All the Theories About the Oakland County Child Killer<\/p>\n
Some, though, have theorized over the years that detectives have long known who abducted and killed all four kids, but covered up crucial leads that would\u2019ve given up the killer. In her book The Snow Killings: Inside the Oakland County Child Killer Investigation<\/a>, journalist Marney Rich Keenan, who covered the unsolved murders during her 26-year stint with venerated paper The Detroit News, suggests police looked the other way with respect to suspect Christopher Busch<\/a>, a convicted pedophile who died by suicide in 1978<\/a>. Authorities later cleared Busch as a suspect.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe, and my reporting bears this out, that law enforcement covered up these four children\u2019s murders to save face,\u201d Keenan tells A&E Crime + Investigation in an exclusive interview. \u201cIn 1977, Christopher Busch was a 26-year-old four-time convicted pedophile who never spent a night in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n Keenan alleges that Busch\u2019s father H. Lee Busch, a then-General Motors executive who died in 2002<\/a>, \u201cpaid a defense to attorney to fly all around Michigan<\/a> in a privately-owned airplane to arrange plea deals for his for his son.\u201d Michigan State Police documents show that H. Lee posted bond to free Busch in all four of his rape with a minor charges.<\/p>\n \u201cIn all four cases,\u201d Keenan continues, \u201cChris Busch was sentenced to probation. In late January 1977, when Chris Busch was arrested in connection with these child murders, Tim King, the fourth and final victim, was still a 10-year-old freckled baseball player who loved chocolate milk and rarely went anywhere without his skateboard.\u201d<\/p>\n Keenan alleges that Busch learned about Tim through his friend, Greg Greene, who had a history of pedophile convictions in California, according to the Michigan State Police<\/a>. She found out through her investigative work that Greene told police under interrogation, \u201cChris Busch had murdered Mark Stebbins, the first victim in the Oakland County Child Killer case.\u201d<\/p>\n Mark disappeared while making his way home on February 15, 1976. Jill was murdered on December 22, 1976<\/a>; police say she was abducted soon after leaving her parents\u2019 home during an argument with her mom. Kristine was last seen on January 2, 1977\u2014kidnapped as she headed to a local 7-Eleven; her body was found 19 days later.<\/p>\n \u201cBusch was arrested and a top official from the Oakland County Task Force rushed to Flint to interrogate him,\u201d Keenan says. \u201cBut somehow, within hours, Chris Busch passed a polygraph\u201d and was let go.\u201d<\/p>\n Weeks later, Tim King went missing. Timothy left for a pharmacy on March 16, 1977 and was found dead seven days later<\/a>. Then in November 1978, Busch\u2019s brother discovered him dead in his bedroom with a gunshot wound right<\/a> between his eyes. A drawing of a frightened boy being tortured, who police recognized had a likeness to Mark, was found in Busch\u2019s bedroom but not made public until 2011. Police ruled it a suicide, but victims\u2019 families remain unconvinced.<\/p>\n Considering Other Culprits<\/p>\n Investigators also considered Arch Sloan as a suspect in the murders. Prosecutors said a hair from Sloan\u2019s cat matched hairs found on the two male victims, according to WXYZ<\/a>, although the hair did not match Sloan\u2019s<\/a>. Sloan, now 84, is serving two life sentences for first-degree criminal sexual conduct at Gus Harrison Correctional<\/a> in Adrian, Mich.<\/p>\n Keenan thinks Sloan and Busch were associates, and notes that the Detroit area was home to a large multimillion-dollar child prostitution and pornography ring<\/a> in the 1970s. \u201cBoth Sloan and Busch lived in Oakland County and back then, without cell phones or the internet, pedophiles were a tight-knit group,\u201d Keenan says.<\/p>\n In 2011, investigators identified another person of interest in the case in 2011: James Vincent Gunnels<\/a>. A hair recovered from Kristine\u2019s shirt was compared with a sample strand taken from Gunnels\u2014who was 49 at the time\u2014and although it was a DNA match, authorities didn\u2019t have enough interest to arrest Gunnels. However, Gunnels has a history of property and drug crimes<\/a>, as well as an attempted prison escape in 1988. His most recent conviction<\/a> came in 2015 when he was found guilty of manufacturing methamphetamine with intent to distribute, for which he served time until 2023.<\/p>\n How the Case Can Be Solved <\/p>\n Keenan believes the case will eventually be solved through some future advancement in DNA science, especially since there are four victims. \u201c[That means] not just one set of clothing from which to retrieve hairs and semen, but four; not just one autopsy, but four,\u201d she points out. She does acknowledge \u201cDNA should have nailed\u201d the Oakland County Child Killer years ago.<\/p>\n Local news reports from 2011 indicated police had found white canine hairs<\/a> on the clothing of all four victims that came from the same dog. It was also suggested at this time police were exploring the theory two people carried out the horrific murders. Then in 2013, parts of a demolished blue AMC Gremlin<\/a> with a white stripe, similar to the vehicle seen at the scene of Timothy\u2019s kidnappings, were discovered in 2013 by construction workers at a site in Grand Blanc Township<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cSome have pinned their hopes on a deathbed confession, although, over the course of 50 years, all but a handful of people who know the truth about what happened to these four kids are still alive,\u201d Keenan says. \u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t know how they sleep at night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All the Theories About the Oakland County Child Killer Some, though, have theorized over the years that detectives…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-181599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181599","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=181599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}