The Murder Game (Michigan, Notorious USA)

by Katherine Ramsland

  Other items circumstantially implicate Busch. White animal hairs had been found on all of the victims, and the Busch family had owned a white welsh terrier. After Busch committed suicide in 1978, ligatures were found in his room, along with a drawing on his wall of the face of a young boy screaming. The boy was wearing a parka hood and resembled Mark Stebbins.

  In 2005, nearly three decades after the murders, Detective Sergeants David Robertson and Garry Gray began going through the files once again. They put out a public appeal for tips.

  In 2007, the focus was on Ted Lamborgine. A retired autoworker who’d resided in Royal Oak during the 1970s, he’d been involved in a child pornography ring. He pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting young boys in order to avoid a plea deal that required a polygraph. The family of Mark Stebbins filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him. However, at this writing, Lamborgine has not been charged with killing Mark.

  In July 2012, news outlets announced a potential DNA link. The FBI DNA Unit at Quantico, VA, had tested some strands of hair picked off the bodies of Mark Stebbins, Kristine Mihelich and Timothy King. Using mitochondrial analysis, which is much less accurate than nuclear DNA analysis, they established a link between the boys, as the hair on them had come from the same person.

  DNA tests confirmed that white dog hair found on all four victims was from the same dog, but police did not locate a dog for matching. The lab also tested hair recovered from a Pontiac Bonneville that belonged to Archibald “Ed” Sloan, another person of interest from the 70s. The analysis linked Sloan’s car to the boys. Now over 70, he’s serving prison time for two counts of criminal sexual conduct. However, mtDNA analysis of Sloan’s hair did not match that found on the boys or in the car. Thus, investigators continue to look for information about other people who might have borrowed the car. Sloan often loaned it to his pedophile friends. The analysis cleared him.

  There was a match between Gunnels and a hair found on Kristine Mihelich. Gunnels said he did not know how his DNA got on her. The Michigan State Police reports show that Gunnels had told inconsistent stories, and in a recorded conversation between Gunnels and his sister while he was in prison, she’d asked him about the hair found on Kristine. His answer had been enigmatic: “I wasn’t there when it happened,” he said. This indicates that he possibly knows something about her death. When specifically asked using a polygraph, he flunked on those questions. Yet he was not charged. The DNA link was considered weak, the evidence in degraded condition, and the strand of hair had been destroyed during the testing.

  Tim King’s father has posted documents on the Internet, apparently with the hope of persuading someone that Busch and Gunnels should be a top priority. Yet it’s difficult to make a case with so little physical and circumstantial evidence. The best evidence (hair) was used up in testing, so something new would have to emerge. As of this writing, the identity of the Babysitter, or the OCCK, remains unknown.

  LONELY HEARTS

  DURING THE 1940s, HOMICIDE COPS Charles Hildebrandt and Elmer C. Robinson tracked a male con artist, Raymond Fernandez, who was using personals ads to attract and fleece vulnerable women. The officers learned that he’d teamed up with an obese woman, Martha Beck, who was posing as his sister. Robinson’s gut told him these two grifters had turned their con game into a deadly affair and were associated with more than a dozen fatal incidents.

  In a cleaned-out rental on Long Island traced to Fernandez, they finally found evidence of murder: Apparently, the killers didn’t realize just how much blood can seep into floorboard cracks. Clearly, a body had been there. The cops suspected that the missing Janet Fay, 66, had been killed. However, Beck and Fernadez had absconded.

  Fernandez had corresponded with a forty-one-year-old widow in Grand Rapids, Delphine Downing, the mother of a two-year-old girl, Rainelle. He’d presented himself as Charles Martin, a successful businessman who loved kids. By letter, when Fernandez told Delphine he was traveling to her area on business, she was happy to invite him to her home on Byron Center Road in Wyoming Township. He arrived in January 1949 with his “sister.”

  Fernandez knew exactly how to play this single mother. He was courteous to her and deferential to her child. Soon, he’d moved in as Delphine’s lover. Beck wasn’t happy about this development, but she bided her time. When Delphine caught Fernandez without his toupee, she was shocked. She claimed he’d deceived her. Beck stepped in and convinced Delphine to take some sleeping pills to calm herself down.

