You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
What drove the inconspicuous sociopath to become a ruthless killer During his nearly fifteen year reign of terror? Ronald Lloyd Bailey's braved obsession with sexual sadism held communities across Southeast Michigan in a shroud of fear from the early nineteen seventies to the mid nineteen eighties. The former patient at one of Michigan's foremost psychiatric hospitals abducted as many as fifteen teens and over time, became a sadistic serial killer.
In this shocking, fast paced account, retired police officer and true crime author Rod Sadler examines law enforcement's dedicated efforts in connecting the dots to stop an unknown killer, and he poignantly chronicles the determination of the victim's families to triumph over tragedy. Sadler also examines Bailey's insanity defense that centered on the alleged abuse he endured at the hands
of a psychiatrists. In doing so, the best selling author of Killing Women asks and answers the question what drove the inconspicuous sociopath to become a ruthless GUESI. The book that we're featuring this evening is Depraved Obsession, the gripping true story of law enforcements hunt for a sadistic serial killer, with my special guest, retired law enforcement officer and award winning author, Rod Sadler. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Rod Sadler.
Well, thank you for having me again.
This seems to be a regular occurrence every couple of years and I always enjoy it.
Thank you so much.
Dan, I do too as well. Thank you so much, and congratulations on your latest Depraved Obsession.
Thank you. Thank you.
May sixth the launch, and I think I'm almost positive that the readers will find it is by far my best work yet.
I truly believe.
That, yes, I will concur Let's talk about how you came to this story. You are a former law enforcement police officer. Tell us how you came to be involved in this story.
Well, back in nineteen eighty five, I worked briefly, and I do mean very briefly in the Detroit area as a police officer. I can remember driving down US twenty three, it's a state highway here in the Brighton area, which is down toward the Detroit area, and I can remember seeing the news reports of this young teenage boy who had been kidnapped and his body hadn't even been found yet.
And I can remember driving down US twenty three and glancing over and seeing the green Oak Township Police Department. They were the original investigating agency in this kidnapping, and realizing, oh, that's where this young boy was kidnapped from, was green
Oak Township, and always remembered that case. And then as I was searching for new material for a new book, a friend of mine that I've known for, oh my gosh, probably thirty years told me that he was the first officer contacted by a witness in that case, and he and another friend of mine were the very first two officers involved in the kidnapping of Sean Moore.
And so that's how.
He said, would you like to write the book about it, and I said, Oh, I'd be absolutely thrilled to write that book. Yeah, And so that's how it all started.
You're right that the abduction and murder of Shawn Moore became a defining moment for Brighton, Michigan, and for Livingston County, and the entire community lost its innocence at that time. And you say it was also a defining moment for anyone directly involved in the investigation.
It was.
You have to understand in the mid eighties, it really was a time when a lot of people didn't lock their doors, a lot of people had a lot of trust in that area. Brighton was a working class community, a suburb really. I don't know as they would admit it today, but really it was kind of a suburb of the Detroit area, and a lot of people commuted to Detroit and the surrounding suburbs to work from Brighton,
and Brighton was just a quaint little community. And to have something like that happen on a Labor Day weekend in the middle of the day in nineteen eighty five absolutely took the innocence of Brighton, Michigan and Livingston County away and anybody that you talked to, anyone that I interviewed.
For the book would agree with that.
It was as if the whole county lost its innocence because of this kidnapping.
You take the reader to February nineteen seventy six and right that across southeast Michigan and beyond, people were gripped in fear with the seemingly random murders of children in and around Oakland County that spanned the next fourteen months. And you say the murders began in January, Tell us about what happens in Macombe County and Cynthia Cadou.
There was a series of children who were murdered, Some were teenagers, mid teenagers.
Cynthia Caddou was one of them.
Off the top of my head, I don't recall the circumstances around her murder, but there was two or three of them that occurred, along with four that were attributed to at least one group or group of killers who became known as the Oakland County child killings. And Cynthia Kudo and there were their names escaped me off the
top of my head. But there were two others that they thought were related to the Oaklan County child killings, and it turned out eventually they were able to show that they were not involved or a part of those, So now the police were left with four other murders
of children. The murders of Mark Stebbens, Jill Robinson, Christine Mahellick, and Timothy King were the victims of the Oakland County child killings, and the other three that I do reference at the beginning of the book turns out they were not a part of those.
We spoke earlier. Can you explain this Oakland County child killings and why this book is not specifically about that, even though it's the title of this What.
Happened was in February of nineteen seventy six, a young boy named Mark Stebbins came up missing.
His body was found.
In a parking lot shortly a couple days after he was kidnapped. After that, a young girl by the name of Joe Robinson, she was twelve. She came up missing in December of nineteen seventy six. And then there was another girl who came up missing, Christine Mahellick. She was ten years old. She came up missing in January of nineteen seventy seven, and Timothy King, who was eleven at the time, came up missing in March of nineteen seventy seven. When these kids' bodies were found, they were as if
they had been taken care of. They had been held, obviously for several days before they were murdered, and the police formed a task force in order to find the Oaklan County child killings or killer, and to this day he has not been caught.
