Crime Junkie - CONSPIRACY: North Fox Island & The Oakland County Child Killer Part 2

Episode Date: June 10, 2019

In part 2 we discuss more suspects in the Oakland County Child Killings and how some or all of them might be connected to North Fox Island. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/conspiracy-north-fox-island-the-oakland-county-child-killer-part-2/    

Hi, crime junkies. Ashley Flowers here, and I am back with the second part to the North Fox Island and Oakland County Child Killer conspiracy. Now, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, stop right here and go back. You'll be totally lost otherwise. But for those of you who did listen last week, here's a quick refresher. In the late 1970s, two big events were happening almost simultaneously. The first is that a camp for troubled boys was busted in Northern Michigan and found to actually be a hub for child pornography and sex trafficking. Only one of the men responsible was ever in prison and has served less than 10 years. The other men responsible fled and lived out their lives in other places and no real manhunt was done to apprehend them. Meanwhile,

300 miles south, four kids were abducted and murdered in the affluent neighborhoods around Detroit, Michigan. The killings became known as the Oakland County Child Killings. There were a couple of suspects early on, and after one of them died under very suspicious circumstances, the Oakland County Child Killer Task Force was disbanded. But just because that suspect was dead didn't mean that he was gone from the investigation. His name would keep coming up, and the search for answers into who murdered these four children would become much more complicated. All right, now that you're caught up, let's jump in to part two. Through the entire time of the police's investigation into the Oakland County Child Killer,

keep in mind that all of the families were kind of kept in the dark about suspects. Like, for example, they had never heard Chris Bush's name or Greg Green's name, which, you know, in the early days is pretty standard for an investigation. Like, you want to keep the family abreast of the fact that you're working on the case and maybe give them some updates, but police wouldn't necessarily name every single suspect to the family. But since the families didn't know about Chris Bush, they also didn't know that back when Gerald Richards got busted for his involvement in that pornography sex ring, he had turned over some of his client names, and one of his clients slash associates was Chris Bush.

The stories were becoming intertwined, but no one could see exactly how back in the late 70s. After the task force disbanded, not much happened in the case. They had one guy who was assigned to it, and if leads came in, he'd work them, but those were few and far between. And in 1993, they thought maybe they caught a break. The child pornography distributor that Frank used in Amsterdam had been caught, and so the police sent photos of their four victims to see if maybe they could be recognized in any pictures or any tapes. Maybe there was this connection, but that lead ended up being a dead end. The families waited patiently for answers for many years. They trusted that the state police were doing everything they could.

But as decades passed, they started to wonder why there was no movement. Tim's family eventually requested records of their own and started to compile their own file as much as they could. While they were working to get their own grasp on the case, what they didn't know was that someone from the Wayne County Prosecutor's office was going to stumble his way into this case as well. While reading some transcripts for another completely unrelated case, he comes across one line that stops him in his tracks. I know who did the Michigan snow killings. Now, this didn't mean anything to people that whoever this, you know, person being interviewed was talking to, but to the man reading the transcript, it meant everything. And he knew

that he had to talk to this person. Now, the guy who was quoted in the interview was a man named Richard Lawson. So Detective Williams tells him, listen, I read your statement. I know you know who did it. And this man says, no, I said, I think I might know. And he goes on to tell him about an interesting cast of characters that he used to run with in the 70s. He said he mostly hung out with a guy named Bob Moore, and they would hang out in the seedier parts of Detroit and prey on lower income neighborhoods, kids where parents might not have been home, might not have been paying attention, broken families, places where kids may have been more willing to go with them for some money or some drugs. He said that his friend Bob liked to film the kids that they

interacted with, and they would attend parties where other people would bring young kids and they would swap. And then he said something that probably didn't strike Detective Williams right away because he was new to the case, but something that would stay with him for a long time because once he got his head wrapped around this monster, it was something that made sense. Richard Lawson said that Bob used to sell the photos and the films that he would take. He would sell them to a man named Frank, the same Frank who owned North Fox Island. The interview with Lawson keeps going and he says, oh, hey, I have another name, Ted Orr. Well, really Orr was just his street name. His real last name is like Ted L A M something.

