The Oakland County Child Killer Part 1

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 400

of the Criminology Podcast on Mike Ferguson.

And this is Mike Morford.

Mr. Morford, how you doing this week, buddy?

I'm doing pretty good.

I'm pretty excited this is our 400th episode

and it's just such a monumental number

that I was very excited to do this one.

Yeah, it's a big milestone.

If you think back about how we started,

how long it's been.

I mean, time flies.

There's no doubt about that.

But it's been a heck of a journey.

I mean, I've had fun doing this with you.

Yeah, same.

And if we're doing roughly 50 episodes a year,

that's like eight years that we've been doing this.

And I'm excited about the next eight years.

Yeah, it's kind of funny because I had someone

leave a voicemail on true crime all the time.

And they were saying, hey, started listening to you

as a freshman in high school

and then they were just graduating from college.

So that kind of, you know, put it into perspective.

And I'm sure that there are people like that

with criminology as well

because we have been doing it for eight plus years.

Yeah, that kind of makes you feel old.

It does.

It does.

Hey, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs.

And Davis and Jamie Bazel jump out at our highest level.

So that's great new support.

Yeah, thank you both so much.

That really helps us out.

And thanks to everyone else that helps the show out

for anyone else that would like to head over to patreon.com

slash criminology to get started.

All right.

So let's jump into this 400th episode.

And for 400, we wanted to cover a really big case.

One that we wanted to do for a long time.

And we figured episode 400 would be perfect

for the first part of a two part episode on a really big case.

We're covering the Oakland County child killer.

The Oakland County child killer was responsible for the murders of

at least four children in Oakland County Michigan

between 1976 and 1977.

Now technically we don't know if it's a single killer

or more than one.

What we do know is that these murders shocked that area of Michigan

and forever changed the lives of the people there.

And not just the families of the victims,

but the entire community.

Everyone made sure their doors were locked

and parents didn't let their kids out of the house alone

for fear that they might be the next victim.

It was a time of lost innocence and a breakdown of trust.

Well, there were a few good leads and suspects.

Here we are almost 50 years later

and the case has not been solved.

Oakland County is in the southeast portion of the state of Michigan.

While the city of Detroit is in neighboring Wayne County,

Oakland County is still very populated

and it's part of the Detroit metro area.

However, the suburbs felt much safer than the city

and many families in the 1970s moved from Detroit

to other towns nearby, many of them in Oakland County.

During the 1975-1976 period,

there were just under a million residents

that called the county home.

This was a middle-class neighborhood.

And while there was some crime,

it didn't reach to the level of what you would expect

to see in bigger cities like Detroit.

But as a calendar changed in 1976,

a shocking murder would begin a full-fledged panic in Oakland County.

On January 1, 1976,

the body of 16-year-old Judy Farrah was found

at Lola Valley Park and Redford Township, Michigan.

She was fully clothed and had been beaten and strangled.

Judy was last seen sometime between midnight and 3 a.m.

at the home where she was babysitting.

It was believed that someone had forced her out of the home.

The news was shocking to those that heard it,

but it seemed like an isolated incident at the time.

Police early on became interested in a 19-year-old man,

named Gary Pervinkler,

and he became the prime suspect in her murder,

not due to an eyewitness seeing him with Judy

or any physical evidence,

linking him to the crime,

but mainly because he had been acting erratically

and left home with a gun

and stole his father's car the night before Judy's body was found.

Unfortunately, Gary Pervinkler dropped from sight

and police wanted to find him.

At around 8 p.m. on January 15, 1976,

16-year-old Cynthia Kadoo began walking to a Roseville home

from her friend's house.

It was only about a 10-minute walk,

but she never made it home.

Unfortunately, it wasn't immediately clear to anyone

that she was actually missing.

Her parents thought she would be spending the night at her friend's house

and her friend knew she had headed home.

Just after one in the morning on the 16th,

her body was found on the side of Franklin Road

in Bloomfield Township, about 26 miles away from her home.

She was nude and had been bludgeoned to death with a blunt object.

Her killer or killers had sexually assaulted and sawdumized her.

News of a second young person being murdered within two weeks

was hard to avoid.

It's unknown how Cynthia's killer got her into a vehicle,

but it's possible that it may have been by force.

Because according to friends of Cynthia's,

she preferred to walk over riding in a car.

Her friend Rose had offered Cynthia right home on the night she was killed,

but she refused.

The day after Cynthia could do's body was discovered.

There was a terrifying crime on Villa Street and Birmingham, Michigan.

At around 8 p.m., a string of home invasion robberies began.

Each one was the same.

The intruder would break in, tie up anyone inside the home,

steal valuables, and then leave.

However, in one of the homes, 14-year-old Sheila Schrock was babysitting.

For whatever reason, the intruder sexually assaulted her,

sawdumized her, and used a 38-calibre weapon to shoot her in the stomach five times killing her.

