Every Town - He Fed Them, Bathed Them, And Then Killed Them. And Was Never Caught

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Today we’re chasing down a kid killer whose never been caught. And as you’ll find, what investigators uncovered while trying to find him, is somehow even darker than the murders themselves. 🗣 Go to Zocdoc.com/EVERYTOWN to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. 👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://youtu.be/VWrYKFvzZMA 👁 Check out our movie AN ANGRY BOY: https://www.anangryboy.com 💀 MERCH: https://scary-mysteries-merch.dashery.com 💀 Scary Mysteries SECRET VAULT: https://www.patreon.com/c/scarymysteries/collections   🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT⁠ 👁 Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg⁠ 👁 TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald⁠ 👁 Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial⁠ 👁 X: ⁠https://x.com/ScaryMysteries1⁠  🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at ⁠[e-mail]⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Scary Mysteries has officially hit the 1 million subscriber mark here on YouTube, which is a really awesome achievement for us.

Something I definitely didn't think was even possible when starting out 10 years ago. So thank you all very much for being part of this dark little corner of the internet. It's been a fun ride so far. As a way to show my appreciation, we are giving away several items from our Merck shop, including our newest Everytown T-shirt. Plus, one lucky random person will also get a $1,000 gift card sent their way. All you have to do to be entered is be subscribed and hit the like button on this specific video. I will announce the winners next week on our social, so good luck.

I love you guys, even though we've never met. Now, on to the episode. Every town has a dark side. Nearly 50 years since the Oakland County Child Killer murdered four children and terrified an entire community. There's a serial killer out there who has never been given a name you'd recognize. There's no catchy moniker that made national news, and Netflix hasn't made a documentary that cracked the case wide open. What he did get, though, was a nickname from the investigators who spent years trying to catch him,

and they called him the babysitter. And when you hear what he did to four children in the suburbs of Detroit, you'll understand exactly why, and it's morbid. And he didn't just take these kids. He kept them, fed them, bade them, and washed their clothes. And after that, well, he killed them and left their bodies in public places like he was returning something that no longer belonged to him. Hey guys, it's Andrew, and thanks for tuning into every town where today.

We're chasing down a kid killer who's never been caught. And as you'll find, what investigators uncover while trying to find him is somehow even darker than the murders themselves. So, let's head on over to Michigan and dive into the story of the Oakland County Child Killer. There's a specific kind of fear that takes over a place

when children start disappearing. At first, there's denial and people tell themselves there just has to be a logical explanation. A misunderstanding, a runaway, something that makes sense. And so the fear doesn't hit everybody at once.

It creeps in, slow. By the time people finally accept what they're actually dealing with, it's already inside everything. The way they talk at dinner, the way they look at strangers and parking lots, the walls start to close in wondering, well, who might be next? Oakland County, Michigan, 1976. This was a stretch of suburbs sitting just north of Detroit. Back then, these neighborhoods had a particular kind of rhythm to them. That was different than today. There were kids walking at corner stores all by themselves, riding bikes to a friend's house across town,

or stopping at the pharmacy on the way home just because they felt like it. And parents weren't anywhere around, and they certainly weren't hovering over their every move. Because, well, why would they? Everything was good to go. This was the kind of place where you let your 12-year-old walk four blocks home. Nobody thought twice about it. That was just life out here.

Then one day, La Boy didn't make it. His name was Mark Stebbins, 12 years old, and on the afternoon of February 15th and 1976, he'd been at the American Legion Hall in Furndale, not because he'd gone there on his own, but because that's where his mother worked. She was behind the bar, Mark had been hanging around while she finished her shift, the way kids do when there's nowhere else to be. He got bored, though, and asked his mom for her. for some money to go to the hobby shop down the street.

