The Snow Killings

by Marney Rich Keenan

  Greg Greene was given a life sentence and was sent to Jackson State Prison on June 17, 1977. Eighteen years later, in 1995, Greene died of a heart attack while watching TV in his cell. He was 45. The guards found him sitting upright with his eyes open.

  The official record states that Busch committed suicide in his home on November 20, 1978. He was 27. Two days after his body was found, the remains were cremated at Evergreen Crematory in Detroit. Four weeks later, on December 15, 1978, the Oakland County Child Killings Task Force disbanded, saying it had exhausted its resources.

  * * *

  1. Dr. Charles A. Gray, Chairman of the Dept. of Physical Education at Alma College in character reference letter for Busch to Jane Burgess, April 15,1977.

  2. Kenneth Bowman, interview by Flint P.D. Jan 26, 1977.

  3. James Vincent Gunnels, interview by Det. Garry Gray and Det. Cory Williams at Camp Ojibway Prison, March 6, 2008.

  4. (Redacted) Gunnels, father of James Vincent Gunnels, Statement to Det. Lapp and Det. Let. Biggs, Flint Police Department, February 25, 1977.

  5. Flint Officer Tom Waldron and Ferndale Police officer Tom Cattell, Complaint No. 7603079, January 26, 1977.

  6. Det. Sgt Ralph E. Cabot, Polygraph Unit, Flint Post, Polygraph No. P35–19–77.

  7. Flint P.D. Officer Tom Waldron, “Special Report Regarding the arrest of Christopher Brian Busch M/W/25 of 736 N. State St., Alma, Michigan, for CSC 3rd degree on Complaint #2197,” January 31, 1977.

  8. Waldron, “Special Report,” January 31, 1977.

  9. Flint P.D. Officer Tom Waldron interview with Det. Cory Williams, June 30, 2009.

  10. Southfield PD Lourn Doan City of Livonia narrative report, Complaint #7603079, January 28, 1977.

  11. Ralph E. Cabot, Polygraph Unit Flint Post, exam date: January 28, 1977.

  12. E.W. James, “Half Century of Service by the Michigan State Police Polygraph Section,” Polygraph Volume 15 Issue: 4, December, 1986. Pages 279–317.

  13. Lourn Doan, in Det. Cory Williams’s narrative report: “Today it was determined that Greene was possibly out on bond at the time of King’s abduction. Garry Gray was reviewing some old notes today from Task Force Detective Doan (Southfield PD) and observed where Doan had written the following statement: ‘Greene was sent to Jackson Prison on 6-17-77. “Out on bond till then.” This means that Greene may have posted bond sometime between February of 1977 and when he went to prison in June of 77. King was abducted and killed in March of 1977.” October 14, 2008.

  14. no by-line, “Task Force Finds: No Slaying Link in Flint Case,” The Oakland Press, February 2, 1977.

  15. Richard Willing, “Oakland County Link Probed in Sexual Exploiting of Boys,” The Detroit News, February 22, 1977.

  16. Willing, “Oakland.”

  17. Judith Fullerton, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Genesee County to David F. Tibbetts. June 29, 1977.

  18. Signature of Richard Thompson, Oakland County Asst. Prosecuting Atty. on arrest warrant for Christopher Busch February 25, 1977, and on Circuit Court Judge Robert Templin court clerk notes date February 28, 1977.

  19. L. Brooks Patterson interview with author July 18, 2012.

  20. Doan, interview with Det. Cory Williams and Det. Garry Gray, February 21, 2008.

  21. Officer Tom Waldron, Juvenile Division, Flint PD, letter to Chief Killingsworth and Det. Sgt. R. Lombardi, Alma P.D. March 9, 1977.

  22. Retired officer Tom Waldron at his home in Flint in interview with Det. Cory Williams, June 30, 2009.

  23. Flint PD Officer Tom Waldron told Det. Williams that the photos were likely never given to the OCCK task force for comparison because Busch and Greene had been cleared by MSP’s polygraph. He said he thought they the photos was put in evidence storage at Flint PD. In June of 2009, Williams went to Flint in search of the photos. Former Flint detective Gary Alford who then worked with the cold case squad at the Genesee Prosecutor’s Office told Williams there had been “a few floods in Flint over the years” and that “evidence had been destroyed.”

