Oakland County Child Killer: Four Bizarre Unsolved Murders

2021-07-10 15:40:51 Written by Jones Jay

"During 13 months, four children were kidnaped and killed with their bodies left in several locations within Oakland County, Michigan. The children were each held from 4 to 19 days before being murdered. Their deaths activated a murder inquiry which at the time was the hugest in US history. The murders are still unsolved.

 

Fear and near-mass hysteria swept southeastern Michigan as young people were saturated with information on "stranger danger", and parents clogged streets around schools dropping off and picking up their children. The few who did walk, walked in groups and under the sharp eyes of parents in "safe houses", where children could go if they felt uneasy. Children even avoided using a playground directly behind the Birmingham police station. One incident in Livonia involved a tow-truck driver who attacked a man he had seen asking two boys on the street for directions. He turned out to be a tire salesman on a business trip from Akron, Ohio, who had gotten lost with no understanding of the slayings. The Detroit News proposed a $100,000 reward for the murderer's apprehension.

Mark Stebbins, 12, of Ferndale, was last seen leaving an American Legion Hall on Sunday afternoon, February 15, 1976. He had told his mother he was going home to watch television. His body was found on February 19, near laid out in a snowbank in the parking lot of an office building at Ten Mile Road and Greenfield in Southfield (some reports claim Oak Park; Greenfield is the boundary between the two cities). He had been strangled and sexually attacked with an object. Rope marks were seen on his wrists. He was fully clothed in the outfit he was wearing when last seen alive.

 

Jill Robinson, 12, of Royal Oak, packed a backpack and ran away from her home on Wednesday, December 22, 1976, following an argument with her mother over dinner preparations. The day after her missing, her bicycle was found behind a hobby store on Main Street in that city. Her body was found on the morning of December 26, along the side of Interstate 75 near Big Beaver Road in Troy. She was murdered by a single shotgun blast to the face. She was fully clothed and still wearing her backpack. The body was placed within sight of the Troy police station, once again, laid out neatly in the snow.

 

Kristine Mihelich, 10, of Berkley, was last seen Sunday, January 2, 1977, at 3:00 pm at a 7-Eleven store on Twelve Mile Road at Oakshire in Berkley, buying a magazine. A mail carrier spotted her fully clothed body 19 days later on the side of a rural road in Franklin Village. She had been smothered. The body was put within view of nearby homes, eyes closed and arms folded across the chest, once again in the snow.

 

Timothy King, 11, borrowed 30 cents from his older sister and left his home in Birmingham, skateboard in hand, to purchase candy at a drugstore on nearby Maple Road on Wednesday, March 16, 1977, at about 8:30 pm. He left the store by the rear entrance, which opened to a parking lot shared with a supermarket, and disappeared. An intensive search was executed that covered the entire Detroit metropolitan area, and there was extensive media coverage, already heavy with coverage on the prior three slayings. In an emotional television appeal, Timothy's father, Barry King, asked the kidnapper to release his son unharmed. In a letter printed in the Detroit News, Marion King wrote that she hoped Timothy could come home soon so she could serve him his favorite meal, Kentucky Fried Chicken. In the late evening hours of March 22, 1977, two teenagers in a car placed his body in a shallow ditch alongside Gill Road, about 300 feet south of Eight Mile Road in Livonia, just across the county line in Wayne County. His skateboard was placed next to his body. His clothing had been neatly pressed and washed. He had been suffocated and sexually attacked with an object. The autopsy showed that Timothy had eaten fried chicken before he was slain.

Soon after Timothy King was kidnaped, a composite drawing of the suspected kidnapper, and his vehicle, was released. A woman claimed she had seen a boy with a skateboard talking to a man in a parking lot of the pharmacy that Timothy had told his parents he was going to ride his skateboard. The vehicle was reportedly a blue AMC Gremlin with a white side stripe. Police would eventually question every Gremlin owner in Oakland County.

 

Detectives put together a profile of the killer based on witnesses' descriptions of the man seen talking to Timothy King the night he disappeared—a white male with a dark complexion, 25 to 35 years old with shaggy hair and sideburns. Authorities thought that the killer had a job that gave him freedom of movement and may have seemed to be someone that a child might trust, such as a police officer, clergyman, or doctor. He was also supposed to be familiar with the region and could keep children for long periods without rousing neighbors' suspicions.

 

Detroit psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Danto, who worked with the task force, received a letter many weeks after Timothy King's body was found from a man named "Allen", who claimed that he was the killer's roommate and even helped look after the victims. Allen told his roommate had been traumatized by murdering children in the Vietnam War and was taking revenge on more affluent citizens, which Allen says, his roommate criticized for sending him to war. Soon after, Danto got a phone call from Allen, who offered to provide photographic proof in exchange for protection from prosecution. Under police surveillance, the psychiatrist organized to meet Allen at a gay bar near Detroit's exclusive Palmer Woods neighborhood. Allen did not show, and was never heard from again."