November 24, 2025 • 55 mins
For more than a decade, a serial killer stalked teenage boys in Michigan. Ronald Lloyd Bailey was eventually caught. But the story becomes more complicated because of Bailey’s experience at one of the state’s most respected psychiatric hospitals. Author Rod Sadler tells me the story in his book: Depraved Obsession.
Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4gF2K18
See more information on my books: katewinklerdawson.com
Follow me on social: @tenfoldmore (Twitter) / @wickedwordspod (Facebook) / @tenfoldmorewicked (Instagram)
2025 All Rights Reserved
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language, along with references
to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If an investigator at some agency reads this book, or
a parent who has a lost child that they haven't
seen for forty years, maybe there's a connection.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:55):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious through
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. For more than a decade,
a serial killer stalked teenage boys in Michigan. Ronald Lloyd
(01:17):
Bailey was eventually caught, but the story became more complicated
because of Bailey's experience at one of the state's most
respected psychiatric hospitals. Author Rod Sadler tells me the story
in his book depraved obsession. Tell me briefly about your
background with law enforcement, because I do think you know,
(01:38):
unlike other authors, this gives you such a unique perspective
of a kind of a complicated case.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, I was a police officer for thirty years here
in Michigan. I started in nineteen eighty one. I worked
for some small agencies for about the first five years
of my career, and then I was hired by the
Eton County Sheriff's Office, which is the west side of Lansing, Michigan,
which is our state capitol. And I worked at Eton
(02:05):
County for twenty five years until I retired in twenty twelve.
As a police officer working for Eaton County, I was
promoted to the position of sergeant in nineteen ninety nine.
I also was our police composite artist and our lead
traffic crash investigator for all of our fatality crashes. And
(02:27):
I was also an emergency manager. So I kind of
had a storied career.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I guess, if you will now, does that include investigating murders?
I don't know what the role of sergeant would be.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, as a road patrol sergeant, I supervised the shift
certainly if I or a deputy responded to, let's say
a homicide call, I would, as a sergeant, you know,
make sure that the detectives are on the way and
the scene is secure, and we have enough people to
do this, that and the other things. So so I'm
(03:01):
familiar with procedures and things like that with homicides.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Set the scene for me, you know, if we're talking
about southeast Michigan starting in the seventies, when there's no
discovery made, because this goes on for a very long time,
set the scene for when things start happening with these
boys in the area. What is the area like and
who are the people who were in that area.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
It doesn't start with this particular kidnapping, but this particular
kidnapping is the highlight of the book, and that's the
kidnapping of Sean Moore, a thirteen year old boy who
lived just south of Brighton, Michigan. And Brighton, Michigan, for
all intents and purposes, is about halfway between Detroit and Lancing.
(03:46):
Lancing is more centralized, our state capital. Obviously, Detroit is
the southeast corner of the state, and so about halfway
between Lansing and Detroit is Brighton, Michigan. Brighton, Michigan at
that time, in nineteen eighty five, i've was sort of
a hub for young professionals and senior citizens that commuted
(04:07):
either to Lancing or to Detroit to work. And it
was a very quiet community, not a lot of crime
and not a lot of violent crime especially, and that's
where this all took place.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I have to think, based on the demographic that you're
talking about that this would be a low crime area
in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
It is a very low crime area. Yeah, it's between
Lancing and Detroit. You know, Detroit huge city and Lancing
the state capitol, busy city. But Brighton, Michigan really was
you know, the downtown area was about six blocks long
at what and I put right in the book, it
(04:47):
wasn't unusual for if you're driving down the main street
in Brighton to waive several times at people because everybody
seemed to know everybody else.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Tell me about Sean Moore, thirteen years old? What kind
of kid is he?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
From what you know, Sean Moore is a very bright,
thirteen year old boy who lived with his parents and
his older brother. His older brother was about thirteen years
older than he was Sean was set to start the
seventh grade. It was summer break. He was just your
typical bright teenager. He was liked by everybody. All of
(05:25):
his teachers just loved him to death. And he was
just a very bright, typical thirteen year old boy who
had everything you can imagine a thirteen year old boy
would have in his bedroom, baseball cards, a sign on
his door that said this room is protected by an
attack moose. You know, just silly things like that.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
This is thirteen year old boys in Michigan, I think exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, So he was just a very bright, young, well
liked thirteen year old boy.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Set the scene for me what happens before Sean disappears
and win also.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, it was Labor Day weekend in nineteen eighty five,
August thirty first, I believe it was a Sunday, if
I'm not mistaken, and Sean was doing some yard work
with his dad. They needed to get to lawn mode,
and during the evening they were going to go see
a movie. The entire family was going to go see
(06:24):
Back to the Future I think had just been released.
Sean liked to use the riding lawnmower, but next to
the house there was apparently a small hill or something,
so his dad would mow that and then Sean would
use the riding lawnmore and mow the rest of the lawn. Well,
the riding lawnmower broke that afternoon, and so his dad
(06:46):
began to try to fix it, and Sean was waiting
and waiting and waiting, and he was hot. They'd been
out in the sun for several hours, and so he
asked his parents, Hey, can I jump on my bike
and ride a mile up to the Pump and Pantry
Party convenience store gas station. They gave him permission to
(07:07):
They were very strict about him leaving the subdivision, but
they did allow him to go, and so he jumped
on his bike and he rode up to the Pump
and Pantry Party store to buy an anw root peer.
Some friends of his saw him at the store, saw
him purchase the root per and that's where the killer
first spotted him.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Also tell me what happens next? When do his parents
figure out that something's wrong.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Well, after several hours, Sean hadn't returned, and his brother
became quite concerned and decided to go look for him.
Figured that maybe he was dawdling up at the up
at the pump and pantry for some reason. And so
as his brother leaves the subdivision and begins to drive
up this service road called Whittemore Lake Road, or they
(07:57):
also referred to it as old US twenty three because
before the highway was put in, it was US twenty three.
So he leaves the subdivision and literally less than a
mile up the road, he can see police cars pulled
to the side of the road, and he pulls up
and he sees his brother's bike, and so he asks
to speak to the Greenolk Township police officer on the scene,
(08:20):
and he says, that's my brother's bike. He said, there
must have been an accident, and the officer said said
to him, he said, well, why do you think that
there was an accident? He said, well, my brother's bike's here.
You guys are all here. And it was then that
they had to take him aside and say it it
looks as if your brother has been abducted.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
How did that happen? Did somebody call and say we
saw a man take this boy, because you know, bike
laying there wouldn't be alarming to most people.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yes, actually, there were several witnesses, but the main witness
was on the highway. Sean was riding northbound up to
the party store. The witnesses were driving southbound on the
freeway next to this service road. The first witness was
trying to get to the University of Michigan Hospital because
(09:11):
his daughter had been injured in a farm accident. So
he was on his way to ann Arbor and he
glanced over and he saw a man forcing a young
boy back toward a vehicle, and for some reason, his
mind clicked and he knew something was wrong. It was
just an instinct, and he said to his fiance, who
(09:34):
was in the vehicle with him, He said, I need
to get to the next exit, and we need to
get back and try to get a license plate number,
because he saw that Sean was visibly upset and it
didn't look right to him.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Wow, all from just going he's driving, You got to think,
what fifty sixty miles an hour? Maybe less, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, back in eighty five, the speed limited, I think
the national speed limit was fifty five miles an hour
on the freeway, and I I think that he said
that his cruise control was set at like sixty and
so yeah, So for an instant he glances over and
sees this, and he knows he has to get back
(10:13):
to try to get a license plate number. And by
the time he hits the next exit and turns around,
comes back up the service road, all he finds is
the bike.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Now, you say there was another witness or two also
to this.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yes, there was another witness, and she was traveling northbound
on the service road, and so she's coming up just
as Sean is riding his bike, and he's looking over
his shoulder at a man who's walking very fast toward him.
And the bike was a little bit big for Sean.
(10:47):
He hadn't quite grown into it, and so he was
trying to steady the bike. His handlebars were moving back
and forth as he glanced over his shoulder at the
guy coming up to him. This particular witness felt something
was a miss maybe, but what she really noticed was
the jeep that the man had come from. He had
(11:08):
gotten out of a nineteen eighty five AMC jeep. That's
significant in this case because the first witness who glanced
over and was trying to get back to the scene,
thought that the vehicle involved was a GMC pickup the
second witness who saw the jeep, she didn't get a
(11:30):
chance to report it for a day or two, and
so for that first day or two police were looking
for a GMC pickup when they should have been looking
for a jeep CJ seven. No.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, was there anybody else who saw this?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
There were some other witnesses that came forward that were
on the highway also that identified the killer later that
saw the same thing that the first witness saw him,
forcing a young boy back toward a jeep.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Does everybody go to the media at this point and
there's apbs happening everywhere? What's the response?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, the first response is the first witness who sees
the bike laying on the side of the road. He
knows he's got to find a police officer, so he
drives up to the next exit, which is the Pump
and Pantry party store, and he's going to try to
find a cop. Well, on the other side of the
intersection is a Green Oak Township police officer by the
(12:28):
name of Dave Ostrom, and Dave Ostrom is getting ready
to get off his shift. He's got about forty five
minutes left, and he looks up and there's a pickup
facing him on the other side of the intersection, flashing
his headlights at him. So he pulls up next to
the pickup and the witness says, hey, I think I
just saw a young boy getting kidnapped, and so Dave
(12:51):
immediately gets him to the side of the road starts
taking information, putting it out over the radio. And about
a mile north of there is Livingston County detective who's
working in uniform for the holiday weekend taking marine complaints,
and he hears the information go out over the radio.
(13:15):
So he gets on the radio and says, hey, I'm
just a mile north of there. Have you been down
to the scene yet, and Ostrom says no. He says,
I'm still taking information. So Ed Moore, this detective from
Livingston County, Michigan, runs down to the scene and finds
the bike on the side of the road. So quickly
information's put out over the radio. People are on the lookout,
(13:37):
but they're on the lookout for a GMC pickup and
not an AMC jeep. As the information's going out, the
Michigan State Police, who have a post or a substation
if you will, north of the scene, they get the information.
