After the hypnosis session, it was determined that license number GBR22 registers to a 1969 Ford 2 door and that license number GJR registers to a 1970 Plymouth 2-door. Both owners’ names are redacted.
The conflicting accounts of the vehicle identified—the Lemans in his 2012 statement and the Cutlass from his 1977 hypnosis session—might be a consequence of faulty recall after 35 years. But no one would argue with Wilson’s sentiment expressed to Barry King in the cover letter sent with his statement.23
Hi Barry,
The following is my recollection of the events surrounding your son’s abduction. I was keenly interested to read about Chris Busch. If the authorities knew about this individual at the time, why didn’t they haul him in and have me look at him in a line-up?
When WXYZ-TV interviewed Doug Wilson via Skype, they sought the most bang for the buck and played up the John Wayne Gacy angle. Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper said the Gacy reference was “pie in the sky”24 and tossed Wilson’s testimony out the window.
Doug Wilson took it personally. Having agreed to go on camera only to have his story dismissed was humiliating. In response, Cathy posted on her blog: “Thank you, Doug Wilson. You have nothing to feel bad about. … Why wouldn’t you have assumed that the police had followed up on the information as best they could and kept the families up to speed on your part in the investigation?”25
The common denominator from witness accounts in all four victims’ cases was a General Motors vehicle, likely a compact or sedan, even more likely a Pontiac Tempest or Oldsmobile Cutlass, blue or green in color. Williams ran Wilson’s license plate numbers and other variations, and checked all vehicles of known suspects for a LeMans, Tempest and Cutlass, without success.
In late August 2013, interest in the fabled Gremlin spiked again when a construction crew excavating a basement for a home in Grand Blanc Township, just north of Oakland County, unearthed some long-buried car parts. A next-door neighbor took photos of the parts after she realized they were from an AMC Gremlin.
“I said those were out in the seventies sometime,” Pat Phillips told several reporters who had flocked to the site. “The chunk of metal was painted blue with a white stripe.”26
Phillips called police and within hours Michigan State Police officers were digging with shovels and small bulldozers.
“There were like four tires sticking up—it was like the car was chopped up. It was sheet metal and in pieces when they dug it up,” said Phillips.
As news broke that the Oakland County Child Killer Task Force was looking into an excavation, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard issued a reserved and cautious response.
“All of the current Task Force members who worked this case from the beginning, including me as a rookie patrol officer, have a deep desire to bring this case to a close for the victims and their families. The State Police and all of our local partners as well as the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, remain committed to that goal. We will continue to actively investigate and pursue any potential leads. The Task Force recognizes there have been a lot of high hopes dashed when leads have not come to fruition in the past. If anything further develops, the Task Force certainly will make the public aware.”27
Amid much media fanfare reminiscent of the sensational Hoffa excavations over the years, two truckloads of car parts and scraps were taken to be processed at the state police crime lab.
“The irony is that if we didn’t go out there and dig up the Gremlin, we’d be remiss,” said Det. Lt. Denise Powell, commander of the OCCK Task Force. “But the public should know there were other vehicles reported by witnesses in the areas (where the crimes happened) and we don’t want the focus to be limited just on vehicles.”28
If they found a vehicle identification number, they would cross reference it using a list of Gremlins registered in the tri-county area, compiled by law enforcement back in the seventies.
“From what I’ve been told, it was common that people would bury car parts up there,” Powell said. “But since it is a Gremlin, we absolutely have to follow up on it. But the problem is that when everyone’s focus is on a vehicle, we limit ourselves. There might be someone out there who has an uncle or a neighbor who they thought might be suspicious but then said, ‘Oh they didn’t drive a Gremlin,’ so it’s not one of them.”
In response, Powell did not want to comment on the specific vehicles. “I don’t want to debate what the families are saying,” Powell said. “All I can say is we are aware of all the different vehicles identified by witnesses, but we can’t just focus on a single car. We have to follow where the evidence leads us. If it leads us to a LeMans or a Tempest or a Gremlin, then that’s great. But we are going at everything with open eyes.”