By this point, Oakland County residents had to be asking themselves,

what's going on here?

Within the span of just a couple of weeks,

three young people had been murdered in the county.

Residents hoped that Sheila's murder would be the last.

And the killer or killers of the three young people would quickly be off the street.

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning.

On Sunday, February 15, 1976, exactly a month after Cynthia could use murder,

12-year-old Mark Stebbins was with his mom Ruth,

and his older brother Michael at the local American Legion Hall in Ferndale.

Ruth worked there as a bartender,

and Mark and Michael were there that day to watch a pool tournament.

Just after 1pm, Mark left because he wanted to go home and watch a war movie on TV

because it was a war history buff.

But Michael wasn't ready to go,

so Mark headed out on his own to walk the mile or so back to his house.

He'd never make it home.

Mark was reported missing at around 11pm.

Investigators at the time believed that he probably ran away and would show back up soon.

For whatever reason, the family was told that if he was still missing in 24 hours,

they could begin an investigation.

But Mark's family knew that Mark would never run away,

but they were helpless and waited anxiously for any news.

Mark was missing for four long days.

Just before noon on February 19, his body was found lying up against a brick wall,

separating the parking lot of an office building and the New Orleans Mall in Southfield, Michigan.

Just four miles from where he was last seen.

The man who worked in the building was walking to a shop in the mall when he thought he saw a mannequin.

As he got closer, he could see that this was no mannequin.

It was the body of a young boy.

Mark was on his back with his hands folded over his chest.

He was wearing the same clothes he was wearing four days earlier when he disappeared.

But his belt was on the wrong notch.

The outer clothes were clean, but his underwear had obviously been worn for multiple days.

A closer examination of Mark's body revealed some troubling details.

There were discoloration on his wrist and ankles.

They indicated he had been tied up at some point after his abduction.

There were also rope burns on his neck.

According to Oakland County Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas J. Patenga,

Mark had been suffocated to death.

It appeared that someone had put their hand over Mark's mouth

and pinched his nose close with their other hand.

There were two small cuts or contusions on the back of his head

that could have come from the latch of a trunk or the barrel of a shotgun among other things.

The cuts had bled onto the hood of his jacket.

It was determined that Mark's body had been left in the snow just hours before he was found.

At 9.30 a.m., about two hours before he was found,

someone had walked their dog along the edge of the parking lot and hadn't seen anything.

And their dog had an acted weird or tried to pull toward that direction either.

Someone had dumped his body near businesses in broad daylight.

So in the span of just six weeks,

four young people had been murdered in Oakland County,

but investigators weren't sure if they were looking for one person or more than one,

or if the cases were even connected at all.

Mark was a 12 year old boy and had been smothered.

The other three victims were all teenage girls.

One of them was strangled, another bludgeoned,

and one of them was shot to death in a home invasion.

While police were on high alert and stepped up patrols in the area,

residents in the community kept a watchful eye,

but weeks and then months went by,

with no other young people being murdered.

Now, Oakland County, more if it's not a small county,

I mean, you mentioned it, there was like a million people in this county, right?

But still, four young people being murdered in the span of, you know,

six weeks or so,

you could see how that would really put the area on edge, right?

Put the residents in the area on edge.

But one of the things that, you know,

I really want to talk about is the time frame here.

We're talking about 1976.

So that would have been our bicentennial year.

You and I would not have been that old,

but we were both alive.

It was a much different time.

You know, people are not getting this news through text,

through social media, through feed, right?

This is probably all coming from most likely the news,

the five o'clock news, the six o'clock news, the 10 o'clock news,

whatever it was.

And then some word of mouth,

I just, I think today,

because we have such access to information,

it does a couple of things.

First of all, we find out a lot of stuff very quickly.

But the other thing is, I think we also get more bad information,

maybe, than people did back then.

And I don't mean bad is in horrible things.

I mean, just the information is not correct.

Yeah, and I imagine this was a big water cooler topic too.

People probably are talking about these murders around,

you know, their local places that they hang out,

maybe in the checkout, at the store, at work.

And I imagine that there was probably some level of panic

starting to set in, you know, having the knowledge

that these different kids were murdered in these very circumstances.

And I think everyone was worried, especially if they had kids,

because, you know, there were someone targeting kids in that area.

Well, and we've talked about it before, right?

I think in the 70s,

by and large, kids had a little bit more freedom.

I know we did in the 80s, for sure.

I know for myself personally, I had much more freedom

to ride my bike all over town,

much more freedom than I gave my kids.

There's just no doubt about that.

Yeah, that's the same with me.

And it's sort of ironic because you had that freedom,

but back then, it was probably easier to,

you know, if you're going to abduct a karma child,

it would be easier back then.

And now it seems like people are more protective

they don't let them out as much.

But now there's more safeguards.

You have cell phones.

You have surveillance cameras on every other person's house.

So it seems they could be safer now to let some child out

versus back then, but it seems like it's backwards.

