An investigation shows its priorities in what it spends: a polygraph, a search warrant, a lab request, a press conference. Fifty years of those choices in the Oakland County Child Killer case form a pattern, and the pattern says as much as any single lead.
Content note: this series discusses the abduction and murder of children and the sexual abuse of minors. Details of the crimes are kept to what the record requires. Survivors who have not spoken publicly are not named.
Over fifty years, Oakland County Child Killer investigators investigated Gregory Greene’s allegation that Christopher Busch killed Mark Stebbins and polygraphed Busch in 1977, revived him as a suspect in 2008 and searched his former home, then told the King family in 2010 that Busch was no longer a suspect; prosecutors later publicly defended their assessment without providing a complete public inventory of the 2008 search findings. Prosecutors publicly elevated Ted Lamborgine in 2006 and DNA tied to Arch Sloan’s car in 2012. A 1977 tip placed Busch at his family’s northern Michigan cottage with three boys; WDIV reported that no warrant had been executed there as of May 2011. The sources reviewed here do not publicly identify the suburban men alleged to have purchased access to boys. No one has been charged in the four deaths.
Busch and his accuser were polygraphed in Flint in January 1977. Decades later, experienced examiners who reviewed the charts for the task force said both men should have failed.
On March 19, 1977, police got a call that Busch was at his family’s Ess Lake cottage with three boys. As of May 2011, no search warrant had been executed there.
In October 2008 the State Police crime lab spent nine hours in Busch’s former Bloomfield Township home and found dog hairs and a walled-off room. No complete, itemized laboratory accounting has been identified in the sources reviewed here; the King family later litigated for Busch-related records.
The prosecutor who approved that search left office weeks later. His successor told colleagues in 2009 that she had not known about it.
Named-suspect leads generated documented forensic work and public announcements; comparable public documentation of follow-through on the alleged suburban buyers and cross-case North Fox Island connections remains difficult to locate.
Was the Ess Lake cottage ever searched?
Not as of May 2011, when WDIV reported that no search warrant had been executed there and that the King family had offered to pay for the search. This article has not independently established whether a later search occurred.
What happened to the 2008 search of Busch’s former home?
The State Police crime lab collected dog hairs, fibers, and material from a walled-off room, according to the account Detective Sgt. Cory Williams gave the King family. As of March 2009 the results were still being processed. The article has not located a comprehensive public item-by-item laboratory disposition; Oakland County told the King family in 2010 Busch was no longer considered a suspect.
Why was the Busch lead closed?
Oakland County took charge of the task force in late 2009 and closed the Busch line on March 1, 2010, according to Barry King. The family says it received no contemporaneous written basis for the decision and litigated for Busch-related records; a 2013 appellate decision upheld withholding them because of an active investigation. In 2012 prosecutors publicly disputed the Busch theory and described forensic evidence they believed did not connect him to the killings. The underlying disposition of the 2008 search evidence remains a separate question.
Which leads were never worked publicly?
The public record reviewed here does not establish how detectives followed up with the alleged suburban buyers, or whether the OCCK task force formally cross-referenced witness statements and evidence from the separate North Fox Island investigation.
Part I of this series asked who controlled the information in the Oakland County Child Killer case. Part II asked who had access to whom. This installment asks a question that sounds simpler: which theories actually got investigated?
Every investigation says it follows every lead. The record lets you check. A lead that matters gets something you can see: a polygraph, a search warrant, a lab request, a grand jury, a press conference. Other leads can be worked without a public trace, and that difference is precisely the accountability problem. When I lined up fifty years of those visible steps, a pattern came out of it, and I think the pattern explains more about why this case is unsolved than any single suspect does.
