Oakland County Search For Phantom

[Helen Dagner]

I want you to think about this-Taken from the Detroit Free Press-* Spreen's comments about Mark Stebbin's case: "'Although the State Police maintain two relatively close crime labs and the Oakland County Sheriff's Department also has an excellent crime lab available, none were called to process the scene. By the time the investigator from the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office had arrived, the body had been removed to the Southfield Police Department. When the body finally arrived at the morgue, it was devoid of all clothes. . . . No one really knows what might have been found at the scene had proper crime scene procedures been followed and a crime lab present.'"

[Helen Dagner]

I want you to think about this~ Taken From The Detroit Free Press~*Discussing the murder of Tim King, Spreen "criticized the task force for allowing 300 tri-county investigators to flood the area [where the body was dropped off]." The Detroit Free Press quoted Spreen as saying "[d]uring the King homicide (March 1977) numerous bits of information were lost forever due to inadequate reporting procedures and unfamiliarity with the case."

[Helen Dagner]

In the summer of 1977, Oakland County Sheriff Johannes Spreen gave a speech about the OCCK investigation to the Southern Police Retraining Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Spreen had been a critic of the police work on the OCCK from the outset and was an advocate of a single county police department, rather than individual city police departments. The speech was released to the press and was covered by The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press on August 2, 1977. The task force apparently refused comment, so what follows are basically unchallenged excerpts from Spreen's speech.

From The Detroit News:

"Fragmentation of police agencies made 'a vivid horror story in the investigation of the child murders in Oakland County,' Sheriff Johannes F. Spreen has charged. . . . 'I want to talk to you about the problems we encountered, the shortcomings of our solutions and how we should plan for future occurences,' he told the conference. 'I must tell you from the outset that the events will sadden you as parents, and infuriate you as professional police officers.'"

Spreen's comments about Mark Stebbin's case: "'Although the State Police maintain two relatively close crime labs and the Oakland County Sheriff's Department also has an excellent crime lab available, none were called to process the scene. By the time the investigator from the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office had arrived, the body had been removed to the Southfield Police Department. When the body finally arrived at the morgue, it was devoid of all clothes. . . . No one really knows what might have been found at the scene had proper crime scene procedures been followed and a crime lab present.'"

The Troy Police failed to call a crime lab to process the scene where the body of Jill Robinson was found. "'Noting the similarities in the two cases, it was suggested that a coordinated effort involving the State Police, Sheriff's Department and the local authorities involved be implemented in an attempt to solve the crimes,' Spreen said. 'The suggestion was submitted to the local agencies by the State Police, and the offer was declined.'"

"Berkley police refused the offer of assistance of the State Police and Sheriff's Department after the dissapearence [sic] of 10-year-old Kristine Mihelich of Berkley and only after her body was found in Franklin . . . did the Franklin chief turn the investigation over to the state police, Spreen said."

The News reported that according to Spreen, "[t]hat afternoon, 30 investigators committed themselves to find the murderer of Kristine Mihelich" and "[t]he Oakland County Task Force was implemented. The work of the task force was hampered from the start by many problems. It was discovered that one jurisdiction charged with the investigation had virtually no report and in another jurisdiction, evidence had been misplaced and mishandled. The investigative team was forced to investigate one of the slayings from the very beginning. Another agency was reluctant to submit their report to the task force."

Discussing the murder of Tim King, Spreen "criticized the task force for allowing 300 tri-county investigators to flood the area [where the body was dropped off]." The Detroit Free Press quoted Spreen as saying "[d]uring the King homicide (March 1977) numerous bits of information were lost forever due to inadequate reporting procedures and unfamiliarity with the case."

The News article went on to explain that with "posted rewards totaling $70,000, Spreen said, people began 'to use the case as a lottery. Parents turned in sons, brothers turned in brothers, and church members turned in their pastors. To date [August 2, 1977] the task force has 12,000 tips on suspects, with 5,500 closed and over 6,000 have not been checked.'" Spreen went on to state that "'ome departments were virtually using the task force as a training experience for their personnel. Chiefs were committing rookie detectives and patrol officers to investigate the homicides and were rotating their personnel periodically to allow everyone to participate in the investigation.'"