For his part, Williams agrees that the Gremlin was “one of the biggest red herrings in a case ever.” But, for the original investigators back in the day, “there was an eyewitness who said they saw Tim talking to someone near a Gremlin and that’s what they went with.”
Still, Williams said, “Every time I interviewed somebody, even back in the Lamborgine-Moore days, I was always asking about a Lemans, or a Tempest, or a Skylark. Any GM product.”
* * *
1. Retired MSP Forensic Scientist David A. Metzger/Trace Evidence exam, Laboratory report #14402–78, December 12, 1978.
2. Tim Nummer, interview with author, November, 2009.
3. Judy, interviews with author, October 2009 and July,2017.
4. Nini Mayer Dauer, email with author, January, 2020.
5. Anonymous survivor, interview with author, July, 2015, via her friend Jeff Davidson, Oak Park.
6. Amanda Sharpe, email to Cathy King Broad, July 16, 2018.
7. Anonymous survivor interview with author, November 2010.
8. Anonymous, attorney, letter to Det. Williams, June 7, 2019.
9. Michael H. Keller and Gabriel J.X. Dance, “The Internet Is Overrun with Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?” New York Times, September 28, 2019.
10. Benedict Carey, “The Psychology of Pedophilia: Portrait of a Disorder Emerges,” New York Times, September 29, 2019.
11. Jack Kalbfleisch, letter to Chief Edward Ostin, Birmingham Police Department, July 20, 1998.
12. Michigan State Police Supplementary Report, Complaint No. 27–5471–76, January 10, 1977, 2.
13. Michigan Department of State Police, Complaint No.: 27–5471–76, Supplementary Report, January 10, 1977, 3.
14. Ron Davis at General Motors Proving Ground, City of Birmingham Police Department Narrative report. (no date, no signature, etc.)
15. Photo Interpreters Measurements. Charles Olsen, University of Michigan from report written by Lt. Jack Kalbfleisch, September 8, 1977, 3.
16. Lt. Jack Kalbfleisch, City of Birmingham Police Department narrative report, undated, 1977.
17. Heather Catallo, “Did the Oakland County Child Killer Case Focus on the Wrong Car for Decades?” WXYZ-TV, May 12, 2017. https://www.wxyz.com/news/local-news/investigations/did-oakland-county-child-killer-case-focus-on-wrong-car-for-decades.
18. Jack Kalbfleisch, emails to author, December 7–8, 2018.
19. Robert Robertson, Assistant District Commander, Press Release, September 7, 1978.
20. Southfield Police Department, FU 76/03079, Homicide, Mark Stebbins, February 19, 1976.
21. Doug Wilson statement, June, 2012.
22. Lt. Jack Kalbfleisch, City of Birmingham Police Department narrative report, undated, 1977.
23. Wilson, statement.
24. Heather Catallo, WXYZ T.V. February 1, 2013 http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/oakland_county/is-the-oakland-county-child-killer-connected-to-john-wayne-gacy.
25. Cathy Broad, “Thank You, Doug Wilson,” catherinebroad.blog.com, February 4, 2013.
26. Halston Herrera, “Police: Gremlin Is Longshot in Solving 70’s Child Killer Cases, but One Worth Looking Into: Blue Gremlin Found Is Same Description as Car in Oakland County Child Killer Case,” WDIV-TV, August 20, 2013.
27. Tammy Stables Battaglia, “Cops Comb Blue Gremlin Near Grand Blanc,” Detroit Free Press, August 21, 2013
28. Det. First Lt. Denise Powell Interview, with author, August 24, 2013.
15
No New Evidence
By September 2011, James Vincent Gunnels had never been so popular or sought-after. If only the recent celebrity status was for a different reason. Six feet tall, lanky and dressed in jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt, he was clearing out the back lot of the Alano Club, an Al-Anon fellowship group in Kalamazoo, a mid-sized city about 150 miles west of Detroit.
