The King Family has received four unrelated reports that the OCCK murderer was the son of an automobile or GM executive. I initially referred to them as urban legends but my children said we lived in the suburbs and therefore I changed the Title to Suburban Legends for this Chapter.
Within three or four weeks after Marney Keenan of The Detroit News published her first Article on OCCK Case on October 26, 2009, a young man knocked at my door and wanted to speak at me. He had played on the same hockey team as my son, Tim, and made this report. He stated 18 years ago he was working in a clothing store and had a number of police officers as customers. On one occasion he asked a police customer if he was working on any interesting cases. The officer did not reply and started to leave the store. He then returned and told Nummer that he had been working on the OCCK Case, and that the murderer had been identified as the son of a prominent GM Executive. Nummer was quite surprised that if this information was made available to him that it had not been made available to my family.
During the same period of time Marney Keenan, the Detroit News Reporter, received a phone call from a lady who identified herself as a teacher of Kristine Mihelich, the third victim. The teacher reported that she was drinking at the Salamander Bar in the Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit one evening next to a police officer. She inquired about the status of the Mihelich case, and the officer replied that it had been solved and that the murderer was the son of a prominent automobile executive.
My children, Cathy and Chris, went to college at Marquette University with an acquaintance who also grew up in the Birmingham area. This lady advised my children that she was drinking in a bar in Chicago where she met a police officer from this area. She asked him about the status of the OCCK Case and was advised that the Case had been solved and that the murderer was the son of a prominent automobile executive.
The fourth source of these continuing legends came to my attention when my daughter, Cathy, published her WordPress article on May 20, 2016. In this article, she reported she had received the following message:
“Hi Cathy,
I was a teenager in Detroit at the time and my father had a stamp and coin store at Eastland Shopping Center. One of his customers was E. Harwood Rydholm, a big executive at Chrysler. Mr. Rydholm told my dad that that OCCK was the son of a powerful GM exec and that the police were protecting GM’s reputation so he probably wouldn’t be arrested. Mr. Rydholm passed away in 1987. The ghastly part is that Mr. Rydholm told my father this story shortly after Kristine Mihelich went missing.”
These four unrelated reports all indicate that the OCCK murderer was the son of a prominent GM or automobile executive. They all took place during the 30 years of silence between 1977 and 2007 during which no one from law enforcement talked to the King Family. To my knowledge, no one from law enforcement talked to these individuals after the King Family went public in October 2009. As you can imagine, the King Family has legitimate concerns that these Reports are not coincidental. If anyone reading this Chapter has any other similar information, please bring it to my attention.