The Oakland County Child Killer (OCCK) is the name given to the perpetrator(s) responsible for the serial killings of at least four children in Oakland County, Michigan, between 1976 and 1977. The children who were murdered were last seen in the company of a young to middle-aged man with a defined face, sharp nose, and long black hair. The victims were held captive before being killed, and the four deaths triggered a murder investigation, which at the time was the largest in U.S. history, with Detroit's two daily newspapers, as well as the area's numerous radio and television stations, covering the case. A presentation on WXYT radio, titled Winter's Fear: The Children, the Killer, the Search, won the Peabody Award in 1977.
Forensic DNA testing has indirectly implicated two suspects, one of whom has since died, with the other serving life in prison for sexual offenses against children. A DNA profile of the main perpetrator was created from samples taken from some of the victims' bodies but does not match the DNA of anyone named in connection with the case; the perpetrator's identity is unknown.
Background Between February 15, 1976 and March 16, 1977, two boys and two girls aged between 10 and 12 went missing outside their homes, en route to or from another location, in Oakland County, Michigan, north of Detroit. Each child's body was discovered in a public area within nineteen days of his or her disappearance. The children were all either strangled or shot, with the two boys having been sexually abused. Once the victims were dead, the offender dispersed their bodies around Oakland County in places where they could be seen from roadways.
Victims
Confirmed Mark Douglas Stebbins, 12, of Ferndale, did not return home from an American Legion Hall on February 15, 1976. His body was found four days later, wearing the same clothes he was last seen in, lying on a pile of wood and dirt in the parking lot of a local office building in Southfield. He had been strangled and sexually abused with a foreign object and had two lacerations to the left rear of his head. Rope marks were evident on both his wrists and ankles, indicating he had been bound during his captivity.Barfknecht 1993, pp. 123–126 Jill Robinson, 12, of Royal Oak, left her home on December 22, 1976, following an argument with her mother over dinner preparations. The following day, her bicycle was found behind a local hobby store, before her body was found alongside Interstate 75 in Troy, within view of the Troy police station, on the morning of December 26. She had been shot in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun, and her body was fully clothed and wearing the backpack she had taken with her when she left home. Autopsy reports revealed that Robinson had been fed and cared for for at least three days before she was killed.
Kristine Marie Mihelich, 10, of Berkley, was reported missing on January 2, 1977, after she failed to return home from a 7-Eleven store on 12 Mile Road at Oakshire. A mail carrier found her fully clothed body nineteen days later on the side of a rural road in Franklin Village. She had been smothered to death less than 24 hours earlier, and her body lay within view of nearby homes. Timothy John King, 11, left his home in Birmingham and went to a pharmacy on the evening of March 16, 1977. After he failed to return home, an intensive search covering the entire Detroit metropolitan area was conducted before his body was found on the evening of March 22 by two teenagers in a shallow ditch alongside Gill Road in Livonia. He had been sexually assaulted with a foreign object and suffocated approximately six hours earlier. Autopsy results revealed that King had eaten Kentucky Fried Chicken shortly before his death and that he was cleaned and groomed prior to his suffocation.
Suspected 17-year-old Donna Serra went missing after hitchhiking to a beach after school in Macomb County, Michigan, on September 29, 1972. Serra's body was discovered face down in a shallow creek on October 20, 1972, in her hometown of Ray Township in Macomb County, close to 27 Mile Road. Before she was killed, Serra had been imprisoned and drugged for several days. Her death was due to strangulation. Her murder remains unsolved. 13-year-old Jane Louise "Janey" Allan went missing on August 8, 1976, and was last seen hitchhiking between Pontiac and Royal Oak in Oakland County, Michigan. Allan was found dead floating in a river in Miamisburg, Ohio, on August 11, 1976, four days later, over 200 miles away from her Royal Oak home. Her wrists had been tied behind her back with torn strips of a T-shirt. Decomposition of the body left police unable to determine whether or not Allan had been sexually assaulted, but they were able to ascertain that Allan had been dead before being dumped in the water. She had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Kimberly Alice "Kim" King, 12, disappeared from Warren on September 15, 1979. She had stayed over at a friend's house that night. When she called her sister at 11:00 p.m., she claimed to have snuck out of her friend's house and to be phoning from a nearby outdoor phone booth. Her sister instructed her to return inside. However, Kimberly never went back to her friend's house and has not been seen or heard from since. Authorities believe she was abducted and that her disappearance is connected to the unsolved killings.