  While Delphine was unconscious, Rainelle began to cry. Beck grabbed the child and choked her. The bruises were obvious on the girl’s neck. The grifters had reached a turning point. They couldn’t let Delphine awaken and see what Beck had done. Fernandez got a handgun and shot the sleeping Delphine in the head. Then they wrapped her body in sheets and carried it to the basement. They dug a hole, placed the body inside, and covered it with cement.

  Beck and Fernandez remained in the house to look for valuables. Rainelle cried incessantly, so Beck, a mother herself who’d abandoned her kids, drowned the child in a metal tub. Fernandez buried her in the basement.

  Oddly enough, they went to the movies. During this time, suspicious neighbors called the police to go check on Delphine’s welfare. Officers were dispatched just as Beck and Fernandez arrived home to pack up their stuff. Rather than leaving the state as they’d expected, they were placed under arrest. Fernandez confessed in the hope of remaining in Michigan, where there was no death penalty. However, they were both extradited to New York to be tried for the murder of Janet Fay. Their trial, which detailed their various sexual perversities, became a sensational proceeding.

  Beck and Fernandez were convicted, largely due to Fernandez’s 73-page confession (which he had tried to recant), and both went to the electric chair on the same day in March 1951. They were suspected in up to 20 murders.

  FIRST STEP ON A DARK ROAD

  HENRY LEE LUCAS WOULD GAIN FAME DURING THE 1980S FOR HIS CONFESSION to hundreds of murders. When he later recanted, he said he’d been just “funning” with law enforcement. "I set out to break and corrupt any law enforcement officer I could get,” he said. “I think I did a pretty good job."

  Officers from 19 states had closed their cases, based on Lucas’s details. He’d partnered with the notorious Ottis Toole, who seems to have been the man who killed Adam Walsh, which launched the popular TV series, America’s Most Wanted. Together from their prison cell in two different states, they made wild and disgusting claims about their life as wanderers. For Lucas, his career in murder had started in Michigan.

  Lucas was born in 1936 in the backwoods of Virginia to a woman named Viola, a half-Chippewa prostitute and bootlegger who got mean when she drank. Lucas said that she’d dress him up as a little girl, which humiliated him. When he was five, Viola struck him in the head with a board, knocking him out and producing a series of headaches, dizzy spells, and blackouts. Lucas also took a knife wound to his left eye, and eventually he got a glass eye that left him with a drooping eyelid. Not surprisingly, he became sullen and withdrawn.

  On June 12, 1952, Lucas burglarized an appliance store and was sent to a reformatory for two years. Upon release, he committed a felony and got four years at the Virginia State Penitentiary. He escaped, stole a car and made his way to Michigan, where he was arrested and returned to prison. When he was released, he went to live with his half-sister in Tecumseh. Then Viola came for a fateful visit. She was 74 at the time.

  On January 11, 1960, after drinking too much, Lucas and Viola got into an argument, supposedly over a woman Lucas wanted to marry. He grabbed a knife and plunged it into Viola’s neck. (He remembered only that he knocked her around and she had a heart attack, but then he saw the knife in his hand and the wound on her body.) Lucas was arrested, convicted of second-degree murder and sent to the state prison in southern Michigan. There he tried to commit suicide and was transferred to a forensic psychiatric hospital.

  For his mother’s murder, Lucas served half of a
twenty-year sentence. Yet as soon as he was released, he tried to kidnap two girls. Arrested again, he returned to prison for another three and a half years. Once he was out, he moved to Pennsylvania. Soon, the one-eyed killer started to travel. In Florida, he took up with Ottis Toole and they roamed cross-country together.

  In Texas in 1983, Lucas was jailed for illegal possession of a weapon. He told a jailer that he'd done some “bad things,” and began to confess … and confess. At first the police believed him, but as his death toll climbed to some 600 victims in nearly every state and in Canada, it began to seem like he was just a compulsive confessor. Nevertheless, he did point to places where police did find victims.

