Still Chasing the Blue Gremlin

I was heartened to see that Fox 2 Detroit produced a short documentary marking the 50th anniversary of the Oakland County Child Killer case, which left an indelible mark on me as a child growing up in the area.

Sadly, despite all the technological advances in crime solving over the past five decades, it doesn't sound like investigators are any closer to solving the case. DNA is obviously how most cold cases are solved these days -- and the two male victims were both sexually assaulted. But I'm just now learning that rape kits weren't introduced in Detroit until the late 1970s or early 1980s, which may explain why this case could remain unsolved forever, because surely a familial search would have been conducted by now if they had any usable biological evidence.

As it stands, a few strands of hair without the roots are all investigators seem to be working with, and they were reportedly too few or too degraded for testing using Bode Technology's proprietary DNA X-traction process, which can sometimes generate nuclear DNA profiles from single rootless hairs. For now, we continue to hope someone comes forward. 

Have a look and let me know what you think. This North Fox Island angle -- which was not something I knew about back when -- is truly horrifying. 

P.S. I've also recently learned that the blue AMC Gremlin was eventually ruled out back in the day, which is perhaps why they used a Ford Pinto instead! 

Remains of the Day (02/25)

Grub Street: My beloved Donut Pub -- where all drunken nights end -- is expanding after 50 years

Instagram: Grigor Dimitrov looking like a million bucks at the Vanity Fair Oscars party

Towleroad: Former campaign staffer accuses Trump of forced kiss in 2016

The Washington Post: 58 former senior national security officials speak out on Trump's imaginary national emergency, but it won't do any good

Baseline: How will Roger Federer fair on clay in 2019? (You vote!)

Back2Stonewall: Actor Richard E. Grant dedicates Indie Spirit Award to AIDS victims

ICYMI: "Don't Talk to Strangers," a podcast about the Oakland County Child Killer, is streaming now

The Daily News: R. Kelly pleads not guilty during court appearance, remains jailed as supporters try to come up with $100,000 bail for sex abuse charges

Instagram: Disgraced GOP Rep. Aaron Schock's beard and sexy chest traveled to India

Gr8er Days: Beverley Owen, the first Marilyn Munster, dies at 81

The Randy Report: A Los Angeles news anchor's death was ruled a drug overdose by two meth rocks up his ass during a hookup in a Days Inn

Raw Story: Dementia is a very sad disease

Boy Culture: Jackie Shane, trans soul pioneer, dies at 78

Greg in Hollywood: I'm not the only one perving on sexy Serb Laslo Djere

The New York Times: Inside a thriving sex trafficking trade in Florida: "The monsters are the men"

OMG Blog: Only click if you're interested in seeing Mark Duplass full-frontal naked

Dlisted: Ryan Murphy announces his next series for Netflix, and it sounds like fans of Old Hollywood will love it

Instinct: "Survivor" alum Michael Yerger can't keep his hands off himself (and who can blame him?)

Hot Cat of the Day: You won't believe Boco, the gold-hearted savior cat! 

Still Chasing the Blue Gremlin

Finished watching “Children of the Snow,” a new four-part documentary about the Oakland County Child Killer, a case that haunted my childhood growing up in the suburbs of Detroit. (I wrote about it at length in Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? A Memoir.)

Investigation Discovery did a good job. The first two hours are completely riveting -- so much of it felt like being taken back to my early youth, when I foolishly fantasized about being kidnapped by the serial killer (believed to drive a blue AMC Gremlin) so kids at my new school would like me more.

Then it gets a little weighed down by a stream of potential suspects and confusing peripheral players -- the vile underworld of child-pornography production likely played an underestimated role in the killings -- which ultimately gives you a keen sense of what the detectives have been going through these past 40-odd years. (Now that I’ve seen it onscreen, I have a better sense of why Erin Moriarty ended up passing on the case for “48 Hours” after she and I discussed making it happen. The story definitely cannot be told in an hour.)

Kudos to my online buddy J. Reuben Appelman, author of the definitive book on the murders (“The Kill Jar: Obsession, Descent, and a Hunt for Detroit's Most Notorious Serial Killer), who wonderfully guides us through the whole sad affair. (Reuben has his own connection to the case -- he believes the predator tried to pull him into a car.)

Definitely worth checking out. The Oakland County Child Killer is the most disturbing case you've never heard of. More info HERE.

