{"id":157694,"date":"2026-01-31T05:45:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T05:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/157694\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T05:45:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T05:45:17","slug":"more-than-60-years-after-being-convicted-of-fatally-beating-oakland-county-child-with-hammer-killer-resentenced-to-life-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/157694\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 60 years after being convicted of fatally beating Oakland County child with hammer, killer resentenced to life in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who who murdered an Oakland County child more than six decades ago when he was 20 years old was resentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.<\/p>\n

James Gilbert Gostlin, 83, was convicted of killing 11-year-old Shirley Husted with a claw hammer after breaking into her home in Novi Township on Dec. 20, 1962. Court records show he broke in to steal a rifle and car in an attempt to flee from his brother who accused him of sexually assaulting a child.<\/p>\n

\"inmate\"James Gostlin (2025 MDOC photo)<\/p>\n

Shirley was murdered when she came to the aid of her father who was being attacked by Gostlin, his former co-worker at Edgewater Amusement Park in Detroit. He then kidnapped and sexually assaulted Shirley\u2019s mother before dropping her off and then turned himself in at the Dearborn Police Department. He handed over a broken, bloody claw hammer to officers, saying he had just killed two people, believing Wesley Husted was also dead, court records show.<\/p>\n

\"child\"Murder victim Shirley Husted (photo shared by family)<\/p>\n

The resentencing was in accordance with Michigan Supreme Court rulings that mandatory life sentences \u2014 issued to Gostlin in 1963 \u2014 are unconstitutional for those who were 20 or younger when they committed first-degree murder.<\/p>\n

Gostlin was resentenced by Oakland County Circuit Judge David Cohen during a hearing conducted via Zoom.<\/p>\n

The Oakland County Prosecutor\u2019s Office said it\u2019s \u201creviewing all life without parole sentences for offenders who were 20 years or younger and only asking courts to consider life sentences in the most egregious cases.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who who murdered an Oakland County child more than six decades ago when he was 20…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,77028,77026,143,77027,25791,145,144,52608],"class_list":["post-157694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-homicide","tag-judge-david-cohen","tag-juvenile-lifers","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-county-child-killed","tag-oakland-county-circuit-court","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-resentencing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}