The Snow Killings

by Marney Rich Keenan

  Of course, the reverse was also true. When Williams went to the Ferndale Police Department to get a copy of the original case files on Mark Stebbins, he was told that several months earlier, Michigan State Police had already picked up all their original files on the Stebbins investigation. Once contacted by Wayne County, MSP promised scanned copies of all the reports. But, in true form, they took months to deliver.

  Delving into the original investigation of Sloan’s possible involvement in Mark Stebbins’ murder, Williams soon became concerned about the integrity of evidence collected in Sloan’s car. John Crosbie, another suspect picked up the day Mark’s body was discovered, also had his vehicle impounded and searched by Southfield police. Sloan’s and Crosbie’s cars were searched within four days of each other by the same evidence technician, Mel Paunovich. What’s more, Paunovich wrote his report on the trace evidence he collected (hairs, fibers, debris, fingerprints, etc.), from both vehicles on the same page, in his own, scratchy, hard-to-decipher handwriting. Forty years after the fact, Crosbie needed to be fully vetted to ensure that the DNA evidence from both cars hadn’t been accidentally switched or contaminated.

  But there was another compelling reason to revisit John Thomas Crosbie: he was one of the last people to talk to Mark Stebbins before he was abducted.

  * * *

  1. Det. Cory Williams, interview with author, May 2013.

  2. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, interview with author, September 2010. All of the quotes in this chapter are from this three-hour meeting, unless noted otherwise.

  3. Oakland County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Paul Walton, Bill of Particulars Case 2012–125171-CZ, August 8, 2012.

  4. Dana Littlefield, “How O.J. Simpson Trial Introduced Courts to DNA” The San Diego Union-Tribune, April 16, 2016.

  17

  Sloan, Crosbie and Comrades

  Archibald Edward Sloan, Jr., was born dirt poor in the tiny mining town of California, Pennsylvania, so named because the town’s founding coincided with the California Gold Rush of 1849, and thus it was hoped the name would come to symbolize the town’s future growth and prosperity.

  But whatever good fortune came to the 13-square-mile borough bypassed the Sloan family, whose backwater proclivities included raising pet skunks in the ditch of their front yard.

  Born in 1941, the oldest of eight children, Arch Sloan, Jr., was raised—in the parlance of late sixties social workers—“under sub-normal standards,” due to his father being “a heavy drinker, abusive and a poor provider.” Arch was slapped around by his father by virtue of being within reach, whenever the elder Arch wasn’t sporadically working in construction or passed out on the couch. Because Arch’s mother, Carolyne, worked evenings as a restaurant cook, Arch told his case workers, he was responsible for sweeping floors, cooking meals for his seven younger siblings, and for being a “substitute for both the father and mother in the home.”1

  By the time he was 13, the family had moved to Detroit, where he was ordered by the Juvenile Court to undergo psychiatric treatment for—again, in the language of the time—his “homosexuality of the fellatio type” with another 13-year-old in the Sloan’s basement.2 He admitted that 10 months prior to this offense he was involved with a seven-year-old boy.

  With an I.Q. of 124 (Mensa standard is 130 and above), Arch had the brains to excel at Cooley High School. But he dropped out during Thanksgiving break in the 10th grade, saying he did not have enough money to buy books, supplies, or clothes. Four years later, at age 17, he was arrested and charged as an adult with “gross indecencies,”3 an innocuous way of saying he forced a 10-year-old boy to have oral sex, then penetrated the boy with a pencil flashlight, a crime which today warrants a first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge punishable by up to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

  Instead, Arch spent about two years in Jackson State Prison in Michigan. Upon parole, he lived with his parents for a few years, but in 1968, in his late twenties, he decided to return to Pennsylvania and move in with his grandmother and step-grandfather in Coal Center. He was helping restore their home after the nearby Monongahela River flooded.

  Sloan got a job paying $11.50 a day as a driver for the Book Mobile Unit, a library on wheels delivering books to poor kids who lacked easy access to the public library. Deemed an “excellent employee” (he was described as “punctual, reliable, dependable and likable”4), Sloan was delighted to be grooming his victims in between the stacks of books, ever the helpful, dedicated librarian.

