The Snow Killings
Page 36
She has said that science ultimately will solve the Oakland County Child Killer case. Her chief assistant prosecutor, Paul Walton, swore that prosecutors and investigators have given everything they can to King. “We can’t declare who he wants as a suspect in the murder of his son,” Walton said. “There are too many unanswered questions out there.”
“Of course, he’s a victim,” Walton said of King. “We have treated him as a victim, but sometimes you can’t give the victim the answer he wants. You can only give the victim the answer that we know, and that has been done.”11
* * *
1. Asst. Pros. Atty Rob Moran in Det. Cory Williams Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office investigation: The homicide of Timothy King, May 20, 2011.
2. Capt. Mark Newman, Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, Det. Cory Williams Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office Investigation: The Homicide of Timothy King, May 20, 2011.
3. MSP Det. Lt. Denise Powell, interview with author, April 27, 2018.
4. WDIV-TV news, “2nd Grand Jury Seated in Oakland County Child Killer Case,” July 15, 2011.
5. Emails from Cathy Broad to Chris King, July 2011.
6. Barry King, Memorandum, March 22, 2012, 23.
7. Kevin Dietz, “Chapter 65: June 20, 2011” Exhibit K, August 15, 2016, www.afathersstory-occk.com.
8. Jessica Cooper to author, October 26, 2012. All quotes from Cooper and Paul Walton that follow in this chapter are from this lengthy interview, unless noted otherwise.
9. Paul Walton, Bill of Particulars Case 2012–125171-CZ, August 8, 2012, 4.
10. Erica McAvoy Interview with author, August 2012.
11. Barry King to Susan Vela, “Father of Oakland County Child Killer Victim Waits for Answers,” Hometown Life, February 29, 2020.
19
Cooper Goes Rogue
At the outset, you couldn’t help but feel like she was being played.
It was late April 2012, the day before her deceased daughter’s birthday. Debbie Jarvis faced the glare of television camera lights and a bouquet of microphones affixed atop a podium. She had decided it was time to go public with her long-held, private grief.
“For thirty-five years, I have patiently waited for justice for my daughter, Kristine,” Jarvis said in her first public remarks since the torturous, almost three-week period her daughter was held captive by the elusive Oakland County Child Killer. “Now, I know if I don’t take action, Kris’ killers will never be caught.”1
Jarvis sat behind a long, white table-clothed banquet table in a meeting room at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel in downtown Detroit, rented for the purpose of this press conference mostly through her maxed-out credit cards.
Only a month or so earlier she had hired Paul Hughes, a 60-year-old defense attorney who filed a jaw-dropping $100 million federal lawsuit on her behalf. The suit was petitioning for the Oakland County Child Killing investigation to be turned over to the U.S. Justice Department for an independent probe.
After her daughter Kristine’s Mihelich’s abduction and murder in January 1977, Jarvis married Glen Jarvis and moved to Petoskey, a small tourist village in Northern Michigan. She deliberately removed herself from the failed investigation, preferring the privacy of “my home in the woods.”
Had Kristine lived, the day following the press conference she would have been 46. “I can’t quite believe it’s been that long,” Jarvis told me after the press conference. “It seems like it was yesterday. You can’t live your life thinking, what if. And yet I think, ‘What if I hadn’t let her go up to the 7-Eleven that day? What if I hadn’t given in?’”
Over the years, Jarvis had stayed in contact with one detective from her hometown of Berkley, Ray Anger, a rookie police officer first on the case when Kris went missing. But even that contact was sporadic.
Years turned into decades and Jarvis preferred to let her adult daughter, Erica McAvoy, who was still living near Oakland County, follow developments in the case. Erica was dutiful and smart. She and her Dad, Tom McAvoy, had established a good working relationship with the Kings over the Busch developments.
So it was surprising to see Debbie Jarvis, now gray and in her seventies, by herself, without Erica. (Glen Jarvis passed away in 2008.) Debbie had called her daughter several months earlier to ask for money so that she could bring this lawsuit. Erica thought she was being conned and told her mother so. She begged her mother not to go forward. It was not a good conversation.
Tom Ascroft, Debbie’s second husband and Kristine’s stepfather, minced no words about the lawsuit: “Someone sits around for thirty-plus years and does nothing,” he said. “Then when it smells like money, they crawl out from under a rock. This is really disgusting.”2
Jarvis’ suit accused Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, and Michigan State Police investigators of bungling the investigation or covering it up because they discovered something so terrible it could never be made public.
Attorney Paul Hughes, who would soon be characterized by Cooper as a “dog bite lawyer,” told the assembled TV cameras and reporters: “It’s either political embarrassment or something highly disturbing about what they found.”3
What was so troubling—the outlandish $100 million notwithstanding—was that Hughes and Jarvis were basing the call for a new investigation on a mysterious confidential informant who went by one name only: “Bob.” Both Jarvis and Hughes admitted to reporters that neither had ever met “Bob” in person; they had only spoken to him several times over the phone. Bob was nonetheless described as being “highly intelligent” and was believed to have a law enforcement background.