  9

  Suicide or Hit?

  It was estimated that Christopher Busch had been dead for as long as three days before his body was found in his parents’ home in Bloomfield Village. Charles Busch, Chris’ brother, knew it the minute he reached the top of the staircase and breathed in the stench.

  At 8 a.m. on the morning of November 20, 1978, Christine Bracken, the Busch family’s maid, arrived at 3310 Morningview Terrace to clean, as she did every Monday. But she couldn’t open the door with her key because “the night latch was locked from the inside.”1 At the time, H. Lee and Elsie Busch were in England tying to patch things up with Chris’ older brother, David. Charles would later tell the FBI his parents had had “a falling out” with David because he was a “homosexual” and “a little bit of an activist.”2

  The Busch family home on Morningview Terrace where Chris was living at the time of his death in November 1978 (photograph by Ricardo Thomas, Detroit News).

  Chris had been living full-time at his parents’ house and was working as a chef in the dining facilities at an assisted living facility nearby in Bloomfield Hills. After Chris’ arrest in Flint in January 1977, his father sold The Scotsman, the restaurant he had bought for him in Alma.

  The home was a five bedroom, five-and-a-half bath colonial, perched on a hill on a corner lot at Morningview Terrace and Overhill roads in Bloomfield Village. “The Village,” as it is known, is an upscale, one square mile Oakland County neighborhood, replete with Victorians, colonials and tudors on large lots, with circular driveways and precision-trimmed hedges. The 25 mph zone is strictly enforced by the Village’s own police department. All residents adhere to strict architectural style guidelines so that design details are “in harmony” with traditional American and European designs from the 19th century and earlier. One of the guidelines stipulates that no front entry garages are permitted.3 In fact, all houses in the Village utilize rear-entrance garages so attached garages look like part of the house. In the case of 3310 Morningview Terrace, the rear-entrance garage could also provide for the secluded shuttling of abducted children.

  Decades after the murders, a former neighbor of the Busch family—close in age to Chris and now an ophthalmologist in his fifties—remembered “the big burly guy” and described the Busch family as “creepy.”4 He told Det. Williams that one day his sister, then a young child walking home from school, picked up a Polaroid of a man’s genitals that had been tossed in her driveway. She gave it to her mother, who evidently warned her to stay away from the Busch home and anybody in or near it. Decades later, the ophthalmologist shuddered to think of the hideous possibilities, the narrow misses.

  H. Lee Busch purchased the house as a home base in the States, having lived abroad for business on and off for the previous several years in Germany and England. During his rise through the ranks to become GM’s executive financial director in Europe and the U.S., the family moved around. By the time Chris was 10 years old, the family had lived in Michigan, New York, New Jersey and Germany.

  Far too little is known about H. Lee Busch, beyond his vital records and the very occasional article about GM in which he is referenced. This is due, in part, to interest in the family, as it relates to the OCCK case, coming 40 years too late—contemporaries passing away, memories fading. But it is also, perhaps, by design. Charles Busch told the FBI in 2009 that his father at one point mysteriously shredded all the family documents, including passports, photos, social security cards and birth certificates.

  Harold Lee Busch was born in 1912 in Hillsdale, Michigan, a historic city in the south-central part of the state, near the borders of Ohio and Indiana. He received his undergraduate and master’s degrees in economics at Michigan State
University in Lansing.

  In August 1936, at age 25, H. Lee married Elsie Elizabeth Niemi, 26, a kindergarten teacher from Watton, a small Finnish village on the shore of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

  At the time, H. Lee was a junior cost accountant at GM’s Fisher Body Division. Over the years he was promoted to various supervisory accounting positions. In 1952, he was named comptroller of the Rochester Products Division in Rochester, New York. By 1960, he had been promoted to finance manager at Adam Opel in Germany, and the couple made their home in Königstein. H. Lee’s appointment as managing director of General Motors Limited in London followed. By 1969, he was named comptroller of the Cadillac Motor Car Division. Nearing his sixties and looking forward to less travel, he purchased the home in Bloomfield Village the following year.

