5. Michigan State Police Det. Sgt. Garry Gray, “Detectives Revive Infamous Case,” www.michigan.gov, February 18, 2005.
6. Larry Wasser, interview with author, October 20, 2009.
7. Marney Rich Keenan, “Finding Timmy’s Killer,” The Detroit News, October 26, 2009, A1.
8. Keenan, “Finding.”
9. Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper, Bill of Particulars Case 2012–125171-CZ, August 8, 2012, 4.
10. Capt. Harold J. Love, in memo to David Robertson, Garry Gray, Darryl Hill and Sean Callaghan. Subject: Mr. King, October 5, 2009.
11. Barry King, interview with author, October 27, 2009.
12. Capt. Harold J. Love, in interview with author, October 27, 2009.
13. Chris King, interview with author, October 27, 2009.
14. Marney Rich Keenan, “Oakland County Child Killer Victims’ Families Meet,” The Detroit News, November 11, 2009. All quotes are from author’s covering the meeting.
15. Jessica Cooper, correspondence to Barry King, November 13, 2009.
16. Marney Rich Keenan, “Dad of Slain Child Sues for Records,” The Detroit News, May 15, 2010.
17. Dave Bartkowiak, Jr. “Court Denies Victim’s Father’s 3rd Appeal for More Information,” www.clickondetroit.com, September 13, 2017.
18. Lisa Brody, “Unsolved Mystery: Oakland County Child Killer,” Downtown Birmingham/Bloomfield, September 29, 2010.
19. Patrick Coffey v. Lawrence Wasser and James Feinberg, Wayne County Circuit Court Hon. Robert L. Ziolkowski, Case No. 10
20. Brody, “Unsolved.”
21. Catherine K. Broad, letter via email to Lisa Brody, News Editor, Downtown Publications, September 30, 2010.
22. Marney Rich Keenan, “Murder Victim’s Family Still Hits Roadblocks in Search for Killer,” The Detroit News, October 27, 2010.
23. Editorial board (Headline missing), The Daily Tribune (Royal Oak), November 29, 2010.
14
A Cover-Up and a Red Herring
On December 12, 1978, MSP laboratory scientist David Metzger checked out a box from the forensic division storage locker. The box contained evidence retrieved from Christopher Busch’s bedroom after his suicide a little over three weeks prior. Inside, Metzger found “a drawing of a child in a parka and numerous ropes and cordage.”
The scientist examined the evidence and wrote his results. “No questioned ropes or cordage were recovered from the victims of any of the four homicides under investigation by the Oakland County Task Force. Therefore, no comparisons could be made. The ropes will be retained in the event future comparison with other possible uses becomes necessary.”1
Put more succinctly, “future comparison with other possible uses” meant the MSP kept the ropes should more OCCK victims come in killed and bound. And when time passed and no more children went missing after Busch’s death, those sworn to secrecy could be even more convinced of Busch’s involvement: the killer had stopped killing because he was dead.
Yet no one delved deeper into those ropes, or the drawing that resembled Mark Stebbins, or the gun shell casings left behind, or the lack of blood spatter on the bedroom walls. No one interrogated Gregory Greene, who was sitting in a jail cell with nothing left to lose. No one questioned the Busch family about how their four-time convicted pedophile son and brother never served any jail time. It was as if the monster had never even existed. And, insidious as it is to think this was all by design, no one has come forward with evidence to the contrary.
Records indicate the ropes and the drawing were tossed in a systematic purge in 1982.
In the week following the front-page news about Christopher Busch, Tim Nummer, a 44-year-old childhood friend of Tim King’s, knocked on Barry King’s door. Nummer was the same age as Tim, born in 1966. The two “Tims” played on the same hockey team; Nummer’s dad was the coach. After early morning hockey practices at Birmingham Ice Arena, Nummer would hang out at the King house. In fact, Nummer had been playing with Tim just a week before he went missing; they had even walked up to Hunter Maple Pharmacy together.
Barry opened the door and welcomed Tim warmly, even if he didn’t specifically remember him. He knew the lifelong impact his son’s case had on the entire community, especially Tim’s 11-year-old friends. Nummer began with an apology. “I thought you knew,” he said to Barry. “All along I thought you all knew.”
“I’m sorry,” Barry said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nummer said he had a chance conversation about the case with a retired detective 17 years earlier, in 1992. Then in his twenties, Nummer was working at Merrill Lynch during the day and as a salesperson at a high-end clothing store in the evenings, at the Somerset Collection mall in nearby Troy.
“A man began talking to me, killing time really, while his wife was shopping,” Nummer explained. “He said he was a retired detective, and while I’m not sure of this, I would venture to guess he was a Birmingham detective, because I remember asking him if he ever pulled a gun in his tenure as a police officer. I know I wouldn’t have asked that question unless he was a Birmingham cop. I just considered that Birmingham was probably a really cushy job as a police officer.”2
Nummer asked the officer to name the biggest case he had worked on. With no hesitation, he replied: “The Oakland County Child Killings.” Nummer was not surprised. He told the officer that Tim King had been a good friend of his. Both commented on the seismic impact the killer’s reign of terror had on the community, how suspicion and fear permeated everything. Nummer then said to the officer: “It’s just too bad for the families that nothing ever came of the investigation.”