Jarvis said Bob had phoned her two years prior and they had been in contact ever since. Bob said he could connect as many as 15 other victims to the four child killings in Oakland County. Bob’s suspect, the killer, was still alive, but he could not yet conclusively prove his involvement at this time.
The lawsuit detailed information about a meeting that took place on October 18, 2010, at the office of former Detroit Chief of Police Ike McKinnon. At the time of the child murders, McKinnon was a cop focusing on prostitution in the Cass Corridor. Also present at this secret meeting were a reporter from the Associated Press, Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Paul Walton, Undersheriff Robert McCabe, and retired detective Ray Anger, who was there on Debbie Jarvis’ behalf. “Bob” phoned in as part of a conference call.
Bob told the assembled that he would share his evidence, including names of suspects and persons of interest, in exchange for a “collateral” piece of evidence from OCCK investigators that would confirm his suspect’s identity. Bob said this small piece of evidence (there were hints it was a photo) was to be the “last dot to connect” in his investigation. Included in the outlandish department was the fact that Hughes was seeking donations to finance the lawsuit: for $1,500 a pop, Hughes would hand over copies of Bob’s complete investigation report, no redactions.
“This is David against Goliath,” Hughes claimed. “They have unlimited funding to hide evidence. That money will go to defray the costs already incurred.”4
Hughes was peppered with questions from a very skeptical media, but he remained resolute. He had even appealed to Michigan senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow and U.S. Rep. John Conyers, asking them to urge the Justice Department to take over the investigation.
For her part, the normally shy and quiet Debbie Jarvis held her own at the microphone. In a steady voice, she asserted, “The people we rely on to investigate and prosecute murderers appear to be conspiring to protect these child killers…
“In my opinion, they have stonewalled and attempted to block every effort to solve these cases. They have refused to answer even the most basic of questions. I don’t know who is the bigger monster here—the people who murdered these chil
dren, or the people who refuse to bring them to justice.”5
Cooper responded to the lawsuit calling Hughes “a conspiracy theorist exploiting someone’s grief and that is the true tragedy of this story.”6
But Jarvis shot back: “I’m not being exploited,” she said. “I’m up against a system that is failing me.”
Jarvis said the money meant little compared to solving the case. “I want Jessica Cooper to know how I feel,” she said. “I can accept that I lost a daughter. I can’t accept that I don’t know the truth about how and why I lost her. Every night when I go to sleep, I have nineteen days to think about. Nineteen days when my daughter was calling out for me and nobody ever answered her. Now I’m trying to get answers for her.”7
Over the course of several months, the story of Bob got further and further out there, diminishing what little credibility he had at the start. At an invite-only news conference, Bob said via speaker phone that the children were abducted by a cult. His later theories included Wiccans, lunar calendars and a theory that American Legion Halls across the country were involved.
Prosecutor Cooper filed a grievance against Hughes with the Michigan Attorney Grievance commission, claiming Hughes had filed a frivolous $100 million lawsuit that was unethical because it is based on an anonymous source. A year after discussions with Bob began, U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood dismissed the lawsuit.
Soon after the Bob fiasco, Jessica Cooper published a lengthy history of the Oakland County Child Killings case in the “Prosecutors Corner,” an online newsletter the prosecutor uses to communicate to the public. It also contained a Q&A section that answered questions like: “What is a conspiracy theory?” “What is the role of police in an investigation? What is the role of the prosecutor?” And: “Why can’t the Prosecutor release its knowledge of the case to the victims’ families?”
Then, in a television interview with the local ABC affiliate, both Cooper and Walton began to lay the groundwork to dispel the public’s fascination with Chris Busch. The prosecutors told WDIV-TV reporter Kevin Dietz there was “zero evidence” that Busch is the Oakland County Child Killer. “Whatever evidence that may or may not exist, does not come back to Busch,” Cooper said.8
The prosecutors also hinted they were looking at a live suspect. “We are a prosecutor’s office that is looking to bring a case to the light of a courtroom for potential prosecution and to hold someone accountable,” said Walton.
Said Cooper: “I keep seeing things in the media that are just so wrong, so inappropriate.”
By the summer of 2012, the race for Oakland County prosecutor was heating up. Jessica Cooper was being challenged by Mike Bishop, a former senator who had spent 12 years as a state senator before he was term-limited out of office in 2010. Cooper’s platform—“Tough, Tested. Effective”—touted her experience, while Bishop claimed Cooper was a dismal leader.
Pointing to the mass exodus of attorneys when Cooper took office, Bishop said she ruled by intimidation and fear. He also criticized Cooper for focusing too much on the conviction rate and neglecting the rights of victims of crime.
Matching jab for jab, Cooper called Bishop a politician in love with the spotlight who lacked the knowledge and experience for the office. Still, as much as she sought to demean her challenger with statements like “Honestly, I don’t even think he knows what he doesn’t know,” Bishop was a formidable enough opponent for Cooper to outspend him by a two to one margin.