The Freepress article quoted Spreen describing the major problem "'initially was a lack of coordination between the agencies involved. Information was not shared, offers of assistance (from other police agencies) were refused, each investigator jealously guarded the identity of his suspects in order to be the one to crack the case.'"
( To Be Continued)

[Helen Dagner]

From: Susan
To: [e-mail]
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 10:57 PM
Subject: [occk] Someone answer me this question


Is there actually DNA to match a suspect to???

And what piece of evidence was it?

I do not remember hearing anything about the killer leaving anything.

I do remember something about a hair...

Like I said I have a viable suspect and picked up the phone this morning to call the OCSD but no one answered.

Maybe as it was early when I had the nerve to do it.
Crying was not helping either.............

Susan
Someone told me I could call them and talk and I lost the phone number and who it was.
Whoever it was would you email me again........

[Helen Dagner]

Son follows dad on trail of unsolved child slayings

Web-posted Feb 19, 2005

By TRACY WARD
Of The Daily Oakland Press

He never found the killer, never solved the mystery surrounding the monster who silently, one by one, stole children off the streets.

Now, his son will try.

Nearly 30 years after Robert Robertson led the original Oakland County Child Killer Task Force, his son, Detective Sgt. David Robertson, is joining the investigation into the unsolved 1976-77 slayings.

Michigan State Police announced Friday that they are renewing their efforts to solve the case, buoyed recently by new tips. They declined comment on those tips.

"Good luck. He just said, 'Good luck,' " said Robertson, 46, of Westland, of his father's reaction that a second generation would be tackling the Child Killer murders. "He just wants somebody to solve it. He doesn't care who."

Four children were killed over 13 months in 1976-77, disappearing from streets that were supposed to be safe. As their families waited and hoped, the killer, dubbed "the Baby-sitter," toyed with them for days, keeping them alive, feeding them, bathing them, before he killed them, leaving their small bodies in the snow along roads and parking lots.

The slayings terrorized Oakland County. Streets were quiet as children were kept inside or escorted to schools. School counselors advised kids on staying safe. Warnings appeared on everything from T-shirts to restaurant place mats.

The victims were:

n Mark Stebbins, 12, who was abducted while walking near his Ferndale home on Feb. 15, 1976. His body was found four days later - 29 years ago Friday - in the parking lot of a strip mall in Oak Park. The seventh-grader, smothered, had been sexually abused and rope marks were found on his ankles and wrists.

n Jill Robinson, 12, who left her Royal Oak home Dec. 22, 1976, in a huff after an argument with her mother. Jill didn't want to bake biscuits for dinner. Her body was found the day after Christmas along Interstate 75 near Big Beaver Road in Troy. She was shot in the head at close range.

n Kristine Mihelich, 10, was abducted near her Berkley home on Jan. 2, 1977, after buying a magazine at a nearby store. Nineteen days later, her body was found by a mail carrier who spotted her small hand sticking up through the snow on Bruce Lane, near 13 Mile and Telegraph roads in the village of Franklin. Like Stebbins, she was suffocated.

n Timothy King, 11, was kidnapped from a grocery store parking lot near his home in Birmingham on March 16, 1977. He was found March 22, just south of the Oakland County line in Livonia. He had been suffocated and, like Stebbins, abused.

David Robertson's partner, Detective Sgt. Garry Gray, officially assigned the Michigan State Police investigation, says he happened to read an e-mail from a victim's father. It strengthened his resolve.

"(It said) 'I can't go on any longer, it's just too painful. The police have given up,' " Gray said.

"We haven't given up. We have not given up."

Barry King, father of Timmy King, was at a police news conference Friday. He declined comment, but was not the author of the e-mail, Gray said.

The original Oakland County Child Killer Task Force at one point included more than 300 law enforcement personnel from dozens of agencies, with headquarters in a vacant Beverly Hills elementary school.

