The Snow Killings

by Marney Rich Keenan

  By January of 1976, Shelden named Richards director of “Brother Paul’s Children’s Mission” on the island. In its incorporation papers, the Mission was “to provide services to children with reading problems, minor emotional counseling and classes in physical fitness.”20 Instead boys were encouraged to run naked on the beach, coached into sex acts while cameras rolled and sworn to secrecy.

  An application form for prospective campers described the Mission as a

  Nature Camp for boys. … Unlike other summer camps where a child spends most of his time at play, our camp promotes an appreciation for nature lore, an appreciation for physical fitness, natural living, natural health care, safety, hygiene and physical fitness, a deeper appreciation of the natural gifts of God … through the philosophy and practices of naturopathy and naturalism.21

  Purported to be financed by donations from the “Church of the New Revelation” in Kearny, New Jersey, the Mission was classified as a charitable trust and granted tax exempt status by the IRS in the early seventies. To increase profits further, plans were in the works to establish the Mission as a child welfare agency aiding wayward children, so that states across the country would willingly subsidize their efforts. As one ringleader, Dyer Grossman, explained in a letter to Richards: “the state pays foster parents $180/child/month. Some homes which take problem kids get as high as $400 per month and the Federal Government pays as much as $700 a month for kids in a runaway home. Per boy, states would pay up to $400 and federal agencies up to $700.…”

  (Grossman began the letter: “Dear Jerry—just a note to say that I now have a ‘Little Brother’ age 12, and very affectionate although quite innocent. Some camping trips may cure that.”22)

  When Richards was arrested, he told the Michigan State Police that the Church of New Revelation, Brother Paul’s Children’s Mission, and two other organizations called the Ocean Living Institute and Educational Foundation for Youth, were set up as tax shelters for child pornography operations run by Shelden and his cohorts, who included:

  • Dyer Grossman, a New York millionaire from a wealthy family in Carmel, New York, and science teacher at a boys’ boarding school, listed as vice president of Brother Paul’s Children’s Mission. Grossman spent considerable time in Port Huron with Richards and Shelden, as well as on North Fox Island.

  • Adam Aristotle Starchild, who changed his name from Malcolm Willis McConahy. Starchild was a self-described “international financial consultant,” who served prison terms in the States and abroad and authored 20 books on finance, investing and Libertarian causes.23

  • The Rev. Claudius “Bud” Ira Vermilye, former pastor of the Alto Parish in Tennessee from 1953 to 1962, who was later defrocked and imprisoned for running Boys Farm, Inc. Authorities called it “a house of boy prostitution.”24

  Det. Sgt. Joel Gorzen of the St. Clair Post of the Michigan State Police headed up the investigation of Richards. As part of a plea agreement, Richards gave Gorzen all of his information on Shelden and the North Fox Island operation. He said he and Shelden had flown with minors to the island, where the children were molested and photographed. He named Dyer Grossman as one of the pedophiles who joined him in an orgy with minors at a Holiday Inn in Port Huron. Richards also said Shelden had given him strict instructions that if anything ever happened to him, Richards was to “destroy the files to save Shelden’s parents and relatives any embarrassment.”25

  Shortly after midnight on July 29, 1976—three days after Richards was arrested—MSP officers broke out a lower window on the front of Shelden’s home in Ann Arbor. But file cabinets, closets and drawers had been cleared out. Four days later, Gorzen went to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office to get a warrant for Shelden’s arrest. But the prosecutor decided not to authorize any warrants against Shelden because they were “waiting to see if charges were going to be brought against Shelden in St. Clair County.” As for the St. Clair County prosecutor, MSP Trooper David Lambourn reported: “[St. Clair County Prosecutor Peter] Deegan wants to wait for Shelden until investigation is completed.”

  It wouldn’t have mattered—Shelden was long gone. Apparently, Shelden happened to phone Richards the day he was arrested. Richard’s wife, Judy, told him police had taken her husband into custody. Gorzen wrote: “It is the undersigned opinion’s [sic] that upon Shelden hearing that Richards had been arrested on 7-26-76 that he did make the trip to the Ann Arbor area to his residence to remove or destroy any incriminating evidence that might have been there.”26 Shelden had absconded, and the dominoes began to fall.