And the detective is like in this now for better or worse. And so he starts going through every old tip and looking for any Ted L A M and he finds it. Theodore Lamborghini. The tip the name was on said that Ted was at Bob's house. And on the coffee table, there was this photo album full of kids. And one of the kids looked a lot like Tim, who had just gone missing. And someone points it out and they all just kind of laugh. When Detective Williams finds the Ted, he admits to being a pretty prolific pedophile, but says he had nothing to do with the killings. He agrees to take a polygraph to try and clear himself, but he fails miserably. Now, the new investigator tries to track down some of Ted's old victims to understand how he operated. Was he even a good suspect?

And what he finds is disturbing. This guy, Ted would groom kids with drugs and alcohol. And then after he molested them, he would force them into a tub to wash off any evidence. He would force them to get clean, just like the Oakland County child killer. When Detective Williams confronts Ted about his failed polygraph, his only response was God's forgiven me. Now to Detective Williams, he is looking so good, but he wants him to take another polygraph. And to do it, they even offer him protection if he does. At this time, he's currently being charged with 17 counts of molestation and protection for a pedophile in prison is pretty valuable. But he does something totally unexpected. He completely clams up, rejects their offer and pleads guilty

to all 17 counts, doesn't try and fight it, doesn't try and lessen his sentence, doesn't go for a plea bargain. What is he afraid of? Or maybe the better question is who? Why did he feel the need to clam up? Detective Williams didn't know, but there was nothing he could do. And another hot lead went cold for him. About this same time, Tim's family has been heating up their own inquiry into the case. And they just got a hot lead to pass on to Detective Williams. They had found out through an old family friend, who is now a polygraph expert, that he was approached by another polygraph examiner. And this guy says that during a private polygraph, a man had confessed to the Oakland County child killings. But this polygraph examiner wouldn't say the guy's name because

legally he wasn't even supposed to be saying this much. The only thing he could say was that the lawyer had requested this polygraph for his client. That's why he was hired. And that's why there's this protection around it. But he did say the lawyer is dead and the person who took the polygraph are both dead. So the hunt is on and Detective Williams starts sorting through all the polygraphs from 77. And there's one that fits the bill. The person being polygraphed was Chris Bush. Now this name's brand new to the family, but Detective Williams already knows this name like we know this name. But he wants to try something different. He knows it says all over the file that Chris and Greg were cleared, cleared, cleared, cleared everywhere, cleared.

Based on their polys. But he wonders, has anyone looked past those poly results or has anyone even given those like a second glance and spoiler alert? The answer is no. In almost 30 years, everyone had just taken the file at face value. Someone before me cleared him. I got to move on. What's the next thing I investigate? But Detective Williams had another independent examiner look at the polygraph results and this guy says, I have no idea who would have told you that these guys passed because Greg was a flat out failure and Chris was also deceptive. Like at best, Chris's polygraph should have been inconclusive, not a pass. So I mean, my questions are like, what happened before? Was the original examiner just bad at his job? Or was it part of something

bigger that we still can't fully see? When the King family learns about this, they are understandably furious. This was a very good suspect who was cleared without real reason. And a week after he was let go, their son, their brother was murdered. Could that have been stopped if things had gone differently back in 1977? The Kings finally decided to go public with what they have. They tried being friends with the police for decades and it got them nowhere. And they didn't feel like the police were being honest with them anymore. So they went to the media and openly accused Chris Bush of being a suspect. But accusing someone does not make a trial happen. So while public interest was stirred and the case was back in the media for a while,

it eventually died back down until 2009 when technology was getting a little bit better. Detective Williams wasn't ready to call Chris the killer and close the book. He wanted proof, proof that would stand up in a court of law. So he went back to the physical evidence. There were some hairs found on the victim hairs that couldn't tell them much back in 1977, but hairs that could tell them maybe a whole lot in 2009. The hair they started with was one that was found on the shirt of our third victim, Chris Maholic. They did DNA testing and found surprising results. The DNA from the hair on Chris Maholic did not match Chris Bush, but they did find a DNA match. And if you guys thought this case was confusing before, buckle

up. The DNA matched a man named James Vince Gunnels. And although James was in the system now for crimes he committed as an adult, as a child, he was actually a victim of Chris Bush and Greg Green. And like many children who are groomed by their molester, Vince still associated with those men after he got older. And the police wondered maybe if he wasn't a part of their like ruse to lure kids like it would make a lot of sense. Maybe a young kid was drawing them to these older men that they didn't know. Now it's worth mentioning that the DNA they had was just mitochondrial DNA and not a full nuclear profile. So while it seemed to match, the stats are a lot lower than we've seen in other cases. Like sometimes we're like, it's four zillion to one chance at this guy.