1977: A Profile, a Polygraph, and a Plea
In the winter of 1977 the task force’s most public theory came from a psychiatrist. Dr. Bruce Danto was quoted repeatedly in both Detroit dailies and on television, and in March 1977 he described the killer as a “squirrel-kind of killer” who struck when it snowed, an image meant to draw the killer toward a road where police were waiting. Julia Cianci’s 2009 account of the investigation notes that for all the attention, police developed no solid leads and made no arrests in the week Timothy King was missing.
The theory that did produce a suspect came from Gregory Greene. In January 1977 Greene accused Christopher Busch of killing Mark Stebbins. The accusation was Greene’s, not a confession by Busch. The 2008 warrant materials also recount Busch’s admissions concerning sexual abuse of boys and his discussions of kidnapping or confinement fantasies, while recording his denial of involvement in Stebbins’s killing. Those admissions are serious investigative context, but none constitutes an admission to murder. Both men were polygraphed in Flint. According to the account investigators later received, the State Police’s regular examiner was not in the office that day, and Busch’s family lawyer was not present. Both men were reported to have passed. Busch pleaded to a sex assault charge and walked out on probation. Decades later, Detective Sgt. Cory Williams showed both men’s 1977 charts to experienced examiners at his station, and all of them said both men should have failed.
Two other threads were live in the same weeks. Flint police had arrested Busch shortly before Timothy King was taken and found film on him tied to a boys’ camp on “Fox Island,” a charge still pending in his file when he was polygraphed in the child killer case. The State Police post in Port Huron was separately investigating Francis Shelden and the North Fox Island network. The public material reviewed here does not establish whether the OCCK task force formally compared the two investigations or documented a shared-lead disposition. The Fox Island camp referenced in the film allegation should not be assumed to be North Fox Island without confirming the camp and location.
On March 19, 1977, three days after Timothy King was abducted, Montmorency County police received a call that Busch was at his family’s cottage on Ess Lake with three boys ages 13, 14, and 15, according to a police report WDIV obtained. Timothy’s body was found three days later. Catherine Broad has written that state police searched the family’s Bloomfield Township house but not the cottage. Years later, James Vincent Gunnels told police Busch had abused him at that cottage and taught him to shoot a 12-gauge shotgun there. Jill Robinson was killed with a 12-gauge shotgun.
2005 to 2007: The Lead That Came From a Prison Interview
The next theory to get real resources came from Richard Lawson, a convicted murderer looking for leniency. Lawson pointed Williams to Ted Lamborgine, a former Detroit autoworker tied to a Cass Corridor child sex ring. Lamborgine was arrested in Ohio, and in December 2006 Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy publicly called him the case’s most promising suspect. He pleaded guilty in 2007 to child sexual assaults and refused a deal that would have cut his sentence if he took a polygraph about the killings. Investigators have since said they do not believe he is the killer.
Lawson told Williams something else in 2005: that he and others in the Corridor were prostituting children to wealthy men in the suburbs. A second witness later described similar exploitation and an Oakland County house on a lake. Their accounts warrant comparison by interview date and source of knowledge before they are treated as independent corroboration. As Part II laid out, I have not located a documented public disposition of those buyers as an investigative line. That absence cannot, by itself, prove detectives did no private investigative work.
2006 to 2008: The Busch Lead Comes Back
Busch returned to the investigation through a polygraph examiner. According to Cianci’s account, a private examiner who had worked for the Busch family’s defense lawyers told investigators, under pressure from a Wayne County investigative subpoena, about a young man who in 1978 had described the child killings at length before a scheduled test. In December 2007, looking at a table of files of dead men who had been polygraphed in Flint, he picked out Busch’s.
Williams built a search warrant. On October 30, 2008, the State Police crime lab spent more than nine hours inside the Bloomfield Township house where Busch had lived. As Williams later described it to Timothy’s sister, Catherine Broad, technicians found dog hairs in the air vents and under the baseboards, a walled-off room on the ground floor with shelving, hair, fibers, and smudged fingerprints, and a sealed dumbwaiter. The current owners had not known the room existed. Dog hairs had been found on both boys’ bodies, and Williams told the family he was seeking grant money because examining a single dog hair would cost about $10,000.
