Oakland County families are living in terror after three children have been abducted and murdered. The killer is becoming bolder - the most recent vistim, Kristine Mihelich, was discovered after being missing for 19 days. Tensions are at an all-time high. But the killer isn’t done.
The King family searched everywhere for Timmy. They called his friends, searched the neighborhood and surrounding area. By 9:15 a.m. the next day, Chief Tobin called on the task force, requesting their full involvement. By the afternoon -- the day after Timmy went missing -- headquarters were established in the Adams Fire House, just a few blocks from the King family home. Door-to-door searches were conducted and classmates questioned.
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Timmy was abducted on a Wednesday. By Thursday, 100 lawmen from Oakland County, volunteers, Oakland County Sheriff’s investigators, the county helicopter and the special Oakland County Task Force all were scouring the area. That Thursday the Kings stayed behind closed doors most of the day.
“It’s awful,” said a neighbor of the King family who also had an 11-year-old daughter. “When it happens to other people, you feel sympathy. When it strikes your neighborhood, you’re scared.”
Three days after Timmy King’s body was found in a Livonia ditch, about 400 people joined his family to say goodbye at the Birmingham Holy Name Roman Catholic Church. Timmy’s friends were the pall-bearers.
During the funeral, plainclothes police officers kept an eye out for anyone suspicious. They did make one arrest of a man who was driving around the church over and over, but after questioning, they released him.
Two other officers who were stationed in the balcony watched over the crowd. Ushers tipped those officers off to two guys who looked like the artist rendering of the suspect. It turned out that one of the men was actually Birmingham Mayor Samuel Staples and the other was just a man mourning the loss of Timmy, like the rest of the people in the church.