And she said no, because he already had his allowance. But then he asked if he could just walk home and watch TV instead. It was just three quarters of a mile. He'd done it a hundred times before, so she said, sure. Mark, he never made it home. His mom called the police that evening when she got back and he was nowhere in sight. And after that, she just waited. She kept setting his place at the table.

for the next couple days just in case. Like I said, denial creeps into these kinds of stories. She kept holding out hope that any minute she'd hear the door open and there he'd be. Many mother would probably do the same. And for four days, she hoped. On that fourth day, police found Mark's body in the parking lot of an office building in Southfield, two and a half miles from home. He was still wearing the same clothes he'd left in.

His wrist and ankles showed ligature marks. He'd been bound, he'd been strangled, and he'd been assayed. Another day goes by, you know, where you don't wonder and, you know, worry about it, you know, the wise and aware of his, how long he had been dead before his body was found, who it was, where he was, what he had to go through. He hadn't been dead too long, which meant that he'd been held somewhere for four days before he was killed. That last part matters, so remember it, because it's going to matter more and more as this story goes on. For a while, Oakland County treated Mark's death as a tragedy.

A horrific crime, devastating to his family and to everyone who knew him, but still a single event. Almost a year had passed, nothing else happened, so that makes sense. And people will never forget what happened, but at the same time, they were eager to get back to the way things were before. So that's what they did. The life tried to get back to normal. And there was really no way to know yet that the person responsible was already out there somewhere else in those same quiet suburbs,

watching the same streets and waiting. But that's exactly what was happening. And on December 22nd, 1976, just four days before Christmas, while he claimed his next victim. them. Jill Robinson from Royal Oak was also 12 years old. And that night, she and her mom got into an argument over something stupid in hindsight, and that set off a chain of events that would be devastating and irreversible. And Jill had been asked to make biscuits for dinner and refused.

Her mom got frustrated and wanting to instill a little respect into her, told her to leave and come back when she was ready to be part of the family. And Jill ever defied, and she was ever defyce her, took it a step further. She went to her room and packed a bag, some clothes, a blanket, and she left on her bike. The next morning, her bicycle was found abandoned behind a hobby store on Woodward Ave. Her father called police at 1130 that night when she still hadn't come home. Then Christmas Eve came and went, and Christmas Day came and went. And then, the day after Christmas, December 26th, a driver on Interstate 75 and Troy spot her. She thought it was Jill.

Four days it was the day after Christmas. Her body turned up in Troy. She was dead of a shotgun blast of the head. Her body had been left in plain view, visible right from the highway, with inside of a police station, in fact. She still had her backpack on. Her clothes were clean and undisturbed, and she had been shot in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun.

But here's the real disturbing part. The autopsy showed she had been fed and cared for for at least three days before she was killed. Whoever took Jill Robinson and kept her alive and kept her somewhere. Fed her, probably told her they'd let her go if she just cooperated. And then they shot her, left her body where it would be found, like she was a gift being returned after the holidays. That is not a crime of impulse, it's something else. and from there, well, things only escalated.

Just a week into January of 1977, 10-year-old Christine Mihalich left her home in Berkeley to walk to a 7-Eleven on 12-mile road. She wanted to copy a Teen Beat magazine. Her mom, Deborah, had said no at first because 12-mile was a busy road, and Christine would have to cross it alone. But the girl kept bugging her mom, and eventually she gave in. After all, it was just two blocks away, and it was the middle of the day, so what's the worst that could happen? Well, Christine, she never came back from that store. And for 19 days, her family waited. Deborah went on TV repeatedly, pleading for anyone with information to come forward.

Her little sons kept asking when their sister was coming home. The tips came in, searches were conducted, and the entire time people kept talking about the royal Oak Girl and what had happened to her. And then one morning, a male carrier doing his rounds about eight miles away from that 7-Eleven store, noticed something sticking out of the snow on a dead-end road in Franklin Village. It was a small hand, Christine's hand. Her knees were drawn up, her eyes closed, and her body was clean. She was fully clothed. She almost looked peaceful. Oakland County became concerned, fearing it might be an ugly pattern developing. Residents' worst thoughts seemed to be coming true.