Yeah, but we also didn't have, you know,

podcasts and true crime documentaries and things back then

that, you know, not only inform people,

but, you know, to a certain degree,

can also scare people sometime.

And at the very least, make them, you know,

want to safeguard maybe a little bit more.

You know, one thing that jumped out at me about the timing

was that Mark left the American Legion

because he wanted to go home and watch a movie.

I mean, think about that.

This movie was on. He knew it was on.

He knew what time it was on.

And if he didn't get home to watch it, he wouldn't see it.

Because there was no streaming and there was no way to record it.

I mean, I'm sure that's shocking to many people, to younger people.

But I think the other thing that's important to touch on is

there are pretty distinct differences, you know, in these murders.

You have three teenage girls.

You have a young boy, the method of murder appears to be different

and many of them, some were sexually assaulted, some were not.

And when you think about trying to tie the murders together,

I can understand why there would be a lot of questions.

You know, are these one-off crimes?

Or is there one person or a group of people out committing these crimes?

Yeah, and, you know, I say it all the time, but, you know,

it comes back to me that same question.

What's refrightening?

Is there one maniac going around that county killing all these children

or is there more than one person, both are very frightening in their own rights?

And I think for police investigations, unless they can definitively link these to each other,

they've got to go in several different directions, so it probably didn't help them

in the investigative process.

Eventually, a year passed.

On April 7th, 1976, the body of Gary Pervinkler, who was a suspect

in the murder of 16-year-old Judy Farrow, was found, he had taken his own life

by shooting himself in the head, ballistics determined that the gun found next to him

was a match to a casing that was found in the home.

Judy was babysitting in when she was abducted.

For police, this was enough for them to close Judy's case.

They believed that Gary Pervinkler had killed her and had no reason to suspect him

in the other three murders.

News of Judy's case being solved.

It was definitely welcome in the community, but people were also still uneasy

because there were three other murders still unsolved.

They hoped that there wouldn't be another murder, but sadly, that was not to be.

On Wednesday, December 22nd, 1976, 12-year-old Jill Robinson left her home in royal oak.

She and her mom, Carol, had been arguing, and she was already in trouble for

forging some kind of note at school.

And when her mom asked her to make biscuits for dinner, she refused.

This was the final straw in the argument.

Carol told her that if she didn't want to be part of the family, then she could leave.

Tensions were already high in the home.

Jill's parents had recently divorced, and she was still adjusting.

Jill put some of her belongings in a backpack, and at around 5.30pm.

She headed out on her bicycle, reportedly planning to ride her bike to her dad's house.

She'd never return.

Some reports say that her dad's house was six miles away, while others say it was just one.

Either way, she never arrived, and her dad reported her missing to police at 11.30pm that night.

Police did find a witness who saw a grown-up bike matching Jill's description,

riding in the direction of her father's house.

Unfortunately, as we've seen all too often, police treated Jill as a runaway.

To them, it was a clearer case of a teen girl mad at her mom, and storming out of the house.

They thought she'd come home, but she never would.

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Jill's purple bike was located behind Tiny Tim's hobby shop on December 23rd.

About four blocks away from her mother's home, but there was no sign of Jill.

A family friend came forward and said they had actually seen Jill at Tiny Tim's after she left home on the 22nd.

But we don't know if she left her bike there or if it was moved there sometime later.

Two witnesses claimed to have seen her the next morning.

Between 6 and 7 a.m. at Donut Depot on Maple Avenue.

If this was Jill that they saw that morning, we don't know where she stayed overnight.

There's also a possibility that this is just a case of mistaken identity.

Since police now had Jill's bike and possible sightings of her in the area.

They steered away from the runaway angle and began looking for her.

Three days after she left home, Jill's body was found in Troy.

A driver spotted something right in the snow on the site of Interstate 75 and stopped to investigate.

It was Jill's body. She had been shot in the face at close range.

Investigators determined that the weapon used was a 12 gauge shotgun.

There was no sign of sexual assault.

In fact, she was found fully clothed and was even still wearing her backpack she was last seen carrying.

Investigators believe that Jill could have been suffocated before her killer put her on the side of the road.

Especially because there was only one set of footprints leading to the area where she was found.

Its former Birmingham Police Department detective Jack Cald Fleish's theory that her backpack,

which she was lying on top of, expelled air from her lungs and made it sound like she was still alive.

And that this made the suspect panic and shoot her.

This was a unique circumstance to Jill and it didn't happen in the other cases.

But again, this was just one detective's theory.

We don't know what really happened to Jill along that road.

Because Jill's death was so different from the other victims,

and because it had been so long in between her murder and Mark Stebbins,

Jill's case wasn't immediately connected to the others.

But no doubt, Morph. I mean, these murders that we've talked about so far.

Very brutal. I mean, we're talking about young people.

And, you know, in the case of Jill being shot in the face with a shotgun.