They begin to call the media. And as soon as
that story hit the media, the phone started ringing tips
(14:01):
and people who thought they saw things, and so it
was a quick response, a very quick response to get
the media involved. And I think that's why this case
was resolved so quickly.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I have a jurisdiction question, and you were obviously the
right person to ask. I usually don't ask stuff like this.
So you've got Livingston County, right, and the detective and
the man I can't remember what Dave's is he an officer?
I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, he's with a small township jurisdiction called the green
Oak Township Police Department.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
So you've got two different departments working, and then the
Michigan State Police in this particular case, Sean Moore, did
everybody work well together? Because you said this was a
quick resolution, not a good one, but a quick one.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah. What happened was the following day they formed a
task for us where officers from green Oak Township, Livingston County,
the Michigan State Police, the FBI, the Brighton Police Department,
all those agencies came together. And I have to tell
you that it was really unprecedented because law enforcement back
(15:13):
in the mid eighties, and prior to that, agencies held
a lot of information very close and by that I
mean they didn't share it a lot. In this particular case,
you had local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies who
came together as a task force and were desperately, literally
(15:34):
desperately trying to find Sean Moore before something happened to him.
They worked so closely together it was literally almost unheard
of at that time.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
And this is the FBI who's getting involved.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
The FBI was also involved.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yes, what triggers that? Is that a missing child that
is clearly the victim of abduction or is it there
on the highway or what makes it okay for the
FBI to come in?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Well, I think because it was a kidnapping of a child.
Michigan had gone through a series of child killings in
Oakland County back in the late seventies, seventy six and
seventy seven unsolved. There were four unsolved child abductions and
murders where the children were literally held for several days
(16:23):
before they were murdered. And that was fresh in the
memory of a lot of people in Michigan. And so
when the FBI gets you know, here's a report of
a child being abducted, and they're absolutely certain it's not
a random parental discipline situation where a father's taking his
kid back home for misbehaving or whatever, then certainly, yeah,
(16:48):
they're going to get involved immediately.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Okay, so we have a task force now that involves
several different departments, and then of course the FBI and
the state police. And you've got the media alerted and
now you've got all of these calls eighty five so
there's no social media. You've got all these calls coming
in to the police station with all of these tips.
What does this task force tackle first to try to
(17:11):
get Sean back, because I'm sure there's just incredible alarm,
maybe even all over the state at this point.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, they start to interview that reinterview the witnesses to
get more detailed statements, and they also look at they
contact the American Motors Corporation AMC. If you're very young,
you probably don't realize that AMC made the Jeep at
that time, they made the Pacer. I think they made
the Gremlin, but they also made the Jeep. And so
(17:36):
the task force contacted American Motors Corporation and they got
a list of the vehicle identification numbers of every Jeep
sold between like nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty five, and
then they were in the process of taking those vehicle
identification numbers and they would run those through the law
(17:58):
Enforcement Information Network and find out who the owners were.
And then the process would be to go to all
of those owners and say, hey, where were you on
Labor Day weekend? And that's how it all started the investigation.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Really, how would it go? Rod? Now do you think
it would be checking license plates at the digital electric
tolls if the car passed through a toll, of course,
looking at CCTV at the convenience store, anything like that.
And at this point they just have the make of
the car, the jeep, And I'm assuming the woman who
(18:36):
came forward maybe was she able to say it looked
like Michigan plates. This wasn't like a Florida plate or something.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Actually, yeah, they were able to determine it was definitely
a Michigan plate. And she was absolutely certain of the
make and model of the jeep because her boyfriend had
one that was identical to it. It was a Renegade model.
It said Renegade right on the front of the jeep,
and when the detectives took her to a jeep dealership,
(19:05):
she pointed one out that was identical to it. Okay,
so they were absolutely certain. Again, it took a couple
of days for them to get that information, but once
they had it, she was absolutely certain, no question about it.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
What other resources did they have at that time as
far as locating a vehicle, Like I said, today you
would be looking at toll records that would have come
to you very quickly, CCTV stuff like that, But back
then it was just simply you know, witnesses and then
the database of registered owners of these jeeps.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Absolutely, their hands really were almost tied, if you will.
If you compare it to today's law enforcement in social media,
Oh my gosh, if there's a police agency or a
public service agency out there that doesn't have a website
or some way to relay information for notification to the public,
(20:00):
way behind the times. Yet back then, you're exactly right,
what did they have. They had the television, news, they
had radio, you know, they had computers back then to
relay information quickly to police agencies around the state and
things like that. But still they were looking for the
wrong car for two days, so it was very difficult.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
What did they come up with When they have this search,
they're searching through what three or you were saying, three
or four counties, including Livingstone, looking for the owner of
this particular car.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
They are they're looking for the jeep. By this time,
once the task force tasts a couple of days to
get up and running, by that time, they've determined they're
looking for a jeep and not a GMC pickup. And
so they begin to run these vins through the law
Enforcement Information Network. They're getting the names of the owners
and they're contact and the owners. Well in the middle
(20:56):
of this big list of vin owners jeep owners is
the name of the killer and he's just another person
on the list that they've got to go track down
and interview. But what happens is as they're doing that,
the task force is up and run. In twenty four
to seven and about eleven o'clock at night, the FBI
(21:18):
is man in the task force headquarters and they get
a phone call from the Livonia Police Department. And Lavonia
is a suburb of Detroit, and the Livonia officer says
to the FBI agent, he says, hey, you guys really
need to take a look at this guy. We've got
a guy here in our jurisdiction that does that exact
(21:41):
same thing. He kidnaps kids off their bicycles, he sexually
assaults them, and you really need to take a look
at him. I'm paraphrasing, but basically that's the information that
he gives him. So the FBI agent Jess Lopez is
his name. I interviewed him for the book. He said, yeah,
he said, let's not wait, let's go track him down
(22:02):
right now. So they go track down this guy that
Lavonia Police Department has a record of and they interview him,
and that's when it all begins to unravel.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So Lavogna police tell the task force, we have this guy.
You need to look at him. He snatched kids, you know,
off bikes off the street and assaults them. How many
days into this is that happening? And I'm also wondering
how many people do they have to call about this?
AMC JEEP.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Well, I don't know how big the list was, but
I guess you could imagine it's got to be probably
a thousand people or more. I would think they decided
to go interview the killer based on what Lavonia has said.
Unbeknownst to them, he's already been interviewed by somebody on
the task force earlier that particular day, and this was
(22:52):
within three or four days after the kidnapping. It happened
very quickly, it really did.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
And it was about the fact that he's an owner
of an AMC jeep exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
He was just a name on the list.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You know what I wondered when you were talking about that.
You know, in a second, we can give his name
and you can give me some information. But I was thinking,
you know, his last name starts with a B, and
I wondered if they just alphabetized that list, and he
came up pretty early, and that's why he got interviewed early,
because he's, you know, at the top of the alphabetized list.
I don't know if that's how it worked, but.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Well, you may be exactly right, because the vehicle identification
number is all they had for that list of jeep owners,
and so maybe they did. You know, I never thought
to ask them that, but you may very well be right.
You know, if his last name began with a Z,
maybe they wouldn't have resolved this so quick.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
So tell me what happens and tell me just sort
of initially, who is this guy. What's the impression that
they get when they go to see him.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Well, his name, the killer's name is Ron Bailey. And
Ron Bailey had been interviewed that afternoon before the Lavonia
Police contacted the Task Force, he'd been interviewed by a
couple of detectives and he told them Labor Day weekend,
he said, I was up in Caseville, Michigan. I was
(24:14):
fishing with a friend. He has a boat up there
and a cabin and that's where I was. And so
they took his information and they were going to follow
up later with his friend a list of things to
do if you will. And then later that night, Lavonia
Police contacts the Task Force and says, hey, we've got
this guy named Ron Bailey who lives here in Lavonia.
(24:36):
His emo is to snatch kids off bicycles and sexually
assault them and then release them. And so the police
Jess Lopez, the FBI Special Agent in charge work in
the Task Force, that night he said, let's go talk
to him right now. They go to the Bailey home
in Lavonia. Ron Bailey's dad answers the door. It's about
(24:59):
midnight now, and he says, no, Ron's not here, He's
at a friend's house. The task force guys, they head
over to the friend's house and sure enough, Ron Bailey's
jeep is there, so they wait. They wait for Ron
Bailey to leave, and when he leaves, they stop him
and he becomes arrogant. He starts waving a business card
(25:22):
from a trooper or detective around, saying, hey, I already
talked to you guys this afternoon. I told him I
was up in case Phil. That's my story and I'm
sticking to it. And they said, well, we really just
want to verify your story. You know, we're not accusing you,
we're just following up trying to verify it. Why didn't
(25:42):
you come on back to the Lavonia Police Department with us?
So he agrees to do that, and what Ron Bailey
doesn't know is when he leaves with the officers, a
couple other officers interview his friend and his friend says,
he wasn't in Case filled with me. He asked me
to lie for him. Well, the gig is up now,
(26:05):
so they put the pressure on him back at the
Lavonia Police Department and they feel they have enough literally
maybe to arrest him. Wow, he's yeah, so he's really
not free to go at that point. And they decide
after an interview with him, and he maintains that he
was with his friend, and they hit him up with
(26:27):
the fact that his friend said he wasn't there. He says, well,
that's my story and I'm not changing it. So they
take him up back up to Brighton now and they
decide to do a police lineup with him. It's now
early in the morning, and they bring in some witnesses
that witnessed the abduction of Sean and none of them
(26:48):
can pick him.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Out of the line because they're driving right.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, it's early in the morning. Nobody can pick him out,
and so they have to release him. But what Ron
Bailey doesn't know is that they also put him under surveillance.
They have a surveillance team following him. So that's when
it all begins to come together.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Let me ask you, just playing the skeptic on some
of this, So Hismo has been snatching kids, you know,
off bikes. We don't know anything yet about the legal
process with that. Did he get caught, did he serve time?
You know, was he institutionalized all of that? But you
have this rap sheet and you've got the jeep, and
(27:33):
is that enough to hold him when he cannot be
identified and there's of course no CCTV or anything else.
Can he just say listen, I've made a bunch of mistakes.
