The Murder Game (Michigan, Notorious USA) by Katherine Ramsland

Author:Katherine Ramsland [Ramsland, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Notorious USA
Published: 2014-08-18T05:00:00+00:00

THE BABYSITTER

MARK STEBBINS LEFT THE AMERICAN LEGION HALL in Ferndale, just after noon on a cold February 15 in 1976. It was a Sunday and the twelve-year-old wanted to go home and watch a movie. But Mark vanished somewhere along the three blocks between the American Legion Hall on Livernois and his house.

By 10 PM that night, Mark’s frantic mother had called the police. Officers asked for a description. When she last saw him, she said, he was dressed in blue jeans, a hooded blue parka, rubber boots, and a red sweatshirt. He had blue eyes and blond hair.

A search was launched. By the time morning arrived, everyone believed that Mark had been kidnapped.

Around 11:45 AM on February 19, a businessman walked to a Southfield mall to visit the drugstore. He crossed through a parking lot and spotted something that looked like a kid lying on the ground in a fetal position. He was dressed in jeans, a red sweatshirt, and blue parka. The hood was pulled up. The man called the police.

It was the missing Mark Stebbins. An autopsy found two lacerations on the boy’s scalp, at the back of his head, but he’d died from being smothered. From bruises on his wrists, it appeared that Mark had been bound in some manner, and this suggested he might have been held captive. The coroner estimated that Mark had been dead about eight hours. Oddly, he appeared to have been bathed and his clothing washed and ironed before he was dumped. Such behavior suggested that the offender might have known Mark and felt badly about the treatment.

The pathologist also found evidence of sexual assault. Mark had been sodomized, possibly with an object. The police believed they were looking for a pedophile.

Spring and summer passed without significant progress in the investigation. Winter settled in. Then on January 2, 1977, Kristine Mihelich went out during the mid-afternoon to visit a 7-Eleven store in Berkley. She did not come home. Her mother called around to Kristine’s friends, but no one had seen her. By 6 PM, the police were notified. Photographs of Kristine were copied and distributed. A clerk at the 7-Eleven on Twelve Mile Road recalled a pixie-like girl who resembled Kristine coming in. He thought she’d purchased a movie magazine, but he hadn’t seen her leave.

Days melted into a week. Leads dead-ended. Then a mailman was delivering mail in Franklin Village on January 21. There in plain view, in a snow-filled ditch, was the body of a young girl, face-up, with her arms folded over her chest. She wore the same clothes as the missing girl described in the papers. He notified the police.

Identified as Kristine, the body was partially frozen and the best determination indicated that she’d been in place for about a day. Cause of death was asphyxiation: like Mark Stebbins, she’d been smothered. There was an indentation from a car’s bumper in the snow bank near her body, but officers failed to take measurements. Someone did take a photograph.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.