The Snow Killings

by Marney Rich Keenan

  Finally, MSP Capt. Harold Love took the high road. Williams would remain a part of the Task Force, he said. A memo Love had written to his subordinates a few weeks before the Busch lead went public provided insight into his measured approach. “It appears that Mr. King knows much more about the particulars of this investigation than any investigator would typically divulge to someone not involved with the investigation. However, I believe it is clear to everyone that this investigation is far from typical and the fact is his family has provided and been privileged to quite a bit of information. It is also clear that they have kept the info to themselves or within closed circles, which reduces the risks or concerns we should have over disclosing the status of the investigation to him.”10

  After almost an hour, someone remembered the families were still waiting to be brought into the meeting. After the perfunctory introductions were made, Barry King began to ask questions from his list. Not one of them were answered in any meaningful way.

  “Finally, I asked who the decision makers were,” King recalled. “That was the only question answered at the meeting. One of the prosecutors said: ‘the police’ and one of the police officers said: ‘the prosecutors.’”11

  After an uncomfortable silence, Love said he would assume the position of “decision maker.” He said the Task Force would meet with the families again by December 1 and the meeting ended.

  As the families filed out, reporters respected their wishes to not comment. But they swarmed the State Police. When pressed, Love acknowledged that the families appeared upset. “Just talking about their children again would make anybody upset,” he said. But he refused to shed any light on what was discussed. “The meeting was a follow-up on a request for the families to meet, be updated and mend some communication gaps that have occurred,” he said. “There are no new leads, nothing new to report, and to say more than that would hamper the integrity of the investigation.”12

  Upon leaving, Chris and Barry King drove to Chris’ house, a few miles away from the MSP post. Father and son sunk into the couch, defeated. “It was nothing but a dog and pony show,” Chris recalled in disgust. “Nobody got a straight answer. It was insulting.”13

  In the days after, Barry King invited the members of the other victims’ families to his home on Yorkshire Road to share the recent events in the case and compare notes. Three of the four families were represented: Kristine Mihelich’s sister and stepfather, Erica McAvoy and Tom Ascroft, travelled an hour and a half from their respective homes in Lansing; Cathy King Broad drove from Naperville, Illinois; and Chris King picked up Mark Stebbins’ older brother Mike Stebbins from his home in nearby Ferndale. Tom Robinson, Jill Robinson’s father, who still lives in the Oakland County area, preferred not to be involved. Jill’s mother, Karol Robinson Self, was living in Florida and had distanced herself from the case for decades.

  That Wednesday evening in early November 2009 would be the first time the aggrieved families had met together face to face.14 One father looked into the eyes of another father and recognized the profound pain of a murdered child.

  Cathy King Broad and Erica McAvoy embraced upon first meeting. When Mike Stebbins and Chris King walked in the door, everyone stood in line with open arms.

  Still, while grateful for meeting, they were all disturbed by the revelation that the evidence on Christopher Busch had seemingly been purposely kept from them, and they were angered by the lack of further information and accountability on the part of the Michigan State Police.

  “I feel like I’ve been violated and deceived,” Ascroft said. “My theory has always been that police knew all along who committed these crimes and that they have just been pretending to investigate.”

  Stebbins agreed: “It’s obvious to me that if the police admit this is the guy that did it, then they have to admit they blew it long ago, when at least one of the kids could have been saved.”

  The families talked for three and a half hours, unleashing a seesaw of emotions. They spoke about the two mothers—Ruth Stebbins who died in 1998 and Marion King who died in 2004—never having any answers as to who abducted and murdered their sons. “How we all got through it, I don’t know,” Tom Ascroft said. “Especially the mothers. Their lives were over. … I think the reason we didn’t reach out to each other is that it was so delicate. We had our circumstances and they had their circumstances, and you just felt you didn’t want to interfere with however they were coping.”

  Barry King agreed: Marion “was never the same. Never.”

  Erica Ascroft said her mother, Debbie Jarvis, “was the same way. She always says: ‘I’m thankful for the work police are doing and I’m hopeful we will find whoever is responsible for this. But, you know, it was over in 1977. Life as I knew it was over then.’ It’s not that it doesn’t matter to her who did it. But it certainly wasn’t going to change the end result.”

  Cathy Broad remembered that Ruth Stebbins sent her mother, Marion King, a sympathy card. “Mike, I know our mothers did talk, however briefly,” she said.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Stebbins said. “Those are two mothers that went through hell and they are probably up there now reunited.” Then he added: “My brother’s death affected me in a very negative way. I turned into a child from hell. I mean, I did a lot of things I’m not proud of. I didn’t hurt nobody but myself. But something like this, it changes you forever.”

  Mike Stebbins (left), Mark Stebbins’ brother, endured a difficult life after his brother died. He now counts Det. Cory Williams (right) as one of his closest friends (author photograph).

