A reader wrote to ask if I had details about other abduction attempts in Oakland County because it only makes sense that the killer or killers had made numerous other attempts in their quest to grab and kill kids in 1976 and 1977. Here are the few newspaper articles I found addressing in mostly general terms the many abduction attempts that were reported:
A detective who had been with Birmingham PD told me years ago that two weeks after my brother’s murder, a boy reported an abduction attempt in the same parking lot Tim was taken from. The date of that attempt? March 15, the day before Tim was abducted. Good luck finding that report–but can you imagine how helpful that could have been–then and even now. But I have a feeling the powers that be in Oakland County didn’t want any more press about how the kids there were sitting ducks.
In the wake of more recent publicity about Ted Lamborgine, Arch Sloan, Frank Shelden, Chris Busch, Greg Greene and Vince Gunnels, numerous people came forward as adults to say “this was the man/teenager who tried to abduct me” or worse. They told police, reporters, my dad, and me. Back in the day, prior to the OCCK killings, these types of crimes were seemingly no big deal to police. No big deal until, oops–yes, they are.
There is the 1974 abduction of James Davis, described in the first entry of the OCCK case timeline at https://www.preceden.com/timelines/547927.
The Royal Oak Tribune, January 17, 1975, reported an abduction attempt of a 10-year-old boy while he was on safety patrol on Thursday, January 16 at Donna and Sherry Streets in Madison Heights. Two men pulled up in a light blue car, turned off the ignition and watched the boy. After a few minutes a 6’2″ thin man (estimated to be 19 years old) got out and tried to grab the boy, who ran to a nearby house for help.
I’ve always wondered about the case of Mark Wayno, a 12-year-old who lived across the street from Mark Stebbins in Ferndale, and who was said to have run away for two nights on January 25, 1977. Mr. Wayno died in 2021.
And there was an abduction or abduction attempt of a Royal Oak girl in the late sixties/early seventies that allegedly may have been connected to the OCCK crew. I filed a FOIA request with ROPD but did not have sufficient information to narrow the search for any records. They also pointed out that if it had been an abduction attempt there might not be any record of it anyway. A search of newspapers.com and the Royal Oak Tribune archives yielded no insights.
Two other abduction cases, one from 1970 and the other from 1966. Thanks to a reader:
Still looking for any information about a report mentioned by reader RD1 “about a 14 year old boy who reported an attempted abduction to Southfield PD, after the Mark Stebbins tragedy, and who apparently stressed that he “looks like Stebbins” – ?
Complainant was Michael R. Incident Report 02/25/76 Investigator Doan.”
This would have been post-February 19, 1976 (Mark was abducted Februaryy 15, 1976).