As of March 2009 the lab was still processing what it found. In early 2009, according to Cianci, newly elected Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper told Worthy she had not known about the search or that the case was being actively worked. Her predecessor, David Gorcyca, had approved the warrant and left office without telling her. At a February 20, 2009 meeting of both prosecutors and the task force, the commander acknowledged that carpet fibers from the children’s bodies had been at the FBI laboratory for three years and had not come back.
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$10/month ?2009 to 2010: The Decision, and the Records Withheld
By the King family’s account, Oakland County took charge of the task force after an October 27, 2009 meeting, and the Oakland County Prosecutor closed the Busch line on March 1, 2010. The family says it was given no reason. The published materials reviewed here do not supply a complete, itemized accounting of the 2008 search exhibits, later testing, or how each result affected the lead. Prosecutors did offer a public scientific explanation in 2012: Chief Assistant Prosecutor Paul Walton said no evidence established Busch committed the murders, challenged claims that the animal hairs linked all four children, and cautioned that similarly colored carpet fibers were not proven to come from a single carpet. Prosecutor Jessica Cooper also disputed the supposed significance of a shotgun shell and Walton disputed the claim that ropes recovered in Busch’s home were bloodstained. These statements deserve to be reported alongside the family’s unresolved requests for a contemporaneous written disposition. WDIV, June 26, 2012.
Christopher Busch did not admit to murdering Mark Stebbins in the records discussed here. Gregory Greene accused him of that killing. Investigative materials separately document Busch’s admissions of sexually abusing boys, along with his denial of the Stebbins murder. Greene’s allegation, those admissions, and the later disputed interpretation of the polygraphs were substantial reasons to examine Busch; they did not establish his guilt. Conversely, Cooper’s office deciding in 2010 that Busch was no longer a suspect did not itself prove that he was uninvolved.
The King family’s records fight exposed an additional tension. In King v. Oakland County Prosecutor (2013), the Court of Appeals upheld withholding Busch-related records after an in-camera review. The circuit court had found the information intertwined with an active investigation, and its reconsideration ruling described an ongoing investigation involving Busch at the time of the March and May 2010 FOIA denials. This is not a finding that Busch remained a designated suspect: records about a person can remain important to an investigation focused elsewhere. But it makes the documentation and explanation of the 2010 decision especially important. Read the published appellate decision.
My assessment of the Cooper administration is critical because the family was told the lead had ended and then had to litigate for access to relevant records. The courts found a lawful basis for withholding those records at the time; that legal ruling does not settle whether prosecutors communicated adequately with the family or whether their investigative judgment was sound. Cooper and Walton’s competing forensic explanations are reported above, not adopted as established exoneration.
One of the most intrusive documented steps investigators took in the Busch lead was a nine-hour search of the house where he lived during the killings. Prosecutors later provided general public explanations for why they doubted the Busch theory, but the available reporting still does not provide a complete, exhibit-by-exhibit accounting of that search and its laboratory results. The family was told in 2010 that Busch was no longer a suspect.
2011 to 2012: Hair, a Cottage, and a Car
In 2011, investigators reported a mitochondrial DNA association between a hair on Kristine Mihelich’s blouse and James Vincent Gunnels; WDIV described the result as consistent with roughly 1 percent of the Caucasian population rather than a unique match. Police reports called it the first physical evidence match in the case’s history. Police did not have enough evidence to hold or charge him. That May, WDIV found a Wayne County prosecutor and an investigator at the Ess Lake cottage. No search warrant had been executed there, the families were told searching other Busch properties was too expensive, and the King family offered to pay. At that point, prosecutors and police had discussed a grand jury; later developments are set out below.