At that, the two said goodbye and the officer went on his way. But after taking several steps toward the exit, the officer stopped, turned around, and walked back to where Nummer was standing.
Nummer recalled: “I think his ego had gotten the better of him. Or, maybe it was because I started out by saying ‘did you ever pull out your gun’ and I was kind of pooh-poohing his cushy job. But, when he came back, he kind of patted his hand on the counter, and he leaned over and said to me: ‘It was taken care of.’
“I said: ‘What?’ And he said: ‘Well, it was done quietly for the convenience of the families that wanted to keep it hush-hush.’
“I was, like: ‘what are you talking about?’”
The officer explained that “a representative of the family,” possibly a lawyer, came to the police department sometime in late 1977 or 1978. “And this I recall verbatim,” Nummer said. “‘It was a prominent family in Bloomfield Hills and the father is a General Motors executive. In exchange for the department not pursuing it, they would be willing to institutionalize the son on their own dime so that he can never commit any more crimes.’”
At the time, Nummer said, he did not question the validity of what he’d been told. He reasoned the detective had no motive to fabricate such a detailed story. “It was a succinct, perfectly-executed explanation,” Nummer said. “I think it was a combination of him thinking he was easing some of my concerns, but it was also, in part, his ego.” The detective, Nummer believed, wanted to impress upon him that police had closed the case. He did not want him “to go on thinking that we didn’t put the matter to rest, because we did put it to rest.”
Ever since that exchange, Nummer had assumed the families of the four victims knew, that they were in on the clandestine arrangement and had chosen to move on with their lives, not to re-live the pain and agony. “I thought that without question,” he told Barry King. “Else, I would have driven over to your house that very night years ago.”
But after reading the Detroit News story about Christopher Busch, Nummer realized that wasn’t the case at all. “My dad read the story and said: ‘That fits right into what you have
been saying.’ And a couple of other people said: ‘Holy crap, it’s what you said!’ That’s when I discovered they had been kept in the dark all these years. I just thought, oh man, I have to go over there.”
As it turned out, Nummer was not the only person to have heard about the “son of a prominent GM executive.”
Also in the days following the Detroit News story, I received a phone call from Kristine Mihelich’s first grade schoolteacher. Judy (not her real name), now retired, said she had heard a similar story from police about a suspect from a wealthy family. She remembered Kristine as a “sweet, good little girl” and “very mature for her age.” When Kris went missing, Judy said: “I saw her picture on T.V. and almost fainted. … Kristine was smart. She never would have gone with a stranger.”3
Judy said she had a conversation with a police officer in late 1978, around the holidays, when she went to have drinks at the Ponchartrain Hotel, a popular downtown gathering spot for singles. She was chatting with an off-duty Detroit cop, and the OCCK case came up because it had just been announced the Task Force was shutting down. She told him she had known Kristine and how bad she felt they had not zeroed in on a suspect. “He then told me that there was a rumor within police circles that they caught the guy,” Judy said. “He said the man was insane.” Police felt he would not be convicted, “because of the insanity plea,” and the man was now dead.
In fact, many witnesses came forward, independent of each other, all with similar accounts of law enforcement telling them the suspect in the OCCK case had cut a deal and the public was no longer in danger.
As Chris King recalled in an email: “There were several people who contacted me after we went to the press in late 2009 to say they had come forward with information to the police that fit the Chris Busch scenario, but they didn’t have a name. They were told something to the effect of, ‘Look, the families know who did this, but they don’t want to stir it all up again and have this in the press, and the guy can’t harm anyone else’ (implying the perpetrator was dead or incarcerated) so they let it go. … Sad to think that members of law enforcement might have been using the families of the victims as an excuse to derail the investigation.”
One friend of Chris King’s said she and a friend were at a bar in northern Oakland County near closing time in the early 1990s, about 10 or 15 years after the murders. They were talking with a man who said he had worked the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office. The two women told him they were friends with the King family and asked why the case had never been solved. He said: “We knew who did it, the FBI knew who did it, but it was some rich kid from Bloomfield Hills and we couldn’t touch him.”4 She said he didn’t elaborate on why they couldn’t prosecute.
As more insiders began to focus on General Motors, and what role the company may or may not have played in keeping the name of one of its most prominent executives out of the headlines, rumblings of a ring operating among the highest ranks of one of the world’s largest corporations began to trickle out. Women surfaced, contacting me, the King family or Det. Cory Williams. Most used intermediaries—attorneys, therapists or close friends—because while they felt compelled to tell their story, they had to be sure their anonymity would be protected. Even after all these years they still feared for their safety.
The women claimed to have been sexually abused as children as part of an organized “ring” of pedophiles operating within GM’s executive management during the mid-seventies and into the eighties.