This is more like one out of 50. So it feels like a kind of decent match, but also it could be a lot of other men just in Michigan alone. But now they still want to question this guy. So they go to the Michigan prison that he's in and just flat out tell him what they have. We have your hair on a victim. We don't think you were responsible. Even if you were, we probably wouldn't hold you accountable because you were a young kid who was victimized and manipulated by grown men. We just need you to help us. And he says, listen, I can't help you. I wasn't there. I didn't see anything. But I was in Chris's car a lot like a million times. So I'm sure my hair was all over the place. So he's not pointing the finger directly at Chris. He's giving them nothing they could really use.

But also I feel like he's kind of saying like it's logical that this victim would have been in Chris's car. This is the explanation for my hair. And he's not saying Chris would have never done it. Now they give this guy two polygraphs and he tried to throw the first one for like God knows what reason. He completely fails the second one and answers falsely to these three important questions. Did you participate in any way in the killings of Christine Mahalek? Do you know for sure who killed Christine Mahalek? And did you have any physical contact with Christine Mahalek? Now he says no to all of them and according to the polygraph failed. Now if he would have failed that polygraph back in the 70s when they meant more, maybe something would have come of this. But

in 2009, you can't arrest someone based off of a failed poly. But maybe they could get more evidence to either persuade him or maybe help him like point to Chris and Greg. They still had more hairs on their other victims. So they needed to keep testing. There was a hair on the jacket of our first victim, Mark, and two hairs found on the fourth victim, Tim, one inside his naval cavity and one near his groin. And to me, the hairs found on Tim are way more damning. Like, sure, you could pick up hairs from a car like, like we talked about with Chris, if it was in his car and she was put in there, that doesn't necessarily mean you did it. But a hair on the body of a victim underneath their clothes, that means you were with them when they were undressed.

That cannot be explained away. So they test the hair. And the first thing we learn is that the hair from Mark and the hair from Tim match to the same person. And I know this might seem like a yeah, duh moment, because these four cases have been linked for so long, we've been talking about them for so long. But this was the first real piece of evidence that told investigators that they weren't crazy and that they really were looking for one person. But they just had mitochondrial DNA on this one too. And it didn't match to anyone. But they did match to another sample. If you remember way back to the very beginning of the story in episode one, the very, very first hit police got after Mark Steppen's murder was they got a call from a parole officer.

And the parole officer said, Hey, check out this arched long guy. He was from Pennsylvania. He got in trouble for molesting children. And then he moved to Michigan, the very first guy. Well, Detective Williams decides to go back and look at old evidence to find new things to test. And he comes across the tape samples that were taken from Arch Sloan's car, you know, like the where they just like took as much debris or whatever from his seats and floorboards. So it seemed worth a shot to at least look and see what they could find. When the lab comes back, what they say is shocking. There were in fact hairs mixed in with the debris in his car. And those hairs were a match to the hairs found on both the first victim, Mark and the fourth victim, Tim.

So police were thinking, Oh, oh my God, this is it. We have the Oakland County child killer. This was the first guy all along. I mean, it was shocking to them. And the more they looked at Arch Sloan, he looked so good for it. Not only with the past convictions, but they also learned that he was a volunteer firefighter back in Pennsylvania and volunteer firefighters in Pennsylvania used to get badges. And that would have explained so much for years and years. People always wondered how this killer got these kids to go with him. Surely if they would have been forcibly put into a car, people might have seen something. And it couldn't have been someone all four kids knew they didn't have any connection. But they always wondered if it was someone who