  Gorzen alerted law enforcement across the country to the child pornography operations posing as charities and non-profits in their states. A roll of undeveloped film sent to Richards from a man in California turned out to be photos taken at Boys Farm, Inc., in Alto, Tennessee. On November 10, 1976, police raided the “farm” and arrested its leader—the Rev. Claudius Ira “Bud” Vermilye, Jr., an ordained Episcopal priest—on 16 counts of criminal sexual misconduct. Vermilye had operated the farm for five years. Tennessee authorities found young boys had been sent to the farm through the state corrections system and welfare agencies. “The boys were shown obscene movies to arouse them sexually and given liquor to stifle their inhibitions before sex orgies were held. They were then allegedly filmed by a hidden camera.”27

  Shelden was listed as one of the sponsors of Boys Farm. Police also seized lists of contributors containing about 300 names. According to a law enforcement report obtained by Kenneth Wooden—a former investigative reporter for 60 Minutes and now president of the child safety advocacy group Child Lures Prevention—about ten of those 300 contributors were from Michigan. “Addresses stretched from Canada to the Caribbean,” the report read. “Michigan State Police District Detectives were given names from their areas to check out.”

  Alas, “no charges were developed from Michigan names.”28

  (An interesting, if frustrating, side note: Christopher Busch was named as a person of interest in Wooden’s research, which may be further proof that even back then, Busch’s association with the heavy hitters was raising red flags. His name appears on a four-page typewritten report written by someone in law enforcement, dated March 7, 1977—a week before Tim King disappeared. The report provides short bios of the porn ring’s major players: Francis Shelden, Dyer Grossman, Richard Halverson, Bud Vermilye and Adam Starchild. In Gerald Richard’s bio, one sentence reads: “Sgt. Gorzin [sic] says Richards may know something about Christopher Busch.”29 But the report has no masthead or other identifiers as to who authored it.)

  Dyer Grossman was also one of the untouchables. In addition to being the vice president of Brother Paul’s Children’s Mission, Grossman was the executive director of the “Ocean Living Institute.” The institute’s literature says it is “a foundation to promote research in ocean living, an oceanography camp and academic year programs for students.” Its address is listed as Kearney, New Jersey. Grossman was also the youth director for the Church of the New Revelation, also located in Kearney, and a director for the Educational Foundation for Youth, an “import/export business,” allegedly based in Chicago.30

  A visit by Grossman to see Richards and Shelden in Michigan resulted in charges of two counts—first and second-degree—of criminal sexual conduct involving 10 and 14-year-old boys during some “fun and games” at a Howard Johnson motel in Port Huron. His warrant was authorized December 7, 1976, but he too disappeared.

  Five months after Richards told police about the activities on North Fox Island, a warrant signed on November 26, 1976, in St. Clair County charged Shelden with second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a 13-year-old boy in Port Huron. Two weeks later, Shelden was charged by Leelanau County authorities with sodomizing a nine-year-old on North Fox Island. In St. Clair County, a warrant was also issued for the arrest of Dyer Grossman for the rape of a 10-year-old boy occurring on one of his trips to Port Huron.

  Once the
warrant was issued for Shelden’s arrest, the story of the scion of one of Detroit’s most revered families turning his own private island into a pedophile paradise became public, despite the family’s best efforts to provide cover.

  On December 12, 1976, Alger Shelden, Francis’ father, told a Detroit Free Press reporter his son was “out of the country.”31 Thereafter, Francis Shelden’s parents hid from reporters; the family attorney was quoted as saying they were both ill. For whatever reason, Shelden felt he owed letters of resignation to two boards of directors. Executives from both Boys Republic, a private school for wayward youth in Farmington Hills, and the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills received Shelden’s resignations in November. Neither letter had a return address. One was postmarked Detroit, presumably from the family business located in the Buhl building downtown. The other was postmarked Kearney, New Jersey, the same city listed on the mastheads of the Church of the New Revelation and the Ocean Living Institute.