Their stories were horrific. One woman told of sexual abuse at the hands of her father “and his professional associates,” at pedophile parties held at private homes in Detroit’s palatial suburbs, like Palmer Park and Bloomfield Hills. She said she was also filmed at a campground area. The abuse began from the time she was three years old and continued until she was about 11. When these abuses were happening, she would will herself out of her body to avoid the pain. Her father, “a farm boy from the Midwest” who held a low-level position at GM, was swiftly promoted after he offered his daughter as “fresh meat” at these orgies. The family moved into nicer and nicer homes and neighborhoods.
In adulthood, she experienced the full range of post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related issues, including eating disorders, depression and severe gynecological problems. As recently as 2015, with her father long since deceased, she still felt telling anyone would put her own family, as well as her adult siblings, in grave peril.5
Another woman, whose mother worked as a “personal assistant” to GM executives, said she was passed around to various “babysitters to prep us for movies in secrecy.” The filming took place in a massive storage shed and the movies were transported in “VHS Scooby Doo” cases, she recalled. “I remember my ‘training’ no matter how I try to forget.”6
Yet another woman, who claimed she was abducted in 1970 by a pedophile ring operating out of Auburn Hills (the site of GM’s now shuttered massive truck and coach manufacturing facility) spoke of being held with other kids for several days in private homes. “We were treated like toys, rather than human beings,” she said. Her account was specific and detailed. Both boys and girls were ritually drugged and raped. No penetration for girls, no ejaculation inside boys, with emphasis on scrupulous bathing and cleansing afterwards. She said large sums of money—upwards of $100,000—were involved. When she went to the police, she said, she was humiliated. “I was not taken seriously,” she said, “because I’m a psych patient.”7
In the spring of 2019, a woman knocked on Barry King’s door with a story so compelling, he said it could “blow the lid off the entire case.” Still terrified of retribution, she hired an attorney who secured non-disclosure agreements with investigators as a condition for her agreeing to be interviewed. With her attorney and therapist present, she spoke at length about her abuse at the hands of her father, beginning at age four and lasting well into her teenage years. What began as incest escalated into forced sex acts with several of her fathers’ associates. She said she was sold as entertainment at pedophile orgies; she described helping create child porn movies. She gave the names of many of the well-known suspects in the OCCK and North Fox Island cases, and she described their respective roles in the ring. While prohibited by the NDA to speak on this specific interview, Williams does concede that vetting these horrific narratives is all too often a losing battle.8
Det. Williams investigated each case. Because so many of those involved in child prostitution and pornography rings in the seventies have died off, it is difficult to corroborate and verify such claims. The known suspects who are still alive and may have knowledge—Ted Lamborgine, James Vincent Gunnels and another suspect, Arch Sloan—aren’t talking, to say nothing of those whose silence was bought with money and power.
Still, just because abuse can’t be proven does not mean abuse didn’t occur or that a ring of pedophiles was not terrorizing untold numbers of innocents. We know it happened. Indeed, it happens still.
In September 2019, the New York Times released the results of a months-long investigation into online predators.
The revelations were shocking:
Last year tech companies found over 45 million online photos and videos and children being sexually abused in 2018—more than double what they found the previous year.
Twenty years ago, the online images were a problem; 10 years ago, an epidemic. Now the crisis is at a breaking point.
The images are horrific. Children, some just 3 or 4 years old, being sexually abused and in some cases, tortured.”9
The newspaper attributed the enormous proliferation of the images to several converging factors. Smartphones, iCloud storage and social media enable pedophiles to create, share and mass produce child pornography with unprecedented efficiency and speed. Pedophiles hide their tracks using encryption techniques, posting on the dark web and making their hard drives resistant to decoders.
And while federal legislation e
nacted in 2008 specifically to stamp out child pornography, funding has fallen far short of its original goals. So much so, that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says it is grappling with 20-year-old technology and can’t afford the salaries of the specialists it needs to function. Law enforcement agencies across the country report being besieged with child sex traffickers.
Some have attempted to manage their investigative workloads by focusing only on images depicting the youngest victims, the Times reported. “‘We go home and think, ‘Good grief, the fact that we have to prioritize by age is just really disturbing,’ said [LAPD] Detective Paula Meares...”
The Times found one site, called “Child’s Play,” that had over a million user accounts. (It is now shut down.) Members were required to share images of abused children to maintain their good standing on the site. An exclusive section of the forum was available only to users who shared photos of children they themselves had abused. These were known as “producers.”
Although many tech companies knew their platforms were being co-opted by predators, they looked the other way. The depravity of the content was too difficult to confront.
As one tech official told the Times: “The companies knew the house was full of roaches, and they were scared to turn the lights on,” he said. “And then when they did turn the lights on, it was worse than they thought.”
Lawmakers, too, have tended to avoid the salacious topic. “Steven J. Grocki, who leads a group of policy experts and lawyers at the child exploitation section of the Justice Department, said the reluctance to address the issue went beyond elected officials and was a societal problem,” the Times reported.
All the while, victims are revictimized over and over again. “I don’t really know how to deal with it,” said a woman who had been filmed being sexually assaulted by her father at age 11. “You’re just trying to feel O.K. and not let something like this define your whole life.”
The Snow Killings Page 28