Bishop was recruited to run by L. Brooks Patterson, and whether Cooper’s vitriol stemmed from jealousy or unabashed ill will, she was only too happy to swipe barbs at the longtime fixture in Oakland County politics. “I know (Bishop’s) idol is Brooks, but when Brooks was a prosecutor, there were only ten laws and they were written on a stone tablet. Things have changed in thirty-six years. Forensic science has changed in thirty-six years. I don’t know how strongly I can say you cannot have someone without experience or knowledge in that office.”9
Meanwhile, Barry King was making his case as a prominent stakeholder. As soon as he heard Bishop was running, King pulled out his checkbook. He also offered to do a television ad as an endorsement for Bishop; he even ended up writing the ad himself.
Filmed in his living room, the ad showed King looked very much the sage barrister and grieving father. He identified himself as the father of Tim King, the fourth victim of the decades-old unsolved case, and then said: “When Jessica Cooper took office she refused to talk to my family. She even took me to court and falsely accused me of a felony.”
Cooper fought back almost immediately. The ammunition came in the form of a surprise press conference. Held in her offices in the sprawling Oakland County law complex in Pontiac on July 17, 2012, every media outlet within a 30-mile radius was in attendance. A cacophony of camera shutters greeted Cooper as she walked up to the podium, flanked by several handpicked members of the “newly constituted” OCCK Task Force. With concrete faces, they stood like crows on a line, including Sheriff Mike Bouchard, members of the Michigan State Police and several local police chiefs.
Cooper said there had been a “tremendous breakthrough” in the form of re-examined old evidence. “There may very well be a living perpetrator of these crimes,” Cooper said. Then, in a move that even the commander of the OCCK Task Force did not fully support, Cooper went public with the Arch Sloan DNA evidence.10
Going public was an extreme departure from law enforcement protocol regarding confidentiality concerning on-going investigations. But Cooper said this was an exception. “There are times when investigators need the assistance of the public,” she said. “Release of information may spark a memory or encourage someone to come forward. This is such a time.”
Cooper took pains to explain the DNA evidence step by step. “Testing done by the FBI at Quantico on the first two hairs in this case, one from Mark Stebbins and one from Timothy King, revealed that they do share the same mtDNA profile,” her statement reads. “That is, the two hairs recovered off these victims appear to have come from the same person. … Further testing revealed that those hairs recovered from the boys’ bodies have the same mtDNA profile as a hair recovered from [Sloan’s] 1966 Pontiac Bonneville.”
In the next breath, she effectively eliminated any leverage Det. Williams had to pressure Sloan into talking. Up until this point, Sloan had not been told that the hair in his car did not come from him. “DNA samples were then obtained from the owner of the car [Sloan] and sent to Quantico,” Cooper continued. “That testing, however, revealed that the hairs do not come from the driver of the vehicle. He is not the donor of either the hair found in the Bonneville or the hairs found on the boys.”11
Hours before the press conference, OCCK Task Force Commander Denise Powell and FBI Agent Sean Callaghan arrived at Barry King’s house to brief him and Chris King on what Cooper was ready to announce. The meeting had been hastily prearranged the night before via email, since Cooper had given little advance notice of her decision to go public. (Powell would later reflect that she was “very torn” about Cooper’s abrupt decision.12) This was the first time the Kings would hear about Arch Sloan.
“They were nice and polite and said we have some new developments we’d like to bring up,” Chris remembered. “They said Sloan was in jail for several CSCs and they ran down all known associates they could find and came up with nothing. They were at a dead-end and needed people to come forward.”13
In his comments to the press later, Chris was diplomatic. He called the DNA match tied to two of the victims “a big breakthrough” and said his family was not distressed that the investigation had turned away from Chris Busch.
“We have no investment in which suspect it is,” he said. “We have always wanted them to follow the evidence where it leads, so we’re happy that they are doing that. That is all we have ever asked. I’m glad they are asking the public for help. I’ve always said if this case is solved it will be be
cause of someone who comes forward. It’s painful they didn’t talk to us sooner, but we just want the case solved.”
But amongst themselves, the King family was suspicious. Cathy called the press conference “the best and most disingenuous, reelection propaganda” she had ever seen.14
Chris said it struck him later that the hairs from Sloan’s car “had to be the hairs Cory had raised hell about two years ago. I remember reading his narrative that he had been begging the MSP for four months to get those hairs from the ‘Pontiac debris’ tested. So, they finally sent them off to lab and then refused to tell him about it.”
While Cooper had given the Task Force commander time to notify the families of victims about the press conference ahead of time, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office was accorded no such courtesy. Prosecutor Kym Worthy watched the press conference, live, as it unfolded, on a television in her office. She said she was “completely caught off guard.”15
The following day, Worthy called me back in her office for an interview. She was furious. And she wanted the public to know the full extent of the damage Jessica Cooper had just done to the case.
“I have never seen a situation of a case being compromised like this in all my years—both as an assistant prosecutor and prosecutor,” Worthy said. “Nobody does this, do you understand? Nobody who is an investigator—much less an experienced prosecutor—does this.
“It’s more than a setback,” Worthy said. “There is information out there that shouldn’t be. It is my understanding that they have said they have reached an impasse and they need the public’s help. Well, we [Wayne County] haven’t reached an impasse. We have many leads that we continue to follow. In any investigation, you don’t essentially tell your targets that you are investigating them.”