In 2012 Oakland County publicized hair from Arch Sloan’s car that matched hair from the Stebbins and King scenes but was not Sloan’s. Sloan, serving a life sentence for unrelated crimes, was never charged in the killings. He died in state custody on June 12, 2026, after detectives questioned him in his final hours, and sources told WXYZ he gave them new information to pursue.
July 2011: Two Grand Juries, Not Just a Proposal
The grand-jury proposals did advance. WDIV reported that Oakland County seated a grand jury in July 2011 and that Wayne County convened a separate grand jury on July 15. A federal court opinion in Jarvis v. Cooper recounts the July 13 and July 15 convenings as allegations in the civil complaint; the contemporaneous WDIV reports independently confirm that both counties announced grand juries. In February 2012, WDIV reported that both were examining evidence, and WXYZ subsequently described investigative activity involving Arch Sloan. Their confidential proceedings cannot be reconstructed from those reports, and the public sources reviewed here do not establish a complete disposition of either grand jury.
WDIV, July 15, 2011 · Jarvis v. Cooper (E.D. Mich. 2013) · WDIV, Feb. 22, 2012.
What the DNA Comparisons Do—and Do Not—Establish
The descriptions of forensic testing also require precision. The mitochondrial DNA association reported for James Vincent Gunnels and a hair from Kristine Mihelich is not an individualizing nuclear-DNA identification. Likewise, the mitochondrial association involving hairs recovered from the two male victims and Arch Sloan’s car did not identify Sloan as the hair contributor. In 2012 Oakland County prosecutors said Busch’s DNA did not match the physical evidence on which they relied. A 2026 WXYZ retrospective, however, described mitochondrial DNA associations involving both Sloan and Busch while stating that there was no known definitive nuclear DNA match. The reports do not identify all of the same specimens, comparisons, and analytical methods, so their apparent conflict cannot responsibly be resolved here. The next records request should seek the underlying laboratory reports, specimen identifiers, and dates of analysis, rather than treating an association as identification or a reported exclusion as a universal result.
WDIV, May 2011 · WDIV, June 2012 · WXYZ, 2026 retrospective.
Fifty years of investigative attention
Select a lead. Each panel shows the visible steps investigators took and what became of them.
Greene accuses Busch of murdering Stebbins; Busch denies the killing while other records document admissions concerning sexual abuse of boys. Both are polygraphed in Flint and reported to pass. Busch receives probation on a sex assault plea while a Fox Island film charge sits pending.
Result: Examiners who later reviewed the charts said both men should have failed. The publicly described re-review cast doubt on the original pass interpretations; the underlying chart records should be distinguished from the later examiners’ assessments.
Police are told Busch is at the family’s Ess Lake cottage with three boys, three days after Timothy King’s abduction.
Result: No search of the cottage has been publicly documented. As of 2011, no warrant had been executed there.
Lawson names Lamborgine. Wayne County publicly calls him the most promising suspect. He pleads guilty to other crimes and refuses a polygraph about the killings.
Result: Investigators now say he is not the killer. The suburban buyers Lawson also described were never publicly pursued.
A private polygraph examiner identifies Busch’s file. The crime lab searches his former home for nine hours and finds dog hairs and a walled-off room.
Result: No complete itemized search-evidence accounting located; prosecutors later explain publicly why they doubted Busch’s involvement. Cooper’s office said he was no longer a suspect in 2010; the King family then fought for investigative records.
Mitochondrial associations are reported for the Mihelich hair and for hairs associated with Sloan’s car. Neither association identifies a specific killer. Sloan dies in custody in 2026 after speaking with detectives.
Result: What Sloan told detectives has not been made public.
Lawson and another witness described alleged commercial sexual exploitation involving affluent suburban men, including an account of a house near a lake. The independence and precise particulars of those accounts require comparison against their original interviews.
Result: No public disposition located in the sources reviewed; this does not exclude nonpublic investigation.