Disproved 16-year-old Judy Ferro was found beaten and strangled on January 1, 1976, at Lola Valley Park in Redford, Michigan. She had vanished between midnight and 3 a.m. from the home where she had been babysitting. A Redford Township policeman discovered Ferro's body at 7 a.m., fully dressed. When it was learned that Gary Pervinkler, 19, had left his home the same evening with a gun and his father's automobile, he was identified as a prime suspect. On April 7, 1976, Pervinkler's body was discovered; he had shot himself in the head. The firearm found next to Pervinkler's body matched a bullet casing discovered in the house from where Ferro was abducted. Her case was closed. Cynthia Rae "Cindy" Cadieux, 16, of Roseville, was found bludgeoned to death on January 16, 1976, in Bloomfield Township.McIntyre 1988, p. 11 Cynthia had been abducted while hitchhiking in the 11 Mile area of Roseville, between Gratiot and Grosbeck, on January 14, 1976. Her naked body was found shortly after; she had been tied up, raped, and then beaten to death. In 1979, Robert Anglin and Raymond Heinrich were both convicted of her murder. A third individual, who has not been named, was also involved, but he died before their arrest. Both men were sentenced to life in prison. Sheila Srock, 14, was raped and shot dead while babysitting in Birmingham, Michigan, on January 20, 1976. While shoveling the snow off his roof, a neighbor had witnessed her killer, Oliver Rhodes Andrews, as he burglarized homes in the neighborhood.McIntyre 1988, p. 12 Andrews was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Investigation
After the discovery of Mihelich's body, authorities noticed similarities shared by her case and those of Stebbins and Robinson, and reports were released warning the public that a serial killer was possibly operating in the Oakland County area. The Michigan State Police led a group of law-enforcement officials from thirteen communities in the formation of a task force devoted solely to the investigation into the killings of the three children.
After King disappeared, a woman told authorities that she had seen a boy with a skateboard (like King) talking to a man in the parking lot of the pharmacy that he visited on March 16, 1977. Authorities released a composite drawing of the suspected kidnapper and the blue AMC Gremlin parked near him in the lot, and authorities questioned every Gremlin owner in Oakland County. Investigators created a profile based on witnesses' descriptions of the man seen talking to King—a white male aged between 25 and 35 with a dark complexion, shaggy hair, and sideburns, who had a job that gave him freedom of movement and made him appear trustworthy to children, was familiar with the area, and could keep children captive for long periods of time without rousing neighbors' suspicions.
The task force checked more than 18,000 tips, which resulted in about two dozen arrests on unrelated charges and the discovery of a multi-state child pornography ring named "Brother Paul's Children's Mission" operating on North Fox Island in Lake Michigan. The task force was unable to make much headway in the investigation, disbanding in December 1978, with the investigation being turned over to the State Police.
Suspects and persons of interest A few weeks after King's murder, a psychiatrist who worked with the task force received a letter, riddled with spelling errors, written by an anonymous author ("Allen") claiming to be a sadomasochistic slave of the killer ("Frank"). "Allen" wrote that they had both served in the Vietnam War, that "Frank" was traumatized by having killed children, and that "Frank" had taken revenge on more affluent citizens, such as the residents of Birmingham, for sending forces to Vietnam. "Allen" expressed fear and remorse in his letter, saying he was losing his sanity and was endangered and suicidal, and admitted to having accompanied "Frank" as the latter sought boys to kill. He instructed the psychiatrist to respond by printing the code words "weather bureau says trees to bloom in three weeks" in that Sunday's edition of the Detroit Free Press, before offering to provide photographic evidence in exchange for immunity from prosecution. The psychiatrist arranged to meet "Allen" at a bar, but "Allen" did not show up and was never heard from again.
David Norberg was considered a suspect until 1999. Norberg, who died in 1981, was found with jewelry that some police officers believed were connected to the victims. In 1999, Norberg's body was exhumed at his Wyoming grave, and no DNA match was found to connect him to the case. Family members of Timothy King and Kristine Mihelich have denied that they recognized the jewelry.
Archibald Edward Sloan, a child molester who victimized young boys in his neighborhood, became a person of interest after hair samples found in his 1966 Pontiac Bonneville matched hair found on the bodies of King and Stebbins, but the hair was not from Sloan himself. A witness claimed to have seen King being abducted by two men, one described as being in his late 20s and the other described as bearing a strong resemblance to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who was allegedly in Michigan around the time of the killings. Gacy's DNA did not match DNA found on the victims' bodies.