Exploitation — and murder — took place in Michigan decades before 'Epstein Island'

Warning: Some of the events and depictions in this article are disturbing in nature.

As the revelations and debate continue about the millions of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and their international ties to wealth, privilege, and perversity, the idea of a sophisticated network of elites sexually preying upon children is not just a modern facet of an internet-connected world, but eerily similar to a scandal that was centered in Michigan more than half a century ago.

North Fox Island is small, just over three miles in length and about a mile wide, located in Lake Michigan, about 50 miles north of Traverse City. While it is currently state-owned and uninhabited, that was not always so.

Purchased by Francis “Frank” Shelden in 1960, access to the island was very difficult until Shelden installed a landing strip with the intent of allowing small aircraft as the primary means of getting there. Shelden also built cabins, and created trails, making it into a remote resort and camp where he, along with a group of other men, incorporated a tax-exempt charitable trust in 1975 known as Brother Paul’s Children’s Mission.

On its face, the mission was noble. This group of men, some wealthy, some educators, but all concerned, would recruit young boys and teenagers from underprivileged communities and offer mentorship, guidance, and skill building that the boys wouldn’t normally have access to.

In reality, Shelden and the others were recruiting and exploiting these young boys for sex and the production of child sexual abuse materials. Brother Paul’s served as a front for these operations and boasted a client list of wealthy visitors to the island. If one couldn’t afford a visit, though, the creation and dissemination of sexually abusive images was a less expensive alternative.

Shelden was at the nexus of the criminal enterprise, as J. Reuben Appelman, in his book “The Kill Jar”, equated him to, essentially, the CEO of a sex trafficking ring, with the island as a central piece of it.

A graduate of both Yale University and Wayne State University, Shelden came from old money. He was a descendent of one-time Michigan Gov. Russell A. Alger, a Civil War veteran and lumber baron, who later became President William McKinley’s secretary of war. The family’s wealth and privilege allowed Shelden to not only buy the island for $20,000 in 1960 but, ostensibly, aided in covering up the atrocities that he and his compatriots are alleged to have indulged in.

One of those associates was Gerald Richards, whose day job was as a gym teacher, notably at Catholic schools in Michigan, and as a traveling magician who would routinely perform at child birthday parties and events pro bono. They had met, much like other child exploitation offenders at the time, via communication in the classified and personal sections of weekly publications.

Richards was convicted on molestation charges in 1976 when the parent of a student at St. Joseph Catholic School in Port Huron raised concerns after hearing from their child and others in Richard’s gym class. In a plea deal, Richards gave up the information about Shelden’s North Fox operations, prompting Michigan State Police to raid Shelden’s Ann Arbor home.

Shelden, though, had taken up residence in the Netherlands, which at the time did not have an extradition treaty for child criminal sexual conduct. Reports indicate that Shelden passed away, still in the Netherlands, in 1996.

Richards, much like Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, entered into a plea deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to two to twenty years in prison. Given immunity, Richards testified in 1977 in front of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, where he disclosed the North Fox operations and how rings like the one he worked with Shelden not only recruited children as product but also fostered and communicated to the massive customer base.

“Although I had contact with about 600 correspondents and customers … I gave away a lot of materials in an effort to latch on to a very few wealthy men as supporters,” Richards told the committee. “In many respects, my life was ruined by the mail.”

After serving only a couple of years behind bars, Richards removed himself from public life in 1978 and died in 1994 in Port Huron from natural causes.

It’s telling that the only member of the North Fox Island cabal to see any kind of punishment was Richards, a gym instructor without the resources to flee the country or otherwise elude justice. In many respects, he was more indicative of the clientele that North Fox Island serviced.

One of those clients was a man by the name of Christopher Busch. The investigation into his activities, and subsequent suicide, helped to shine a light on a very dark corner of Michigan’s past, an odyssey that began 50 years ago this week; the Oakland County Child Killer case.

