Oakland County Child Killer

What the record shows

The Oakland County Child Killer is the name given to the unidentified person or persons who abducted and killed four children in the northern suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, between February 1976 and March 1977. The victims, Mark Stebbins, 12, Jill Robinson, 12, Kristine Mihelich, 10, and Timothy King, 11, were taken from communities along the Woodward Avenue corridor in Oakland County and found dead between four and nineteen days later. No one has ever been charged. According to the Michigan State Police, quoted by WDIV in February 2026, the investigation remains open and every new tip is examined.

Stebbins was last seen leaving an American Legion hall in Ferndale on February 15, 1976, and was found four days later in a Southfield parking lot; he had been smothered and sexually assaulted. Robinson left her Royal Oak home on December 22, 1976, and was found on December 26 beside Interstate 75 in Troy, killed with a shotgun. Mihelich went missing in Berkley on January 2, 1977, and was found on January 21 in a snowbank in Franklin; she had been suffocated. King left his Birmingham home on March 16, 1977, and was found on March 22 in a ditch in Livonia; he had been suffocated and sexually assaulted. The ABA Journal and WDIV report that the children were fed and bathed while held captive, the detail behind the "Babysitter Killer" label.

After King's disappearance a multi-agency task force led by the Michigan State Police was formed. The ABA Journal reported in 2017 that it drew about 200 local, county and state officers plus the FBI, spent about 2 million dollars and reviewed roughly 20,000 leads. A 1978 U.S. Department of Justice report used the investigation as the model for a manual on interjurisdictional "major case teams". A witness account of a blue AMC Gremlin near the King abduction led police to stop many Gremlin drivers; later reporting has questioned whether that car was involved. The task force was disbanded in December 1978 and the case passed to the Michigan State Police.

The investigation produced persons of interest but no charges. Christopher Busch, a Bloomfield Township man with child sexual assault convictions, was questioned and polygraphed in early 1977 and released; he died of a gunshot wound ruled self-inflicted in November 1978. In June 2012 Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper and Chief Assistant Prosecutor Paul Walton told WDIV that Busch's DNA did not match the physical evidence and that no evidence connected him to the killings. At a press conference on July 17, 2012, reported by The Associated Press and CBS News, Cooper announced that FBI testing showed hairs found on Stebbins and King came from the same unknown person, the first forensic link between any of the victims, and that a matching hair had been recovered from a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville owned by Arch Edward Sloan, who was serving a life sentence for an unrelated 1983 sexual assault. Cooper said Sloan was not the source of the hair and often lent his car to others; he was investigated repeatedly and never charged. The ABA Journal also reported that a hair from Mihelich's body yielded a mitochondrial DNA profile pointing to another man and his maternal relatives; he was questioned and never charged.

Victims' families pressed the case in court. Timothy King's father, Barry King, sued the Michigan State Police under the Freedom of Information Act in 2010 and obtained more than 3,400 pages of files, according to the ABA Journal. Kristine Mihelich's mother filed a 100 million dollar lawsuit in 2012 alleging the investigation had been mishandled; WDIV reported it was dismissed in 2013. Barry King died in 2020.

In February 2019 WXYZ reported, citing prison records, that Sloan had been interviewed by task force detectives in 2010 and 2012 and had failed a polygraph about the murders. Sloan died in custody on June 12, 2026, according to a Michigan Department of Corrections spokesperson quoted by WXYZ, which reported that detectives questioned him a final time in his last hours. In February 2026 the Michigan State Police told WDIV that the case is open and that evidence is re-evaluated as new technology becomes available. Tips can be submitted at 1-855-MICHTIP.