I happened to have this jeep. What else you have
on me?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Well, they had enough to hold the jeep. After they
released him, when he was brought to the Briton Post,
they look through his wallet. They photographed everything in his
wallet so that they would have a record of it
before giving it back to him. And what they noticed
in there was a receipt for a tow truck a
(28:08):
toe and so Jess Lopez, after Bailey was released early
in the morning, he goes and tracks down Bailey's well.
He tracks down the record company for the receipt and says, hey,
what is this And they said, oh, yeah, it was
a jeep that we pulled out of. It was stuck
(28:29):
in some four wheel driving. They'd been off roading. They said,
we didn't recognize who the driver was, but we recognized
the girl with him. Her name is deb Chesney and
that's a girl that we knew. One of them recognized her.
So Lopez then tracks down Deb Chesney that day and
Deb Chesney is Ron Bailey's pseudo girlfriend, the interviewer, and
(28:52):
they said, hey, where was Ron during Labor Day weekend?
She said, well, he was up at our family cabin
in Gladwin, now Caseville. Just to give you a perspective
on where Caseville is in Michigan, it's in the Thumb
area on Saginaw Bay if you're familiar with Michigan at all,
and then Gladwin is literally up in north central Michigan,
(29:15):
so about one hundred or more miles away from Caseville.
So Deb says, yeah, he was up at our family cabin.
He borrowed the key from us, and so Jess Lopez
knew immediately at that point that's probably where they would
end up finding Shawn Moore's body.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Did she suspect anything? Was she surprised? Alarmed? What was
her reaction?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
She was completely surprised, completely surprised. You know, It's funny.
Ron Bailey's dad as soon as the story about the
kidnapping and the jeep hit the airwaves, hit the television,
in the radio, and the newspapers, he suspected his own
son and confronted him about it, and Ron live told
(30:00):
his dad. He said, well, don't worry, dad, I was
up in Caseville and there's thousands of people that owned
jeep's like mine.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
How old was Ron at the time? Is it twenty two?
Am I remembering?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Right? Twenty three?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I believe so, young man. And we'll learn a little
bit more about him after we find out about Sean.
So they find out about Deb's family's cabin that supposedly
Ron was up there by himself, and they go up.
They go rushing up to the cabin hoping to find
Sean alive, because that has been, as far as they know,
(30:31):
the case with all of the other boys that have
been snatched by Ron before.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Right correct, Ron's history is criminal history has always been
to release his victims, and so in this case they did.
They immediately flew up to Gladwin hoping maybe they would
find Sean alive. They found an empty cabin at that point,
and so they collected a little bits and pieces of
(30:57):
evidence and flew back that same day, and they were
going to organize at that point a search party up
in Gladwin for that particular weekend to search the area
around the cabin for Sean's body.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Did they find anything incriminating in the cabin?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
They did when they actually did a search ward on
the cabin. Later they found a palm print that belonged
to Sean and it was on this I believe it
was found on the stove handle, a partial palm print.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
So they start searching around Gladwin and where this cabin is.
Give me the time frame again. It's a Sunday when
he is kidnapped, Labor Day weekend. Where are we now?
When they find the cabin and they're thinking that Sean,
if he's not alive, is somewhere around here, or hopefully
if he is.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Alive, it's about two weeks later.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
His parents must have just been losing their minds. That's
awful on his brother.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Did they were? His brother was working toward becoming an attorney.
His parents were assigned you could call them victim advocates.
They're what law enforcement uses today, but back then they
were literally Dave Ostrom was assigned to be their liaison,
law enforcement liaison, so he was with them during the
(32:15):
evening hours and during the daylight hours. The Michigan State
Police detective was assigned to be with them also, and
they were simply there to do whatever the family needed
to have done, if it was to change a light bulb,
if it was to if they had questions, just anything
that they needed to be done. They wanted somebody from
(32:36):
law enforcement with them. The subdivision was blocked off so
that the news media wouldn't bother him. They were going
through help. There's no question about it. Yeah, no question
about it.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Did you interview Dave for the book?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I did.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Did Dave tell you what they were thinking during this
two week period, particularly when they find out Ron Bailey's
with young boys. Are they holding out hope that he's
still alive or is this this sort of like grief
where it doesn't look good from their point of view either.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I would describe it more as the grief where it
doesn't look good, like they're kind of preparing for that.
Oh no, that inevitable notification. That's the sense that I
got from Dave. I have to tell you. I was
able to briefly, very briefly, interview the other MSP detective
that was assigned to them. He ended up literally within
(33:33):
a month of me talking to him, he passed away.
He had decided that he really was hesitant about being
a part of this not because he was being rude,
but because he felt that he might be betraying the
confidence of the More family. Even though mister and Missus
Moore had been dead for several years, he still felt
(33:54):
that he might be betraying their confidence, and so he said,
I really would rather not take part in this, he said,
but he did put me in touch with Chris Hansen
from the Predator series. Chris Hansen was a young reporter
at that time, and he and this detective had become
very good friends as a result of the Sean mar
(34:15):
case and had been friends for forty years. And so
he said, I'll put you in touch with Chris and
he'll be sort of the liaison between you and me.
And so that was very helpful.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
You know, just as a quick side note, because I
want to get back to Sean's story. But in true crime,
we do often focus in on the mistakes that the
police make, whether they're unintentional or intentional, or covers of racism,
everything that we can think of. And so even though
this is an awful story that you're unfolding, it is
really nice to hear how compassionate and competent the police
(34:53):
are in this particular case. I just don't get a
lot of those, and so this is I know they're there,
and they're just not cases that I were poured on.
But it feels good to be able to say that.
It sounds like so far they're doing everything they possibly can,
including caring for the family in this case.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Oh, they absolutely were. They absolutely were. I can't find
any fault on the part of law enforcement in this case.
Everybody clicked, everybody worked toward one goal, and that was
to hopefully find shank life.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Okay, so they're searching around the cabin and what is
that like? Is that a grid search? Exact situation? Thank
goodness it's in September, so that it's not I know,
it just snows like heck out there. So I'm glad
it's in September and not bad weather.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, and it happened quick. They had almost a task force,
I guess, if you will, up in Gladwin, troopers from
all around the area, police from all around the area,
and they assigned teams to search particular areas in a grid.
And there was a trooper from the Pontiac Post who
was up there to help in the search, and he
(35:57):
and his partner were assigned particular area. I believe it
was about three miles from the cabin, and they could
see tracks kind of going back into the woods. This
is the here On National Forest. So you've got a huge,
huge forest area and dirt roads, sandy soil, if you will,
(36:18):
a lot of ferns going alongside the road, a lot
of forestry trees. And they see some tracks going kind
of off the road, and above it they see some
bird circling and the one says to the other trooper,
He says, what kind of birds are those? And the
troopers says vultures. And so they started literally walking following
(36:42):
this two track and they've found Sean's body about seventy
five feet off the road.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
So not buried or what was the condition like of
his body.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I would just say that being out in a forest
with wild animals for two weeks, there was a lot
of decomposition, and I'll just leave it at that. Really
it was a grizzly site.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Could they gleam any details of what happened, either how
long was he alive or certainly cause of death or
anything like that trauma?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
There was no evidence of any trauma. There was no
cause of death determined because of the decomposition. However, in
the blood work that was done at the autopsy, they
were able to determine that Sean had an amount of
I'm just going to call it a sedative, if you will,
and over the counter sedative that was much higher than
(37:40):
it should have been if he had been taking it
for a cold, if he will, or for allergies or whatever.
And so that in and of itself, combined with the
fact that I guess the totality of the circumstances around
his disappearance, combined with that that the medical examiner was
able to say that it was a homicide, even though
(38:03):
no cause of death was determined.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
So they find Sean's body and they go back to Bailey,
who they held the car. But they did they hold him.
I couldn't remember what you told me.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
They did not initially hold him. He had once they
released him. Within I think that afternoon. Back in nineteen
eighty five, you could buy a plane ticket without an
ID and with cash. He went to Detroit Metro Airport
and he bought a ticket to Florida, which is where
he had lived a couple of years prior to that.
(38:37):
For just a year or two and then he fled
Florida back then because he was molested boys down there,
So he fled back to Florida basically with that afternoon.
But MSP was the surveillance team was right within. As
a matter of fact, Tom Monahan, the owner of the
Detroit Tigers and Domino's Pizza, donated his private jet for
(38:57):
the surveillance team to fly down and beat the the
commercial flight down there because they knew where he was headed,
and they picked him up there. Once Shawn's body was found,
the police were able to immediately issue a warrant for
the arrest for kidnapping, and then once the identification was
(39:17):
made at the autopsy, they charged him with murder. But
they had enough to move in and arrest him once
they found Shawn's body, and when they did, he had
fled into the woods in Florida. So there was a
two day man hunt in Marion County, Florida before they
finally captured him and brought him back to Michigan.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
At that point, as far as they know, I know
they're looking at his record and everything. What do they
think happened from the time he had a very troubled
childhood and just was it felt like was in trouble
from age ten or so on. What is the record
as far as they knew at that point of what
(39:58):
Ron had done, which you know, it sounds like so
far had been kidnapping young boys and assaulting them, traumatizing
them and then releasing them. How many people are we
talking about?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Well, at his trial he admitted to over the previous
thirteen years having kidnapped as many as twelve to fifteen boys.
He had forgotten how many. The Lavonia Police Department's main
case against him was a case back when he was
sixteen where he had kidnapped a boy, sexually assaulted him,
(40:28):
choked him out to the point where he thought the
kid was dead, and threw him in the bushes. He
was charged with that case. He was charged with kidnapping,
sexual assault, and attempted murder At the age of sixteen.
