isn’t a match so lets move on” a bunch of BS? The following sequences all match:
Q26.1 on Tim
Q43.1 on Mark
Q19 in Pontiac (Sloan’s car)
K24 – Ruth Stebbins
Chris Busch:
Ratted out by Greg Greene after their arrests for molesting boyz in January 1977. Greene told police Chris Busch killed Mark Stebbins. Busch arrested. Both men charged in Oakland County. Greene went to prison for life. Busch got probation.
November 1978, Busch found dead in his Birmingham home with a single gunshot wound perfectly between the eyes with a rifle. His BAC was .41 in an autopsy document.
Their was a drawing of mark Stebbins taped to the wall over the bed. Ropes on the floor in his closet. Cops the showed up at the house for the “suicide” (murder) call the OCCK task force believing he had been the killer.
So, the cops had a lead on Busch before Tim king was abducted & killed, but dropped it because of a polygraph he supposedly passed given by a fill-in guy that screwed up other polygraphs 🤔
Cory
Cathy, I can’t explain why won’t continue to beat the bushes on this case. I do understand their commitment to physical evidence examination, but, it has to be accompanied with interviews & circumstantial evidence.
Cory
The over-reliance on possible DNA results in this case is both understandable and ironic. Understandable, because what could be more straight-forward than a DNA link to a suspect? Ironic, because when this case was elevated to a DNA-only solve case by Jessica Cooper in 2012, she and her deputy had already openly dismissed the mtDNA on Kris’s jacket that could not be ruled out as coming from Vince (or Paul) Gunnels. Yet they were loving the mtDNA from a hair found in Arch Sloan’s car in 1976. A hair that, as KP outlines above, is very similar to Ruth Stebbins and therefore Mark. The hair was extinguished during testing, as is common in these ancient cases, and therefore worthless going forward. The MSP seems unwilling to use the services of a third party lab to rerun the kids’ clothing to see if there is usable DNA that could have been left by the killer or a participant. Also ironic when you think about how this evidence was misfiled and poorly stored and never seriously considered for DNA testing until you and Kym Worthy pressed the issue. Norberg was a bullshit, one and done forever ploy. At the time, the late Ray Anger seriously argued and made the case in the press that the ONLY evidence in the case was a single hair found on my brother. Incompetent or a liar, take your pick.
The typical arguments can be made–it costs too much (yet many labs have “scholarships” to help with the costs); the DNA could be from a lab worker or law enforcement who helped handle the bodies (no kidding, but anyone with any discernment could run this down and rule the person out). It’s like the argument made in the JonBenet Ramsey case that there is no need to reevaluate the child’s underwear because touch DNA could have come from the factory in China where the underwear was made (are you fucking kidding me?).
DNA is also complicated here not only because of the extremely poor handling, storage and age of the evidence in this case and the unwillingness to actually have ALL of the evidence rerun. It is also problematic here because the crimes probably involve team killers and serial sex abusers.
As Dr. Michael Arntfield explains in How to Solve a Cold Case, “sometimes, when there is no DNA sample to slam-dunk a resolution, the lack of significant ongoing investigation is simply a matter of indolence, incompetence, and insensitivity–without a lab report to rely on, there’s no will to run down a suspect.” (P. 34). I’m not seeing a lot of will these days.
In the having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too department, the MSP seems unwilling to utilize a third party lab to rerun the evidence in these four homicides and unwilling to circle back to reinterview and lean on a number of lying “amnesiacs” in this case. Each time the file gets passed off to yet another MSP detective, the inside of the file jacket should prominently note: 1. call victims’ family members (those who are still alive after 47 years) and introduce yourself; 2. interview the following people who are believed to have information about the crimes or manipulation of the investigation (suggested list in next comment).
PARTIAL list of men who should be interviewed or reinterviewed:
1. Ted Lamborgine
2. Arch Sloan
3. Vince Gunnels
4. Paul Gunnels
5. John Hastings
6. Richard Thompson
Also, these men involved in the investigation of Greene/Busch and the OCCK crimes. I haven’t confirmed recently that they are still living, but if they are they are no longer in a position where they would expect the merciless reprisals of L. Brooks Patterson and Richard Thompson if they told the truth:
7. Ed Sosnick (then assistant prosecutor–why were you present at Kristine’s autopsy and did anything seem untoward?)
8. Loarn Doan (Southfield detective–handwritten reports indicate Greene was polygraphed twice on January 26, 1977, yet Greene was again polygraphed by Melvin Scott on January 27, and by Ralph Cabot on February 1, 1977. Four polygraphs were conducted and only two polygraph reports survived. Any idea why? Also, why did you write out two separate Tip #370s? See https://catherinebroad.blog/2021/10/27/can-you-spot-the-differences/.)
9. Melvin Scott (January 27, 1977 polygraph of Greg Greene).
10. Robert Florida (did you conduct two polygraphs of Greg Greene at the Flint PD on January 26, 1977?
11. Chet Romatowski (polygrapher, MSP, what did you discuss with Larry Wasser concerning Christopher Busch?)
12. Tom McMann (Dearborn PD?, same. See interview of Larry Wasser dated November 30, 2007 at page 40.)
13. Jack Kalbfleisch (Birmingham PD–why would you tell Tim King’s friend Tim Nummer anything remotely like the story Tim Nummer told us–that you said the crimes had been somehow solved behind the scenes? Why would you say anything like that? What did you and Jerry Tobin know about how this case was really “taken care of”?)