What the Pattern Shows
Line the leads up and the pattern is plain. Named-suspect theories generated identifiable testing, warrants, grand-jury proceedings, and public statements. Allegations involving suburban buyers and possible overlap with North Fox Island present a different public-record problem: the materials reviewed here do not show a comparably clear investigative disposition. That is a documented transparency gap, not proof that detectives never pursued the leads. Prosecutors have disputed allegations that they neglected the Busch investigation, and their accounts belong in this assessment.
The psychiatrist got the cameras.
The cottage had no executed warrant reported as of May 2011.
The search lacks a complete public exhibit-by-exhibit disposition.
The buyers remain unnamed in the public material reviewed.
Physical evidence followed the same path. Barry King described years of delay in testing evidence from the victims, and the 2009 interagency meeting reportedly discussed carpet fibers that had remained at the FBI laboratory for three years. Williams also reportedly discussed seeking grant funding for specialized dog-hair work. Those accounts raise important questions about evidence-management timelines, but a complete assessment requires submission dates, lab receipts, test reports, and any laboratory capacity constraints.
Which theories got the resources
Editorial grades assess the available public record and explanatory accountability, not the totality of confidential investigative steps. Select a row for the basis.
Verdict: the leads that pointed at one man got the cameras. The leads that pointed at money and networks got a note in the file.
What Would Change It
Every cold case task force should keep a written log of each major lead, the steps taken, and its disposition, transferred formally when a prosecutor leaves office.
Evidence sent to a laboratory should carry a return date and a written explanation when it is missed. Three years at the FBI should not be discovered at a meeting.
When a search warrant is executed in a homicide investigation, the agency should eventually publish what the search produced and how it affected the lead, once doing so cannot harm a prosecution.
The Records I Am Requesting
Michigan State Police: the evidence-property inventory, laboratory reports, specimen IDs, submission and return dates, and chain-of-custody records from the October 30, 2008 search in Bloomfield Township; dog-hair comparisons; and carpet-fiber submissions and returns from the FBI. Include the records supporting the distinct mitochondrial and nuclear DNA statements in 2012 and 2026.
Montmorency County and the State Police: the March 19, 1977 report concerning the Ess Lake cottage and every record of its disposition.
Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office: any contemporaneous written lead-disposition or review underlying the March 1, 2010 notice to the King family; the February 26, 2010 task-force review and transition records from the 2008–09 change in administration. The existence of a review is documented; what can be publicly disclosed remains a separate legal question.
Oakland County and Wayne County prosecutors: non-secret administrative records identifying the dates, authorizations, scope, and documented disposition of the separate grand juries seated in July 2011, subject to grand-jury secrecy restrictions.
The Michigan State Police says the case remains open and that every tip is investigated. Information goes to 1-855-MICHTIP (855-642-4847). Records, documents, or firsthand knowledge of how the investigation was managed can be sent to Clutch Justice at hello@clutchjustice.com or through the Clutch Intel tip portal.
Part IV asks what happens when publicly documented investigative findings and repeated narratives begin to diverge.
Rita Williams, Which Theories Got Investigated? Fifty Years of Leads in the Oakland County Child Killer Case, Clutch Justice (Oct. 20, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/2026/10/20/oakland-county-child-killer-which-theories-got-investigated/.
APA 7Williams, R. (2026, October 20). Which theories got investigated? Fifty years of leads in the Oakland County Child Killer case. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/10/20/oakland-county-child-killer-which-theories-got-investigated/
MLA 9Williams, Rita. “Which Theories Got Investigated? Fifty Years of Leads in the Oakland County Child Killer Case.” Clutch Justice, 20 Oct. 2026, clutchjustice.com/2026/10/20/oakland-county-child-killer-which-theories-got-investigated/.
ChicagoWilliams, Rita. “Which Theories Got Investigated? Fifty Years of Leads in the Oakland County Child Killer Case.” Clutch Justice, October 20, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/10/20/oakland-county-child-killer-which-theories-got-investigated/.
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