Months earlier, his name had been leaked to the media as the source of a DNA match in the OCCK case. This was big news. A hair on Kristine Mihelich’s shirt was found to have a profile consistent with Gunnels’ mitochondrial DNA sequence. This was also very damaging to Gunnels: he was no longer just a victim of Christopher Busch’s. The hair directly connected him to at least one of the victims.
For better than half his life, Gunnels, now 49, had been in and out jail for breaking and entering, larceny, car theft and attempted escape from prison. Four years prior, in December 2007, case records had revealed his connection to Busch, and he felt Det. Cory Williams had been harassing him ever since.
An unlit cigarette teetering from the side of his mouth, he greeted me anxiously. He apologized for not shaking hands, saying they were dirty. He offered to fetch coffee, water. He was eager to please, to win me over. He had granted me an interview, saying he planned to go into hiding afterward, hopefully somewhere in Montana.
Gunnels explained he was clearing out the overgrown lot and being paid for it by his sponsor, a man named Mike. Mike had 20 years of sobriety and was inside the Alano Club, arranging chairs and making coffee for an AA meeting. Mike had taken Gunnels under his wing, had him come for dinner in his home, allowed him to do laundry at the house. He had bought into Gunnels’ narrative that he was a victim police were trying to frame.
Living in a halfway house, Gunnels split his time between working at the club and riding his bike around looking for jobs in the construction trades, which had been crippled by the worst economic recession in years. He also reported for random drug testing, regular meetings with his probation officer, and with a new counselor. He liked this counselor, he said, because she was “unspoiled.”
“By that I mean she hasn’t had hundreds of us guys come in through here and play them games with her, see? She’s helped me deal with a lot of this stuff. I’m not a victim anymore. I refuse to be, but it’s not easy.”1
Gunnels suggested sitting on a picnic bench outside since the weather was pleasant. For the next two hours, he kept his eye on the passing cars along the two-lane highway nearby, wary of cops and TV crews in vans. The NBC affiliate from Detroit had followed him on his bike, then stuck a microphone in his face when he was walking into his house.
He chain-smoked and talked non-stop. “The probation officer told me to be careful with you,” he said. “That’s good advice. But I told her: when you’re not guilty what’s to be careful about? Now, I realize that’s very ignorant thinking because do you realize how police can take one line out of a whole conversation and make it incriminating?”
The media had played up Gunnels’ quandary. Was he a pure victim, a child from a broken home and ideal prey for pedophiles? Was he brainwashed? A hostage turned sympathizer, a Stockholm syndrome kid? Or was he complicit in child murder?
No one denies that, at 14, Gunnels was raped by Chris Busch, that his whole future was most likely wrung out of him like a washrag from the moment that huge, bearded predator bore down on him, plying him with weed and alcohol. Nobody would argue over the inner turmoil of a kid tempted by gifts, food, movies, toys, and beer in exchange for sex, when everybody else was asleep or passed out.
Whatever the case, it seemed clear to everyone outside Gunnels’ inner circle of supporters that he was holding something back. (The inner circle dwindled fast: a year after Mike became his sponsor, he sent Gunnels packing after finding a hash pipe in his laundry, among other infractions.)
The way Gunnels saw it, ever since the Michigan State Police detectives came to interview him his life had turned upside down. Whatever he told them about Chris Busch was not enough. He either would not or could not tell them what they wanted to hear. His defiance (or their perception of it) snowballed. At first, his denial that he ever knew Greg Greene had sounded alarms for detectives Cory Williams and Garry Gray, especially since Greene had named Gunnels as someone he would like to see dead. But Gunnels would insist: “They kept trying to imply that I knew Greene. My exact words were: ‘I do not know him and you can’t make me know him.’”