He was sent to the Hawthorne Psychiatric Hospital in mid Michigan,
(40:49):
and he was confined there. The judge had a choice,
should I send him to prison as a sixteen year
old charged as an adult, or should I send him
maybe to get some help, because he wouldn't get any
help in prison, And so they chose to confine him
to the psychiatric hospital at Hawthorne as a juvenile, and
(41:11):
that's where he met doctor Tombo.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
So we'll pick up now with his experience there. So
first of all, will you give me some clarity on
as a sixteen year old when he sent to the
psychiatric hospital, what are the expectations of him. Is it
that he will be treated successfully somehow some way and
released into society or is this a facility where he
(41:36):
would conceivably spend the rest of his life if he
doesn't make some sort of progress that they can see.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
No, the goal was treatment, rehabilitation and return him to
his home. That's what their goal was. Sadly it didn't
work well.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
He encounters doctor Jose Tombo, who you had mentioned before,
and this was a very well respected psychiatrist I think
think in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
He was. Doctor Tombo had been with the Hawthorne and
Northfield Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Northfille, Michigan for several years,
very highly respected among his peers, among his colleagues, among
some of the patients. But some of the patients also,
it was later found out, were being sexually abused by
(42:22):
doctor Tombo, and as it turns out, Ron Bailey was
one of those. Ron Bailey claimed at his trial that
doctor Tombo had forced him into a sexual relationship and
that caused him to be insane at the time that
he kidnapped Shawan Moore. It didn't work, though the jury
(42:45):
was smarter than that. There was also a second case.
While the police were putting together the Shawn Moore case,
the Ferndale Police and the Task Force began to look
at similar kidnapping and abduction in nineteen four, a year
before Shawn Moore was kidnapped, and in that case, Kenny Myers,
(43:06):
a twelve year old boy was kidnapped and sexual assaulted
and his body was found about twenty miles away the
next day, and that case had gone cold for a year.
And then in addition to that, there was another boy
a month before Kenny Myers was kidnapped who had been
kidnapped and sexual assaulted and let go and he was
(43:29):
able to identify Ron Bailey. So in the end he
had the Shawn Moore case, the Kenny Myers case, and
the case that this other kid had identified Ron Bailey
of kidnapping and sexual assaults. So basically Ron had three
separate court jurisdictions that were prosecuting him.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Kenny Myers, you said he was kidnapped from Ferndale? Is
that right correct? How close is that to Brighton where
Sean was kidnapped.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
I would say maybe thirty miles.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
And as Lavonia like in between those places.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Lavonia is south of Ferndale, but it's another suburb of
Detroit and it's not that far away, maybe ten or
fifteen miles.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
So can you give me a summary of what happens
with Kenny Myers because we have such a kind of
deep understanding of Sean Moore and his family and everything.
What can you tell about Kenny? Is it a similar situation,
nice family, all of that.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
It is absolutely a textbook identical to the Shawn Moore case.
Kenny Myers is out riding his bike down the John
r Is the street that it's called in the Detroit area,
Ferndale area, and he's looking for a job stocking shelves
in a party store. Ron Bailey sees him. He follows him,
(44:49):
just like he did in the Shawn Moore case. A
year later. He takes the opportunity to distract him by
stopping to talk to him. Then he backs into a
parking lot, cuts Kenny Myers off his bike, grabs him
off his bike, forces him into his car, and leaves.
A witness saw it happen. She thought it was a
parent disciplining a child, and so she didn't say anything initially.
(45:12):
So that literally the method of operation is identical to
the Shawn Moore case. Kenny Myers comes from another great family.
You know, the mother's divorce, but she's remarried. They had
moved from Warren, Michigan to Ferndale just two weeks before that.
They were just settling into their new home.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
That's awful. I was thinking when you were describing Shawn's kidnapping.
I was thinking, I wonder, like how many times his
dad lets it run through his head, like if the
freaking lawnmower hadn't broken. If I don't know, I mean
that must as a parent, it just must be awful.
If we had moved there, I think you would have
a tendency to blame blame yourself. I hope that doesn't
(45:51):
happen with the other parents, but I could just see
being in their shoes like that.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Well, as long as you'd mentioned the parents, let me
mention one thing real quick. The positive that came out
of this book because people don't want to read about childkillers.
They really don't. It's a difficult subject to talk about.
It's a difficult subject to research. But I think that
it was important to write this book number one because
(46:18):
the More family and the Meyers family both took their
tragedy and turned it into something positive. And they really did,
and you'll read about that in the book. And beyond that,
I think there are other cases out there.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I was going to ask about the Oakland County. You
said there were four unsolved child murders in Oakland County.
Is there a possibility he can be linked to those?
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Well, that's a suspicion that some investigators have. Without going
into a lot of detail, because I need to emphasize
that this book is not about the Oaklan County childkillings,
although chapter one that's what I talk about is the
Oaklan County childkillings to kind of set the stage because
people were still on edge about those when Sean Wore
(47:02):
was kidnapped and Kenny Myers was kidnapped. And then in
the end of the book, chapter titled Unanswered Questions, we
address that particular issue. Is there a possibility that somehow
Ron Bailey could be tied to the Oaklan County child killings.
I think there's some compelling some we'll call it conjecture.
(47:25):
I don't know. The theory has always been in the
Oakle County childkillings that it was a person or a
group of people that over eighteen months kidnapped these four
children and held them for several days before murdering them.
And one of the theories was did they use someone
who could be used as a lure to coax kids
(47:48):
near the kidnappers. Well, Ron Bailey would have been seventeen
years old at the time, blonde hair, very young looking,
and so there's there's suspicion there that maybe there's a
As a police officer, I never worked on the Oakland
County child killing cases because I worked in mid Michigan,
but I interviewed some of the investigators and I can
(48:09):
tell you that they absolutely believe that there could be
some sort of Italie in.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Do they have any biological evidence that they can use
anything for DNA.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Well, it's kind of a long story, but they do
have a DNA profile of the killer. They have a
hair from a vehicle taken from a suspect they interviewed
in nineteen seventy six. They have a hair from one
of the male victims, and they have a hair from
a second male victim, and all of those hairs came
from the same person. I will tell you that they
(48:41):
do not match Ron Bailey, but there's still a suspicion
that Ron Bailey could somehow be involved.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
I don't want to get too much into Oakland, but
I do find this fascinating. Were the hairs in places
where a random male hairs or a dad's hair or
something like that shouldn't be And that's why they feel
like it's the killer.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
The hair that was taken off Mark Stebbens's body at
the autopsy and the hair that was taken off of
Timothy King's body. Now these two murders were like eighteen
months apart. Those matched the hair off the vehicle that
was of a suspect that was interviewed in nineteen seventy six,
but they don't belong to that suspect. So that suspect
(49:23):
had someone in his vehicle whose hair ended up in
the vehicle and on Mark Stebbin's body and on Timothy
King's body.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
So ultimately he wants to he's issuing it an insanity plea.
He wants to go to a psychiatric facility. His defense,
it sounds like you were saying, is pointing to doctor Tombo,
who it sounds like had been suspected and disciplined, and
it looks like he was. Did he end up being disbarred?
(49:52):
I can't remember. I read that there were six accusations
against him, so it wasn't just Ron Bailey saying this
to get out of anything, right.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
He was eventually in the state of Michigan, took his
medical license. The defense team for Ron Bailey wanted doctor
Tombo to testify, and doctor Tombo disappeared. Conveniently, they can't.
They can't find him, they can't serve him. He wants
no part of it because he knows it's going to
come out that he's been molesting other patients at the hospital.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
So ultimately the jury does not believe the insanity defense
that is put up by Ron Bailey, and then what
does he end up getting for this.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Ron Bailey received a life sentence with no parole for
the kidnapping and murder of Sean Moore. He received the
same sentence for the kidnapping and murder of Kenny Myers,
and the third charge of kidnapping and sexual assault on
the youth that was kidnapped a month before Kenny Myers.
(50:56):
That case was dismissed and thrown out simply because it
just would have been a cumulative sentence. He'd already received
two life sentences without parole. The prosecuting attorney's office felt, hey,
this is just going to be cumulative. Let's go ahead
and dismiss that because that kid survived, he was not murdered.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Any reaction from Ron Bailey when the you know, his
insanity defense falls apart.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
No, I think that he accepted it. I think that
he knew that it was that it was coming. I
will say that his attorney, Ray Casar, and I interviewed
mister Kassar for the book, a very genuine person and
to this day, mister Cassar doesn't believe that Ron Bailey
is a predator. He just thinks that he was a
(51:46):
sick individual that needed help.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
So no chance of getting out and you know, ultimately,
what do you think the story is here? We did
not talk very much because there were so much other
stuff to talk about about how Ron got away with
doing everything he did before Kenny, and before Sean, before
(52:08):
the murders happened, he was trying to kill some of
these kids. How does this slip through? You know, because
he obviously gets out of doctor Tumbull's care. How does
this happen?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
That's a great question. How did he slip through the
cracks for thirteen years? You know, the police had the
reports on him, they had the cases against him. I
don't know how that happens, but it does. And the
other question in the end is are there other victims
out there?
Speaker 1 (52:38):
No, of course murder victims too, Yeah, of course absolutely.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
You know down in Florida where he was doing the
same thing. He was up here for two years before
he decided to move back up here. And are there
other victims up here? That's the big question. And if
an investigator at some agency reads this book, or a
parent who has a lost child that they haven't seen
(53:04):
for forty years, maybe there's a connection.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah. Well, I think that you handled this book really well.
And the sensitivity that you've obviously had dealing with the
public being in law enforcement, all of that lends to
giving you know, I think a story that, as we've
talked about before, is incredibly difficult these This would not
be a book I would be able to do, I
(53:28):
don't think. But it's I think an important book. And
it just showed these kids. So if we talk about
Kenny and we talk about Sean who came from you
know that what you would say would be how we
would describe, you know, a good family. You can imagine
how kids who are from families who either don't want
to or can't pay attention to what's happening with them,
(53:50):
how they could slip through the cracks too. I mean,
if you've got a Kenny and a Shan who are
snatched right in the daylight, it's just to me another
reminder about how all kids, no matter where they're from,
are vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
To describe Kenny and I just thought of this as
I was talking to you. To describe the family life
of Kenny Myers and Sean Moore if you could picture
this may sound ridiculous, but if you could picture the
television family Leave It to Beaver, you know, just the
classic middle class American family. The parents are both working,
(54:25):
they're paying their bills, they're just living life and it's
immediately disrupted by some predator. It's an American tragedy. It
really is.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Sinner's All About the
Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and
Don't Forget. There are twelve s of my historical true
crime podcast, tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,
scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.