14.Don Studt (Birmingham PD)–will continue to deny and lie, but worth a try. Has to have some observations about the investigation into John Hastings and the larger OCCK investigation.
There’s also information that I’m currently looking into that the Busch, Greene polygraphs in flint were altered after the fact.
Cory
The two polygraphs of Greene, taken on January 26, 1977 were no doubt destroyed. The January 27 and February 1, 1977, polygraphs were better tailored to Chris Busch’s needs and are the only two in the FOIA records because there is no sign of the January 26 results and the name of the polygrapher (Robert Florida? Melvin Scott?) is redacted from the FOIA response. Tell me where the statute provides for the redaction of a polygrapher’s name.
I love it, when you call people out over factual errors Cathy!
I’ve actually learned quite a bit, over the years, just from that.
On the other hand…glass houses?
I’ve been biting my tongue for almost five years, over problems with Mr. Appelman’s “Kill Jar”. I did what I could to promote it, at the time, when any publicity about OCCK seemed like good publicity. But, there are many errors, incorrect statements, as well as unsupported and unsupportable assertions.
A few examples;
pg. 78; “Prior to Shelden’s death in the mid-nineties, years of attempted extraditions failed. For whatever reason, the Michigan State Police, the FBI, and multiple political figures were unable to extract Frank Shelden from his power and influence…”
There was no extradition treaty between USA and Netherlands, until 1980. After that, there would be ‘grandfathering’ problems. Since Shelden’s offences were committed prior to there being a treaty, the general principle that if something you did was not a criminal offence when you did it – then you can’t be prosecuted for it, might have been an obstacle. Nothing to do with “power and influence”, however.
pg. 79-80; Dyer Grossman was “living in the Netherlands alongside Shelden”?
Quite simply, no.
pg. 80; Multiple statements about Gordon Lindsay…calling him “a local police officer” – was he? Can’t substantiate that. There’s never been evidence, or even a claim, that the child porn FILMS Lindsay voluntarily turned over to police, depicted boys on NFI. Neither the films nor the magazines were “found in his home”, he brought them all to police voluntarily. Since Lindsay’s house was never raided-searched, it’s not possible for “print material from the camps and receipts from donations he’d made to the Boy’s Farm” to have been “found” there. Lindsay did tell police, himself, that he had made donations to Boy’s Farm. The pornographic materials were voluntarily surrendered, not confiscated, and “eventually destroyed”? Can’t find any record of that either.
The correct information about Gordon Lindsay can be found in the FBI documents, your FBI-Shelden-2.pdf
And what can I say, about the assertion by so many people, that the OCCK victims were “used for child pornography”, except; there is still no proof, for that.
And odds are, there never will be proof, just as the odds are the case will never be “closed.” There is a difference between a misstatement of fact that can be easily corrected by reading the FOIA documents and speculation about what may have happened in these cases because there are no answers. Survivors of Busch, Greene, Shelden and Richards have described being filmed while being raped and assaulted. Other survivors have described being victimized by one or more of these men and then being dropped off for further assault and rape by Ted Lamborgine. Two of these survivors described damn near being killed by Lamborgine. Others have described being forced to have sex with younger victims. Unless you want to believe a theory along the lines of John Hastings’ explanation, that he was killing kids to punish society, had fun playing games and watching t.v. with them during their captivity and only sodomized the boys with an object after they were dead, the odds are that more than one man was involved with these killings and the abuse, physical and psychological, while they were alive. Unless one of the killers placed Polaroids or film of these kids in a safe deposit box and a family member with a conscience found them and turned them over, we will never know. Whether or not the OCCK victims were “used for child pornography” the end result is the same. They were held captive and from their families and then were murdered and dumped like garbage. Forgive me if I don’t believe for one minute that these kids were treated kindly or “cared for” while they were being help captive. I speculate that they were each told if they “didn’t make trouble” they would be returned to their families. Just take a bath/shower and I will take you home . . .
It’s not being stated as a hypothesis, it’s stated as a matter of fact – and in highly publicized books and documentaries.
But, I have a question that perhaps Det. Williams can shine some light on, please?
Was there an investigative purpose, to asking indirect questions in polygraph tests, back in the day? For example; asking “Do you know for certain who killed X”? rather than “Did YOU kill X”?
Those polygraph questions in this record do seem ridiculous. For example, no where on the unredacted versions of the 1/27 (Melvin Scott) or the 2/1 (Ralph Cabot) polygraphs of Greene is he asked whether he is telling the truth about Busch killing Mark Stebbins, nor is he asked if he had sexual contact with Mark.
As for the OCCK victims being filmed for child porn, obviously in the absence of photographs or film, this remains speculation. But I’m sure you can see why people might speculate. Frank Shelden was operating with impunity in Michigan during this era, at or near the top of a worldwide child porn business. Boys were filmed naked and in pornographic situations on N. Fox Island by Shelden. Chris Busch was arrested with child pornography–film and photos. Greg Greene had Poloroids wrapped in foil and buried near the base of a downspout. Richard Lawson describes seeing an “album” of boys–Polaroid shots at Lamborgine’s or Bobby Moore’s and Lamborgine points to a photo and remarks “looks like the King boy, doesn’t it?”
None of this proves that the OCCK victims were “used for child pornography,” and there have been no discoveries of these children in searches of online databases over the years.
Are you concerned that such speculation hurts the investigation?