The Snow Killings

by Marney Rich Keenan

  11. Lisa Milton, Oakland County Circuit Court Case No. 10–110251-CZ Barry L. King v. Oakland County Prosecutor. March 30, 2011, 3.

  12. Defendant’s reply to plaintiff’s brief in support of motion for reconsideration, Barry King vs. Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office Oakland County Circuit Court No. 2010–110251-CZ, 3.

  13. Jessica R. Cooper, Oakland County Prosecuting Attorney Press Release, May 19, 2011.

  14. Charles Busch, in interview with FBI Special Agent Thomas MacDonald, at his home in New York, March 5, 2008.

  15. Barry King, interview with author, December 2010.

  16. Marney Rich Keenan, “Family: Police Reports Point to Child’s Killer,” The Detroit News, December 28, 2010, 1A.

  16

  Obstructing the Investigation

  The Frank Murphy Hall of Justice building is a 12-story concrete, almost completely windowless, structure housing court rooms, judges’ offices and jury rooms. Located on Gratiot Avenue in Detroit, adjacent to the Wayne County jail, it is monolithic and incessantly noisy, like a thousand dogs barking. Teeming with those on the precipice of being vindicated and those about to be condemned, the air is thick with apprehension and dread. There is only an occasional ripple of relief, and even then, most people wish they never had to be here.

  Rarely, if ever, forced to compel her fellow sworn servants of the law to stand accused and produce evidence under penalty of jail, by September 2010, Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney Kym Worthy felt she had no other choice. It was time to ferret out the truth of the “no new evidence” claim. She petitioned Third Circuit Chief Judge Virgil C. Smith to convene a grand jury in the matter of the homicide of Timothy King.

  Ever since the February meeting, in which the Task Force denied the existence of new DNA evidence, there had been virtually no communication between the agencies on the case. Wayne County officials knew the Task Force was concealing something regarding DNA, but with Det. Cory Williams effectively banned from investigation, it was hard to know exactly what that evidence was.

  In an effort to break the logjam, Worthy enlisted the help of Chief James Bivens, director of the criminal investigations in Wayne County. It was hoped he might have some sway because he had good relationships with MSP Det. Lt. Darryl Hill and Capt. Harold Love.

  “Chief Bivens was really trying to mend fences with MSP because we knew how important it was to work together,” Williams said. Livonia Police Chief Robert Stevenson also joined the effort, asking a lot of questions in his conversations with Love and the director of the Michigan State Police, Eddie Washington. But nobody within MSP was giving up anything; they didn’t want to rock the boat. Garry Gray was days away from retirement. Love was looking toward retirement in a couple years as well. And Hill was in line for a promotion to assistant commander elsewhere in the state. Plus, they had a scapegoat: all they had to do was bash Williams, say they didn’t want to work with an investigator they had tainted as a “leak,” and not get involved.

  What unnerved Worthy most was that Wayne County was deliberately kept in the dark about the most critical scientific evidence in the case to date, by agencies that hadn’t done one tenth of the work her investigative team had. This was worse than agencies’ refusing to cooperate and thus hampering an investigation that could be advanced if they worked together. It was law enforcement, entrusted to seek the truth about a horrendous crime against children, choosing instead to obstruct that truth for professional and political gain. It was about trying to destroy the reputation of a seasoned investigator who had devoted eight years to solving this case. It was about disregarding the considerable money and resources already spent by the Livonia Police Department and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

  And, ultimately, it was not about solving the case: it was about hubris, who would claim credit.

  Duly infuriated, in September 2010, Kym Worthy, her chief assistant Rob Moran and Det. Cory Williams met with Judge Virgil Smith in Wayne County. Worthy petitioned the judge to convene a grand jury in the investigation into the homicide of Timothy King. If approved, the judge would issue subpoenas that would compel testimony from the Michigan State Police and force them to hand over the DNA evidence they said did not exist.

  When Worthy was done making her case for the grand jury, Smith dismissed whatever retaliation the Task Force might take against Wayne County with two words: “Fuck ’em. I well remember this case,” the judge said. “These families deserve better.”1

  In the days before the grand jury hearing, Worthy summoned me, as the reporter who broke the Busch-Greene lead, to be briefed at the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. Because of the secrecy inherent in grand jury proceedings, Worthy wanted all the work that had been done by her department, from day one, to be documented by a journalist before they were duty-bound to not speak of it. More to the point, she wanted a record made of all the draconian efforts by the Oakland County prosecutor and the MSP to thwart Wayne County’s investigation and lock them out. She knew that at some point in time, those tactics would be exposed. And hopefully, it would come back full circle.

  Ushered into a conference room and seated with Det. Williams, assistant prosecutors Rob Moran and Maria Miller, Worthy began the meeting with a stern warning. The discussion was off the record and highly confidential and would be kept under wraps until an “appropriate time” came for it to be released. I was given an 18-page document entitled “Child Killing Timeline, Wayne Co. Pros. Office/Livonia P.D.” outlining, by date and development, the trajectory of their investigation into the case beginning in the fall of 2004.