(55:09):
This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This
episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer.
Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and
(55:30):
Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold
More and if you know of a historical crime that
could use some attention from the crew at tenfold more Wicked,
email us at info at Tenfoldmorewicked dot com. We'll also
take your suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words
This story contains adult content and language, along with references
to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If an investigator at some agency reads this book, or
a parent who has a lost child that they haven't
seen for forty years, maybe there's a connection.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:55):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious through
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. For more than a decade,
a serial killer stalked teenage boys in Michigan. Ronald Lloyd
(01:17):
Bailey was eventually caught, but the story became more complicated
because of Bailey's experience at one of the state's most
respected psychiatric hospitals. Author Rod Sadler tells me the story
in his book depraved obsession. Tell me briefly about your
background with law enforcement, because I do think you know,
(01:38):
unlike other authors, this gives you such a unique perspective
of a kind of a complicated case.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, I was a police officer for thirty years here
in Michigan. I started in nineteen eighty one. I worked
for some small agencies for about the first five years
of my career, and then I was hired by the
Eton County Sheriff's Office, which is the west side of Lansing, Michigan,
which is our state capitol. And I worked at Eton
(02:05):
County for twenty five years until I retired in twenty twelve.
As a police officer working for Eaton County, I was
promoted to the position of sergeant in nineteen ninety nine.
I also was our police composite artist and our lead
traffic crash investigator for all of our fatality crashes. And
(02:27):
I was also an emergency manager. So I kind of
had a storied career.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I guess, if you will now, does that include investigating murders?
I don't know what the role of sergeant would be.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, as a road patrol sergeant, I supervised the shift
certainly if I or a deputy responded to, let's say
a homicide call, I would, as a sergeant, you know,
make sure that the detectives are on the way and
the scene is secure, and we have enough people to
do this, that and the other things. So so I'm
(03:01):
familiar with procedures and things like that with homicides.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Set the scene for me, you know, if we're talking
about southeast Michigan starting in the seventies, when there's no
discovery made, because this goes on for a very long time,
set the scene for when things start happening with these
boys in the area. What is the area like and
who are the people who were in that area.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
It doesn't start with this particular kidnapping, but this particular
kidnapping is the highlight of the book, and that's the
kidnapping of Sean Moore, a thirteen year old boy who
lived just south of Brighton, Michigan. And Brighton, Michigan, for
all intents and purposes, is about halfway between Detroit and Lancing.
(03:46):
Lancing is more centralized, our state capital. Obviously, Detroit is
the southeast corner of the state, and so about halfway
between Lansing and Detroit is Brighton, Michigan. Brighton, Michigan at
that time, in nineteen eighty five, i've was sort of
a hub for young professionals and senior citizens that commuted
(04:07):
either to Lancing or to Detroit to work. And it
was a very quiet community, not a lot of crime
and not a lot of violent crime especially, and that's
where this all took place.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I have to think, based on the demographic that you're
talking about that this would be a low crime area
in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
It is a very low crime area. Yeah, it's between
Lancing and Detroit. You know, Detroit huge city and Lancing
the state capitol, busy city. But Brighton, Michigan really was
you know, the downtown area was about six blocks long
at what and I put right in the book, it
(04:47):
wasn't unusual for if you're driving down the main street
in Brighton to waive several times at people because everybody
seemed to know everybody else.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Tell me about Sean Moore, thirteen years old? What kind
of kid is he?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
From what you know, Sean Moore is a very bright,
thirteen year old boy who lived with his parents and
his older brother. His older brother was about thirteen years
older than he was Sean was set to start the
seventh grade. It was summer break. He was just your
typical bright teenager. He was liked by everybody. All of
(05:25):
his teachers just loved him to death. And he was
just a very bright, typical thirteen year old boy who
had everything you can imagine a thirteen year old boy
would have in his bedroom, baseball cards, a sign on
his door that said this room is protected by an
attack moose. You know, just silly things like that.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
This is thirteen year old boys in Michigan, I think exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, So he was just a very bright, young, well
liked thirteen year old boy.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Set the scene for me what happens before Sean disappears
and win also.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, it was Labor Day weekend in nineteen eighty five,
August thirty first, I believe it was a Sunday, if
I'm not mistaken, and Sean was doing some yard work
with his dad. They needed to get to lawn mode,
and during the evening they were going to go see
a movie. The entire family was going to go see
(06:24):
Back to the Future I think had just been released.
Sean liked to use the riding lawnmower, but next to
the house there was apparently a small hill or something,
so his dad would mow that and then Sean would
use the riding lawnmore and mow the rest of the lawn. Well,
the riding lawnmower broke that afternoon, and so his dad
(06:46):
began to try to fix it, and Sean was waiting
and waiting and waiting, and he was hot. They'd been
out in the sun for several hours, and so he
asked his parents, Hey, can I jump on my bike
and ride a mile up to the Pump and Pantry
Party convenience store gas station. They gave him permission to
(07:07):
They were very strict about him leaving the subdivision, but
they did allow him to go, and so he jumped
on his bike and he rode up to the Pump
and Pantry Party store to buy an anw root peer.
Some friends of his saw him at the store, saw
him purchase the root per and that's where the killer
first spotted him.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Also tell me what happens next? When do his parents
figure out that something's wrong.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Well, after several hours, Sean hadn't returned, and his brother
became quite concerned and decided to go look for him.
Figured that maybe he was dawdling up at the up
at the pump and pantry for some reason. And so
as his brother leaves the subdivision and begins to drive
up this service road called Whittemore Lake Road, or they
(07:57):
also referred to it as old US twenty three because
before the highway was put in, it was US twenty three.
So he leaves the subdivision and literally less than a
mile up the road, he can see police cars pulled
to the side of the road, and he pulls up
and he sees his brother's bike, and so he asks
to speak to the Greenolk Township police officer on the scene,
(08:20):
and he says, that's my brother's bike. He said, there
must have been an accident, and the officer said said
to him, he said, well, why do you think that
there was an accident? He said, well, my brother's bike's here.
You guys are all here. And it was then that
they had to take him aside and say it it
looks as if your brother has been abducted.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
How did that happen? Did somebody call and say we
saw a man take this boy, because you know, bike
laying there wouldn't be alarming to most people.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yes, actually, there were several witnesses, but the main witness
was on the highway. Sean was riding northbound up to
the party store. The witnesses were driving southbound on the
freeway next to this service road. The first witness was
trying to get to the University of Michigan Hospital because
(09:11):
his daughter had been injured in a farm accident. So
he was on his way to ann Arbor and he
glanced over and he saw a man forcing a young
boy back toward a vehicle, and for some reason, his
mind clicked and he knew something was wrong. It was
just an instinct, and he said to his fiance, who
(09:34):
was in the vehicle with him, He said, I need
to get to the next exit, and we need to
get back and try to get a license plate number,
because he saw that Sean was visibly upset and it
didn't look right to him.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Wow, all from just going he's driving, You got to think,
what fifty sixty miles an hour? Maybe less, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, back in eighty five, the speed limited, I think
the national speed limit was fifty five miles an hour
on the freeway, and I I think that he said
that his cruise control was set at like sixty and
so yeah, So for an instant he glances over and
sees this, and he knows he has to get back
(10:13):
to try to get a license plate number. And by
the time he hits the next exit and turns around,
comes back up the service road, all he finds is
the bike.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Now, you say there was another witness or two also
to this.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yes, there was another witness, and she was traveling northbound
on the service road, and so she's coming up just
as Sean is riding his bike, and he's looking over
his shoulder at a man who's walking very fast toward him.
And the bike was a little bit big for Sean.
(10:47):
He hadn't quite grown into it, and so he was
trying to steady the bike. His handlebars were moving back
and forth as he glanced over his shoulder at the
guy coming up to him. This particular witness felt something
was a miss maybe, but what she really noticed was
the jeep that the man had come from. He had
(11:08):
gotten out of a nineteen eighty five AMC jeep. That's
significant in this case because the first witness who glanced
over and was trying to get back to the scene,
thought that the vehicle involved was a GMC pickup the
second witness who saw the jeep, she didn't get a
(11:30):
chance to report it for a day or two, and
so for that first day or two police were looking
for a GMC pickup when they should have been looking
for a jeep CJ seven. No.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, was there anybody else who saw this?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
There were some other witnesses that came forward that were
on the highway also that identified the killer later that
saw the same thing that the first witness saw him,
forcing a young boy back toward a jeep.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Does everybody go to the media at this point and
there's apbs happening everywhere? What's the response?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, the first response is the first witness who sees
the bike laying on the side of the road. He
knows he's got to find a police officer, so he
drives up to the next exit, which is the Pump
and Pantry party store, and he's going to try to
find a cop. Well, on the other side of the
intersection is a Green Oak Township police officer by the
(12:28):
name of Dave Ostrom, and Dave Ostrom is getting ready
to get off his shift. He's got about forty five
minutes left, and he looks up and there's a pickup
facing him on the other side of the intersection, flashing
his headlights at him. So he pulls up next to
the pickup and the witness says, hey, I think I
just saw a young boy getting kidnapped, and so Dave
(12:51):
immediately gets him to the side of the road starts
taking information, putting it out over the radio. And about
a mile north of there is Livingston County detective who's
working in uniform for the holiday weekend taking marine complaints,
and he hears the information go out over the radio.
(13:15):
So he gets on the radio and says, hey, I'm
just a mile north of there. Have you been down
to the scene yet, and Ostrom says no. He says,
I'm still taking information. So Ed Moore, this detective from
Livingston County, Michigan, runs down to the scene and finds
the bike on the side of the road. So quickly
information's put out over the radio. People are on the lookout,
(13:37):
but they're on the lookout for a GMC pickup and
not an AMC jeep. As the information's going out, the
Michigan State Police, who have a post or a substation
if you will, north of the scene, they get the information.
They begin to call the media. And as soon as
that story hit the media, the phone started ringing tips
(14:01):
and people who thought they saw things, and so it
was a quick response, a very quick response to get
the media involved. And I think that's why this case
was resolved so quickly.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I have a jurisdiction question, and you were obviously the
right person to ask. I usually don't ask stuff like this.