When 10-year-old Christine Mihalich never came home from a three-block trip to a party store in Berkeley, within two weeks, she too was found dead, this time in Franklin Village. After the autopsy, it was discovered she had been smothered to death less than 24 hours before she was found, even though she had been missing for nearly three weeks. And so she had been kept alive and cared for the entire time, longer than any of the other kids. So this killer was getting more confident. After Christine, everything changed.

Police from 13 communities came together under Michigan State Police and formed a dedicated task force. Because by now, there was no longer any question. They were looking for a serial killer who was killing kids. The public was warned, and parents kept kids inside. School sent letters home. The suburbs that had always felt safe stopped feeling that way almost overnight.

And still, nobody saw it coming again. Raise your hand if you've been putting off a dental cleaning, an annual physical, or some nagging thing, you keep Googling at 1 a.m. Yep, my hands up too. My doom scroll symptoms, self-diagnose, vent to my wife, and still, don't book a doctor. And this year, I'm doing it differently with Zoc Doc.

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Thanks Zocdoch for sponsoring this message. On March 16th, 1977, 11-year-old Timothy King from Birmingham headed out to the local pharmacy. It was only a few blocks away, so he hopped on his skateboard, cruised on down, and went inside. The store clerk remembered he bought some candy in the house. left, and that was the last normal moment of his life. Six days later on March 22nd, it happened again. The victim this time, Timothy King, age 11 of Birmingham, last seen at a party store three blocks from home, found a few weeks later on a dark roadside in Livonia. All four victims in this case were never dumped close to where they were taken, but never

impossibly far either. Always within the same general corridor, always in public and always arranged. changed. Timothy had been assayed and suffocated approximately six hours before he was found. Like the others, he had also been cleaned and groomed. His clothes were washed, and when investigators went through his autopsy results, they found Timothy had eaten Kentucky fried chicken shortly before he died. Someone had fed him a final meal, a specific meal from a specific restaurant, within just hours of killing him. So four children, all between 10 and 12 years old, all taken from

ordinary moments. A walk home, a bike ride, a trip to the corner store. All held captive for days, sometimes weeks. All have been fed and bathed, and all their clothes had been washed. All of them were left in public places where they'd be found quickly, arranged carefully, as if someone and wanted them discovered. It was almost like they felt some sort of emotion for the victims and didn't want them to be disrespected in death. The boys were essayed, the girls were not, and two were strangled, one was smothered, and one was shot.

The forensic picture that emerged from all of this is not of someone acting out of rage or impulse, but deliberate, patient, terrifying control. Whatever this person was doing with these children during the days and weeks they were held, it wasn't random. Every single part of it was planned. And what followed became the largest murder investigation in U.S. history at that point. Well, than 18,000 tips came in and everyone was checked. Composite sketches went out, white male mid-20s to mid-30s with dark complexion, shaggy hair, and sideburns. A blue AMC gremlin had been spotted near Tim King's abduction. and investigators tracked down and questioned every registered gremlin owner in Oakland County.

The profile that emerged was of someone with freedom of movement, and someone who seemed trustworthy to children, and someone who could hold a kid captive for days without a single neighbor noticing. But still, none of that led anywhere. The task force disbanded in December of 78, and from there, the case went to state police. and four families were left to carry questions that have never been answered and most likely never will be because the Oakland County child killer has never been caught.