  The job didn’t last long. Sloan was soon charged with multiple counts of sodomy on six young boys ranging in age from 11 to 14, from 1970 through 1971. Convicted for assault, solicitation to commit sodomy and corrupting the morals of a minor child, he was sentenced in Washington County, Pennsylvania, to five to 10 years in prison.

  In 1973, Arch’s brother Lee Sloan asked his boss, Chuck McCracken, owner of a Standard Service Station at the corner of Ten Mile Road and Middlebelt Road in Farmington Hills, to write a letter to Pennsylvania Department of Corrections saying they had a job waiting for Arch if they would release him from prison. McCracken had hired all four of the Sloan brothers to work at his gas station, and his letter sprung Arch. On September 19, 1973, the 31-one-year-old pedophile—who threatened his young victims into silence by telling them he would tie them to a tree deep in the forest and leave them to die—returned to Oakland County. A little over two years later, Mark Stebbins disappeared walking down a sidewalk, less that two miles from Sloan’s residence.

  During the time of the murders, Sloan lived in the family home on Seminole Street in Southfield, a working-class neighborhood of sagging bungalows, busted swing sets and dirt driveways. The Sloan home always had a lot of cars out front on the lawn, a mice infestation problem and a disregard for basic domestic hygiene.

  The whole family were said to be pack rats; upstairs in Arch’s room, a small aisle separated the floor-to-ceiling boxes and piles of vagabond belongings. The four girls and Carolyne lived downstairs, while the four boys and Arch Sr. lived upstairs. Neighbors told Det. Williams they would often see Carolyne Sloan standing in the front window in her housecoat and slippers watching the neighborhood kids play. One night, the kids spray-painted the front window black.

  From 1976 to 1980, Sloan worked as a mechanic and tow truck driver at McCracken’s Service Station, and at Strye’s Standard Station at Powers Road and Grand River Avenue in Farmington. Always cognizant of where kids might be held and their cries unheard, investigators noted that Sloan’s home on Seminole had a vacant house next door. The McCracken gas station had a back room with a twin bed in it, and a medium-sized motor home was parked behind Strye’s gas station. Once, Sloan dangled the keys to the trailer in front of his girlfriend. After peering in the windows, she told Arch she didn’t want to go inside. When she later found out he was molesting her young son, she broke off the relationship. She told detectives she suspected she was being used as a “front,” since she and Arch never had sex. Arch, ever the bon vivant, insisted otherwise.

  In addition to the burgundy 1966 Pontiac Bonneville, Sloan also drove a blue 1971 Ford pick-up truck and a black 1969 Chevy pick-up truck, both with camper tops on the back. According to a 1977 Oakland County Sheriff’s Office report, a pick-up with a camper on the back was twice identified by witnesses in the OCCK murders—at the scene of Kristine Mihelich’s abduction, and in Franklin where her body was found. Sloan also had a CB radio in his truck, and it was noted that a CB radio operator had called in to report finding Jill’s body.5

  To be sure, these were not the strongest of links, but they were a string of dots Williams one day hoped to connect into a straight line.

  In December of 1978, Sloan was arrested at McCracken’s for the sexual molestation of two brothers, ages 12 and 14, and sentenced to six months and one year consecutively. Sloan had been the boys’ baseball coach in R
edford in 1977. The arrest sheet lists their father as Sloan’s best friend.

  The offense that finally landed Arch Sloan in prison for life occurred on October 1, 1983, in Detroit. At the time, he was living in a house trailer in the abandoned Packard Plant complex in Hamtramck and working for the Hemphill Towing Company. A coworker had given permission to his 10-year-old son to spend the night with Sloan in the trailer and go fishing the following morning. Shortly after being dropped off, Sloan challenged the boy to a footrace. The prize was a dollar if the boy won; if he lost, the boy had to fellate Sloan. That night, Sloan plied the child with wine and soda and raped him. The next morning, he dropped him off at a gas station, gave him $5 and threatened him with the usual: if he told, Arch would tie him to a tree and leave him to starve or be attacked by wolves.