I do reference.
These murders because these were at a time when Ron Bailey, the killer that I write about, was a teenager, and obviously he had a propensity for young children, and there was some suggestion or some thought that he might be involved at least in some way in these killings. And so the book really is not about the Oaklan County childkillings. It's about Ron Bailey and the two young boys that he was convicted of killing in nineteen eight eighty four, nineteen eighty five.
Let's get to this. You call it the beginning. Lavonia Township, a Detroit suburb over one hundred thousand population, and Ron Bailey's father, Alfred Bailey. You say Ron was born in nineteen fifty nine. Tell us about Alfred Bailey, his wife and Ron growing up well.
Alfred Bailey was, by all accounts, was a workaholic, even by his own admissions. And Ron Bailey had a brother also and a sister, and Alfred Bailey was seldom at home. He worked for a computer technology company GM was just taking them on board, so he was busy, it seemed like all the time. He was a coach, though, and he was a highly respected like little league coach in the area, so there was some time spent with his children,
but for the most part, he was a workaholic. At that time, he saw some promise in Ron as a young baseball player, but Ron Bailey had absolutely no interest in that at all, and so Ron Bailey would often get on his bike and take off and be gone all day long and might not even come home for dinner, might not even show up until late in the evening,
and so he was basically out on his own. His mother tried to discipline him when the need arose, but really it came down to Alfred Bailey disciplining him when he would get home after working for a twelve hour day.
You're right about the first one of the first incidents known no doubt Ron was fourteen years old and he put a knife at the throat of a fifteen year old and raped him. And he had got him from a shopping center in Dearborn Heights. He tied his hands behind his back and molested him before letting him go,
and he demanded his phone number. What happens as a result of this, and it's interesting you talk about the reaction when he goes to the police with his parents and then what he does the next day.
Yeah, he's interviewed by the police after this happens, and he denies any part in that, completely denies it. And he lived near the Lavonia Police department and it was short like within a day. He showed back up at the Livonia Police Department by himself, and he went in and he confessed to what he'd been accused of, told him all the details, and basically he was referred because he was a juvenile at that time, he was referred to the juvenile court system and ended up receive in probation.
But this was the beginning of a cycle with him, and it went on and on and on until he was eventually prosecuted for another kidnapping. And basically he was charged with a kidnapping attempted murder of another teenage boy.
And when he went through the court system for those two felony charges, the judge had a very difficult decision, and the decision was should he send Ron Bailey, who was now sixteen years old, into the prison system or should he give him probation and have him receive psychiatric help. And the judge chose to refer him for psychiatric help and put him on five years probation.
As a result, you said that he goes to the Hawthorne Center, the psychiatric for some term of treatment. Tell us what happens at that Hawthorne Center and tell us about the Hawthorne Center itself.
Well, the Hawthorne Center was a psychiatric hospital for youth adults were in a nearby regional psychiatric hospital in Northville, and on the same grounds was the Hawthorn Center, which was for young adults and children, and that's where Ron Bailey went first. It was at the Hawthorn Center when Ron Bailey was first introduced to his new psychiatrist, a doctor by the name of Jose Tombo, and.
Tombo took a liking to.
Ron Bailey because of his sexuality.
And although.
Later there were accusations that doctor Tombo had forced Ron Bailey into some sort of a sexual relationship, doctor Tombo did not actually do that until Ron Bailey was moved from the Hawthorn Center over to the Northfield Regional Psychiatric Hospital as an adult, and that's when the alleged advances from doctor Tombo began.
Another important character he meets that the Hawthorne Center Ron Bailey is a person named Deb Chesney, and she'll be important in his story a little bit later.
Absolutely, Deb Chesney was a friend of Ron. They were about the same age, and they were both at the Hawthorne Center together and basically Ron was struggling with his sexuality. He didn't know if he was gay or if he was a heterosexual. And so he and Deb became very good friends and eventually dated one another for a short period of time.
What was the diagnosis the initial diagnosis of Ron Bailey at that Hawthorn Center.
That's a great question. I don't know specifically what the diagnosis was. There were arguments in court that he suffered from schizophrenia and a split personality, but he eventually was able to leave both the Hawthorn Center and the Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital. While he was at Northville, he was allowed to leave there randomly, almost to go work at a job, to go visit his family on the weekends,
things like that. That was not common knowledge to the police investigators at the time, but doctor Tombo felt that Ron Bailey was well enough to be able to go to leave the hospital grounds, to go to work, and to go visit his family. As a matter of fact, he what's the term I'm looking for?
He was an advocate for Ron in being able to do that.
One of the diagnosis for Ron was that he suffered from pedophilia.
He was a pedophile.
Sure, let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages you also talk about have to be a contributor to all of this. He moves in with a person named George Soper, and George Soper is a manager of a business, and so he actually is able to have Ron Bailey employed. Well, tell us a little bit about this George Soper.