Now, I get it. They theorized that maybe she was suffocated first.

And then the killer thought she was still alive and then shot her.

But no matter how it went down, I mean, these are really brutal murders to young people.

But the one thing that jumps out at me and it always does was that

during this time frame, as we've seen in many cases,

authorities initially thought about a lot of these young people

that, well, they just ran away.

They went somewhere to cool off. They'll be back.

We know that cases like this reported missing teens

or younger people, they were treated so much differently.

In the 70s, then they would be treated today.

Yeah. It seems, you know, if you're a parent in the 70s

and your child didn't come home one day,

it seems like the reflex knee-jerk answer is,

oh, they just ran away and they'll be back.

And we now know that that first time period

when they're missing is the most crucial when you can do something.

I'm glad to see that nowadays they've really come to a point

where they realize that time is crucial and they don't usually treat kids as runaways

unless there's something specific that leads them to believe that.

But to me, it's kind of hard to imagine.

I mean, you get it with an adult, right?

An adult has the right to go missing, to go off, not missing,

but to go off and not return people's calls or not check in.

14, 15, 16 year old kids don't have that.

I mean, does it happen? Yeah, sure.

Obviously it does, but to just automatically assume in many,

many cases that that's what happened, I mean, I think it's shocking.

I'm sure the people who didn't live through it.

But I also think that, you know, how many people,

young people who were later found dead maybe could have been found alive

if police had taken a different direction.

The other thing that jumped out to me was, you know,

obviously there was quite a bit of time that had passed, right?

We said it. It was about a year.

So all of that kind of panic and hunkering down

and maybe not letting your kids go out so much,

did parents kind of back off on that because so much time had passed

and then they did they start to loosen up a little bit again.

That might be the reason why on Sunday, January 2nd, 1977,

Christine Mahalik's mother, Deborah,

let her walk to the 7-Eleven store in the town of Berkeley by herself,

even though she was just 10 years old.

The store was closed and it was still daytime.

The 7-Eleven was a cross from Hartfield's bowling out,

where Deborah worked.

She had talked with Christine previously about not talking to strangers,

so she felt safe and letting Christine go out.

Sadly, Christine would never come back.

When Christine didn't return home within a reasonable amount of time,

Deborah became worried and called police.

Thankfully, police immediately responded and didn't treat Christine as a runaway.

They spoke to the cashier at the 7-Eleven who confirmed that a teenager

matching Christine's description had come in and purchased the magazine,

a soda, and a candy bar.

People who knew Christine saw her walking east away from the 7-Eleven

with a paper bag.

So it's thought that she made it to the 7-Eleven

and had even been able to finish up her shopping

and that she was heading home as instructed the last time she was seen.

For 19 long days, Christine's family awaited any news.

Just before new and on January 21st,

Christine's body was found in a ditch on the side of the road of a Bruce Lane,

a dead end street in Franklin Village.

This time, a mailman driving his route saw something blue in the snow

and decided to investigate.

He contacted the police when he realized he could see a hand.

Christine was lying on her back with her knees bent up.

Her body had frozen in this position.

Just like in the case of Jill Robinson,

Christine was found fully clothed and there were no signs of sexual assault.

She'd been smothered no more than 24 hours before her body was spotted in the snow.

This meant that Christine had been alive somewhere for most of the time that she was missing.

There were no signs of dehydration or malnutrition,

which seemed to indicate that she had been given food and water.

It appeared that someone else had redressed her in the clothes that she was wearing when she was last seen.

Her pants were tucked into her boots, which is something she didn't normally do,

and the tie on her shirt was tied in the front instead of in the back.

Her clothing was all clean.

It was Dr. Siller's opinion that either someone had cleaned her clothing

where she had been held without her clothing the whole time.

And more if we've talked about the differences in some of these murders,

but one of the similarities that's really jumping out to me,

and I think does to a lot of people,

is that many of the victims were found fully clothed with no signs of sexual assault,

but it seemed as though their clothing had been removed at some point

and sometimes even cleaned.

And then they had been redressed.

And for me, that's an element that is pretty strange,

or at the very least noteworthy.

When you're talking about the facts of a case,

okay, what does that mean?

Why would someone go to that link?

And what does it say about the perpetrator?

If this is one perpetrator?

This is where you can really get into somebody's thought process

that does this kind of stuff.

On one hand, they cold-bloodedly kill a child and discard them,

but then we also see it seems they've taken care to dress them.

They were clean.

There was indications that they were fed and given water.

So it's almost like a conflict of things that we see here.

And I'd love to hear the thoughts of a profiler about this kind of person,

what's going on in their opinion in this person's mind

that they can sort of do all of these things,

which sort of conflict with each other.

So by now, investigators were noticing several similarities

in some of the murders, specifically the murders of Mark Stebbins,

Jill Robinson, and now Christine.

They weren't identical, but they were close enough

that they began to investigate the cases as being connected.

Each child had been taken from a different city than they were left in.