Page 1 Roundup (05/09)

The Daily News: Gov. Cuomo orders special prosecutor to investigate assault allegations against ex-AG Eric Schneiderman

Woman who accused Trump of sexual misconduct wins Democratic nomination for Ohio state legislature

Texas teacher suspended after showing students photo of same-sex fiancée sues school for discrimination

EW: Wait'll you see the ginger hunk playing Prince Harry in the new Lifetime movie

New York Post: Woman details nightmare date with 'repulsive' Schneiderman

The New York Times: Firm tied to Russian oligarch paid Trump lawyer $500,000

Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Arizona State University join forces to help curators of color

Mother Jones: Former CFPB head Richard Cordray beats Dennis Kucinich in Ohio Democratic primary

Don Blankenship lost in West Virginia and it wasn't even close

Towleroad: Colton Haynes files for divorce from Jeff Leatham

The Washington Post: [Trump's decision to abandon the Iran nuclear agreement] is deeply uninformed, utterly illogical, inimical to the interests of the United States, taken for the pettiest of personal reasons and done with absolutely no plan for what to do next. In other words, it’s pure Trump," Paul Waldman writes in Opinion

And the most disturbing thing about this is that despite dating back to the 1970s, it's not even related to the Oakland County Child Killer who terrorized the Detroit area when I was in elementary school and was never caught

Los Angeles Times: Millennial makeover: 2 'EastSiders' update their Silver Lake apartment

We Are Flagrant: Drew Droege on being a male actress, impersonating Betty White, and why you need to watch 'Heathers'

GQ: The Met Gala's best menswear looks

The Wall Street Journal: Life on the receiving end of 2,500 often profanity-laced tweets a day from angry commuters venting to @MTA can be intense

Pedro Hernandez Found Guilty of Killing Etan Patz

I've been following this case since I was 11 years old -- my family had just moved to Arizona from a city where a serial child killer remained uncaught when Etan's disappearance made national news in May 1979 -- so you would think I would be overjoyed that someone has finally been convicted of killing this child who will forever be an adorable 6-year-old boy in our minds. But with zero physical evidence and only the confession of a mentally ill, IQ-challenged man, I have a sad feeling this may not have solved the case at all. Read HERE.

Father of Oakland County Child Killer Victim Starts Social-Media Campaign to Kickstart Investigation

For those of you familiar with the Oakland County Child Killer case that haunted my childhood, wanted to bring to your attention a blog and other social media outlets started by Barry King, whose son Timothy was the last victim. Called A Father's Story, the blog is HERE, the Facebook page is HERE and the Twitter feed is HERE. (I'm even learning from this effort -- did you know cops actually believed a dark-colored Pontiac LeMans was involved in the crimes, not a blue Gremlin, yet never seemed to follow up on this?) Mr. King's wish before he leaves the planet is for someone to be held accountable for these heinous crimes. Please spread the word -- someone has got to know something. 

The Blue Gremlin Rides Again!

Did Chapter 3 of "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?" finally get greenlighted for TV?!!!

New DNA Match in the Oakland County Child Killer Case

A DNA match brings new hope to solving the case of the Oakland County Child Killer, who haunted my elementary-school years in suburban Detroit in the mid-1970s. Watch this well-produced video that accompanies the update HERE.

Murder(s), He Wrote

I don't believe in psychics, ESP or anything like that, but I can't tell you how many times strange coincidences have occurred related to the Oakland County Child Killer, the Blue Gremlin-driving serial killer who was on the loose near my home in Madison Heights, Michigan, when I was a boy in the late 1970s. (See HERE.)

Dean Corll: The most horrible person you've never heard of You see, I spent this morning reading a horrifying article in the Texas Monthly a friend sent me about Dean Corll (aka "The Candy Man"), a nearly forgotten serial killer who sexually tortured and murdered at least 28 young boys in the Heights section of Houston in the 1970s. (I "follow" this kind of stuff and I'd never even heard of him. Read Skip Hollandsworth's heartbreaking piece HERE.)