George Soper was he was a neighbor to Ron at one point and when Ron, George Soper was going to move to Florida. Is how that all transpired? And Ron Bailey wanted to move to Florida too. Ron Bailey had been accused in several incidents of kidnapping young boys over the years, and he said he told his dad that he wanted to get a new start and that his neighbor, George Soper, was moving to Florida and he could move to Florida, start a whole new life and move in
with George Soper down there. And so Ron Bailey made arrangements with his probation officer here in Michigan to continue his probation in Florida. He still had another year or two on probation, and it was as simple as as going down there, getting set up with a probation officer down there so they could supervise his activities. And so Ron Bailey went down to Florida with George Soper, moved into a trailer park south of Okala, actually in Bellevue, Florida.
And he initially had a job as a i think installing alarms, and he lost that job. And George Soper was working for a tire dealership, was manager there and got Ron Bailey a job there delivering tires.
And what was his criminal activity in Florida.
His criminal activity in Florida was basically a new hunting ground for him. He began doing exactly what he was doing in Michigan and eventually admitted that that he couldn't help himself. He would pick up young boy, ply him with alcohol, molest them, and release them. There is some suspicion that maybe there is a few unsolved murders down there that he could be responsible for, and.
So the police are looking for him. There's composite drawings from these assaults where these people are let go, but they report to police. But then you take us to Marie Edenstrom and her son Kenny Myers, tell us about the circumstances that they are in the area. They just moved from Warren a couple of weeks before.
They did back back in Michigan. Ron Bailey first got into trouble in Florida for contributing to the delinquency of minors, and so he fled Florida when he learned that there was likely going to be charges filed against him. There actually were charges filed against him, and he fled Florida. Came back to Michigan in about nineteen eighty three, and Marie Edenstrom lived in Ferndale, Michigan, and she lived with
her husband and her son, Kenny Myers. And Kenny Myers was I believe he was fourteen years old, and Kenny Myers wanted to go out and find.
A job as a young boy.
And he told his mother one night, he said, I'm going to go out and I'm going to come back home later and I'll have a job. He was going to go look at the party stores along Woodward Avenue nine mile area down in the Detroit area near Ferndale. And so he left on his bike at about seven o'clock at night, and it was the last time Missus Edenstrom ever saw him. He never came back that night.
They went out looking for him. Sadly, they couldn't find him, so they went and reported him missing to the Ferndale police.
This was in nineteen eighty four.
It was the I believe it was the following day when his body was discovered about twenty miles away from Ferndale in a place called Heinz Park, down in a Detroit suburb of Westland. Kenny had been strangled with a belt and sexually assaulted.
Very interesting too, you say that there was a woman very crucial to this story, Dolly May Banks. She sees something a couple of days before, but then once this becomes in the media and this news story reported, she remembers what she saw and notifies police. Tell us about Dolly May Banks and what she saw and what she reported.
Well, Dowley was just a woman who lived along I think it was nine mile Road.
She was sitting on her porch or she was.
She liked to watch traffic through her front window. And she was sitting in her living room looking at traffic going by, and she noticed a young boy on a bicycle riding along, riding along the street on the opposite side, and she noticed the brown station wagon pull up and stop.
And then the driver that station wagon put it in reverse and backed across a lane of traffic into a parking lot and blocked the young teenage boy from advancing, if you will, and he jumped out and he grabbed the boy, dragged him off his bike, put him in the station wagon, and fled with him. Missus Banks, who's watching this, thinks at first, oh my gosh, did I just witness kidnapping? And then she convinced herself that it
was probably just a father disciplining his son. And it was later that night or the next day when she saw the news reports of Kenny Meyer's missing and she realized, oh my gosh, that's what I saw. She had witnessed the kidnapping.
Ron Bailey realizes that maybe somebody spotted his station wagon. And so what does he do as a result regarding that station wagon.
Well, he sold it. About it I think it was six or seven months later he sold that station wagon. Well, first he drove it back and forth to work every day, and after the news of Kenny Meyer's abduction hit the media, he parked that station wagon in the weeds at his employer and he left it there and he would get friends to pick him up and take him to work every day, or he'd walk to work or hitchhike because he was afraid that someone would eventually spot that station
wagon and make the connection to Kenny Myers abduction. And so finally his boss said, you know, get it off our property. His boss and his coworkers had never made the connection to the Kenny Myers abduction. So Bailey took it off the property there and he ended up selling it and he bought a nineteen eighty five Jeep Renegade, brand new, right off the lot, and that was his new vehicle that he had switched to.
You're right that he was close with his parents, or at least his parents thought they were close with Ron Bailey, but he surprises them when he shows up in Michigan because they thought he was still in Florida.
He yeah, As a matter of fact, in the Kenny Myers abduction, they thought the police thought, well, Ron Bailey would be a great suspect, except he's in Florida, right, So they never even considered him as a suspect, and so they thought he was in Florida. When Ron Bailey moved back to Michigan, his parents. He never even went and saw his parents until Christmas of nineteen eighty three or nineteen eighty four, and it was at that time
they realized, oh, oh my gosh, he's back here. So yeah, nobody knew that Ron Bailey had come back to Michigan.