So you've got Livingston County, right, and the detective and
the man I can't remember what Dave's is he an officer?
I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, he's with a small township jurisdiction called the green
Oak Township Police Department.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
So you've got two different departments working, and then the
Michigan State Police in this particular case, Sean Moore, did
everybody work well together? Because you said this was a
quick resolution, not a good one, but a quick one.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah. What happened was the following day they formed a
task for us where officers from green Oak Township, Livingston County,
the Michigan State Police, the FBI, the Brighton Police Department,
all those agencies came together. And I have to tell
you that it was really unprecedented because law enforcement back
(15:13):
in the mid eighties, and prior to that, agencies held
a lot of information very close and by that I
mean they didn't share it a lot. In this particular case,
you had local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies who
came together as a task force and were desperately, literally
(15:34):
desperately trying to find Sean Moore before something happened to him.
They worked so closely together it was literally almost unheard
of at that time.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
And this is the FBI who's getting involved.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
The FBI was also involved.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yes, what triggers that? Is that a missing child that
is clearly the victim of abduction or is it there
on the highway or what makes it okay for the
FBI to come in?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Well, I think because it was a kidnapping of a child.
Michigan had gone through a series of child killings in
Oakland County back in the late seventies, seventy six and
seventy seven unsolved. There were four unsolved child abductions and
murders where the children were literally held for several days
(16:23):
before they were murdered. And that was fresh in the
memory of a lot of people in Michigan. And so
when the FBI gets you know, here's a report of
a child being abducted, and they're absolutely certain it's not
a random parental discipline situation where a father's taking his
kid back home for misbehaving or whatever, then certainly, yeah,
(16:48):
they're going to get involved immediately.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Okay, so we have a task force now that involves
several different departments, and then of course the FBI and
the state police. And you've got the media alerted and
now you've got all of these calls eighty five so
there's no social media. You've got all these calls coming
in to the police station with all of these tips.
What does this task force tackle first to try to
(17:11):
get Sean back, because I'm sure there's just incredible alarm,
maybe even all over the state at this point.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, they start to interview that reinterview the witnesses to
get more detailed statements, and they also look at they
contact the American Motors Corporation AMC. If you're very young,
you probably don't realize that AMC made the Jeep at
that time, they made the Pacer. I think they made
the Gremlin, but they also made the Jeep. And so
(17:36):
the task force contacted American Motors Corporation and they got
a list of the vehicle identification numbers of every Jeep
sold between like nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty five, and
then they were in the process of taking those vehicle
identification numbers and they would run those through the law
(17:58):
Enforcement Information Network and find out who the owners were.
And then the process would be to go to all
of those owners and say, hey, where were you on
Labor Day weekend? And that's how it all started the investigation.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Really, how would it go? Rod? Now do you think
it would be checking license plates at the digital electric
tolls if the car passed through a toll, of course,
looking at CCTV at the convenience store, anything like that.
And at this point they just have the make of
the car, the jeep, And I'm assuming the woman who
(18:36):
came forward maybe was she able to say it looked
like Michigan plates. This wasn't like a Florida plate or something.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Actually, yeah, they were able to determine it was definitely
a Michigan plate. And she was absolutely certain of the
make and model of the jeep because her boyfriend had
one that was identical to it. It was a Renegade model.
It said Renegade right on the front of the jeep,
and when the detectives took her to a jeep dealership,
(19:05):
she pointed one out that was identical to it. Okay,
so they were absolutely certain. Again, it took a couple
of days for them to get that information, but once
they had it, she was absolutely certain, no question about it.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
What other resources did they have at that time as
far as locating a vehicle, Like I said, today you
would be looking at toll records that would have come
to you very quickly, CCTV stuff like that, But back
then it was just simply you know, witnesses and then
the database of registered owners of these jeeps.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Absolutely, their hands really were almost tied, if you will.
If you compare it to today's law enforcement in social media,
Oh my gosh, if there's a police agency or a
public service agency out there that doesn't have a website
or some way to relay information for notification to the public,
(20:00):
way behind the times. Yet back then, you're exactly right,
what did they have. They had the television, news, they
had radio, you know, they had computers back then to
relay information quickly to police agencies around the state and
things like that. But still they were looking for the
wrong car for two days, so it was very difficult.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
What did they come up with When they have this search,
they're searching through what three or you were saying, three
or four counties, including Livingstone, looking for the owner of
this particular car.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
They are they're looking for the jeep. By this time,
once the task force tasts a couple of days to
get up and running, by that time, they've determined they're
looking for a jeep and not a GMC pickup. And
so they begin to run these vins through the law
Enforcement Information Network. They're getting the names of the owners
and they're contact and the owners. Well in the middle
(20:56):
of this big list of vin owners jeep owners is
the name of the killer and he's just another person
on the list that they've got to go track down
and interview. But what happens is as they're doing that,
the task force is up and run. In twenty four
to seven and about eleven o'clock at night, the FBI
(21:18):
is man in the task force headquarters and they get
a phone call from the Livonia Police Department. And Lavonia
is a suburb of Detroit, and the Livonia officer says
to the FBI agent, he says, hey, you guys really
need to take a look at this guy. We've got
a guy here in our jurisdiction that does that exact
(21:41):
same thing. He kidnaps kids off their bicycles, he sexually
assaults them, and you really need to take a look
at him. I'm paraphrasing, but basically that's the information that
he gives him. So the FBI agent Jess Lopez is
his name. I interviewed him for the book. He said, yeah,
he said, let's not wait, let's go track him down
(22:02):
right now. So they go track down this guy that
Lavonia Police Department has a record of and they interview him,
and that's when it all begins to unravel.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So Lavogna police tell the task force, we have this guy.
You need to look at him. He snatched kids, you know,
off bikes off the street and assaults them. How many
days into this is that happening? And I'm also wondering
how many people do they have to call about this?
AMC JEEP.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Well, I don't know how big the list was, but
I guess you could imagine it's got to be probably
a thousand people or more. I would think they decided
to go interview the killer based on what Lavonia has said.
Unbeknownst to them, he's already been interviewed by somebody on
the task force earlier that particular day, and this was
(22:52):
within three or four days after the kidnapping. It happened
very quickly, it really did.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
And it was about the fact that he's an owner
of an AMC jeep exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
He was just a name on the list.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You know what I wondered when you were talking about that.
You know, in a second, we can give his name
and you can give me some information. But I was thinking,
you know, his last name starts with a B, and
I wondered if they just alphabetized that list, and he
came up pretty early, and that's why he got interviewed early,
because he's, you know, at the top of the alphabetized list.
I don't know if that's how it worked, but.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Well, you may be exactly right, because the vehicle identification
number is all they had for that list of jeep owners,
and so maybe they did. You know, I never thought
to ask them that, but you may very well be right.
You know, if his last name began with a Z,
maybe they wouldn't have resolved this so quick.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
So tell me what happens and tell me just sort
of initially, who is this guy. What's the impression that
they get when they go to see him.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Well, his name, the killer's name is Ron Bailey. And
Ron Bailey had been interviewed that afternoon before the Lavonia
Police contacted the Task Force, he'd been interviewed by a
couple of detectives and he told them Labor Day weekend,
he said, I was up in Caseville, Michigan. I was
(24:14):
fishing with a friend. He has a boat up there
and a cabin and that's where I was. And so
they took his information and they were going to follow
up later with his friend a list of things to
do if you will. And then later that night, Lavonia
Police contacts the Task Force and says, hey, we've got
this guy named Ron Bailey who lives here in Lavonia.
(24:36):
His emo is to snatch kids off bicycles and sexually
assault them and then release them. And so the police
Jess Lopez, the FBI Special Agent in charge work in
the Task Force, that night he said, let's go talk
to him right now. They go to the Bailey home
in Lavonia. Ron Bailey's dad answers the door. It's about
(24:59):
midnight now, and he says, no, Ron's not here, He's
at a friend's house. The task force guys, they head
over to the friend's house and sure enough, Ron Bailey's
jeep is there, so they wait. They wait for Ron
Bailey to leave, and when he leaves, they stop him
and he becomes arrogant. He starts waving a business card
(25:22):
from a trooper or detective around, saying, hey, I already
talked to you guys this afternoon. I told him I
was up in case Phil. That's my story and I'm
sticking to it. And they said, well, we really just
want to verify your story. You know, we're not accusing you,
we're just following up trying to verify it. Why didn't
(25:42):
you come on back to the Lavonia Police Department with us?
So he agrees to do that, and what Ron Bailey
doesn't know is when he leaves with the officers, a
couple other officers interview his friend and his friend says,
he wasn't in Case filled with me. He asked me
to lie for him. Well, the gig is up now,
(26:05):
so they put the pressure on him back at the
Lavonia Police Department and they feel they have enough literally
maybe to arrest him. Wow, he's yeah, so he's really
not free to go at that point. And they decide
after an interview with him, and he maintains that he
was with his friend, and they hit him up with
(26:27):
the fact that his friend said he wasn't there. He says, well,
that's my story and I'm not changing it. So they
take him up back up to Brighton now and they
decide to do a police lineup with him. It's now
early in the morning, and they bring in some witnesses
that witnessed the abduction of Sean and none of them
(26:48):
can pick him.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Out of the line because they're driving right.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, it's early in the morning. Nobody can pick him out,
and so they have to release him. But what Ron
Bailey doesn't know is that they also put him under surveillance.
They have a surveillance team following him. So that's when
it all begins to come together.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Let me ask you, just playing the skeptic on some
of this, So Hismo has been snatching kids, you know,
off bikes. We don't know anything yet about the legal
process with that. Did he get caught, did he serve time?
You know, was he institutionalized all of that? But you
have this rap sheet and you've got the jeep, and
(27:33):
is that enough to hold him when he cannot be
identified and there's of course no CCTV or anything else.
Can he just say listen, I've made a bunch of mistakes.
I happened to have this jeep. What else you have
on me?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Well, they had enough to hold the jeep. After they
released him, when he was brought to the Briton Post,
they look through his wallet. They photographed everything in his
wallet so that they would have a record of it
before giving it back to him. And what they noticed
in there was a receipt for a tow truck a
(28:08):
toe and so Jess Lopez, after Bailey was released early
in the morning, he goes and tracks down Bailey's well.