They seemed to have been held alive for multiple days.

But also, like we just talked about, right,

somewhat cared for during their captivity.

There was evidence that the victims clothing,

and possibly the victims themselves had been washed or cleaned,

despite the fact that only Jill had been shot.

Investigators believed that she could have been smothered or suffocated.

Like Christine and Mark had been and could have already been dead when she was shot.

There was no attempt to hide any of the bodies.

They were all dumped on the side of the road in plain view.

There was a heightened level of carbon monoxide in Christine's blood,

according to Dr. Silvery, but it didn't contribute to her death in any way.

It was just an unexpected result because she was a child who didn't smoke cigarettes,

but this may provide a clue about how she and possibly the other three children

were transported, and may even link her to the death of a teenager named Jane Louise Allen.

Fourteen-year-old Jane Allen left her home in rural Oak, Michigan,

shortly after noon on August 7, 1976.

She and her mom had argued, so Jane decided to go to her boyfriend's house.

He lived in Auburn Heights, which was about 17 miles away, so she had a hitchhike.

She made it to his place, but he got upset with her for hitchhiking because it wasn't safe.

Sometime after this, she left his house.

She was last seen trying to catch a ride on University Drive near Interstate 75 in Pontiac.

Four days later, Jane's body was found in the Great Miami River in Miami's Berg Ohio.

She was still fully clothed, and her hands were bound behind her back with strips of a torn-up t-shirt.

The medical examiner determined that Jane had died from carbon monoxide poisoning

before she was thrown into the river.

They were unable to determine whether or not she had been sexually assaulted

due to decomposition and the water.

And more if we often hear from people about how cases hit close to home,

and how that makes the case a little bit more harrowing than it already is,

because they're familiar with the town, or it happened in their town.

You know, this case, I have a lot of connections to.

First of all, I did live in the Detroit area, specifically in Oakland County.

Now, it was in the 90s, the late 90s, but all these areas that we're talking about,

I'm very familiar with, and I have lived for the last 25 years in Miami's Berg Ohio.

And Miami's Berg is not a big place. Let me tell you.

So I live maybe a mile or two from the Great Miami River.

So that is just, I mean, it is strange.

When you hear these cases or you research them, and you find out things like this.

Yeah, I think that really just goes to show that, you know, some people think this can't happen here.

It happens someplace else. I think this kind of thing that you're talking about proves

that's not the case all the time.

Now, the one thing that I should point out is that both

Miami's Berg Ohio and these, most of the towns in Michigan that we're talking about,

they are very close to Interstate 75.

I live right off of Interstate 75.

So that is obviously a big highway that many people travel.

Still strange, though.

Investigators believe that Jane may have died in the trunk of a car.

This opens up the possibility that her death was accidental.

If she hadn't succumbed to the fumes in the trunk,

it's possible that her body would have been found fully clothed on the side of the road in the snow

after being suffocated with no fabric tying her hands.

It's possible that throwing her into the river was just part of the suspect panicking

and getting rid of her body and potential evidence.

To be clear, authorities don't officially believe that Jane is a victim of the Oakland County Child Killer

and as we'll discuss a bit later, there was no real shortage of criminals operating in the area.

Behind the scenes, it was becoming clear to the authorities that they had a serial killer on the loose

and they knew it was in the public's best interest to share that news.

Authorities finally went public with their belief that there was a serial killer in the area.

The serial killer wasn't yet a term.

They specified that a suspect was targeting young children in the county.

Residents were warned to keep a close eye on their children and to use caution when letting them out of their homes.

And as a result, people started to be more alert.

People living in the area channeled their anxiety into action

and started putting cutouts of a hand in their window

to show that their home was a safe place for any child who needed help.

The idea was that if someone was, say, trying to get a child into their car

that the child could run to the door and knock instead of trying to make it a home with a creep following them.

In theory, someone trying to watch out for the children in between Point A and Point B

could be the difference between an easy target and a child that made it home safe.

Children were somewhat trusting of these houses and did run to them

in different instances when they felt in danger.

But it was always in the back of their mind.

What if this is the killer's house?

What if this is a trap?

Sales of bumper stickers that read don't go with strangers.

Skyrocketed.

There were even radio jingles about how children could stay safe.

All of this was being done to try and keep Oakland County children safe.

But unfortunately, these efforts would not prevent another murder.

And I actually had that same exact thought.

I get that people are going to try to do things.

Because, hey, first of all, they want to help.

They're scared.

They want to keep these kids safe.

So this idea of putting a hand up to designate a quote-unquote safe place, I get it.

I also understand that the person, if it's one person committing these crimes,

could very easily do the same thing.

So, yeah, could children have that in the back of their mind?

Yeah, they should.

And especially if that killer wants to blend in and make it look like they're on board

and they're part of the community trying to fight back against this killer.

And meanwhile, they're the one doing it.

That's a frightening thought.