Then there was the statement that stood out and seemed to speak volumes, the one the cops insisted was proof he knew more that he was telling. It was regarding the murder of Kristine Mihelich. In a recorded jailhouse phone call to his sister in Montana. Gunnels had said: “I wasn’t there when it happened.”
Add to that his two polygraph results. The first was inconclusive—police said Gunnels intentionally held his breath to throw off the exam. In the second, seven months later, in July 2009, he was asked if he had had physical contact with Kristine Mihelich, participated in her murder, or knew who killed her. Gunnels “completely failed all aspects of said examination.”2
Gunnels told me there was no way he could have held his breath during the first polygraph. “I have COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). From smoking! I can’t even breathe right normally, much less hold my breath more than fifteen seconds without feeling like I’m dyin’!”
As for a second test, it was the cops who threw him off: showing him pictures of the murder victims, leaving the Bible out in the waiting room opened to certain passages, and fishing and hunting magazines to make him mindful about blowing his chances for the good life in Montana. It was all designed to get his heartbeat racing, all part of the frame job.
Asked directly about the DNA evidence, Gunnels told me in an earlier interview: “I have no idea how it got there, or even if it is mine…. I haven’t a clue, no clue at all. There are a million ifs.”
Asked about his indirect admission to his sister, Gunnels said: “I was there when what happened to me happened. I wasn’t there when anything else happened.”3
Gunnels blamed his troubles with the law on his abuse at the hands of Chris Busch. There was also a succession of losses: his mom died in 2004, his father in 2005, both of heart disease brought on by hard living, and his sister Monica “Monty” of cancer in 2006. But that didn’t mean he was a killer.
“Look, I know I’m a fall guy,” Gunnels said. “That’s as simple as anything can be. When the pressure got on them, they went through their files and said: ‘Look here’s this guy that used to be a victim. The bonus is he’s in prison. Let’s see what we can do to mess with him.’”
At first, Gunnels said, Williams and Gray were sympathetic, stressing that he was a victim and not an accomplice. “There were times when I believed them,” he said. “I mean they poured it on thick, calling Busch a monster and all that. They didn’t even turn on the tape recorder for an hour. No way in hell they were saying do we think you are any kind of a suspect. You know, they were trying to put me at ease, but now I know they can say anything they want, legally, to me. They can lie. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. … All I want to do is get back to Montana.”
That plan never materialized. In September 2015, Gunnels was picked up in Kalamazoo for selling methamphetamine. By October of 2016, he was sentenced to three to 20 years in prison.
Shortly after Jessica Cooper assumed her newly elected office as Oakland County prosecutor in January 2009, she was briefed on the status of the OCCK case by the Michigan State Police. She seemed impressed by all the recent work Wayne County had done on the case and pledged to work hand in hand.
Ten months later, all bets were off the table. Cooper felt duped. In an interview with me, she said she was so “blindsided” when the Christopher Busch lead broke in the Detroit News in October 2009, she decided right then and there she would take the reins of the investigation.
She said she was “appalled” at the Task Force meeting held in the days after the Busch lead became public, when her office was the only agency from Oakland County represented. “After all, it is the Oakland County Child Killings,” Cooper said. “So, I came back and I made a phone call to Sheriff [Mike Bouchard] and I made a phone call to all the chiefs of police where the children were either taken and where their bodies were dropped off and asked them if they wanted to be part of the ongoing task force,” Cooper said. “My good deed was then to call the MSP and say you know what? All these Oakland County agencies would love to come in and help out. And they went: wow, that’s great. We could use their manpower and that was terrific. And that was the beginning of the newly reconstituted task force.”4
Three months later, on February 26, 2010, Cooper convened a meeting of her hand-picked team at her office at the Oakland County Government complex in Pontiac, a northern suburb in Oakland County. It would be a pivotal meeting not because of what transpired, but because of what did not. Sometimes, the time-worn adage “the absence of evidence is evidence of its absence” is fully dependent on the integrity of those who have the evidence.
The Snow Killings Page 30