You say that it's some kind of odd behavior. He decided to buy a pleasure boat through financing, and also that he surprised relatives like his cousin and said that he was just heading up north and he'd brought some guns along for some target practice, and one of these people that asked to see the guns. It was a twenty two rifle and a twelve gage shotgun. And he also had a couple of gym bags in a wooden box, and that relative asked him what was in the box.
Yeah, ammunition was in the box.
And this was in This was now nineteen eighty five, this would have been Labor Day weekend. Ron Bailey shows up in a small town called Fowlerville, actually outside Fowlerville, Michigan, where his cousins lived, and just on a whim, he pulls in to visit them and he says, yeah, I'm going up north for the weekend. Tries to see if his teenage cousin can go, but the dad says no because he's been he's got some other stuff to do.
And so Ron Bailey he shows off his gun and the guns that he's got, and he shows off the new jeep and basically he's only there for a couple hours. He drinks a couple of beers with his cousin and
he leaves. At that point, those people were instrumental witnesses in his trial to show that he was in the area Fowlerville is very near within seven or eight miles of Brighton, Michigan, and that's where Sean Moore was kidnapped, and so they were crucial witnesses in Ron Bailey's trial to show Hey, he was in the area at the time that Sean Moore was kidnapped in nineteen eighty five.
Let us has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you write about Sean Moore, he lived with his parents, Bruce and Sharon, and he had an older brother named Scott, and his older sister had married and had moved away, and a very close family. And he at about three pm, Sean wanted to go to the store and got permission to go get a soda at the store. Tell us what happens right afterwards.
Yeah, Sean had been mowing the lawn with his dad in a subdivision south of Brighton along Whitmore Lake Road, and it's also referred to as Old US twenty three. Before the highway was built, it was the state highway, so they called it Old US twenty three. So it was a hot day, Sean wanted to go get a soda pop, so he asked his dad if he could ride his bike up to the pump and pump and pantry, I believe.
It was called.
And his dad said, yeah, but be back by, you know, don't be long because we're all going to have dinner.
Then go see a movie tonight.
And so Sean left on his bike and he rode up to the pump and pantry and it was there where Ron Bailey first noticed Sean Moore and ended up kidnapping him.
Again.
You write about some witnesses important ones to this story. Sherry Huey driving to her sisters in Brighton. What does she see later becoming again a very valuable witness.
Well, she's driving northbound on Whitmore Lake Road at about the time Sean Moore has left the pump and pantry. And what she sees is she notices a jeep parked alongside the road, and she knows that it's a jeep because her boyfriend has one that's identical to it. And she sees a man with his arm around. Well, first she sees Sean Moore riding southbound, but he's looking over his shoulder and he's got a worried.
Look on his face, and.
He's riding so slow that his handlebars are wobbling as he's looking over his shoulder, and that that was a key piece of evidence because the first witness that reported Shawn Moore as kidnapping had been traveling southbound on US twenty three and had noticed a vehicle on Whitmore Lake Road, pulled off to the side of the road and saw a young man with his arm around a teenage boy.
The teenage boy was crying and the man was forcing him toward the g and this man, this witness, was on his way to the University of Michigan Hospital because his daughter was going to undergo emergency surgery. But when he saw that on the side of Whitmore Lake Road, he instantly thought something's wrong and I've got to get back there and try to get a license plate number off that vehicle. But by the time he was able to get off the highway and circle.
Back, the vehicle gone.
In his own mind, because he didn't pay attention to the vehicle he worked for GM, he thought the vehicle was a GMC pickup and that's what he reported to the police. So for the first two days of the investigation, until Sherry Hughey came forward, the police were looking for the wrong vehicle.
They were looking for a GMC pickup truck and not a jeep. Renegade.
You introduced now the crucial members of the law enforcement that are involved in this case. Dave Austrom and Detective Ed Moore. Tell us a little bit about these gentlemen.
Dave Moore, I'm sorry, Dave Moore. Dave Ostrom worked for the Green Oak Township Police Department and he'd been there about five years. Very not a big crime rate there. I'm pretty middle class township. He enjoyed his work, but he wanted to go on to bigger and better things in law enforcement. And so it was towards the end of his shift and he was on his way back to the Green Oak Township Police Department. He had like
a half hour left in his shift. And he pulls up to the intersection where the pump and pantry is, and on the other side of the road is this first witness and he's flashing his lights at Officer Ostrom, and so Officer Ostrom pulls up next to him, and the guy sitting the witness says, hey, I think I just saw a teenager getting abducted, and so Dave Ostrom and him start conversing and he Dave has taken notes as quick as he can, and he gets on the
radio and calls it in. Ed Moore, who worked for the Livingston County Sheriff Department, is about a mile away. He's on marine duty for the holiday weekend, but his normal duty is as a detective, and so he realizes he's close.
He radioes to oast him and says, Hey, have you been to the scene yet. Dave says no.
He says, I'm trying to get some more information here. So ed Moore says, I'll head down to the scene because he's just about a mile away. He gets down there and he sees Sean Moore's ten speed bicycle laying on the side of the road.
There is a task force organized soon and the cooperation from the Michigan State Police and the FBI, including local police department. Tell us about this task force that is formed and their progress.