But the other thing you see is what we see all the time, right?

Okay, you got bumper stickers being sold, radio jingles,

the other thing I'm sure happened was gun sales probably rose.

That's something that happens quite a bit as well.

On Wednesday, March 16, 1977,

11-year-old Timothy King wrote a skateboard to Hunter Maple Pharmacy,

which wasn't far from his home in Birmingham.

He did this often since it was so close.

It was a little after 8 pm when he borrowed 30 cents from his big sister

and headed to the pharmacy.

He was supposed to buy some candy and then go straight home,

but he never made it back that evening.

It was only about three blocks away and he was on a skateboard.

It should have been a pretty quick trip.

So quick that his sister felt okay leaving the home's front door unlocked

and slightly open for him because she was leaving

and their parents and two brothers weren't home.

Tim didn't want to get stuck outside of the door locked.

Around 9 pm, when their parents got back home,

the door was still a jar and Tim wasn't there.

They immediately called police who spoke with the cashier at the pharmacy

and this cashier told them that they saw Tim buying candy

at about 8.30 before he left out the back door of the pharmacy.

For the next week, there was no sign of Tim.

Then one week later, his body was found just over the border of Oakland

and Wayne counties on Gil Road in Livonia, Michigan.

He was wearing the same clothes that he disappeared in.

It was just before midnight when he was found.

His red jacket had caught the light from the headlights of a passing car.

His skateboard was in the same roadside ditch,

just a few feet from his body.

Tim had been killed about six hours earlier.

First responders actually performed CPR, thinking he could be saved

because his body was still warm.

There are reports that it looked like he had been placed in the ditch

on the side of the road gently.

He was laying sort of on his back and also sort of on his side.

Once again, it appeared that a victim had been kept alive,

some place for an extended period of time before being cleaned and dumped.

We mentioned that it looked like someone had taken time

to carefully lay Tim's body where it was found

and had likely fed him and cared for him in his capacity while he was in captivity,

but make no mistake.

The person or persons that had taken him had tortured and brutalized him.

Tim had been sodomized multiple times during his captivity.

There were teeth marks on his tongue.

There were scrapes in and around his mouth.

His cause of death was suffocation, just like in the case of Mark Stebans.

He had been hit on the head after death, possibly when he was tossed into the ditch.

There were marks on his wrist and ankles indicating he had been bound.

There was no doubt about it in the minds of police.

Timothy King was the latest and officially the fourth victim

in the string of murders committed by who had now come to be known

as the Oakland County child killer.

But unlike in the first three murders,

police had a strong lead in Tim's case.

A witness had seen a young boy.

She believed to be Tim King talking to a man in the pharmacy's parking lot.

She was able to give a description of the man and of the car that they were standing near.

The man was white, somewhere between 25 and 35 years old,

and he had dark shaggy hair with thick long sideburns and a dark complexion.

The car was a blue 70s model AMC Grimland,

with a white stripe down the side, and tires with a white sidewalk.

Investigators began to question people in Oakland County

who had a Grimland registered in their name.

And while that lead sounded very specific,

the amount of men who matched the description and or had a similar car

was no small number.

Pretty much everyone in the area became suspicious of every Grimland they saw.

And I imagine more if there was a fair number of Grimlands, right?

In the late 70s,

not a particularly good looking car,

or even well performing car, I don't believe,

but I think they were cheap.

They were also probably pretty good on gas.

And in the late 70s, you know, gas was a big issue.

Yeah, and that was considered the economy car.

You know, those vegas were popular.

Chivets, things like that.

And so a lot of people try to get these cars to save on gas

because most of them are those big giant square gas guzzling vehicles.

But one of the downside is it was not very unique

because so many people had them.

I would say,

stripe on the side of this Grimland does seem a little bit more unique.

And I would imagine that anyone that had that kind of car with that stripe on it,

most likely would have been on police radar, you know,

either because police had identified them as owning that kind of vehicle

or maybe a neighbor or coworker had turned them in.

So it always seems interesting when you have a very distinct vehicle,

like one with a stripe on it,

yet they've never tied that to anybody officially.

Yeah, I think though most Grimlands had a stripe,

but they came in different colors.

A lot of them were white.

I could be wrong about that.

But for some reason, I believe the Grimland was,

most of them did have a stripe down the side.

Police believed that the suspect in these killings

was likely paying close attention to discussions about the case

and news stories covering the murders.

One of the biggest potential clues to this is that Tim King's mother,

Marion, had been on TV, pleading with the kidnapper

and trying to humanize her son while he was missing.

And in one of these moments,

she mentioned that Tim's favorite food was Kentucky Fried Chicken.

His autopsy would show that surely before he was killed,

he was fed fried chicken and corn.

Did that mean the killer had given Tim fried chicken

after seeing his mom on TV?

However, another possibility is that the killer

befriended the children up to a point.

Maybe Tim himself mentioned how much he loved KFC

or was simply asked what he wanted to eat.