  Lucas was convicted of several Texas murders, and for one he received the death penalty. Eventually, when it was proven that he could not have killed this victim, his sentence was commuted to life, and he died in prison.

  THE TIDE GOES OUT

  IT WAS JUNE IN 1968 WHEN RICHARD ROBISON SET OUT with his family for their log cabin retreat, Summerset, near Lake Michigan’s dunes in the northwest part of the state. I went to that area many times as a kid, walking the beach and picking up the distinct “Petoskey stones” for my grandmother’s collection. I might have even passed by the Robison kids at some point doing the same thing on the same beach, as they’d come to this cottage every summer for twelve years.

  I first heard of this case in association with John Norman Collins (see story above), when there was speculation that he might have been involved. Then I read When Evil Came to Good Hart, by Mardi Link. It was such a spooky story that I had to include it in this collection. Nothing about that idyllic place would have suggested the possibility for such cold-blooded brutality.

  The Robisons had told friends and relatives that they’d spend the summer months in Good Hart, in their cabin a couple of miles north. Robison worked in advertising and published a cultural arts magazine, Impresario. His wife, Sarah, was a homemaker, and their children ranged in age from 7 to 19. The oldest was a student at Eastern Michigan University, but he’d wanted to join them at the cottage as well. They knew they’d be isolated, but that’s what they wanted: a nice, relaxing summer up north.

  They took the narrow drive off M-119 into the woods. A few people saw them on June 24, when they went shopping for supplies, and someone doing work for them saw them on the 25th. No one recalled seeing them after that. Yet no one personally checked on their welfare, either. There were no cellphones or Internet connections. Even long distance calling was used sparingly.

  But some residents who lived in the area of their cottage complained of a foul odor, especially when the wind blew a certain way. Many believed that a dead animal had crawled under the Robison cottage, and they couldn’t understand why no one did anything about it.

  On the sweaty afternoon of July 22, caretaker Chauncey Bliss and his assistant went to check. They approached the Robison home and knocked. No one answered. He knew that the Robisons had been planning an extended trip, so he didn’t worry about that. Curtains prevented them from seeing inside and the doors were locked. An outside leather latch on the front door had been pulled inside and the lakeside door was padlocked. Two cars covered in pollen were parked there, and flies crawled on the log walls. Something was definitely wrong here.

  Bliss pried open the door to get in. Stale air blasted them. Now the smell was overwhelming. So were the flies. The house was full of them. He spotted what looked like a female leg under a rug, then a body in the hall, and backed out.

  The police arrived when he called. It was much worse than anyone had anticipated. They had to strap on gas masks to go through the rooms and break a few windows to let in fresh air and drive out the flies. Dead flies littered the floors. Someone, perhaps Robison himself, had slaughtered the entire family. But his body was among the others, so the first thought was a murder-suicide. A note written on a paper towel and stuck to an east-facing window said, “Will be back 7-10. Robison.” Next to it were three bullet holes.

  Three bodies blocked the hallway. Robison lay on a hot air register. His son Randall, 12, was on top of him, covered with a rug. Young Susan, 7, lay nearby. Richard, Jr., 19, was sprawled in a doorway, and his younger brother Gary, 17, was in a bedroom. Playing cards were scattered, as if he’d been shot in the midst of a game. A plaid blanket covered Shirley, 40, who lay face down in the living room, with legs spread in a posture that suggested sexual assault. Her dress was pulled up and her underwear, sliced with a knife, was pulled to her ankles. All of the victims had been shot, but Susan had been bludgeoned with a hammer. Casings were found from .22 and .25 caliber weapons. Bloody drag marks showed that some of the bodies had been moved, and there were bloody footprints – good for evidence.

  The bullet holes in the windows suggested that someone had shot from outside first and then entered the home to finish the job. Furniture was overturned, but there was no evidence of forced entry. Perhaps the doors had not been locked.

  The sheriff was on vacation, and the inexperienced under-sheriff wiped things clean and allowed the crime scene to be trampled by numerous people before the evidence unit arrived. He seemed unaware of the need to preserve evidence. He even wiped the hammer clean that had been used on Susan. (There’s actually a photo of him doing it.)