He tracks down the record company for the receipt and says, hey,
what is this And they said, oh, yeah, it was
a jeep that we pulled out of. It was stuck
(28:29):
in some four wheel driving. They'd been off roading. They said,
we didn't recognize who the driver was, but we recognized
the girl with him. Her name is deb Chesney and
that's a girl that we knew. One of them recognized her.
So Lopez then tracks down Deb Chesney that day and
Deb Chesney is Ron Bailey's pseudo girlfriend, the interviewer, and
(28:52):
they said, hey, where was Ron during Labor Day weekend?
She said, well, he was up at our family cabin
in Gladwin, now Caseville. Just to give you a perspective
on where Caseville is in Michigan, it's in the Thumb
area on Saginaw Bay if you're familiar with Michigan at all,
and then Gladwin is literally up in north central Michigan,
(29:15):
so about one hundred or more miles away from Caseville.
So Deb says, yeah, he was up at our family cabin.
He borrowed the key from us, and so Jess Lopez
knew immediately at that point that's probably where they would
end up finding Shawn Moore's body.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Did she suspect anything? Was she surprised? Alarmed? What was
her reaction?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
She was completely surprised, completely surprised. You know, It's funny.
Ron Bailey's dad as soon as the story about the
kidnapping and the jeep hit the airwaves, hit the television,
in the radio, and the newspapers, he suspected his own
son and confronted him about it, and Ron live told
(30:00):
his dad. He said, well, don't worry, dad, I was
up in Caseville and there's thousands of people that owned
jeep's like mine.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
How old was Ron at the time? Is it twenty two?
Am I remembering?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Right? Twenty three?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I believe so, young man. And we'll learn a little
bit more about him after we find out about Sean.
So they find out about Deb's family's cabin that supposedly
Ron was up there by himself, and they go up.
They go rushing up to the cabin hoping to find
Sean alive, because that has been, as far as they know,
(30:31):
the case with all of the other boys that have
been snatched by Ron before.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Right correct, Ron's history is criminal history has always been
to release his victims, and so in this case they did.
They immediately flew up to Gladwin hoping maybe they would
find Sean alive. They found an empty cabin at that point,
and so they collected a little bits and pieces of
(30:57):
evidence and flew back that same day, and they were
going to organize at that point a search party up
in Gladwin for that particular weekend to search the area
around the cabin for Sean's body.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Did they find anything incriminating in the cabin?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
They did when they actually did a search ward on
the cabin. Later they found a palm print that belonged
to Sean and it was on this I believe it
was found on the stove handle, a partial palm print.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
So they start searching around Gladwin and where this cabin is.
Give me the time frame again. It's a Sunday when
he is kidnapped, Labor Day weekend. Where are we now?
When they find the cabin and they're thinking that Sean,
if he's not alive, is somewhere around here, or hopefully
if he is.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Alive, it's about two weeks later.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
His parents must have just been losing their minds. That's
awful on his brother.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Did they were? His brother was working toward becoming an attorney.
His parents were assigned you could call them victim advocates.
They're what law enforcement uses today, but back then they
were literally Dave Ostrom was assigned to be their liaison,
law enforcement liaison, so he was with them during the
(32:15):
evening hours and during the daylight hours. The Michigan State
Police detective was assigned to be with them also, and
they were simply there to do whatever the family needed
to have done, if it was to change a light bulb,
if it was to if they had questions, just anything
that they needed to be done. They wanted somebody from
(32:36):
law enforcement with them. The subdivision was blocked off so
that the news media wouldn't bother him. They were going
through help. There's no question about it. Yeah, no question
about it.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Did you interview Dave for the book?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I did.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Did Dave tell you what they were thinking during this
two week period, particularly when they find out Ron Bailey's
with young boys. Are they holding out hope that he's
still alive or is this this sort of like grief
where it doesn't look good from their point of view either.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I would describe it more as the grief where it
doesn't look good, like they're kind of preparing for that.
Oh no, that inevitable notification. That's the sense that I
got from Dave. I have to tell you. I was
able to briefly, very briefly, interview the other MSP detective
that was assigned to them. He ended up literally within
(33:33):
a month of me talking to him, he passed away.
He had decided that he really was hesitant about being
a part of this not because he was being rude,
but because he felt that he might be betraying the
confidence of the More family. Even though mister and Missus
Moore had been dead for several years, he still felt
(33:54):
that he might be betraying their confidence, and so he said,
I really would rather not take part in this, he said,
but he did put me in touch with Chris Hansen
from the Predator series. Chris Hansen was a young reporter
at that time, and he and this detective had become
very good friends as a result of the Sean mar
(34:15):
case and had been friends for forty years. And so
he said, I'll put you in touch with Chris and
he'll be sort of the liaison between you and me.
And so that was very helpful.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
You know, just as a quick side note, because I
want to get back to Sean's story. But in true crime,
we do often focus in on the mistakes that the
police make, whether they're unintentional or intentional, or covers of racism,
everything that we can think of. And so even though
this is an awful story that you're unfolding, it is
really nice to hear how compassionate and competent the police
(34:53):
are in this particular case. I just don't get a
lot of those, and so this is I know they're there,
and they're just not cases that I were poured on.
But it feels good to be able to say that.
It sounds like so far they're doing everything they possibly can,
including caring for the family in this case.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Oh, they absolutely were. They absolutely were. I can't find
any fault on the part of law enforcement in this case.
Everybody clicked, everybody worked toward one goal, and that was
to hopefully find shank life.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Okay, so they're searching around the cabin and what is
that like? Is that a grid search? Exact situation? Thank
goodness it's in September, so that it's not I know,
it just snows like heck out there. So I'm glad
it's in September and not bad weather.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, and it happened quick. They had almost a task force,
I guess, if you will, up in Gladwin, troopers from
all around the area, police from all around the area,
and they assigned teams to search particular areas in a grid.
And there was a trooper from the Pontiac Post who
was up there to help in the search, and he
(35:57):
and his partner were assigned particular area. I believe it
was about three miles from the cabin, and they could
see tracks kind of going back into the woods. This
is the here On National Forest. So you've got a huge,
huge forest area and dirt roads, sandy soil, if you will,
(36:18):
a lot of ferns going alongside the road, a lot
of forestry trees. And they see some tracks going kind
of off the road, and above it they see some
bird circling and the one says to the other trooper,
He says, what kind of birds are those? And the
troopers says vultures. And so they started literally walking following
(36:42):
this two track and they've found Sean's body about seventy
five feet off the road.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
So not buried or what was the condition like of
his body.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I would just say that being out in a forest
with wild animals for two weeks, there was a lot
of decomposition, and I'll just leave it at that. Really
it was a grizzly site.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Could they gleam any details of what happened, either how
long was he alive or certainly cause of death or
anything like that trauma?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
There was no evidence of any trauma. There was no
cause of death determined because of the decomposition. However, in
the blood work that was done at the autopsy, they
were able to determine that Sean had an amount of
I'm just going to call it a sedative, if you will,
and over the counter sedative that was much higher than
(37:40):
it should have been if he had been taking it
for a cold, if he will, or for allergies or whatever.
And so that in and of itself, combined with the
fact that I guess the totality of the circumstances around
his disappearance, combined with that that the medical examiner was
able to say that it was a homicide, even though
(38:03):
no cause of death was determined.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
So they find Sean's body and they go back to Bailey,
who they held the car. But they did they hold him.
I couldn't remember what you told me.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
They did not initially hold him. He had once they
released him. Within I think that afternoon. Back in nineteen
eighty five, you could buy a plane ticket without an
ID and with cash. He went to Detroit Metro Airport
and he bought a ticket to Florida, which is where
he had lived a couple of years prior to that.
(38:37):
For just a year or two and then he fled
Florida back then because he was molested boys down there,
So he fled back to Florida basically with that afternoon.
But MSP was the surveillance team was right within. As
a matter of fact, Tom Monahan, the owner of the
Detroit Tigers and Domino's Pizza, donated his private jet for
(38:57):
the surveillance team to fly down and beat the the
commercial flight down there because they knew where he was headed,
and they picked him up there. Once Shawn's body was found,
the police were able to immediately issue a warrant for
the arrest for kidnapping, and then once the identification was
(39:17):
made at the autopsy, they charged him with murder. But
they had enough to move in and arrest him once
they found Shawn's body, and when they did, he had
fled into the woods in Florida. So there was a
two day man hunt in Marion County, Florida before they
finally captured him and brought him back to Michigan.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
At that point, as far as they know, I know
they're looking at his record and everything. What do they
think happened from the time he had a very troubled
childhood and just was it felt like was in trouble
from age ten or so on. What is the record
as far as they knew at that point of what
(39:58):
Ron had done, which you know, it sounds like so
far had been kidnapping young boys and assaulting them, traumatizing
them and then releasing them. How many people are we
talking about?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Well, at his trial he admitted to over the previous
thirteen years having kidnapped as many as twelve to fifteen boys.
He had forgotten how many. The Lavonia Police Department's main
case against him was a case back when he was
sixteen where he had kidnapped a boy, sexually assaulted him,
(40:28):
choked him out to the point where he thought the
kid was dead, and threw him in the bushes. He
was charged with that case. He was charged with kidnapping,
sexual assault, and attempted murder At the age of sixteen.
He was sent to the Hawthorne Psychiatric Hospital in mid Michigan,
(40:49):
and he was confined there. The judge had a choice,
should I send him to prison as a sixteen year
old charged as an adult, or should I send him
maybe to get some help, because he wouldn't get any
help in prison, And so they chose to confine him
to the psychiatric hospital at Hawthorne as a juvenile, and
(41:11):
that's where he met doctor Tombo.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
So we'll pick up now with his experience there. So
first of all, will you give me some clarity on
as a sixteen year old when he sent to the
psychiatric hospital, what are the expectations of him. Is it
that he will be treated successfully somehow some way and
released into society or is this a facility where he
(41:36):
would conceivably spend the rest of his life if he
doesn't make some sort of progress that they can see.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
No, the goal was treatment, rehabilitation and return him to
his home. That's what their goal was. Sadly it didn't
work well.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
He encounters doctor Jose Tombo, who you had mentioned before,
and this was a very well respected psychiatrist I think
think in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
He was. Doctor Tombo had been with the Hawthorne and
Northfield Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Northfille, Michigan for several years,
very highly respected among his peers, among his colleagues, among
some of the patients. But some of the patients also,
it was later found out, were being sexually abused by
(42:22):
doctor Tombo, and as it turns out, Ron Bailey was
one of those. Ron Bailey claimed at his trial that
doctor Tombo had forced him into a sexual relationship and
that caused him to be insane at the time that
he kidnapped Shawan Moore. It didn't work, though the jury
(42:45):
was smarter than that. There was also a second case.