Maybe the killer was trying to gain their victims' trust

or comfort them somehow.

Another interesting possible clue is that Joel Robinson

reportedly suffered from night terrors about being shot and killed.

And she's the only victim to have been shot.

The killer could have learned this by talking to Jill

maybe even by comforting her after she had one of the nightmares.

But there's also the chance that this could just be a coincidence.

Police began to wonder if the killer was thumbing their nose

at the investigators.

From the spot that Joel Robinson was left on the side of the road in Troy,

you could actually see the police station.

Is this another sign that the killer was trying to tease

a tag on his law enforcement?

Or was it a coincidence?

A profile of the killer was created by Dr. Nicholas Groth

from the Massachusetts Treatment Center

for sexually deranged persons.

He believed that investigators were looking for someone intelligent

but not overly educated,

had no authority at their place of employment,

was lower in social ranking and economic status,

had a violent criminal record but nothing like murder

and who's choosing victims based on their age and availability

and not based on their gender.

Police wondered how the victims were secured.

Did the person or persons blitz attack the kids

and get them into a vehicle?

Did they lure them with some kind of prop or reward?

Or did the victims know their killer and trust them?

This seemed unlikely though since all four lived in different towns.

But I mean, police had to consider all the possibility.

Two of them had been riding bikes or skateboards

so it seems less likely that they would accept rides

to their destination since they weren't on foot.

And for Jill, who was riding a bike,

she would have to find a ride or walk back

if she left her bike behind.

And most of them were only going a short distance

so they probably wouldn't even need a ride.

One disturbing possibility was that perhaps the killer was

pretending to be a police officer or some kind of authority figure

or even more frightening,

perhaps they were an actual authority figure,

a police officer, a teacher, a coach,

and it's scary as all of these things

are that we talk about more.

This is another one.

When you have people in authority,

positions of power, or positions of trust,

so you're talking about police officers, teachers, coaches,

things like that, when those people misuse

that power, authority, or trust,

somehow it hits even harder.

Now we don't know for sure that the perpetrator

was one of these types of individuals, but again,

I think if you're the authorities,

you can't take that off the table, right?

Because there is this big question,

how are these kids lured?

Well, would it not be easier

if the person was someone that the kids thought they could trust

as opposed to a random stranger?

Yeah, and I mean there's,

I think a couple of different kinds of childhood abductors,

there's the ones that do it by force,

just pick someone up and grab them and throw them in a car,

and then there's the ones that lure them into a car,

which I think seems more of the type you see,

because the last thing they want to do is draw attention,

have a kid screaming, have people looking.

I think more often than not, they're probably going to try

and lure them in, and you may be showing them a puppy in the car

or a badge of some sort to make them think

that they're someone they need to listen to.

Something like that seems like a way

that you might be able to draw these children in

and not raise a commotion when you're doing it.

Yeah, and we have learned about

some of these different ruses, right?

Puppy.

Well, what kid doesn't want to see and pet a puppy?

Candy.

That's always the one that, you know,

a lot of parents warn against.

And I think, at least in Tim King's case,

witnesses saw him calmly talking to who they believe is the suspect.

So there was some kind of interaction going on

and it wasn't just a case of Tim running away,

he didn't seem to be worried about this individual

that, you know, makes you wonder,

did he know him from someplace?

Was there something that this person showed Tim

that made him trust him?

You know, there's a lot of different questions

and unfortunately, just not a lot of answers.

Police had their work cut out for them.

Fortunately, they were able to officially rule out

a couple more of the early murders

as being part of the Oakland County Child murders.

We mentioned earlier that Gary Pervincler

was linked to Judy Ferrer's murder of Viabilistics.

In 1978, a man named Oliver Andrews

was convicted of the January 1976 abduction

and murder of babysitter Sheila Schrock.

And in 1979, two men named Robert Anglin

and Raymond Heinrich were both convicted

of Cynthia Caduce murder.

A third man, who's not been named,

was also reportedly involved,

but he died before their arrest.

Both men were sentenced to life in prison.

We mentioned earlier that 13-year-old Jane Owl

was killed in August 1976.

She was the victim who died

of carbon monoxide poisoning.

But for some reason,

police don't seem to think she was a victim of this serial killer.

But there are others who believe she may be.

There are a couple of other names,

often associated with this case

that some people believe may be victims of the killer.

One is 17-year-old Donna Sarah,

who went missing while hitchhiking

in September 1972 in McCone County,

about 30 miles from Oakland County.

A month later, her body was found there.

She had been strangled,

and it appeared that she had been drugged,

and kept alive for some time before her death.

Some of the MOFIDS,

but it's an entirely different county.

Another murder victim we have to mention

is 12-year-old Kimberly Alice King.

She was as a sleepover at a friend's house

in Moorn, Michigan on September 15, 1979,

when she reportedly snuck out

and called home from a phone booth at around 11 p.m.

to talk to her sister.