Sex trafficking in the analog age

The North Fox Island trafficking ring was not content with their business exploits on the island, with Shelden connected to another trafficking operation in Tennessee called The Tennessee Boy’s Farm run by the Rev. Claudius “Bud” Vermilye Jr.

As Richards testified to Congress, the network was overwhelmingly connected via the U.S. Mail. While testifying, he drew an elaborate diagram showing just how the network of child exploitation operated.

Richards worked as the assistant to the manager in a Chicago adult bookstore and said he paid very close attention to what customers asked for and, in turn, cataloged the companies that were creating illicit child sexual material, which was never on public display.

Richards and others involved in the trade would communicate through personal classified ads in the back of homemade zines and in direct mail outreach collected through the orders and other shops. This would then become the pool of customers for Brother Paul’s, the Tennessee Boy’s Farm and countless others.

Richard’s testimony demonstrated how the operations would function on the ground. Those newsletters, complete with ads, and local adult bookstore patronage, were exactly where would-be pedophiles would find the materials they desired.

Customers just like Christopher Busch.

Busch was not from an affluent family like Frank Shelden, but his family was influential. He was the son of H. Lee Busch, the executive finance director of Europe for General Motors. Busch attended school in Switzerland, went to Wayne State University for a year, and then eventually graduated from a Midland culinary school. His father provided the financial backing and Busch opened a restaurant/bar called The Scotsman in Alma.

Busch was arrested in 1977 with a man named Gregory Greene in Genesee County for sexually exploiting more than two dozen adolescent boys. Under questioning, Greene, who was eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison on child sexual assault charges, implicated Busch in the notorious Oakland County Child Killer case, making him a person of interest in an investigation that involved four murdered children and remains unsolved to this day.

Murders and missteps

Between February 1976 and March 1977, four adolescent children were abducted, kept for a period of time, murdered, and their bodies then disposed of in the greater Detroit area.

Each of them lived in areas that were considered safe: Berkley, Ferndale, Royal Oak, and Birmingham. The murders of these four children, ascribed to an unknown subject called The Oakland County Child Killer, contain elements making them more difficult to solve than most.

The first child to fall victim was Mark Stebbins, a 12-year-old boy that left his home in Ferndale on February 15, 1976 and never returned home. His body was found 50 years ago this past Thursday, on February 19, 1976, near an office building in Southfield. His cause of death was noted as asphyxia via smothering with obvious ligature marks around his neck, wrists, and ankles. There were signs of sexual abuse. Stebbins was fed while in captivity and was washed prior to discovery.

Jill Robinson, a 12-year-old girl, left her home in Royal Oak on December 22, 1976 after a minor argument with her mother. Jill was discovered on December 26, 1976 on the side of I-75. She was transported and shot at close range in the head with a shotgun. There were no signs of sexual abuse.

10-year-old Kristine Mihelich was last seen on January 2, 1977 after leaving her mother’s workplace. She was discovered a full 19 days later on January 21, 1977. Her cause of death was listed as suffocation and she was found in the clothes she had last been seen in. In Kristine’s case, there were no signs of sexual assault.

The fourth, and final, victim to be attributed to the Oakland County Child Killer was 11-year-old Timothy King. He left his home in Birmingham on March 16, 1977 to go to the store and was last seen purchasing candy. King was found on March 23, 1977 in Livonia. His manner of death was also listed as suffocation. Like Stebbins, he was cleaned, groomed, and fed. King had been sexually assaulted.

After the discovery of King, a multi-jurisdictional task force was created. One of the largest of its kind in history, but all to no avail. Tens of thousands of tips poured in, but none of them were the smoking gun necessary to not only find but arrest a suspect. The only thing that was clear during the investigation was that, if this were a single bad actor, then they were not behaving like a serial sexual predator normally would.

For the most part, serial predators have a specific ‘type’ of victim that they are interested in. This varies, of course, since access and opportunity trump whatever fantasy the perpetrator is trying to fulfill. King and Stebbins were both young boys who were sexually assaulted and then asphyxiated. Robinson and Mihelich were young girls who were not sexually assaulted.