 

Not sure why I read it today -- my pal had sent it to me weeks ago -- but the second I finished it, I clicked on my email to find my friend Mark had forwarded me a tweet from ThatKevinSmith with a link to a KickStarter campaign to fund ... a new book about the Oakland County Child Killer. (I'm sorry, but that sent a chill down my spine.) In writing "Murder City Shakedown: A Cold Case Memoir." J. Reuben Appelman has made it his mission to solve this sickening crime that left at least four children dead, destroyed countless families and terrorized an entire community. He explains why: My memory of the O.C.C.K. era is anchored by an abduction attempt on me. I was seven years old during the winter of 1977, when I eluded a "snatch and grab" halfway between a local pharmacy and my home. The O.C.C.K. task force was fully operable at the time, ransacking the streets for information. I ran from my would-be abductor, hid in a woods for the afternoon, then went home and told no one. As an adult, I became haunted by what might have awaited me in captivity. I am not a journalist, nor memoirist, by nature. My obsessions related the O.C.C.K. murders have compelled me to find closure to both the criminal aspects of the case, and to the equally haunting psychological aspects I, and the environs of Detroit, have inherited in the wake of these crimes.

 

Absolutely cannot wait for this one -- how did I not write it already?! -- as I'm not aware of any books on the subject, and missed the E! Investigates episode about it. Although it's been 35 years, this case finally has some momentum building. Just last month, the first DNA match of any kind in the case was made and it, in a round about way, links back to Christopher Busch, the convicted child molester who committed suicide right after the killings stopped. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that I would hear about this book the same day I was revisiting those old fears while reading about the Candy Man murders, though, as the O.C.C.K. is never really that far from my mind. (Just look at those kids.) For more information about "Murder City Shakedown," click HERE.

Blue Gremlin

When I was in little boy growing up in the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights, Michigan, there was a serial child killer on the loose. Known as the Oakland County Child Killer (and sometimes Oakland County Child Molester), all of Hiller Elementary lived in absolute terror for years as this lunatic managed to lure kids into his grip, seemingly in broad daylight in crowded areas. Was he a clergyman? A police officer? Everyone wondered how he could abduct so many children without anyone noticing. Each week we'd have a new DON'T GO WITH STRANGERS seminar, with filmstrips and corresponding badges and handouts. While most of the kids trembled at the mere mention of the subject, I found myself completely intrigued, often engaging my teachers in lengthy discussions about the case. Not a lot happened in my neck of the woods, so a real-life serial killer felt more like watching a scary movie than something to be really afraid of.

It didn't help calm my imagination much that the killer reportedly drove a blue AMC Gremlin with a white racing stripe -- exactly like my former second-grade teacher's car. Miss Blackburn was kind of a man -- what else might she be hiding? I can still remember cutting out all of the articles from the Oakland Tribune and the Detroit Free Press, and studying the profiles of the killer's numerous victims, kids whose lives appeared to be just like mine. Even while relaying this story to my co-worker, I could still readily recall some 30 years later several of the children's names -- like Timothy King, Kristine Mihelich, Jill Robinson and Mark Stebbins -- who seemed like they could have been my friends.

The Oakland County Child Killer was known for meticulously "caring" for his victims, whom the police believe were alive with their abductor for a few days before the end. When Timothy King's mom went on television and mentioned that she looked forward to his safe return so she could get him his favorite dinner, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the medical examiner later determined that Timmy had chicken in his stomach at the time of his death. His victims were always bathed and dressed, with manicured fingernails. For this reason he was sometimes called The Babysitter, although having cared for children in my early teens this name seemed rather odd as I doubt killing the children – although frequently tempting given how bratty most of my “clients” were -- would have been acceptable to anyone.


So while all the normal kids were busy being afraid of the killer, with the mere sight of a blue Gremlin driving past the playground sending children running and screaming in a panic, I spent a huge part of my time fantasizing that he would abduct me. Having seen Linda Blair's tour de force performance in the classic made-for-television movie "Sweet Hostage" a couple years earlier, I knew that the best way to deal with a deranged kidnapper was to befriend him. (Admittedly she f**ked her way into the good graces of her abductor, played by a young Martin Sheen, but you get the idea.) And then once I had the Oakland County Child Killer’s trust, I would be shrewd and clever enough to escape and then quickly race to the authorities to get him arrested, putting an end to this monster's reign of terror. Talk about glamorous! I couldn't wait to be on the news -- or maybe even "Good Morning America" with Nancy Dussault and David Hartman -- and be lauded as a hero. I used to practice what I'd say talking into my mom's Goody hair brush, always giving answers that made me seem brave but never cocky about my actions. (Why did you do it, Kenny? "It was just something I felt I had to do." Were you scared at all, Kenny? I was only scared that this monster would remain free to harm other children.")