  The conversation kept circling back to anger. “There is probably no more heinous crime than this,” Chris King said. “And for all the torture we went through, it’s nothing like the torture those kids went through. I don’t know what people mean when they say closure. But I do know what justice is. And that is finding the guys who did this and closing the case. So, it isn’t such an open wound. So that every anniversary isn’t this horrible reminder of the fact we know nothing.”

  Tom Ascroft said, “I remember back in the day, you had so many turfs. You had Royal Oak. You had Franklin Village. You had Berkley. They were all squabbling. I remember my best contact was a camera crew guy from TV. It was a fucking circus. It still is. If they have anybody dirty they are hiding, they better come clean soon.”

  The following week, Barry King received a letter from Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper. It was in response to letters from King asking for a status update on the lead “fortuitously provided by my family.”

  November 13, 2009

  Dear Mr. King:

  I am in receipt of a copy of your letter dated November 9, 2009 to Capt. Harold Love of the Michigan State Police regarding the investigation of the Oakland County Child Killer. It is apparent from your letter that a speculative resolution based on disjointed bits of information may have filled you and your family with hope and speculation regarding that investigation.

  The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office is not an investigative agency. Rather, we prosecute crimes which have already been investigated by police agencies to the point where the issuance of criminal charges against specific, living individuals is both legally and factually justified. We then represent the people of Michigan in the courtroom against the individual charged. This office can, and does, supply legal advice and legal assistance to the police in the form of issuing subpoenas and search warrants when requested and legally sustainable. But, it is the police who do the investigation. Our professional and ethical function is to see that justice is done for all concerned.

  While this office cannot speak for the police, it is the policy of this office to advise our police agencies to keep all development of their investigations confidential until they are ready to present them to this office for possible issuance of charges. There are many reasons for this. One reason is that it is impossible to foresee how information made public during an
ongoing investigation might compromise that investigation at some further point. In addition, the publicizing of some information, such as that related to polygraphs, is actually a crime. Moreover, there are ethical and professional obligations to respect and protect the privacy of innocent people and their property on whom investigations touch, however tangentially.

  Finally, should an investigation produce charges against an individual, any pre-trial publicity of that investigation compromises and endangers the integrity of any subsequent prosecution.

  Again, absolute confidentiality, even, unfortunately, from the family of a victim, remains the policy of this office.

  In the event that the investigation of the death of your son produces that level of evidence that would justify the issuance of charges against a specific, living individual for a crime committed in Oakland County, it will be my decision, as chief law enforcement officer of this County, who and what to charge. Until that time, however, it lies with police agencies to continue their investigation or to conclude that no further investigation would be fruitful.

  Should the police conclude that they have identified a perpetrator, but that person is now deceased, I ethically cannot make a public pronouncement of that. It is not the province of prosecutors, without the safeguard of a trial, to make pronouncements of innocence or guilt in the media—as much as it might serve to alleviate your pain. To make such a public declaration could also undermine a future prosecution should another perpetrator be found.

  I understand the great anguish that you and your family have suffered for over thirty years and continue to suffer. But I believe that I am professionally and ethically prohibited from revealing to you the details of an incomplete and inconclusive investigation that could impugn those who may be innocent and only increase your anguish by seeding and cultivating further conjecture.

  Sincerely,

  Jessica R. Cooper

  Prosecuting Attorney15

  Barry King was insulted. He felt the letter was condescending and dismissive. The case against Chris Busch, which had been hidden for over three decades, likely by some kind of inside effort, was hardly “speculative” and decidedly not “based on disjointed bits of information.” He responded by filing a lawsuit against the Michigan State Police and the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office demanding that he have access to the Busch files and that he be briefed and brought up to date on the investigation. “The Michigan Constitution, in Article I, Section 24, says that crime victims have the right to confer with the prosecutor,” King told reporters. “I’m suing because I just want to see the file and make up my own mind. After so many years of conjecture, I need to know whether there has been a cover up or a mistake.

  “If I see the file,” he continued, “and see that they’re looking at the same facts as I am, and coming to the same, or even a different conclusion than I do, that’s fine. I just want to know about Christopher Busch. I want a conversation with the prosecutor who can finally look me in the eye and tell me how a four-time convicted pedophile never spent a night in jail. That’s all I want. That’s all my family wants.”16

  (The parties would battle in court for the next several years, with King appealing to the Michigan Supreme Court. A ruling in September 2017 denied King’s appeal. He had requested more information on the investigation under the Freedom of Information Act, and moved for an order compelling the Oakland County Prosecutor to confer with him pursuant to the Crime Victim’s Rights Act. But the Supreme Court denied King’s right to appeal, ruling it was “not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court”).17

  After the Busch lead broke, polygrapher Lawrence Wasser and his attorney, James Feinberg, sought to publicly discredit Patrick Coffey.

  In the premier issue of Downtown Birmingham/Bloomfield magazine in September, Feinberg—identified only as “Larry Wasser’s Detroit attorney”—said the person Wasser polygraphed during the time of the killings “had nothing to do with the Timothy King case.”