The task force was formed within a day or two after Sean's kidnapping, and it literally it was an unheard of event, if you will, And by that I mean that in the mid eighties, police agencies, not all of them, but some police agencies, and I think This is true for the entire country, but police agencies had a tendency to hold information very close. They wanted the credit for a big investigation, and that was the case with seal killer John Norman Collins in the sixties and early seventies
here in Michigan. But the state police would hold their information close, and so would the smaller agencies. Unheard of in nineteen eighty five was the fact that the local police, the Greenolk Township Police, the Livingston County Sheriff's Department, the Brighton Police Department, the Michigan State Police, and the FBI all formed.
This task force.
The commander of the task force got up Roger Battel the very first day, room packed full of investigators, and he said, I don't care who you are, I don't care who you work for. I don't care how much time you have in If you have an idea, I want to hear it. And that cohesiveness really was the catalyst to get this investigation going. It really paid off, and it was something that was virtually unheard of before
that everybody worked together. That's an important point of my book is it really is law enforcement coming together, local, state, and federal agencies to try to catch a killer.
And they did, You're right then, and I think we should make this distinction. And originally law enforcement thought that this was regarded as a kidnapping because there was some harassing calls at the Moore home for Sharon Moore, so they treated it as a kidnapping in that possible ransom or any kind of conditions or especially evidenced by the
contact of the family. However, you write that this WE tip program was set up and calls were coming in and there was an anonymous tipster with some very very valuable information imparted.
There was an anonymous tipster. It turned out that the anonymous tipster was one of Ron Bailey's co workers here in Michigan, and by that time he had started working for Ara Coffee Services. He would service vending machines around the Detroit area, and one of his co workers called the WEI tip line and said, hey, you might want to check out Ron Bailey, and he gave some details about Ron's past and the fact that Ron Bailey drove
a nineteen eighty five cheap renegade. About that same time, an officer from the Lavonia Police Department called the Task Force headquarters and said he called him at like eleven o'clock at night and he said, hey, you might want to look at this guy named Ron Bailey. Ron Bailey has a serious history of kidnapping young boys and molesting them off their bikes, and he's a really good I think he's a really good suspect and you should take a look at him.
Well.
Jeff Lopez, who was an special agent with the FBI, was working on a task force. He took that call from the Livonia officer and he said, we'll be right out. So they went out that night tried to find Ron Bailey, and they went to his home and his parents said, no, he's not here right now. He's over at a friend's house.
And so they went over to that friend's house and sure enough, Ron Bailey's jeep was in the driveway and they waited for him to leave, and they pulled a traffic stop on him and took him into custody and took him back to the Lavogna Police department for an interview.
And they had witnesses come in that night to try to identify Ron Bailey as the kidnapper of Sean Moore, and none of them could pick him out because they had gone by so fast and didn't get a really good look at his face when Shawn was kidnapped, and so they had to release Ron Bailey that night. They had to release him. Sean Moore was still missing, and when they released him, they set up a surveillance on him, unbeknownst to him, so they were tailing him.
Ron Bailey was taken to.
Detroit Metro Airport and he immediately caught a flight to Florida and fled the state.
You're right though, Before that that, Jess Lopez had caught Bailey in a profound lie. He was talking about his alibi and he noted someone named Mike Slaven.
He did.
He said that Ron Bailey had told Lopez. Well, Ron Bailey was interviewed twice. He'd been interviewed in the afternoon that same day by the state police because of the wee tip, and he told him, Hey, I was up in I think it was Castill Keystill, Michigan, which is up in.
The Thumb area.
He says, I was up there with Mike Slave and my friend and we were fishing all weekend. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. So when Jess Lopez interviewed him, he said the same thing. He said, Well, he says, I was up in case with my buddy
Mike Slaven and we were fishing all weekend. Well, unbeknownst to Ron Bailey, when he left Mike Slaven's house that night, when they pulled him over and took him in for questioning, they also took Mike Slavean in for questioning, and Mike Slaven said he was never with me right, never ever that weekend, And so they'd caught Ron Bailey in a huge lie. Their only problem was they knew he was lying.
They didn't know where Sean Moore's body was. What they did was during the interview with Ron Bailey, they went through his wallet and in his wallet there was a towing receipt from a record company. And so when Ron Bailey fled the state, Jess Lopez went to the record company and he said, you know what was this tobill for? And they said, oh, guy in a jeep got his jeep stuck and he was with his girlfriend. She's one
of the Chesney girls. The record driver knew her. So Jess Lopez went down river in Detroit and interviewed Deb Chesney and Deb Chesney said, oh, yeah, we got stuck and a record came and pulled us out. Yeah, And so Jess Lopez asked him, He said, where was Ron Bailey? You know, where was your boyfriend on Labor Day weekend?
Oh, well, he went up to.
Our family cabin. He told me he was going up to our family cabin. And Gladwin. Well, Gladwin, Michigan is about one hundred miles north of Saginaw, Michigan. It's quite a ways. It's in the middle of northern Michigan. And it was at that point when Jess Lopez knew that's where Sean Moore's body was.