And now, here's where this story takes a different turn entirely, because without someone being definitively caught, well, people were left to speculate. And there were some weird things that happened in the days that followed the murders that made things only more complicated. A few weeks after Tim King's body was found, a task force psychiatrist received an anonymous letter. It was handwritten and riddled with spelling errors, signed only by Alan. Now, Alan claimed to be the sadomasochistic slave of a man named Frank, and he was suggesting that Frank was the killer. He wrote that both of them had served in Vietnam,

that Frank had come back from the war deeply damaged, that the murders in wealthy Oakland County were his way of getting revenge. Against the kind of people he believed had sent young men like him to die in Southeast Asia for nothing at all. Alan even said he had been present during the abductions. He said he was losing his mind and then offered something remarkable. Photographic evidence in exchange for immunity. He had one condition, though. If the psychiatrist wanted to arrange a meeting,

he had to print a specific coded message in the Detroit Free Press. The psychiatrist printed the code, and he arranged the meeting and showed up to the bar. Alan, though, he never came. That letter has never been fully explained. Whoever wrote it either had direct knowledge of these crimes or was someone deeply disturbed, instructing a fantasy out of what they had read in the papers. For decades, investigators couldn't rule out either possibility, and in some ways they still can't.

But the leads that gained the most traction over the years didn't point to a lone disturbed individual, they pointed toward something far more organized and far more sinister. Away up north from Oakland County on North Fox Island and Lake Michigan, a wealthy businessman named Francis Sheldon was running what he called Brother Paul's Nature Center. This place was marketed as a wholesome outdoor experience for young boys. A place where they could learn about how to build a fire, how to fish,

all those wonderful outdoorsy things boys can do at summer camp. It was led by good men wanting to lend a helping hand and teach the next generation about what it takes. But in reality, well, this place was something else. It was essentially what Epstein Island is accused of being, except this was well before that place existed, and it only involved young boys. A men came to the island to photograph and do other things with these kids.

In photographs, just like Alan had mentioned in his letter. The full scope of victims has never been publicly established, but this place ran for two summers, between 1975 and 76, before the heat started coming down on them in 77 as a part of the Oakland County Child Killer case. A former gym teacher named Gerald Richards was the only person. ever charged in connection with what happened on that island. And Francis Sheldon, though, left the country before he could be prosecuted. So gone just like that.

As to how this island in northern Michigan is connected to four murdered children in the suburbs of Detroit, well, that all comes through a man named Christopher Bush. Chris Bush was 26 years old in 1977. His father, Harold Lee Bush, was a senior executive at GM. and Chris had already been convicted of assault crimes against children, four separate charges, in fact, and yet had never spent a single night in jail, not one. According to journalist Marnie Keenan, who spent 26 years investigating this case for the Detroit News, Harold had paid a defense attorney to fly around Michigan in a private plane,

ranging plea deals for his son every single time he was charged. Every single time then, Chris just got probation. His father always posted Bond and Chris Bush walked. So from there he was free to do whatever he pleased, never learning any hard lessons and never getting reformed. And he just so happened to be good friends with none other than Francis Sheldon. And Chris's name, it appeared in client records connected to the island operation. In late January of 77, while Christine Mealich was still missing and Timothy King was still alive,

Chris Bush was brought in for questioning in connection with the Oakland County killings. A top investigator from the task force went to question him personally. And Chris passed a polygraph and then he was released. Just weeks later, Timothy King disappeared. And there's more. Bush had a close friend named Greg Green. by his own history of being inappropriate with kids and convictions for it in California. Under interrogation, Green reportedly told police that Chris had personally murdered Mark Stebbins,

the first victim. Still, though, nothing happened. Nobody was charged. Chris walked away again, and you have to ask yourself why. In November of 78, roughly 20 months after the last Oakland County killing, Chris was found dead in his bedroom from a single gunshot wound of the head, and on aliveing. Inside that room, they found bloodstained ligatures, and pinned to the wall, a hand-drawn pencil sketch of a boy screaming. Mark Stebbins' brother looked at that drawing and said it looked exactly like his brother. The families of the victims were never even told about any of this. Not the drawing, not the bloody ropes. They didn't find out for decades.

When they finally did, while the question started coming fast, why wasn't this treated as significant at the time, and why weren't the families informed? And why did so much of the evidence connected to Bush seem to disappear? Because here's the thing. When investigators eventually went looking for those bloodstained ropes, they were gone, just gone. They were checked into an evidence locker and then never seen again.