The task force was disbanded a few years later, but police departments continued to receive reports and tips, even decades after the slayings.

Last week, all of the yellowing files and nearly 100,000 tips collected were moved to the state police's Metro North post in Oak Park. Photos of an old blue Gremlin, once believed to be the killer's car, and old composite photos of suspects, hang on the walls there now.

Theories abound - on the Internet a man named "John" is identified as the killer. Others suggest it was a priest or a man posing as a police officer. Another points at a Troy engineering student.

In 1999, the body of autoworker David Norberg was exhumed from a Wyoming grave so his DNA could be compared with that of a hair found on one of the children's bodies. It wasn't a match.

Gray is hoping all of the old files can be collected in a centralized computer database similar to those used by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, ensuring the search for the killer continues.

In the last three decades, life has moved on for everyone involved. Detectives have retired. Robert Robertson, 71, a great-grandfather, is a snowbird now who spends his winters in Florida and summers in Greenville, Mich.

Life didn't stop for the victim's families, either. Some of them, like Ruth Stebbins - Mark Stebbins' mother - have died, never seeing justice done.

Some detectives have never given up, like Berkley police Detective Sgt. Ray Anger. At 64, he could have retired 10 years ago. One of the reasons he stays is the Oakland County Child Killer case.

He took the original missing child report from the Mihelich family.

He knew the Stebbins' family, too. On the day before she died, Anger made Ruth Stebbins a promise: "I can't promise you I'll ever solve it, but I'll never stop trying."

There are others - Ferndale Detective George Hartley, Oakland County Sheriff's Deputies Jim Ahern and Clay Jansen, a patrol officer when the children were killed, plus officers from Birmingham and Franklin.

Joining their ranks now will be David Robertson. Like his father before him, he'll be searching for answers.

Robertson's dad, who retired in 1984 and served as an undersheriff in western Michigan, could not be interviewed. But he believed the killer was either dead or institutionalized, and was quoted at one time, saying, "I'm convinced he is not among us today."

His son said his father was not haunted by the case or the fact the killer was never caught. Instead, his dad finds comfort that the deluge of tips over the years helped solve dozens of other unrelated cases, Robertson said. The task force served as a model for other efforts, including the Atlanta Child Killer Task Force in the early 1980s.

His father, who received a commendation for his work with the Oakland County Child Killer Task Force, was also instrumental in the creation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

He sees his father's work in old files, paperwork filled with familiar handwriting.

"RHR, that's how he signed everything," said Robertson, one of three brothers who work in law enforcement, including his twin brother, John, an Oakland County Sheriff's detective in Oxford.

Robertson says his dad, adamant about separating home and work life, never talked much about the case. But there were days he was gone by dawn, and home too late.

His son hopes the answer will be found.

"To say we can't solve it? We can't do that," Robertson said.

"Somebody out there knows," said Anger. "Somebody out there knows."

[Helen Dagner]

It seems to me the mtDNA (Mitochondrial DNA), found on the two boys and in Sloane's car, is not enough to get an arrest or a conviction. Not by a long shot. Law enforcement and forensics experts, and the courts all say mtDNA can only be used to rule people out, not to rule them in. Also since the mtDNA profile is passed from mom to kids, generation after generation, it means that a woman could have had children 150 years ago, passing the profile to all of her kids and all of her following female descendents, and their girls pass it on and so on... If that original female had sisters, they would have done the same, doubling or tripling that number.... So you can see that a lot of people could have the same mtDNA profile of those hairs. Any half way competent lawyer could demolish it in court if it wasn't bolstered by a lot of much more specific and definitive evidence, which seems to be in short supply. Suppose they find a "match" with someone, so then what? Arrest him without substantiating forensic evidence? There is none. The killer left no prints or nuclear DNA which would be ' individual specific', and could lead to a conviction. I would say "Close, but no cigar' except this isn't even close, so I'm not excited by this at all.

[Helen Dagner]