You say, take us to this very vivid scene where they noticed the troopers bows and Margosian noticed buzzards and you right, soon Shawn's body was found. What do they find in terms of forensic evidence from that Shawn's body being found.
Well, they organized a search up there. Two troopers from the Pontiac area were assigned a specific area search and they went down the road. As soon as they got out of their car, they noticed some tracks back into a very heavily wooded area. It's a national forest, so above there was a couple bird circlings. The younger troopers said what are those? And the experienced troopers said, those are buzzards And as they walked back into the woods. They walked back about fifty feet into the woods and
they discovered Shawn's body. Sean had been out in the wilderness or out in the elements for two weeks, and so he was decomposed to a degree. Part of his job bone was missing, his chest had been born open from wild animals feeding, and so the pathologist who did the autopsy on Sean was not able to determine a cause of death for Sean. As far as forensic evidence, they were able to show that Sean had ingested at least two or three beers and some over the counter
cold medication that would make a person drowsy. And that was a signature of Ron Bailey. Basically, he would ply his victims with alcohol and drugs so that it would lower their defenses and he could take it vantage of them.
That uses has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you're right that he's on the run. Tell us how police finally capture him and those conditions therein.
Well, he's back in George Soaper's trailer. They have that under surveillance. They're waiting for a positive identification of Sean so that they can charge. They felt they had enough to charge him with kidnapping, and so they did that first. They were waiting for idea of the body before they could charge him with murder, so they issued the warrant for the kidnapping and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. They
moved in to arrest him in Florida. The trailer was empty and so a huge, huge, huge man hunt ensues and there is as many is two hundred and fifty law enforcement people involved in this search for Ron Bailey, and they have him pinned down to about a ten mile square area. There's patrol cars every five hundred feet literally, and this search goes on for two days. They've got helicopters, they've got ATVs, they've got Lisa on horseback going through
this dense wooded area. They've got patrol cars every five hundred feet and they are not given up. They are not giving up. And finally, on I believe it was a Saturday night, they were going to search through the night, and a corrections deputy from the Marion County Sheriff's Office in Florida had come out to help, and she was on a point and she flashed it was just getting dark, and she turned her flashlight over poor defense and there stood Ron Bailey with his hands up and he said,
my name's Ron Bailey. I'm tired, I'm hungry. I give up, and he was taken into custody without incident.
You write about the attorneys that assemble immediately for his defense, Y Kassar, if that's the pronunciation, and then you talk about that he realizes that he's going to need some assistance. So just tell us briefly about these defense attorneys and they have to speak to their client.
Ray Casar is a brand new attorney. He'd been out of law school, I believe for a year. His criminal cases really consisted of suspended driving, drunk drivers, things like that. Didn't have a lot of experience in capital cases, and so he brought on a second attorney by the name of Chuck Murphy and they shared office space in Farmington Hills. Ray Kassar is a very genuine person, deeply committed to
his clients. Just top of the line. I can't say enough good things about Ray Kasar just very genuine Chuck Murphy kind of boisterous, friendly enough, but kind of a gregarious personality.
And so they went.
When Ron was caught in Florida and flown back, he waived his extradition. So on Sunday he was flown back to Michigan and they waited at the jail for him for him to arrive. Chuck Murphy didn't want to go in. Ray Kassars frightened to death. He says, what do I say to him? Chuck Murphy told him, just find out
what's going on. And so when Ray Kassar went into me Ron Bailey for the very first time, Ron Bailey was covered in cuts and bruises and insect bites from being on the run in a swamp and forest for two days. And he said, you look horrible, he says. He said, did they beat you? And Ron Bailey said beat me?
You mean the cops?
He said no, He said, I was on the run for two days. These are all mosquito bites and things like that. But that's how Ray Casar met Rob Bailey for the first time.
And Ron was forthright with his attorneys. I'm not sure in this book exactly where he first confides in these attorneys about his treatment at the Hawthorne Center and doctor Tombo. But he does the attorneys do speak to Ron's father, Al to get sort of his background as well. So for the a nation of those things, what's the information that those are defense attorneys at least have as a some motivation and obviously some sort of possible defense for these crimes.
Well, just before Ron Bailey was captured, Jose Tombo called Alfred Bailey and he said, we need to meet with you. Well, Alfred was worried about Ron, and so he said, I can't talk right now. He said, call Raykassar, call my attorney. And so Tombo calls up Rayasar.
And he says, I can help you.
I can give you all the information that you need to show that Ron is insane, he said, But he said, we have to do it after hours at your office. So it was this big clandestine meeting, this secret meeting
between Ray Casar, Murphy, Alfred Bailey, and Jose Tombo. And Jose Tombo comes in and he says, again, I can give you all the stuff that you need to show that Ron Bailey's insane, he said, but you cannot bring up the trip that I removed him from Northville Psychiatric Regional Hospital and took him to the races in Canada.