held some kind of authority, someone who could flash a badge and convince the children that they had to go with them without making a scene. It felt so right. But as you all know, this case is still unsolved. And nothing is that simple when dealing with a 40 year old cold case. They can't just use the hair found in Arch's car to arrest him. They have to get a hair sample directly from him. But the hair in his car was at least enough probable cause to get what they need it. When they test the hair from his head against the hair in his car and against the hair found on the boys, it doesn't match. Now Arch Sloan might not be our killer, but this guy is key and he plays some kind of role and he knows more than he let on decades earlier. Whether he was

involved in the act or not, we know his car was involved in at least disposing of the bodies and he likely knows the person the hair belongs to. So the person police know is their killer. So they have to go talk to Arch in prison where he's serving a life sentence for the rape of a co-worker's child. They interview him for three hours. They tell him we have hairs from your car on the skin of the victim. There is no way out of this. Now they do leave out the fact that his head hairs didn't match. Police aren't required to give all the facts or even tell the whole truth in interviews. If they want to put the pressure on him and make him believe that they have him dead to rights, they can't and that's what they try to do. They want him to give up this other

person, but no matter how hard they tried, he wouldn't talk. And again, police's hands are tied. They can't go to court with the hairs that belong to someone else when they don't know who that someone else is. They plan to keep pressuring Arch, but then the prosecutor blows up their chances. She was running for reelection and out of nowhere, years after it happened, she decides to tell the public about the hairs found in the car and the fact that they did not match Arch. Now this ruins any leveraged police thought that they had. Now Arch knows he doesn't have to say a damn thing. So they go in with a softer approach. They offer him immunity if he'll talk. Turn on whoever it is that did this, whoever that hair belonged to. They said that they would even put

him in any federal prison he wanted and tell people he was there for check fraud, which you guys, that's unreal. The way prison works is they can move you to any prison at any time, anywhere, making it very hard for you to see family or friends. And they could even be a prison with really bad conditions. Prisoners don't get to pick where they are and pedophiles have it really bad in prison. So they're targeted and this time they're offering him kind of a way out, a cushy sentence, but Arch wouldn't budge. He would not give up this other guy. And why? Who was it that he's protecting and what kind of power would that person have over him to make him still protect him while serving a life sentence? Is it someone that could get to him even in prison? Now some say

that's not it at all. If he gave up anything, it would surely get back to people that he was involved. He'd have to testify. It would all come out and in his mind, it would be better to die in prison than to be associated with the Oakland County child killer or killings. But here's the interesting piece. Arch wouldn't say he knew the killer or what happened, but he did have something to tell police. I sold that car at the time, the car that you found all this hair and debris in. I sold it to the state police, Lieutenant's son. So here in the story is where things get really fishy and the family starts to think maybe everything they believed for the last 40 years was a lie. I saw an interview with a

retired detective in this case. His dad was on the original task force and he said that he even used to look at tips as a kid. So he's been super familiar with this case for almost his entire life. This detective says that there was also saliva DNA found on Chris's jacket. He said that DNA matched the hair on Mark and the hairs on Tim. And he said, yeah, we checked out the Lieutenant's son. It was just the mitochondrial DNA. So we checked a bunch of people in the family and we couldn't find anyone that was like a 100% match. So the interviewers like, okay, but how did you rule out his son? And there's no answer. And they're wanting to know, like, did you look at him in any other way? Like, who is this Lieutenant? Who is the son? How was he investigated? And the retired

guy just gets pretty quiet. And he's like, I don't remember the name. I don't remember. I should follow up with my partner like he might know. And when he does follow up, the guy can't remember the name either. And when the family hears this, they're obviously so frustrated. And it keeps getting more confusing because when Detective Williams, who's working the case now is asked about it, he says, yeah, we knew about the Lieutenant's son having the car, but there was no useful DNA from Chris's jacket. So I don't know what they're talking about there. And I don't know if your head hurts yet, because at this point, mine is spinning and I don't know what to think. Was this Lieutenant's son somehow involved? Was he the one flashing a badge and getting children to go

with him? Where on earth is all this talk of the DNA on the jacket coming from? You would think that if someone mentioned anywhere in the case file about that, Detective Williams would have seen it. So was the retired trooper just confused? Or did he know something that was supposed to be underwrapped, something that had been removed from the file? But I find it really hard to believe that he would just misremember and make such a crazy story up. But I also don't know how all of the traces could have been erased from the files. These are typed reports. You can't just make a line item on an evidence log disappear. I mean, you could, but we'd be talking about a massive cover up. But at this point, is that totally out of the question? We have a pedophile ring