  Shelden’s brother, Alger Shelden, Jr., told authorities he was hiring armed guards to keep curiosity seekers away from North Fox Island. Several of Shelden’s victims-turned-dependents—he was reported to have financed 18 boys’ college tuitions—were caught unaware. Joe Moore, one of Shelden’s favorite boys, took his own life upon hearing about his benefactor’s arrest warrant. The 18-year-old, befriended by Shelden since he was nine, was treated to hunting trips on the Island, skiing trips in Aspen and beach parties at the family estate on Antigua in the Caribbean. Soon after Moore received a letter from Shelden, he put a gun in his mouth. In the letter, sent from Miami, Shelden explained he would “be away for a while” working on some “personal problems.”32

  A good friend of Moore’s said: “It’s amazing that I’ve always remembered him telling me just those few things, one time. Frank Shelden, father figure, under his wing, pilot, Aspen and Fox Island. It stuck with me all these years. No wonder he played that Jimmy [sic] Hendrix song [about the gun in Land] whenever I was at his house. … He just kept playing that song over and over again.”33

  By the end of February 1977, the FBI had joined a nationwide search for the multimillionaire fugitive. Shelden’s six-passenger airplane was located in Arizona and a man claimed he had bought the twin-engine airplane from Shelden months earlier. The person listed as Shelden’s agent in the sale was Adam Starchild. Personal belongings of Shelden’s left in the plane, including a thermos, flashlight and other survival equipment, were mailed to Starchild at the Kearney, New Jersey, address of the Church of the New Revelation and the Ocean Living Institute. When reached by reporters, Starchild said he had never met Shelden.

  By 1978, the search for Shelden and Grossman had spread across 21 states and the West Indies, with negative results. Federal authorities had come within inches of capturing Grossman in December 1977 after he was questioned by California police in the company of two men arrested on child molestation charges. But Grossman, using an alias, managed to flee. He was later traced to Honolulu and Tacoma, Washington. An online observer of the case reported that Grossman had planned to create Ocean Living Institute camps for boys in the Pacific Northwest and was last sighted at a motel in Tacoma, Washington, in 1978 with a lot of camera equipment. He was later traced to Plandome Manor on Long Island, where the trail grew cold. Dyer Grossman was apparently never located.

  Shelden reportedly moved freely throughout Europe, thanks to a West Indies trust fund managed by Starchild. Det. Gorzen reported that as of February 1979, Shelden had been tracked in France, where he had married a French prostitute. Michigan’s Assistant Attorney General John Wilson advised Gorzen that since Shelden was a French citizen, he would be ineligible for extradition. By 1983, Shelden had become a citizen of Holland. When St. Clair County tried to extradite him, the U.S. State Department declined to authorize, saying they “missed the window of opportunity.” The U.S. and Holland entered into an extradition treaty in the mid-eighties and the “treaty was too late to exclude Sheldon [sic].” Still, Gorzen wrote, “Sheldon [sic] is entered on wanted computer thru INTERPOLE [sic] & is arrestable in 108 countries if he travels. For present time he is home free. The St. Clair County Prosecutor WILL EXTRADITE if subj is caught in area where he can be returned.”34

  Some online groups have reported that Shelden changed his name to Frank Torey and founded his own publishing house, specializing in boy-love fiction and erotica for a decade.35

  Starchild, who was arrested in the sixties for circulating pornographic material and for his involvement with a 16-year-old, was convicted for a $57,000 check fraud in which he tried to dupe 10 different banks. He served time in federal prison on mail fraud, and in London, on forgery charges. Curiously, McConahy has been reported as having been being killed in an auto accident in Minneapolis in March 1977. But, later, Shelden sued Starchild to retrieve more than $1 million in cash that he claimed to have given Starchild for safekeeping in the Trust Co. of the Virgin Islands, Ltd., which Starchild managed.36 Starchild died on September 22, 2006, at age 60 from cancer at his home in Spain.37

  Shelden was reported to have been found dead of natural causes in his Amsterdam apartment on July 1, 1996. He was 68. Shelden’s attorney, L. Bennett Young of Bloomfield Hills, confirmed that Shelden died, but declined further comment.38 He was never extradited.