  H. Lee Busch in 1965 (courtesy of National Automotive History Collection, Detroit Public Library).

  Christopher Brian Busch was the baby of the family, the youngest of four sons, born July 31, 1951, in Pontiac, Michigan, at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

  The oldest child was John Scott Busch, born in 1940. Charles Nels Busch was born in 1944 and David Lee Busch in 1946.

  Chris attended elementary school in Germany. At 13, he was sent to Switzerland to attend Institut Le Rosey, a historic and elite boarding school on the banks of Lake Geneva for children of dignitaries. (Alumni include the Shah of Iran and Prince Albert of Monaco.) After graduating from the 12th grade at Le Rosey, Chris stayed on as an instructor for a short while.

  He came back to the States in 1970 and attended Wayne State University for a year. He then transferred to culinary school at Northwood University in Midland, where he received a degree.

  At the time of Chris’ death, his oldest brother John was living in Whitehall, Michigan, near Muskegon, and running a convenience store his father had bought for him. Divorced from his wife Connie, John lived above the store in an apartment. The couple’s two sons—Brent, born in 1963, and Scott, in 1966—lived with their mother but visited their father regularly. Both had been repeatedly molested by their Uncle Chris.

  Of the four Busch sons, Charles, it seems, was the only one not to disappoint his parents. Upon graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in business in the early sixties, he went on to forge a successful career with General Motors and Chrysler. He married fellow University of Michigan grad Nancy Putz in 1965. Their son, Alexander Nels Busch, was born five years after they married. The couple made their home in Birmingham, on Mohegan Street, less than three blocks away from where Tim King lived.

  Charles and Nancy Busch’s Tudor home overlooked Poppleton Park, which sprawled over several acres, where Tim King and his friends were playing the afternoon of March 16, 1977. Later that day, Tim would disappear. Poppleton Park was also the first temporary headquarters of the task force for the Oakland County Child Killings. The park was chosen because helicopter search efforts could easily land and take off in the wide-open space it provided. A command center was also set up there. Charles Busch could not have missed the mass of police vehicles when he looked out his window in March of 1977; he could not have missed the frenetic whipping of helicopter blades slicing the air during the aerial search for the missing boy with the red hockey jacket. If he had his suspicions about his pedophile brother, he never acted on them. Maybe he knew the end was coming soon enough.

  When the maid, Christina Bracken, first saw the weekend newspapers still on the front porch and heard the dogs, Tabatha and Sam, barking inside the Busch home, it was Charles Busch she called first. Tabatha was a white-haired Welsh terrier, the family dog, and Sam, was an Ibezan hound dog, light tan in color. Chris had brought him back from an island off the coast of Spain. (Animal hairs found on all four victims were light in color.)

  Bracken went across the street to the Dunn residence and asked Harry Dunn to call Charles. Immediately sensing the worst, he called police from his home and then met them over at the home on Morningview Terrace.

  Officers forced the front door open, breaking the chain lock from the wall. Both Charles and the officers went upstairs to Chris’ bedroom. The door was closed. Opening it, they discovered Chris Busch lying in bed with a .22 caliber rifle by his side, pointed at his face—a bullet hole in his forehead. The air was so putrid Charles couldn’t stay in the room for more than a few minutes.

  Busch was said to have shot himself right between the eyes yet no gunshot residue was found on his hands (Michigan State Police).

  Charles told police his parents had gone to Europe to visit his brother, David. He said he and his wife, Nancy, had talked to Chris four days prior about Thanksgiving dinner and that there had been no indication he was despondent.