  “You will learn that there has been a complete breakdown of information-sharing between this office at the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office such that there is no communication at all,” Worthy said.2

  Det. Cory Williams at the podium announcing first-degree murder charges against Richard Lawson for the 1989 murder of Exavor Giller. In January 2010, Williams went to work for Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney Kym Worthy. Seated, left to right, are Wayne County Chief Asst. Prosecutor Robert Moran and Prosecutor Kym Worthy (Livonia Police Department).

  Over the course of three hours and with painstaking detail, Williams and Moran described how Williams had breathed new life into the cold case, starting in September 2004 with Richard Lawson’s conviction in the homicide of Exavor Giller. When the Michigan State Police reopened the investigation in 2005 in advance of the 30th anniversary, the assumption was the case would be pursued with vigor. “But they didn’t do that,” Moran said. “Their definition of reopening the investigation was: OK, we’re going to have a line open—a tip line—for people to call in and we will call them back when we feel like it. They didn’t do anything on their own initiative. It was all done by Livonia P.D., Wayne County and the FBI.”

  Initially, when Jessica Cooper took office in January 2009, Worthy said, “I was very interested in working with her. I did a lot to help her get elected.” The two prosecutors’ offices met several times on the case during the first six months of 2009. In June, when Sean Callaghan replaced Ouellet at the FBI and began working with Garry Gray at the MSP, “that’s when things started to go south,” Worthy said. “When Callaghan came into the picture is when relationships started to break down.”

  It became evident that MSP had disengaged with Wayne County at the behest of Cooper, that Cory Williams had been blacklisted and that the relationship between Cooper and Worthy was non-existent. (Worthy called her an “obstructionist.”)

  “We have made several attempts to get together with the Michigan State Police this year,” said Williams. “Our office is continuing to work leads. We don’t want to duplicate efforts. But we can’t even get them to meet with us. It appears at this point they are working only with the Oakland County Prosecutor.”

  Worthy deplored the treatment of the families of the victims. “One of those points of disagreement is h
ow the [families in] this case have been treated. Our philosophy generally in all cases is that we share as much as we can with our victims. Obviously, of course, there is some information that we can’t share that would compromise any investigation. And our feeling, quite frankly, is that the way they have been handled—the family—it is inhumane, especially the way the Kings have been treated.”

  Worthy took pains to describe the tremendous efforts made by Williams and Ouellet to locate and gather original physical evidence from the victims, and how they repeatedly pressured MSP to process the evidence for DNA testing. “But they kept dragging their feet and dragging their feet,” Moran said. “There were literally dozens of pieces of evidence that MSP were sitting on. Most of which they never even knew about until our office found them.”

  “And we knew the key had to be in there somewhere,” Worthy said. Referring to the new evidence only in the most obscure terms, she said: “I will tell you that there appears to have been some developments. We are not going to share them at this point, and they are not sharing them with us. We are now persona non-grata, because supposedly Cory was this big leak. That just isn’t true. …That said, the fact remains: a body was found in our county. It’s our case too.”

  Her anger was palpable. “Whatever they have developed is based on what we have given them,” Worthy said. “And we are not privy to that. … This is unprecedented in law enforcement. You just don’t do this. It’s unheard of. … This is something that never would have happened had they acted professionally, but we are not the obstructionists here. We will continue to try to bring some closure to Mr. King and we are going to continue to try and honor our obligation as prosecutors and investigators to him, and do what we can do, outside the circle, so to speak.”

  Worthy concluded the meeting, saying to me: “It will become obvious to you why we did this when the time comes. There is something to be said for people knowing information before an event happens. Should there be a break, we want you to know how that happened. And at the appropriate time—if that happens—we will want the story to be told.”

  With that, a beleaguered Det. Williams escorted me down the long hall of the assistant prosecutors’ offices, through the lobby and out to the elevators. Surely, he was grateful for the backing and support of his bosses, but that did little to soften the blow of being ostracized for political gain.

  In the weeks following the meeting, per the grand jury’s orders, several members of the Michigan State Police were subpoenaed to testify before Judge Virgil Smith. Accustomed to serving subpoenas rather than receiving them, and having been summoned to relinquish evidence in an highly publicized criminal case under penalty of jail was unprecedented.

  While the MSP officers were forbidden to disclose to anyone anything related to the grand jury, Williams was still worried. Fearing retaliation, he packed up all the case records he kept at home and stored them at a neighbor’s house for safekeeping.

  He told his wife, Michelle: “If they show up and I’m not here, just cooperate with them. Tell the kids it will be okay. And call me right away.”

  Michelle’s fear was well-founded, but also surreal; she wasn’t worried about criminals showing up at her door, but fellow cops intent on bringing down her husband.

  By October 2010, Livonia PD Chief Robert Stevenson had confirmed through conversations with MSP Capt. Harold Love and Col. Eddie Washington that the Michigan State Police did indeed have a DNA match connected to the suspect. Stevenson was told the suspect was in prison somewhere in the western part of the state. But nothing more.