  “The sad thing is, this man [Coffey] started something out of nothing,” Feinberg was quoted anonymously. “There is no basis in truth, and he has gotten the family stirred up for nothing. He basically made it all up. Maybe he wants recognition, or he wanted to write a book.’”18

  Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, quoted in the article, reiterated his position that he didn’t remember the Busch name. But he parted ways with Jessica Cooper’s refusal to share information with Barry King.

  “He ought to have access to the files and records,” Patterson said. “It’s not going to do any harm. Whose rights are they protecting? If I was prosecuting attorney—not to start a fight with the current Prosecutor—those files would be sitting on my conference table and Barry would be looking at them. If they’re so confidential, then swear King in as an Assistant Prosecutor, or have [Oakland County Sheriff] Mike Bouchard deputize him. There’s a million ways to get around it. Personally, that’s how I would have approached it.”19

  The King family was outraged by Feinberg’s attempt to downplay the Busch lead by demeaning Patrick Coffey. (In October 2010, Coffey sued both Wasser and Feinberg for libel and defamation. They settled out of court. Among the provisions of the settlement was a retraction and an apology from Wasser and Feinberg.20) In characteristic form, Cathy Broad wrote a pointed letter to the news editor of Downtown Publications.

  I can understand why Larry Wasser’s Detroit attorney wishes to remain nameless in your article. He has defamed Patrick Coffey. I can no longer sit back and allow this to happen. Patrick has been entirely selfless in this nightmare. He has integrity that seems to be completely lacking in your unnamed source. We are where we are today because of a conversation between Mr. Wasser and Mr. Coffey. Mr. Wasser can continue to deny it, but he knows the truth. Let me explain how I know Patrick Coffey did not “make this up.”

  I spoke with Patrick less than 24 hours after this conversation between him and Wasser took place in July, 2006. I hardly think Patrick used those few intervening hours to concoct a book plot and line up an agent. … I am so sick of hearing from law enforcement that everything in this case is simply a coincidence or conjecture. Do we have to suspend common sense and ignore the obvious?

  … Mr. Wasser and his attorney can hide behind the attorney-client privilege, the investigative subpoena statute and their fervent hope that after all these years no DNA will connect Busch to these crimes. With all that going for them, it is interesting that they still choose to defame Mr. Coffey. But before Wasser’s attorney calls Mrs. Cooper to get her to send me a nasty letter about an investigative subpoena she has no jurisdiction over, keep in mind that I did not obtain this information as a result of the subpoena. I WAS THE INITIAL SOURCE of the information that was the basis for the investigative subpoena.

  … For someone who has lived through and with a nightmare, I have a remarkably happy and full life. I try to never take this for granted. I needed this like I need a hole in the head. But I will be damned if I am going to sit back and let the state police and Oakland County blow off this lead and let unnamed sources or anyone defame Patrick Coffey.

  … Whatever was said or not said in preparation for the polygraph Mr. Wasser was referring to with Patrick, and whatever he and attorney Jane Burgess did or did not do in response to that information is between them and the universe. I sense an immense amount of relief on the part of many that after three decades it will no doubt be difficult, if not impossible, to prove Chris Busch was involved in these murders. So, should we all just forget about it and walk away? How anyone can make any version of that argument with a straight face is beyond me. Why did the MSP fire up the task force in 2005 if they didn’t want to vigorously follow leads?

  … There is no joy in any of this, I can assure you. And Mr. Wasser, his attorney, the higher-ups at the MSP and Mrs. Cooper all know it didn’t have to come to this, despite their posturing in the press. Why is
everyone so afraid of the possibility that the truth—or some part of it—will come out? Things were more an open book when the suspect was some objectively certifiable scumbag from the greater Detroit area who could not afford a private attorney. Why are the families being treated like suspects instead of crime victims?

  “What is wrong with this picture?”21

  The King family would not back off and the community supported them in kind. Cathy Broad insisted police were hiding their own misdeeds: “I am sure there is a cover-up, and if it ever comes out, we will be astounded at the depths of the depravity and how many people know about it.”22

  As one editorial in The Daily Tribune in Royal Oak read:

  The King family believes that investigators are dragging their feet, perhaps as a result of friction between different agencies involved. It’s possible. Friction between investigating agencies has gotten in the way of solving a crime before from federal to local levels. We hope that’s not the case here. A lot of people in this region would like the killer brought to justice if he’s still alive. His name known for certain if he’s dead. And for family members and some retired investigators, it’s more than “like.” It’s a pressing need.”23

  * * *

  1. Chris King in interview with author, September 2010.

  2. Janice King in interview with author, October 2009.

  3. The Associated Press, “DNA Does Not Link Wyoming Suspect to Child Killings,” Billings Gazette, November 27, 2000.

  4. Frank Witzil “Child Killer Hunt Heats Up,” Detroit Free Press, February 18, 2005, 1B.