While the police were putting together the Shawn Moore case,
the Ferndale Police and the Task Force began to look
at similar kidnapping and abduction in nineteen four, a year
before Shawn Moore was kidnapped, and in that case, Kenny Myers,
(43:06):
a twelve year old boy was kidnapped and sexual assaulted
and his body was found about twenty miles away the
next day, and that case had gone cold for a year.
And then in addition to that, there was another boy
a month before Kenny Myers was kidnapped who had been
kidnapped and sexual assaulted and let go and he was
(43:29):
able to identify Ron Bailey. So in the end he
had the Shawn Moore case, the Kenny Myers case, and
the case that this other kid had identified Ron Bailey
of kidnapping and sexual assaults. So basically Ron had three
separate court jurisdictions that were prosecuting him.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Kenny Myers, you said he was kidnapped from Ferndale? Is
that right correct? How close is that to Brighton where
Sean was kidnapped.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
I would say maybe thirty miles.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
And as Lavonia like in between those places.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Lavonia is south of Ferndale, but it's another suburb of
Detroit and it's not that far away, maybe ten or
fifteen miles.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
So can you give me a summary of what happens
with Kenny Myers because we have such a kind of
deep understanding of Sean Moore and his family and everything.
What can you tell about Kenny? Is it a similar situation,
nice family, all of that.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
It is absolutely a textbook identical to the Shawn Moore case.
Kenny Myers is out riding his bike down the John
r Is the street that it's called in the Detroit area,
Ferndale area, and he's looking for a job stocking shelves
in a party store. Ron Bailey sees him. He follows him,
(44:49):
just like he did in the Shawn Moore case. A
year later. He takes the opportunity to distract him by
stopping to talk to him. Then he backs into a
parking lot, cuts Kenny Myers off his bike, grabs him
off his bike, forces him into his car, and leaves.
A witness saw it happen. She thought it was a
parent disciplining a child, and so she didn't say anything initially.
(45:12):
So that literally the method of operation is identical to
the Shawn Moore case. Kenny Myers comes from another great family.
You know, the mother's divorce, but she's remarried. They had
moved from Warren, Michigan to Ferndale just two weeks before that.
They were just settling into their new home.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
That's awful. I was thinking when you were describing Shawn's kidnapping.
I was thinking, I wonder, like how many times his
dad lets it run through his head, like if the
freaking lawnmower hadn't broken. If I don't know, I mean
that must as a parent, it just must be awful.
If we had moved there, I think you would have
a tendency to blame blame yourself. I hope that doesn't
(45:51):
happen with the other parents, but I could just see
being in their shoes like that.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Well, as long as you'd mentioned the parents, let me
mention one thing real quick. The positive that came out
of this book because people don't want to read about childkillers.
They really don't. It's a difficult subject to talk about.
It's a difficult subject to research. But I think that
it was important to write this book number one because
(46:18):
the More family and the Meyers family both took their
tragedy and turned it into something positive. And they really did,
and you'll read about that in the book. And beyond that,
I think there are other cases out there.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I was going to ask about the Oakland County. You
said there were four unsolved child murders in Oakland County.
Is there a possibility he can be linked to those?
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Well, that's a suspicion that some investigators have. Without going
into a lot of detail, because I need to emphasize
that this book is not about the Oaklan County childkillings,
although chapter one that's what I talk about is the
Oaklan County childkillings to kind of set the stage because
people were still on edge about those when Sean Wore
(47:02):
was kidnapped and Kenny Myers was kidnapped. And then in
the end of the book, chapter titled Unanswered Questions, we
address that particular issue. Is there a possibility that somehow
Ron Bailey could be tied to the Oaklan County child killings.
I think there's some compelling some we'll call it conjecture.
(47:25):
I don't know. The theory has always been in the
Oakle County childkillings that it was a person or a
group of people that over eighteen months kidnapped these four
children and held them for several days before murdering them.
And one of the theories was did they use someone
who could be used as a lure to coax kids
(47:48):
near the kidnappers. Well, Ron Bailey would have been seventeen
years old at the time, blonde hair, very young looking,
and so there's there's suspicion there that maybe there's a
As a police officer, I never worked on the Oakland
County child killing cases because I worked in mid Michigan,
but I interviewed some of the investigators and I can
(48:09):
tell you that they absolutely believe that there could be
some sort of Italie in.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Do they have any biological evidence that they can use
anything for DNA.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Well, it's kind of a long story, but they do
have a DNA profile of the killer. They have a
hair from a vehicle taken from a suspect they interviewed
in nineteen seventy six. They have a hair from one
of the male victims, and they have a hair from
a second male victim, and all of those hairs came
from the same person. I will tell you that they
(48:41):
do not match Ron Bailey, but there's still a suspicion
that Ron Bailey could somehow be involved.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
I don't want to get too much into Oakland, but
I do find this fascinating. Were the hairs in places
where a random male hairs or a dad's hair or
something like that shouldn't be And that's why they feel
like it's the killer.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
The hair that was taken off Mark Stebbens's body at
the autopsy and the hair that was taken off of
Timothy King's body. Now these two murders were like eighteen
months apart. Those matched the hair off the vehicle that
was of a suspect that was interviewed in nineteen seventy six,
but they don't belong to that suspect. So that suspect
(49:23):
had someone in his vehicle whose hair ended up in
the vehicle and on Mark Stebbin's body and on Timothy
King's body.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
So ultimately he wants to he's issuing it an insanity plea.
He wants to go to a psychiatric facility. His defense,
it sounds like you were saying, is pointing to doctor Tombo,
who it sounds like had been suspected and disciplined, and
it looks like he was. Did he end up being disbarred?
(49:52):
I can't remember. I read that there were six accusations
against him, so it wasn't just Ron Bailey saying this
to get out of anything, right.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
He was eventually in the state of Michigan, took his
medical license. The defense team for Ron Bailey wanted doctor
Tombo to testify, and doctor Tombo disappeared. Conveniently, they can't.
They can't find him, they can't serve him. He wants
no part of it because he knows it's going to
come out that he's been molesting other patients at the hospital.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
So ultimately the jury does not believe the insanity defense
that is put up by Ron Bailey, and then what
does he end up getting for this.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Ron Bailey received a life sentence with no parole for
the kidnapping and murder of Sean Moore. He received the
same sentence for the kidnapping and murder of Kenny Myers,
and the third charge of kidnapping and sexual assault on
the youth that was kidnapped a month before Kenny Myers.
(50:56):
That case was dismissed and thrown out simply because it
just would have been a cumulative sentence. He'd already received
two life sentences without parole. The prosecuting attorney's office felt, hey,
this is just going to be cumulative. Let's go ahead
and dismiss that because that kid survived, he was not murdered.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Any reaction from Ron Bailey when the you know, his
insanity defense falls apart.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
No, I think that he accepted it. I think that
he knew that it was that it was coming. I
will say that his attorney, Ray Casar, and I interviewed
mister Kassar for the book, a very genuine person and
to this day, mister Cassar doesn't believe that Ron Bailey
is a predator. He just thinks that he was a
(51:46):
sick individual that needed help.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
So no chance of getting out and you know, ultimately,
what do you think the story is here? We did
not talk very much because there were so much other
stuff to talk about about how Ron got away with
doing everything he did before Kenny, and before Sean, before
(52:08):
the murders happened, he was trying to kill some of
these kids. How does this slip through? You know, because
he obviously gets out of doctor Tumbull's care. How does
this happen?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
That's a great question. How did he slip through the
cracks for thirteen years? You know, the police had the
reports on him, they had the cases against him. I
don't know how that happens, but it does. And the
other question in the end is are there other victims
out there?
Speaker 1 (52:38):
No, of course murder victims too, Yeah, of course absolutely.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
You know down in Florida where he was doing the
same thing. He was up here for two years before
he decided to move back up here. And are there
other victims up here? That's the big question. And if
an investigator at some agency reads this book, or a
parent who has a lost child that they haven't seen
(53:04):
for forty years, maybe there's a connection.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah. Well, I think that you handled this book really well.
And the sensitivity that you've obviously had dealing with the
public being in law enforcement, all of that lends to
giving you know, I think a story that, as we've
talked about before, is incredibly difficult these This would not
be a book I would be able to do, I
(53:28):
don't think. But it's I think an important book. And
it just showed these kids. So if we talk about
Kenny and we talk about Sean who came from you
know that what you would say would be how we
would describe, you know, a good family. You can imagine
how kids who are from families who either don't want
to or can't pay attention to what's happening with them,
(53:50):
how they could slip through the cracks too. I mean,
if you've got a Kenny and a Shan who are
snatched right in the daylight, it's just to me another
reminder about how all kids, no matter where they're from,
are vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
To describe Kenny and I just thought of this as
I was talking to you. To describe the family life
of Kenny Myers and Sean Moore if you could picture
this may sound ridiculous, but if you could picture the
television family Leave It to Beaver, you know, just the
classic middle class American family. The parents are both working,
(54:25):
they're paying their bills, they're just living life and it's
immediately disrupted by some predator. It's an American tragedy. It
really is.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Sinner's All About the
Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and
Don't Forget. There are twelve s of my historical true
crime podcast, tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,
scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.
(55:09):
This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This
episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer.
Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and
(55:30):
Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold
More and if you know of a historical crime that
could use some attention from the crew at tenfold more Wicked,
email us at info at Tenfoldmorewicked dot com. We'll also
take your suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.