  At Sloan’s trial in January 1985, a psychiatrist testified Sloan was “only capable of sexual satisfaction with small children.”6 In defense of her son, Carolyne Sloan wrote a four page letter to Judge Michael Talbot: “I know what Arch did was wrong, but, Your Honor, will locking him up in jail help his problem?”

  Talbot sentenced him to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, saying Sloan “should never be allowed in society again.”7

  In comparing the Busch and Sloan leads, it is often said that the case against Busch comprises an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence but scant scientific evidence, while the reverse is true of the case against Sloan.

  The DNA evidence in the Sloan case is so powerful and definitive, Williams believes it is likely that the donor of the hairs tied to Mark Stebbins, Tim King and Sloan’s Pontiac is the Oakland County Child Killer. And yet, the circumstantial evidence tying Sloan to the crimes is so underwhelming.

  That said, investigators believe Sloan is hiding something. On December 2, 2010, he was administered a polygraph in which he was asked the following questions:

  (Q) Do you know for sure who did kill Timothy King in March of 1977? (A) No.

  (Q) Did you personally kill Timothy King in March of 1977? (A) No.

  (Q) Did you have any personal, physical contact with Timothy King? (A) No.

  (Q) Did you assist, in any way, in the kidnapping of Timothy King? (A) No.

  (Q) Are you deliberately withholding any information you have about Timothy King’s murder? (A) No.

  The results of the polygraph found “significant responses to the pertinent test questions indicative of deception.”8 In other words, Sloan failed the polygraph on Tim King. Yet, he passed the polygraph—albeit 40 years earlier—on Mark Stebbins.

  Sloan also placed himself minutes away from where Mark Stebbins’ body was found, the night before he was killed. The distance from McCracken’s Gas Station to the New Orleans Shopping Mall parking lot is less than five miles—a straight shot east. In the dark predawn hours, without any traffic, the distance can be travelled in less than 10 minutes, maybe even seven, if you’re nervous because your cargo is the still-warm body of a sandy-haired boy.

  On February 18, 1976, the last night of Mark Stebbins’ life, records show that Sloan “called Farmington Hills P.D. on the night in question to advise them he would be in the station working” at McCracken’s past closing. When later questioned about his whereabouts that night, Sloan cemented his alibi, telling Southfield and Ferndale police, “I was working late on a car. I called police and let them know. You can check.”9

  Forty years later, when MSP Det. Denise Powell questioned Sloan in his prison cell about this phone call, Sloan explained: “I had to call them, let them know when I was late so they’d see my car parked in front there, they wouldn’t, ah, you know, get all gangbusters.”10

  While it is customary for wrecking services to tow vehicles involved in accidents or cars that have to be impounded, police officers and precinct dispatchers usually call the wrecker drivers, not the other way around. When Williams got his turn to interrogate Sloan, he pounced on his ill-conceived cover.

  “I did that all the time,” Sloan sneered at Williams.

  “Bullshit, Arch!” Williams shot back. “You called the cops once. And one time only. I got all the phone records from back then, Arch.” Williams was bluffing, but he felt it was worth the risk.

  “The night before Mark was dropped, you called. And that’s the only time you ever did that, Arch. I checked.”

  Sloan said nothing. The 72-year-old, prone to grandiosity, deflated like a balloon. He glanced left, then right, anywhere but in the face of his interrogator. Williams leaned into Sloan’s face, nose to nose, speaking in a measured, deliberate tone that built to a crescendo.

  “I know what you did, Arch. You put that kid in your wrecker and you drove straight down Ten Mile. Probably waved at a couple of cop cars, ’cause no one looks twice at a wrecker, right, Archie? I know this, Arch. I’m a cop. I know the name of every wrecker I ever worked with. That kid was probably lying dead on your floorboard while you were cruising down Ten Mile! Wasn’t he, Arch?”11

  MSP Det. Sgt. Becky MacArthur, who was in the interview with Williams, said Sloan was shaken. Williams knew he was on to something. Sloan just sat there and took it. He didn’t say a word.