Her sister told her to hang up and go back inside.

Kimberly never returned to the home.

It was never seen again.

Her body was never found.

Officially, 12-year-old Mark Stebbins,

12-year-old Joe Robinson,

10-year-old Christine Mahellick,

and 11-year-old Timothy King

are the four victims universally believed

to be the victims of the person or persons

dubbed the Oakland County Child Killer.

In the next episode of Criminology,

in the conclusion of our Oakland County Child Killer coverage,

we'll take a deep dive into a little cesspool

of potential suspects,

and explore a lot of very troubling

and twisted details and theories.

So don't miss part two.

Yeah, part two is going to be a doozy.

No doubt about it.

So as we wrap this first part up more,

you know, it's tough.

Are you talking about the murders of so many young people?

But this is a case that has gripped people for, you know, 50 years.

And I think there are a lot of reasons why.

First of all,

you have a lot of confirmed victims

of the serial killer or killers.

We don't know that part.

But then you have a lot of other individuals

who were killed.

Now, some they have tied to specific people.

And some of those people have even been convicted.

But others, you know, they're still debate

about whether they could potentially be victims

of the Oakland County Child Killer.

So I think, you know,

the things that are standing out to me is, you know,

obviously this perpetrator or perpetrators

were targeting young people.

Now, there can be a number of reasons for that.

Maybe there was a sexual attraction

to younger kids, which is sick, obviously.

But it could also be that, you know, the killer thought

that it would be easier, you know, to get people

of this age into their car.

Yeah, and I think the, usually the younger the age,

the more chance is that a child might get into a car

with a stranger, because they just don't know

about stranger danger as much.

What I find interesting is that it was

these angles that were targeted

was pretty interesting.

I don't know how often that is

that one specific gender might be targeted.

But here, it didn't seem like there's any discrimination.

As we talked about earlier, the one profile stated

that it was more of convenience

and the availability of these victims,

as opposed to any type of victim.

But I find it interesting too that

it seems that both female victims were not sexually assaulted,

but the boys were.

So I wonder if that tells us anything

about the suspect in this case.

And I wonder if what the authorities think about that,

the experts, the profilers,

what that might tell us about that potential killer?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you have to take

all of it into consideration.

And then, you know, again, to me,

one of the things that really stands out about this case

is this idea that the killer or killers

in some way took some care of these individuals.

I know that's weird to say,

but they kept them fed

during the period of time

that they had them.

And then, you know,

in the way that they disposed of their bodies,

we talked about it, right?

It's almost as if they had been redressed

after their clothes had been cleaned.

So I guess for me,

it's like this dichotomy.

You have a terrible child predator

who ultimately is killing these kids

and in some cases,

sexually assaulting them.

But at the same time,

almost showing them, you know, some level of care.

And I'm really struggling to understand what that means.

And that's another interesting thing in itself

is that sort of mirror image

of, on one hand,

they're committing these heinous acts.

But on the other hand,

they're showing some care.

And, you know,

almost showing them dignity

by dressing them again.

You know, in the one case,

his hands were folded neatly across his chest.

Almost like you might see if they were in a casket.

So, you know,

I think that would tell,

you know, profilers

and people that study these kinds of killers,

probably would tell them something

about this person's background.

So, to know

what's in this person's thinking.

Well, and also you can't forget the fact

that it seems as though

the killer wanted these children

found quickly.

Right? He wasn't trying to hide them.

So, does that play into it as well?

Right? In one instance,

the body was found very close to,

I think, the police station.

But they were all found

in places where

they think the killer knew

someone was going to find them very quickly.

So, you have to take that into account as well.

Yeah, and if they simply

wanted to discard them

hide their bodies, hide evidence,

you'd think they would, you know,

put them in a river

or bury them or something along those lines.

But here it's,

it's almost like they wanted them to be found.

So, you know, interesting.

And then one of the things too

that's most interesting about this case is

the fact they kept them for

so long. You know,

that's not an easy thing to do.

And that probably tells us a lot about

the suspect in this case too.

They have to have a place to keep them

for extended period of time

and care for them.

I imagine that, you know,

this person probably doesn't have

a wife and kids at home

that they were keeping the kids with

because that would be hard to do.

So, does that mean that they live alone?

Does it mean they have family

but maybe they were away on

vacation and they had that time

where they could keep them there?

I think it brings up a lot of

interesting possibilities.

It also likely means they probably lived

in a house versus an apartment

or something like that.

So, I mean, yeah.

I mean, you got to take all of that

into consideration.

And I'm sure police have

it just didn't help them, right?

So, I don't know.

So, I don't know how to identify

this person.

But that's it for our first

episode on the Oakland

county child killer.

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So, that's it for another

episode of criminology.

But Morph and I will be back

with all of you next Saturday

night to wrap up

with you guys.

We'll talk to you next week.

Take care, everyone.

See you next week.