In 2012, DNA testing officially cleared Bush as the killer. And his DNA didn't match evidence recovered from the victim, so he didn't do it fine. But that still leaves a whole lot of questions about what he did know, who he was connected to and whether he was involved in some capacity regardless of what the DNA said. And Bush isn't the only name that keeps coming up. Arch Sloan was a man who spent decades targeting young boys in his own. neighborhood in Michigan. And he grew up in Southfield, the exact same city where Mark Stebbin's body was found. This guy became a serious person of interest when forensic analysis

of his 1966 Pontiac Bonneville turned up something very interesting. Hare found in Sloan's 1966, Pontiac Bonneville, has the same mitochondrial DNA profile as hairs found on two of the child killer victims. The hares do not match. Hatch Sloan, but detectives want to know who else may have used Sloan's vehicle. And this is someone whose identity has never been publicly confirmed. Sloan is 84 years old. He's currently serving two life sentences for being inappropriate with a 10-year-old kid. This boy was the son of a co-worker, and Sloan asked if he could take the kid out fishing one day.

That's when the crime went down. And it very much so harkens back to the kind of tactics that went down at Brother Paul. Nature Center. A Sloan failed polygraph test related to the Oakland County killings in both 2010 and 2012, but has never been charged in connection with the murders. So, by the time you layer all this together, Bush, Sloan, Green, the North Fox Island Operation, that letter from Allen, and the bloodstained ropes that disappeared, the drawing on the wall, what you have is not the profile of one lone predator working in isolation.

What you have looks far more like a network. A group of men connected through shared crimes against children, connected through geography, and through a culture of abuse that have been operating in Michigan for years. And somewhere inside that network, four children were killed. And so then where does this all stand 50 years later? Michigan State Police confirms the case is still open. And they say new tips are still coming in

and that evidence is being reevaluated as forensic technology improves. That's all true, but here's what's also true. The families of the victims say MSP hasn't meaningfully contacted them in years. The last real communication was around 2016 or 2017. After that, it's been silence. And DNA should have solved this by now. It really should have. The technology exists and the evidence exists.

That hair recovered from Arch Sloan's car, the hair found on the bodies of two victims. There's a DNA profile built from samples taken from the crime scene, so all of it points to one unknown man. Which means either he was never arrested for anything else in his entire life, and his entire family is never sent in their DNA to look up family trees, or someone has made sure his name has never ended up where it could be found. In two cases have never been officially connected to the Oakland County series, but I've never been fully dismissed either. A 17-year-old named Donna Serra, abducted while hitchhiking in McComb County in 1972, held for days, drugged, strangled, her body found face down in a creek. And a 13-year-old named Jane Allen, who vanished in 1976 while hitchhiking between Pontiac and Royal Oak, found four days later in a river in Ohio.

She had her wrist bound behind her back, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Both cases share too many characteristics with the confirmed murders to ignore. Neither has been officially included in the series, though, and neither has been solved. If the real scope of what happened here goes beyond four victims, if there were more children, more families, more evidence sitting in files that nobody is fully cross-referenced, then what took place in Oakland County between 76 and 77 is even darker than the record currently shows, and the record is already about as dark as it gets. The 50 years have passed, the people who knew what happened are either dead or very old and not talking,

evidence has deteriorated, and some of it, like those blood-stained ropes from Bush's apartment, simply vanished. The suburbs north of Detroit look completely different now. The world looks completely different. And still, not one person has ever been charged with the killing of Mark Stebbins, Jill Robinson, Christine Mealich, or Timothy King. The case is still open. If you know anything at all, Michigan State Police can be reached at 1-855-Mish Tip.

So that's going to do it for this week's episode of Every Town. Appreciate you tuning in. Have you enjoyed watching, and please do take a look around at all the other crazy stories we have in store for you. And for the freshest one, we'll remember to come on back next week for another episode of Everytown, filled with scary, strange and mysterious stories. Because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.