  The stone face was his go-to defense. From the very first interview with OCCK investigators in February 2010, and in every interview since, Arch Sloan has asserted unwavering denial. Neither Stebbins nor King were ever in his car. He was not involved in any way with the abduction or murder of either boy. He doesn’t recognize their photos. He has never encountered Lamborgine, Lawson, Bobby Moore, Busch, Greene. No way. No how.

  Sloan maintains that if he did know anything or was witness to anything, he would tell if only to bring an end to his own persecution—since being named a suspect, he has been robbed and beaten by fellow inmates—and to protect his family from being harassed. He insists: the only way those hairs got in his car is if they were transferred from some stranger. He lent his car to a lot of people. It could be anyone!

  After watching Sloan’s interviews on videotape, Williams wrote in his notes: “Sloan’s body language indicated that he was possibly telling the truth about [his involvement], but he could be just that relaxed and just that good of a liar.” In another moment of frustration, Williams wrote: “He knows whose DNA it is! A hair found on Stebbins and then a hair found in King’s underwear match a hair from Sloan’s car and it just so happens that Sloan puts himself in the area and is a violent pedophile?!! NOT A COINCIDENCE!”12

  Like Lamborgine before him, the young lives whose futures were forever flat-lined by Sloan’s cruelty seemed endless. Sloan molested his best friend’s two sons, his boss’ seven-year-old son, his girlfriend’s son, any number of boys on the baseball team he was coaching, any young boy whose parents he could sweet-talk into letting him take their son fishing or hunting.

  But it was the boy who was preyed upon who put him in prison. The one who stared down the barrel of gun while ordered to pull down his pants, who was shoved down on the filthy mattress in the camper, who was told: “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you and your entire family.”

  Arch Sloan, now serving life in prison, failed a polygraph on the death of Tim King. Also, a hair found in his 1966 Pontiac Bonneville had the same mtDNA profile as hairs found on the bodies of Tim King and Mark Stebbins (Michigan State Police).

  For Williams, it was the same horror show all over again. Showing Sloan’s picture to a now elderly mother whose window of retribution had long since closed. “I should have killed that bastard when I had a chance for what he did to my boys,” she said.13 The victim, now a 50-year-old man, took one look at the photo and grumbled: “That’s the son-of-a-bitch Arch Sloan that ruined me and my brothers’ lives.”

  Williams learned endless lurid details about Sloan. Sloan was fond of “rewarding” one of his victims with a stack of quarters equal to the length of the erection he could achieve. There was sex in a car up on a hoist at the station, sniffi
ng bicycle seats, one pervert’s tales of sex with dogs and cats, a grandfather who would have their kids pick out their favorite candy, take it from them and return it to the kids “all wet” because Grandpa ejaculated on their candy before they ate it.

  Sloan’s siblings staunchly defended their brother. Joe Sloan had often borrowed the Bonneville—he also resembled a composite sketch of the Oakland County Child Killer. But, when Williams began poking into his background, the entire family closed ranks and shut him out. Detectives listened to Arch’s phone conversations from jail ad nauseam. Interviews with former cellmates revealed his penchant for bluster and control. One said Sloan compared himself to the B.T.K. killer and Danny Ranes, a Michigan serial killer. The cellmate recalled that Sloan would tell him: “They got me for what they got me here now for, but they would really be amazed at the crimes I got away with.”14 When the subject of the Oakland County Child Killings came up, the cellmate said, Sloan insisted the killer would never be caught because he had covered his tracks so well. Still, the credibility of jailhouse informants is always weighed against their motives: their version of the truth is skewed by what might deliver personal gain—special yard privileges, change in work detail.

  All of Sloan’s coworkers and associates had to be vetted. Among those who raised the biggest red flags was Robert Stevens, a fellow mechanic and wrecker driver. Stevens had worked with Sloan at McCracken’s and when news of the Sloan DNA broke in 2012, a neighbor of Stevens’ became suspicious and called the Task Force. He told detectives he would ask Stevens about Sloan; but when he did, Stevens, “an old grump” who “kept to himself and lived in the house in filth”15 became so upset he wouldn’t speak to him for a month. The neighbor later questioned Stevens about the OCCK case on his deathbed, the night before he died in the hospital. But Stevens said nothing.