  Officers spoke with Chris’ co-workers, who also said he did not seem depressed. Up until November 4, he had been working as an administrative chef at Franklin Club Apartments. He quit in order to pursue a new job at Franklin Terrace Apartments, a retirement community. A week later, when Bloomfield police interviewed George Enoch, a Busch’s Oakland County probation officer. Enoch stated that Chris “may have been despondent over the four cases against him and may have committed suicide because of this.”5 (Although, as of May 1978, all four cases had been fully adjudicated and he was on probation.)

  Elsie Busch had her youngest son’s bedroom decorated with a leopard motif. There was a large round painting of the head of a leopard hanging on the wall to the right of the bed. The bedspread was the same animal print and two of the bedroom chairs were upholstered in the print to match. A five-drawer mahogany dresser with an oval vanity mirror stood between the two wooden shuttered windows. The stereo record player sat atop a small nightstand; a few sleeveless record albums were on the carpet, leaning against the wall. A large stereo speaker had been placed on a chair, with an extra-long speaker wire laid in loops across the carpet. The speaker was positioned at a right angle to the head of the bed, so Chris could crank up the volume while lying down.

  Investigators found a strong resemblance between a police artist’s sketch of Mark Stebbins and a drawing of a young boy in anguish taped to Chris Busch’s bedroom wall (Michigan State Police).

  Above the record player was a framed print of what appears to be a European city, possibly London or somewhere in Germany. Hanging to the left of this nondescript print was a hand-drawn sketch that would connect Chris Busch to the Oakland County Child Killings in a way no other physical evidence would (outside of DNA, which came decades later). Pinned to the wall, a pencil sketch on a sheet of drawing paper depicted the face of a young boy that bore a striking resemblance to Mark Stebbins. The boy is wearing a zipped-up, fur-lined hooded jacket, identical to what Stebbins was wearing when he was abducted. His face is wailing in pain, the eyes clenched tight, as if to will away, with all his tiny might, the penetration of his every orifice. The hood is up, a veritable shroud. The drawing seems hung like a grotesque trophy, a sadistic memento, by the deathbed of a pedophile who had shot himself between the eyes.

  Conspicuously absent by the deathbed of a man who had blown his brains out was any evidence of blood spatter on the wall just inches from his head.

  Many observers questioned the lack of blood splatter on the wall near Chris Busch’s head (Michigan State Police).

  In the closet, next to a pair of men’s L.L. Bean duck-hunting boots, lay four lengths of ropes, looped in the middle of the floor—placed conspicuously and, it seemed, intentionally. (All four victims had showed signs of being bound at some point during their captivity.)

  In 2008, Williams had the photos of the ropes enhanced for possible clues by the Michigan State Police Forensics Unit. In his report, he wrote: “Upon examination of the enhanced photos, it appears that some of the shorter lengths of rope have blood on them. This could be consistent with the rather large open wound that victim Mark Stebbins had on the top of his head that the Medical Examiner determined during the autopsy was caused by Stebbins being
struck over the head with an unknown object while Stebbins was alive.”6

  Blood-stained ropes on Chris Busch’s closet floor, as they were found at the scene of his death (Michigan State Police).

  From the crime scene photos, Williams also noted that Bloomfield Township Police found what appears to be a single 12-gauge shotgun shell placed upright on top of the desk in Busch’s bedroom. Williams wrote: “The caliber of this shotgun shell would be consistent with what experts determined during the original investigation was the caliber of the shotgun used to shoot Jill Robinson. The shotgun shell casing was never found at Robinson’s homicide scene and was believed to have been recovered & removed by the suspect at the scene of the shooting, to avoid detection by police.”

  According to the suicide records, at about 10:45 a.m., Det. John Davis from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department and Det. Ron Pearce from the Ferndale Police Department—both officers serving on Oakland County Child Killer Task Force—were called to the scene. Yet, remarkably, they did not file a report on their findings. Det. Williams noted: “It appears that detectives in 1978 looked briefly into this information but did not give it much credibility due to both Busch and Greene having already been cleared by a State Police polygraph in 1977. … Because of the passed polygraphs, it appears that detectives made no connection to the Child Killing case at that time.”7