  The aim of Wayne County’s grand jury was to reveal the name of the secret suspect the Task Force had developed based on DNA evidence they had been sitting on for close to a year. The subterfuge finally came to an end on a late October morning in downtown Detroit, as a line of uniformed command staff officers of the Michigan State Police, carrying large binders, filed into in the courtroom of Circuit Court Judge Timothy Kenny. Provided with the information the MSP had withheld, the Wayne County Prosecutors Office was able to follow the DNA evidence to a living suspect.

  (In court records, the Oakland County Prosecutor’s office would later characterize these grand jury subpoenas as “draconian measures” issued by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office “to MSP Command Officers to compel them to disclose updates on the information obtained in this ongoing investigation” because “their investigator was asked to leave the Task Force.”3)

  Arch Edward Sloan, a pedophile serving two life sentences for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, had been convicted and sentenced in Wayne County in 1985 for raping the 10-year-old son of a co-worker. Police had eyes on Sloan as far back as 1976, and he was brought in for questioning during the original investigation into Mark Stebbins’ murder.

  At the time Stebbins went missing, Sloan was 35, working as an auto mechanic and tow truck driver and living at his parents’ home in the city of Southfield, where Mark Stebbins’ body was dropped.

  Arch Sloan in a family Christmas photograph around the time of the Oakland County Child Killings (Michigan State Police).

  On the night of Mark’s death, February 19, 1976, Sloan’s parole officer was watching the television news coverage of the missing boy’s body being discovered, and immediately thought of the repeat offender in his charge. Sloan had been violating young boys since he was 13 years old and he both lived and worked close to where the body had been found. The following day, the parole officer picked up the phone and called Southfield police.

  Sloan was interviewed at the Southfield Police Department on February 22. He also gave consent to search his vehicle—a burgundy 1966 Pontiac Bonneville with a black top—in the police department garage.

  An evidence technician named Mel Paunovich searched Sloan’s car, dusted for latent fingerprints and took tapings from the interior of the car windows and the center console. In total, Paunovich was able to lift several latent prints. He also collected hairs, fibers and debris from the flooring of the car. Back then, none of the latent prints from Sloan’s car matched Mark’s fingerprints, nor did the debris collected from Mark’s clothing appear to be similar to the debris from the floor of the Bonneville. After providing alibis for the relevant time period and passing a lie detector test concerning Mark’s abduction and murder, Sloan was cleared.

  This was long before the genetic testing could be used to solve crimes. It would be another 10 years before the process of removing a DNA molecule from a cell and processing it to reveal distinctive characteristics unique to an individual would begin to be an effective forensics tool in criminal cases. The public would not become aware of the science of DNA testing until the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995.4

  In 1997, physical evidence retained by the Michigan State Police in the OCCK case—then 20 years old—was submitted for the first time for DNA processing. The MSP organized and labelled most of the evidence and sent it to the FBI lab in Quantico. Included was a package of slides containing the hairs Paunovich had retrieved from Sloan’s car, labelled “Pontiac debris.”

  But not all the evidence was sent. Williams knew this because he had been unable to locate a slide containing the hair found on Tim’s groin area during the autopsy.

  In November 2008, after several searches of forensic lab storage locations, a package of slides connected to the case was found at the Detroit FBI lab. On one of them contained the hair found on Tim. The slides were then sent to the MSP Lab in Northville to be processed for DNA comparison.

  A few months later, in the spring of 2009, Williams went to the Northville lab to get a status update. While there, he located another package of slides connected to the case, labelled “dirt, fur, fiber.” When MSP forensic scientist Lori Bruski put the slides under her microscope, she found human hairs. Five hairs were isolated from both sets of slides. One was completely degraded; of the remaining four, three had been found on Tim King. The fourth was found on Mark’s clo
thing. These hairs were sent to Quantico in April 2009.

  By October 2010, 10 months after the Task Force had received the Sloan DNA lab report from the FBI, Wayne County finally got their hands on the Holy Grail, thanks to the evidence released by the grand jury. Det. Williams and Assistant Prosecutor Moran rushed to a private conference room and laid out the diagram of the new hair evidence and sequencing results on the table. They were silent for several minutes as the power of the evidence sunk in.

  “This is unbelievable,” said one.

  “No shit,” said the other.

  Three human hairs were found to have the same mitochondrial DNA sequence. One was the hair found on Tim King’s groin area. Another was the hair found on Mark Stebbins’ clothing. The third had been found by Paunovich during his search of Arch Sloan’s car in the days after Mark Stebbins was found dead.

  Put succinctly: the same person left behind all three hairs. In sequence, the first ended up on Mark Stebbins’ body, found on February 19, 1976. The second was left behind in Sloan’s Bonneville, sometime before February 23, 1976, when the car was impounded and searched. The third was deposited 13 months later on Tim King’s genitals. It was the most compelling evidence to date: they had connected a convicted pedophile with the first and the last victims of the Oakland County Child Killer.

  There was only one problem: the hair found in Arch Sloan’s car did not belong to him. And Arch Sloan, probed repeatedly by Task Force interrogators, was not talking.

  Williams hit the ground running. While the Task Force had gotten a 10-month head start on the investigation into Sloan, Williams’ 18-hour days soon made up for lost time. In fact, Task Force investigators knocked on the door of prospective witnesses only to find they had already been interviewed by Williams—he had left his card.