The Snow Killings: Inside the Oakland County Child Killer Investigation

by Marney Rich Keenan, Carrington MacDuffie (Read by)

Overview

Over 13 months in 1976­-1977, four children were abducted in the Detroit suburbs, each of them held for days before their still-warm bodies were dumped in the snow near public roadsides. The Oakland County Child Murders spawned panic across southeast Michigan, triggering the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history. Yet after less than two years, the task force created to find the killer was shut down without naming a suspect. The case "went cold" for more than 30 years, until a chance discovery by one victim's family pointed to the son of a wealthy General Motors executive: Christopher Brian Busch, a convicted pedophile, was freed weeks before the fourth child disappeared. Veteran Detroit News reporter Marney Rich Keenan takes the reader inside the investigation of the still-unsolved murders--seen through the eyes of the lead detective in the case and the family who cracked it open--revealing evidence of a decades-long coverup of malfeasance and obstruction that denied justice for the victims.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781094199399
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	11/10/2020
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Marney Rich Keenan is an award-winning reporter and columnist, recently retired after twenty-six years with The Detroit News. She lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor, recording artist, poet, and spoken-word performer who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook Many Things Invisible. In addition to her narration work, she has released an album of original songs entitled Only an Angel. She has recited and performed her poetry at venues ranging from L.A. coffeehouses to the museums and poetry festivals of the Northwest. She served for several years as poetry editor of the literary journal Square Lake, where she enjoyed discovering and publishing unknown writers alongside of literary notables.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Prologue 1

1 "The Clock Was Ticking" 5

2 The Body of a Young Boy 26

3 A Sinister Confluence of Events 43

4 The Snow Killings 48

5 The Sick Underbelly of the Beast 61

6 Offered Ten Years, He Chose Three Life Sentences 68

7 A One in a Million Conversation 79

8 "This should have been solved thirty-two years ago" 91

9 Suicide or Hit? 105

10 A Request for Witness Protection 117

11 "We don't let the tail wag the dog" 129

12 Brother Paul's Children's Mission 144

13 Busch Is Front Page News 157

14 A Cover-Up and a Red Herring 169

15 No New Evidence 182

16 Obstructing the Investigation 191

17 Sloan, Crosbie and Comrades 199

18 Finally Righting the Ship 208

19 Cooper Goes Rogue 216

20 Trying to Make All the Pieces Fit 224

21 Last Resorts 236

22 No Such Thing as Closure 241

Chapter Notes 253

Bibliography 265

Index 269

Editorial Reviews

Each chapter reads like an in-depth newspaper article, and while the shifting time periods can be confusing, this is a page-turner nonetheless. Readers will ache for the family members of Mark Stebbins, Jill Robinson, Kristine Mihelich, and Timothy King, and be outraged at the incompetent and seemingly petty divisiveness of the investigators. ...A moving, well-crafted narrative for true crime buffs.”—Library Journal

From the Publisher

08/07/2020

Retired Detroit News reporter Keenan has covered the Oakland County, MI, Child Killer Investigation since 2009, when new evidence came to light. In 1976–77, four children were abducted, sexually assaulted, and held for several days before they were murdered and their bodies dumped. While looking into these crimes—still not fully resolved—investigators uncovered a "seemingly endless cesspool of pedophiles" that led to a large pool of suspects. Cory Williams of the Livonia Police Department took up the probe after being assigned a cold case homicide in 2004 that resulted in the discovery of a child pornography ring. Williams and Keenan believe that the most likely suspect was Christopher Busch, the son of a GM executive who successfully kept him out of prison on several child molestation charges. Busch is long dead, having possibly taken his own life; he also likely had several accomplices. Each chapter reads like an in-depth newspaper article, and while the shifting time periods can be confusing, this is a page-turner nonetheless. Readers will ache for the family members of Mark Stebbins, Jill Robinson, Kristine Mihelich, and Timothy King, and be outraged at the incompetent and seemingly petty divisiveness of the investigators. VERDICT A moving, well-crafted narrative for true crime buffs.—Karen Sandlin Silverman, Mt. Ararat Middle Sch., Topsham, ME

Library Journal