One or more child-killers stalked Oakland County in Michigan during 1976-77. Authorities are certain of a connection in the deaths of four victims, the first being Mark Stebbins, 12, who was abducted in Ferndale while walking to his home on February 13, 1976. His body was found in a parking lot six days afterwards, his corpse meticulously cleaned. Stebbins had been sexually assaulted and smothered to death. On December 12, twelve-year-old Jill Robinson was abducted in Royal Oak and her body found in Troy. Though no sexual assault was evident and the girl had been killed by a shotgun blast, she had also been scrubbed clean before her disposal.
The next certain victim was Kristine Mihelich, 10, who vanished in Berkely on January 2, 1977, and her corpse located nineteen days later in Franklin Village. Like the others, her body had been cleaned after her killer suffocated her death. The last of the series seems to be Timothy King, 11, who went missing on March 11 in Birmingham and found dead in a ditch near Livonia with his body scoured clean, his nails manicured, and his clothes freshly washed and ironed. King was also sexually assaulted before his sad death. By this point the press had picked up on the odd signature of the killings, dubbing the unknown perpetrator "The Babysitter" due to his apparent post-mortem care of the victims.
Other killings that occurred in the aea at the same time have been tentatively linked to the series. Cynthia Cadieux, 16, was abducted and bludgeoned to death on January 15, 1976. Missing from Roseville she was discovered nude in Bloomfield Township the next day. Just five days after Cadieux's disappearance Sheila Shrock was raped and shot dead at her home in Birmingham. Jane Allen, 13, was murdered by carbon monoxide poisoning after accepting a ride in Royal Oak and was found in Miamisburg, Ohio, on August 11, 1976. The 1972 slaying of teenager Donna Serra in Ray Township has also been mentioned as possibly being connected to the string of murders.
Though the body count is disputable, there is one thing for certain. At least one serial killer plied his trade in the normally quiet communities of Oakland County, never to be identified. A long-standing suspect who was killed ina 1981 auto accident has since been cleard of involvement by DNA testing, leaving investigators with little hope of solving this baffling case.