  They called Emmet County Prosecutor W. Richard Smith to the scene. Later to reporters he would say, "I lasted in there maybe two or three minutes. I was just covered with flies, and the stench was unbelievable."

  They all knew that if this was some outside killer, he (or they) had a very long head start. These bodies were badly decomposed, thanks to being enclosed for almost four weeks during the summer. But breaking the windows had let in the air. This had helped, but it would also affect the bodies. Officers were posted to watch the scene overnight.

  Then something bizarre happened. On-site deputies noticed plumes of smoke coming out the broken windows. Had someone started a fire? They rushed in to extinguish it. But they discovered that the cooler night temperatures had kicked on the gas heater. Robison’s decomposed body, lying on the vent, was breaking apart and falling onto the furnace below.

  NEWS OF THE MASSACRE SPREAD FAST. People in the community feared that a deranged killer was loose among them. Who would slaughter an entire family?

  The 15 shell casings found in and around the house were from two different guns, a rifle and a handgun. The autopsies found that all had been executed with shots to the head, and Susan had been bludgeoned. Richard was shot three times. Shirley’s diamond ring was missing, but watches and billfolds with money were not taken. Shirley had been raped, and three pubic hairs were collected.

  The investigation hit plenty of dead-ends until it appeared that Robison’s business practices were not altogether above-board. In fact, Robison was both secretive and duplicitous. Some associates called him schizophrenic. He seemed to have been the focus of the massacre. A 1970 Detroit Free Press story revealed that Robison's company had overcharged a significant client, Delta Faucet, for ads. The article stated that just prior to the massacre, Impresario's circulation and number of pages increased substantially. Apparently, this was a deception to make companies believe it was a better place for ads than it really was.

  Investigators questioned Robison's business associate, Joseph Scolaro III. A former military sharpshooter, he knew how to use a gun. He said he had an alibi for the day the Robisons had disappeared. Yet his story was complicated and could not be corroborated. Officers who questioned him believed he was hiding something, especially when he contradicted himself several times. Scolaro also failed three lie detector tests and he’d argued over the phone with Robison on June 25. In addition, he could not account for eleven hours of that time frame. His shoe fit a clear bloody shoeprint found in the house, although the shoe they tested had never been worn. Still, Scolaro’s habit was to purchase duplicates of everything. He could have thrown the matching pair out.

  Worse, he clearly had lied to a couple who’d called him to inq
uire about the Robisons. At this time they were all dead, but Scolaro said he’d heard from them and they were in Kentucky.

  Scolaro also owned a gun like that believed to have been used on the Robison’s, although the one he gave police didn’t match the spent casings. Yet on February 2 that year, he’d purchased two similar .25 caliber Berettas. He claimed he’d given the other one away. Some of the cartridges from the scene were SAKO, a rare 1968 Finnish brand sold in Michigan only in January and February 1968. Scolaro had been one of the few purchasers.

  On a hunch, police went to where Scolaro liked to target shoot and used metal detectors to pick up shell casings there. They got a match to the cartridges from the scene. The circumstances were against Scolaro, but the case was not definitive. Scolaro could not be charged.

  In 1973, Scolaro wrote a suicide note admitting that he was a liar, thief and fraud but insisting on his innocence in the Robison homicides. Then he fatally shot himself. He’d been embezzling from the business, so he had a motive to want Robison dead. But why would he kill the entire family?

  Among other suspects in this case were the caretaker who discovered the bodies, organized crime, and presumed serial killer John Norman Collins, who liked to ski in the area and who had some acquaintance from the university with the eldest son.

  Eventually, DNA technology allowed testing of pubic hair strands found on Shirley Robison. However, the samples were too deteriorated to provide conclusive results.

  THE ANN ARBOR HOSPITAL MURDERS

  THE ANN ARBOR VENTERANS ADMINISTRATON HOSPITAL (VAH) is located on the edge of the north campus of the University of Michigan. During a six-week period in the summer of 1975, there was a sudden spike of patients experiencing Code 7 breathing failures. As the incidents increased, the staff became alarmed. Some of the patients died.