that seems to all be connected. Frank and Gerald running the camp were connected to Chris and Greg, who were suspects. That guy, Bob Moore, who ran with Ted, who used to wash kids after he assaulted them. Bob was connected to Frank because he was selling him videos. I don't think Frank is at the top of this food chain. There is someone else or something else bigger. And I can't draw a straight line to it, but there are pieces. I mean, Frank was able to get away because a warrant for his arrest was delayed and delayed and delayed until he had time to clear out and leave. Is someone in political power protecting these people? Maybe someone in police. Now, I didn't bring up this other part earlier on because I don't know how much weight to put into

it. But in the case of our third victim, Chris, there was a man who came forward in a recent documentary and a man who didn't want his identity known, who said that he saw Chris getting into an unmarked car with a man in a police's uniform after she left 7-Eleven. Now, he said he called this and he was like super young, but he said he called this into the tip line. They basically told him, you know, you're being crazy. The lady thought he was a young kid, like pulling a prank, stopping ridiculous. But she did take down the tip. He told his teacher who laughed him off. But then he said, someone came and followed up the tip and he got basically harassed by cops who came to visit him and told him he had to keep quiet, basically pushed his face into a desk and

said, if you ever speak of this again, we're going to ruin your life. We're going to take your parents away from you. You and your siblings are going to be in orphanages. Now take this with a grain of salt because remember from episode one, we also had a witness who saw Chris walking home after she got her magazine and the clerk at the 7-Eleven didn't see a cop with her. And even if this sighting is real, like could it have been someone in a fake uniform that, you know, they were just trying to, again, win the confidence of these kids and make them think they had to go with him. Here's all I think we can know for sure. I believe that Chris Bush was killed because he was a liability. Admittedly from him and from other people, he was part of a bigger

pedophile community and he didn't always act alone. Now most of the children procured by all of these men were from lower income neighborhoods with not much parental supervision. No one to notice something was happening to them or if they went missing. Maybe whoever was taking these four Oakland kids was bringing too much attention on an operation that needed to stay under wraps. And that's the thing. It still stayed under wraps. I had known about the Oakland County Child Killings for years, but I had never heard about the connection to a bigger pornography and sex ring until I really started digging into the case. And I think that's because we aren't meant to know. And I can feel some of you side-eyeing me through your podcast apps and I know how

conspiratorial and tinfoil hatty I sound here, but there is something bigger at play. I mentioned in episode one the similarities to the Franklin scandal and I mean Google it, but don't just Google it because Wikipedia will just give you a half page telling you it's a hoax. Read the Franklin cover-up book. Learn about the people who tried to bring light to a massive underground child sex ring much like this one and how they ended up dying mysteriously. You might think you're living in a world where information flows freely, but that depends on where you're getting your information from. There are powerful people who are running government and they own the media outlets and they're all intertwined and they're not all involved, but power and money ruled the world

and it's all very controlled. You hear what they want you to hear. And if you think this was just happening in the 70s, you're wrong. In 2018, 123 missing children were found in Michigan during a bust of a sex trafficking operation. So hear me out. There are a lot of good people working in law enforcement trying to right the wrongs. In fact, I believe most of them are good, but I also believe there are some very powerful people doing very bad things. I hope some of the good guys are working the Oakland County child killer case because I think there's still hope. There might be some DNA left. They're going back through and seeing everything they have, and now that it's 2019, there are lots of whispers. Should we be using the new genealogy

technology to catch the killer? The police won't confirm or deny if this is happening or ever will happen. But if it does, who knows what that could uncover. If talk of abuse in this episode hits a little close to home and you or someone you know were victims of assault, there are resources to help. Check out rain.org or call 800-565-HOPE. If you want to learn more about this case, I'm going to link out to two blogs on our website. The blogs are run by Tim King's sister and father, and they have a ton of information and case documents, and they were incredibly helpful when putting together this episode. So you can find those on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. If you want to follow us on social, we are at

crimejunkiepod on Twitter and at crimejunkiepodcast on Instagram, and I will be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio check production, so what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?