Despite my hours of planning, though, there was still one thing standing in the way of me and my heroic effort. Although the killer was definitely in the area, he never bothered to venture into Madison Heights to find his victims. All of that changed one night in early 1977 when my mom and stepdad happened to ask me if I wanted to go to the movies with them. At first when they said they were headed to see the remake of "King Kong" I wasn't very excited, until they mentioned that they were seeing it at the Berkley Theatre. In an instant a plan was hatched in my mind: The Berkley was on 12 Mile and Robina -- just a few blocks from the 7-11 on 12 Mile and Oakshire where Kristine Mihelich had been abducted earlier that month. If the killer wouldn't come to me, I thought, I'll go to him. My stomach was filled with butterflies as we drove to the theater in my stepdad's black Malibu Classic, my anticipation nearly unbearable. As we approached the theater I quickly scoured the parking lot and adjoining streets looking for his blue Gremlin, but saw nothing. Inside the show I panned the crowd looking for anyone suspicious. I was 9 years old, but I felt like I was a mature 12 and I knew what needed to be done. During the film I discreetly excused myself to use the bathroom -- alone -- in the hope that I would find him and he would make his move. Those other kids may not have known what was going on, but I did. And now it was time for him to pay for his crimes. Outside the auditorium, the bathroom and lobby were empty but for an usher or two, and much to my dismay getting abducted was not in the cards that night -- or any other. Instead I watched a crappy movie with my parents, which in turn led to the beginning of my long-term love affair with Jessica Lange.

By the end of 1977 four kids were thought to be definite victims of the Oakland County Child Killer, and at least four others were strongly suspected. But by the time my family moved to Phoenix in early 1979 the killings had long since stopped, and no arrests were ever made. So here I was with a fellow true-crime-junkie co-worker pal the other day telling him this story when naturally I Googled the topic to see if anything had happened since I'd last looked at some microfiche while working at The Orange County Register in the early 1990s. Suddenly, there it was: to my complete and utter shock an arrest had been made in Ohio and that very week a guy named Ted Lamborgine opted to plead guilty to 15 sex-related charges involving boys during the 1970s instead of accepting a plea bargain that would have allowed him to only plead guilty to just two charges -- on the condition that he agree to take a polygraph test regarding the unsolved Oakland County Child Killer cases. (I got chills when I read this.) When Lamborgine chose a guaranteed life in prison over this sweetheart-if-you’re-innocent deal, the prosecutor Robert Moran was quoted as saying, "I can’t in my wildest dreams imagine why he wouldn't cooperate."

Although it's unlikely anyone will ever be tried for the heinous crimes that brought my old neighborhood to its knees, it appears that we may finally know who the Oakland County Child Killer is, and that he is safely behind bars for life. I'm very happy for the victims' families that this day has finally come, although I would be lying if I didn't say that I wish he had been caught back in his heyday, and in a high-profile way. The monster in the blue Gremlin didn't deserve to live freely for another 30 years, and for that the junior detective in me will never forgive myself. (Detnews)

*(I was so obsessed with "Sweet Hostage," in fact, that I had written a similar treatment of my own that my Jody doll used to act out: sadly, the cleverly titled "Let Me Go" starring Jennifer Michaels never even made it into pre-production.)

UPDATE 12/28/10: The Detroit News reports that Christopher Busch, a pedophile who was convicted four times of rape with a minor, along with a companion, Gregory Greene is, are considered extremely viable suspects in the Oakland County killings. Busch committed suicide in November 1978 and Greene died of a heart attack in prison in 1995 when he as 45. Read the compelling case against them HERE.

UPDATE 05/18/11: The first DNA link of any kind was announced, which links James Vincent Gunnels to one of the victims. Gunnels was a sexual victim of Christopher Busch's, and police believe he may have been used to lure some of the OCCK victims in. Read details HERE.

UPDATE 01/27/12: More damning evidence against Christopher Busch. Look at his bedroom after he committed suicide. Grand juries have convened in Wayne and Oakland County. Read HERE.

According to DNA tests conducted in 2012, samples of hair belonging to an unknown person were found on the seat of Archibald "Ed" Sloan's 1966 Pontiac Bonneville and bodies of victims Mark Stebbins and Timothy King. The samples are one of the first pieces of concrete evidence linking two of the murders. The samples, however, exonerated most of the current suspects. DNA tests also confirmed that white hair from the same dog were found on all four victims. (Via Wikipedia)