He said, you can't bring that up. And what they found out was that Ron Bailey had told them about this sexual relationship with Jose Tombo, and his own dad didn't believe him until Tombo came in and said, I'll give you all the information you need, but you can't bring up this trip to the Windsor Racetrack in Canada where I took Ron. And it was at that point Alfred Bailey knew that everything Ron had told him was
true about the sexual relationship with doctor Tombo. He hadn't believed his own son until Tombo came in and said, you can't mention.
This extraordinary you right too. That Bailey's house is searched, and they also the task force found Bailey's station wagon someone else had purchased it. But they also searched the house and found two blankets with yellow fibers that had been found on Kenny Myers on his tennis shoes and that was taken to the Michigan State Police Lab in Northville for analysis.
Yeah, when one of the detectives Don Brooks from the state Police went to seize a couple guns.
That were at the house.
Mister Bailey took him down in the basement, which is where Ron slept. It was just a big, open family room, and Don Brooks just started taking photos and he found out later in one of the photos there was a yellow blanket and the Lavonia police said that when Kenny Myers was found, he had fibers on his velcro tennis shoes that were yellow in color, and so the blanket was ultimately seized and they matched those fibers with the fibers on Kenny Myers tennis shoes.
You're right that they find out law enforcement finds out that Bailey had gotten five years probation or previous charges which included attempted murder, assault, and kidnapping.
He did he'd gotten.
That was the dilemma that that early judge had was do I send him to prison or do I put him on probation and try to get him some psychiatric help.
And he felt that Ron Bailey.
At sixteen years old, he was young enough where psychiatric help might might be a corrective action for him, and that's what he did. And the public was outraged when Kenny Myers was murdered, and when Sean Moore was murdered, finding out that Ron Bailey had been given probation after an attempted murder and kidnapping charge years before.
It's interesting you write that there is again this public outcry, but also it's from the media and generated stories, and you write that Kasar sees that there's an obvious leak and then traces it back to his own office. Tell us about this bizarre incident.
Yeah, told me.
I interviewed Ray and he said that one of the one of the network reporters. Maybe she wasn't with the network at that time, but she ended up being with the National Network, receiving several awards. But she pulled him aside and she said we need to talk, and she said, we don't think it's fair, but there's a leak. Every time Ray Casar would go and interview his client, Ron Bailey, he'd go back and he'd share the interview with his partner, Chuck, and they were supposed to be the only two that
knew the information. And then the next day he would see stuff from the interview printed in the media, so he knew there was a leak. Somewhere, and he thought maybe it was a corrections officer or something that maybe was listening in on their interviews, but he couldn't pinpoint it. So this other nastally known reporter pulls him aside and says, we don't think it's fair, but the leak is coming
from your office. It's Chuck, and Ray Kassar was just just blindsided, a dumbfounded that it could be his own law partner, Chuck Murphy, and so he confronted Chuck about it, and Chuck said, well, you don't understand. He said, no, he said, I do understand. He said, I am not going to share anything more with you if you're going to leak it to the media. And nobody knows what
Chuck's motive was to do that. It could just be that because of his gregarious personality that he just liked to talk and intimate details that should have only been known between an attorney and his client were being leaked and it was ending up in the media.
Tell us about el Brooks Patterson and Frank del Verro and the initiative to get prepared for this trial.
Well, Elbrooks Patterson was the prosecutor for Oakland County. During the Oakland County child killings, there was such a concern for the safety of children. There was literally, and I've
used this term before, I'll use it again here. It was literally a palpable fear in the community for the safety of children in the mid seventies, and Elbrooks Patterson literally sent out a memo to all the law enforcement agencies in the Tri County area down there authorizing them to stop every car that was out at night between the hours of like midnight and six am or nine pm.
And I forget what the timeframe was, but he knew that it was illegal for them to do that, but it was in the interest of finding one of the last Oapen County child victims, in the hopes of finding that young person alive. And so he was a very conservative prosecutor and well respected in the community. He was a proponent of capital punishment. He felt that criminals got all the advantages in prison and it just wasn't tough enough for him, and so he was a leader in
trying to get capital punishment back. On the Michigan ballot. Frank del Verro was the Livingston County prosecutor. He'd not been in office for very long when this occurred, and he teamed up with his chiefs assistant, David Morris, and they put together a prosecution that.
Was the best.
David Morris handled the insanity defense that the defense team came up with, while Frank del Vero handled like the criminal aspect of it, the evidence and the case and things like that. And they put together a formidable team and they were able to defeat Ray Caasara and Chuck Murphy and get the jury to convict Ron Bailey of first degree murder.
That jusus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you just mentioned that, and you jumped ahead, but I think we won't go into it too far because, as we spoke earlier, I find it outrageous to consider this insanity defense when it has no foundation in the
first place. And then we have to listen to this ridiculous motivation for Ron Bailey to have committed these murders, first from Ron Bailey's version of events to doctor Tombo, and then finally at the trial, because doctor Tombo is missing an action, they're looking for him, they can't find him. And this doctor Dreyer testifies at the trial, including again surprisingly I think Ron Bailey. So just give us this what the defense went to court with and how the
prosecution countered and Ron Bailey's appearance. Give us some of these highlights of this most extraordinary trial.