What ties the group of children together is in the manner of their discovery and the amount of time they were kept before being killed. Forensically, each victim was found with white canine hair that came from the same breed of dog.

The investigation into North Fox Island influenced Oakland County investigators, speculating at the time that the children who were in captivity could have been used to create child sexual assault materials for distribution, maybe even through networks developed by Sheldon and Richards, although no evidence to that effect has ever been uncovered.

After his arrest in the Genesee County case, Busch was released on bond, but agreed to a search of his rooms. That search yielded a great deal of child sexual assault materials, which while not definitively linked to the North Fox Island ring by authorities, has long been rumored to be connected. There were also what appeared to be ligatures, and a pencil portrait of a young boy screaming that, according to some, resembled Stebbins.

In 1978, Busch was found deceased in his parent’s home from an apparent suicide, although the details of his death have been contested by family and friends.

To be clear, the materials found in Busch’s possession were not thought to be connected to the Oakland County murders or the victims themselves, and DNA evidence did not match Busch to available biological evidence in the case, although some, including family members of the victims, continue to believe he was somehow involved.

Busch, though, did admit to authorities that he cruised the areas that served as the child killer’s hunting grounds – Ferndale, Berkley, Royal Oak, etc..

If Richards’ testimony is to be believed, it would stand to reason that even if Busch was not the Oakland County Child Killer, it is possible that they were aware of one another.

Suspects like Christopher Busch, under arrest for other child exploitation crimes, were being implicated by their colleagues in the trade. Mistaken eyewitness reports also served to send detectives in directions that were not fruitful, including a great deal of time spent looking for an AMC Gremlin. Still, other practitioners and consumers of child exploitation media would enter and leave the narrative.

Unlike Busch, some of these new players had tenuous forensic ties to the murders. Arch Sloan owned a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville that contained hairs that matched those found on the bodies of the two boys, Stebbins and King. Unfortunately, the hair did not belong to Sloan.

Ted Lamborgine was arrested in 2007 on 19 counts of child sexual assault stemming from the 1970s and 80s. An Ohio resident at the time, Lamborgine, and other men, would cruise the Cass Corridor in Detroit preying on young boys. He was sued in 2007 by the Stebbins family for the wrongful death of Mark Stebbins, but that case was dismissed by counsel after the task force indicated their focus had changed away from Lamborgine. Regardless, he was offered a plea deal if he assisted in the Oakland County Child Killer case, but rejected the deal and did not assist.

Sloan, Busch, Lamborgine, and a host of others have all come under scrutiny, although there has never been any direct evidence implicating any of them.

Accountability in short supply

The elements of each of these murders are, sometimes, in direct contrast with one another. A rogues gallery of pedophiles and pederasts have been investigated with suspects waxing and waning in likelihood of guilt based on whatever theory is in vogue.

At its core, there are a few elements that are incontrovertible: forensic evidence ties the victims together, the choice of victims discards current research on behaviors of a single sexual predator, and Michigan in the 1970s and 80s, much like many other areas, was home to a sophisticated network of child exploitation and sex trafficking with clientele in close contact with one another.

It is hopeful that DNA evidence will finally point the finger at the responsible culprits since, with the available evidence and what is known in terms of the production of child sexual abuse materials, these children were most likely swept up within and murdered by an industry built on exploiting them.

Many men, some with extreme privilege, were probably not only aware of the children’s fate, but participated in it. Sadly, history has a way of repeating itself, sometimes even louder and on a grander scale.

The victims of the Oakland County Child Killer, like the boys trafficked to North Fox Island, were caught in a system that treated them as disposable commodities. And as today’s headlines force us to reckon with how privilege permits predation, the story stands as a disturbing reminder that this pattern did not begin in the digital age of Jeffrey Epstein — it took flight on a small island in Lake Michigan more than half a century ago.

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