CRIME: They All Trusted Their Killer

A grim combination of suspicion, fear and horror hangs over the trim, tree-shaded suburban townships of Oakland County, Mich., northwest of Detroit. For the seventh time in 14 months, a child has been abducted, then killed.

Police are almost certain that four of the murders were committed by the same man. The chilling conclusion of Birmingham Police Chief Jerry Tobin: “We think he is a white-collar-class person or a professional man—somebody who is trusted, like a doctor, a policeman, a member of the clergy.” Asked if that means neighbor should watch neighbor, his answer is a terse yes.

The latest victim is Timothy King, 11, son of Detroit Lawyer Barry King and an all-A student at Adams Elementary School in Birmingham. On March 16 he left his home at 8:15 p.m. to buy 30¢ worth of candy at a neighborhood drugstore. He made the purchase—and vanished. Last week his body, still warm, was found beside a dirt road eleven miles away. It was fully clothed and laid out with almost ritual care. The skateboard he had carried was neatly placed next to him.

Timothy had been smothered to death. An autopsy revealed signs of sexual abuse, and there were marks around his wrists and ankles suggesting that he had been tied. His last meal had been chicken (in a TV appeal for his return, his mother had mentioned that his favorite dinner was chicken). His body was strikingly clean. “He was scrubbed, his fingernails and toenails were immaculate,” says Wayne County Medical Examiner Werner Spitz. “Even his clothes had been cleaned.”

The same remarkable fastidiousness points to a single killer in three other child murders. Mark Stebbins, 12, a quiet boy who lived with his divorced mother in Ferndale, was found in a parking lot on Feb. 19,1976, some 17 days after he had disappeared. The body of Jill Robinson, 12, was discovered Dec. 16 beside a freeway, four days after she was reported missing from her home in Royal Oak. Kristine Mihelich, a brown-haired, blue-eyed ten-year-old from nearby Berkley, vanished on Jan. 2. Her body turned up 18 days later in a roadside snowbank. These victims may all have been sexually molested—the Stebbins boy was. Each body was found fully clothed; two were dead from having been smothered. The exception was Jill Robinson, killed by a shotgun blast that the police think accidentally occurred when the killer panicked. All the children, including Timothy King, were last seen within a few blocks of Oakland County’s main north-south commercial street, Woodward Avenue.

Promising Lead. More than 200 detectives from 50 police departments are working with state police on the case. Tips from Oakland County citizens are pouring in at the rate of 300 a day. The most promising lead so far: a witness saw Timothy talking with a white male, 20 to 35 years old with shag-cut hair and bushy sideburns, just before his disappearance.

Meanwhile, Birmingham parents are trying to protect their children. “We’re terrified,” says a mother of three. “We have a rule that no child on the block walks to or from school alone.” Many youngsters are being driven to classes, libraries and playgrounds. Streets are all but deserted after dusk. “I wouldn’t let my child walk beyond the corner,” says Birmingham Psychiatrist Rafael Gonzalez. The menace is tangible. When the news that Timothy’s body had been discovered flashed over TV, one 14-year-old boy who lives near the Kings said to his father, “That means he’ll be looking for somebody else, doesn’t it?”