  Two months after his arrest, Richards pled guilty and was sentenced to two to 10 years. He served only a small portion of his sentence and was released by 1980. In February 1988 Richards was arrested and charged by the postal inspector for trafficking in kiddie porn. Richards was divorced and living with his mother at the time. Officer Gorzen wrote: “Jerry says he was acting alone & was trying to get goods on a Kiddie Porn dealer so he could turn him in (as he has completely reformed) however it backfired on him by an entrapment situation conducted by the post office.”39 He committed suicide in 1996 at age 49.

  * * *

  1. Judianne Densen-Gerber, “What Pornographers are Doing to Children: A Shocking Report,” Redbook, August, 1977, 88–90.

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

  3. Willing, “Oakland.”

  4. Willing, “Oakland.”

  5. From staff and wire reports, “Legislator to Sponsor Outlawing Child Porn,” The Traverse City Record Eagle, March 12, 1977, 1.

  6. Staff and wire reports, “Legislator.”

  7. Robert F. Leonard, Letter to “All interested prosecutors and police agencies to coordinate investigations in the sexual abuse and commercial exploitation of children,” April 6, 1977.

  8. Robert F. Leonard, “Tentative Confidential Agenda,” April 6, 1977.

  9. William E. Schmidt, “Flint Journal; A Fallen Star Wants to Shine Again,” New York Times, September 24, 1987.

  10. Cathy Broad, NORTH FOX ISLAND, CIRCA 1975–1976, March 12, 2013, https://catherinebroad.blog/2013/03/page/2/.

  11. Det. Cory Williams, City of Livonia Narrative report: OCCK Investigation. Incident # 77–0006883, February 7, 2007.

  12. UPI, “847-Acre Island Is Purchased as Summer Resort,” The Detroit News, September 5, 1959.

  13. Donna Olendorf, “The Alger Family,” Heritage Magazine, October 1985, 13–17.

  14. Sworn deposition of Frances D. Shelden, July 9, 1982, in Amsterdam, regarding the removal of Adam Starchild and The Trust Company of the Virgin Islands as trustee and appointment of L. Bennett Young and the Detroit Bank and Trust, 2.

  15. Jim Neubaucher, “North Fox: One Man’s Rare Dot on the Universe,” Detroit Free Press, December 28, 1975.

  16. Neubaucher, “North Fox.”

  17. Gerald Richards, Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation, Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, U.S. Senate, May 27, 1977, 34.
<
br />   18. Richards, “Protection.”

  19. Marilyn Wright, “Police Say Photos Link Area Island, Porn Ring,” Traverse City Record Eagle, February 16, 1977, 1A.

  20. Article II, “Certificate of Amendment to the Articles of Incorporation,” January 14, 1976.

  21. Brother Paul’s Nature Camp for Boys, Camp Director Gerald S. Richards. Application Form, Ages 7–16.

  22. Dyer Grossman to Jerry Richards, postmarked July 19, 1976. From MSP complaint # 23–1728–76, Reporting Officer, Det. Sgt. Joel Gorzen.

  23. Lucy Morgan, “Starchild Is a Mystery Figure in Kelly Case,” St. Petersburg Times, May 13, 1980.

  24. Kirk Loggins and James Branscome, “Boys Farm Scandal,” The Washington Post, June 5, 1977.

  25. Det. Sgt. Joel Gorzen, MSP Complaint #23–1728–76, Supplementary Report, July 26, 1976.

  26. Gorzen, MSP Complaint.

  27. Kirk Loggins and James Branscome, “Boys Farm Scandal” The Washington Post, June 5, 1977.

  28. Kenneth Wooden, journalist and child safety activist in Shelburne, Vermont. Law enforcement records found in his files.

  29. Wooden, Records.

  30. Ocean Living Institute, 31 Davis Avenue, Kearney, New Jersey 07032. Fund raising letter.

  31. No byline, “Lake Hideaway Suspected as Homosexual Boys Camp,” Detroit Free Press, December 12, 1976.