Yeah, Ron Bailey made the claim that that doctor Tombo had forced him into a sexual relationship and therefore that caused him to be insane at the time that he killed Kenny Myers and Sean Moore in nineteen eighty four and eighty five. And so Ray Kasar after the meeting with doctor Tombo and Alfred Bailey and Chuck Murphy, they knew they were going to have to have Tombo testify. They absolutely knew it. But he also knew he'd probably never see him again because he figured that Tombo was
going to split. Doctor Tombo was a Filipino doctor and he'd been with the Northfield Regional Psychiatric Hospital for several years and was very well respected. But they tried to serve doctor Tombo a subpoena for the trial and he was nowhere to be found. He was intentionally avoiding testifying basically because he knew he'd have to admit that he'd had this sexual relationship with Ron Bailey, and so they
couldn't find him, and they couldn't find him. In the meantime, a local psychiatrist, very well known, high profile, very narcissistic psychiatrist in the Detroit area who had a lot of TV commercials on several times a day, called Raksar and said, I can help you out, and so they hired him. They brought him on because no other psychiatrists in the Detroit area wanted anything to do with this case because it involved the murder of two teenage boys, and so
they brought doctor Dryer on, doctor Joel Dryer. Doctor Dryer was an interesting individual. His testimony was, from what I saw, was very random and very disjointed and very difficult to understand. And the prosecution was able to show that Ron Bailey was not insane. They brought in the state psychiatrists, that psychologists and psychiatrists that had interviewed Ron Bailey several times,
and their testimony was impeccable. As a matter of fact, I interviewed doctor Harley Stock, who was the States psychiatrist as a psychologist, and he said that Ron Bailey was one of the most sadistic serial killers he'd ever met.
What I found very very interesting is the the profound lies that he was able to impart to his attorneys. And I know you have respect for Kassar, but it's very interesting to have the only defense be an insanity defense, but try to put these very thin in terms of the motivation thread that would connect these crimes to any kind of motivation whatsoever. So'm I was especially angered reading all of the lies that were accepted Tombo had said and gone along with the voices that Ron Bailey apparently
had heard. But what it seemed like is he trotted out all kinds of things, including the devil made me do it, and the psychiatrists and the lawyer took that the court anyway, And so I thought it was outrageous the trial itself, for the family and for the dutiful law enforcement to have to go through the process of listening to these absurd, profound and quite ridiculous lies.
It's a very very.
Difficult, not only for the families, but literally for the investigators to have to listen to that too. I'll give you a perfect example in my book that I wrote four or five years ago, Killing Women, about serial killer Don Miller. He claimed that he was insane, that the devil made him do it, that he only went into this house and raped this fourteen year old girl because he was trying to savor from the devil. And then he ends up in prison counseling session where he admits
that was all made up. And that's the beauty of having state psychiatrists and psychologists because they can come in and in their interviews they are able to tell whether or not a person is what they call malingering or lying. They do it through formal testing and they do it through their interviews. And doctor Harley Stock did a fabulous job,
and doctor Lynn Blunt another fabulous psychiatrist. They did a great job in showing that everything that Ron Bailey said wasn't true and they were able to convince the jury of that through the masterful questioning and cross examination of David Morse, the assistant prosecutor who handled that insanity defense,
and picking it apart piece by piece. It's difficult for the family to hear a person like Ron Bailey make those statements, but it is an absolute joy from an investigator's standpoint to watch the prosecution tear that defense apart.
And that's what they did.
Yeah, as evidence of that. You have that the deliberation was only two and a half hours for the jury. Tell us about the verdict.
The verdict after two and a half hours was guilty of kidnapping and guilty of first degree murder. And it wasn't over with Sean Moore's case because they had put together a case against Ron Bailey for the kidnapping and murder of Kenny Myers. So after he was convicted in front of a jury by a jury in Shawn Moore's
kidnapping and abduction, they're kidnapping and murder. He went on trial, but he chose a bench trial here in Michigan, that is a trial before the judge with no jury, and the judge listened to the evidence in the Kenny Myers case and knew by the end of the trial that Ron Bailey was guilty, and he was convicted in Kenny Myers case.
Very interesting. Gray gasar uses doctor Dreyer again at his star witness in this Kenny Meyers trial.
He does and.
Doctor Dreyer Dreyer Der he wanted to illustrate to the judge how he interviewed Ron Bailey, and so he wanted to do He literally wanted to re enact the interview, and the chief assistant at that time tim Oh, my gosh, having a I can't think of his last name right now, Tim Kenny. I'm sorry, Tim Kenny. Yes, he ended up actually being the chief court chief Circuit Court judge in
Wayne County. But Tim Kenny said, that's fine. He says, he can reenact how he interviewed how he interviewed round Bailey, he said, but he has to stay on the stand afterwards so I can cross examine him. And Tim Kenny was so confident at that point he said that that's where I knew we had him.
You're right at the end of this that Bailey faced a third trial, but prosecutor Tim Kenny filed a motion to dismiss there was no real practical purpose to another trial in this case.
Yeah, there was a the case a month before, a month before Kenny Myers was kidnapped, there was another teen boy who was kidnapped and sexually assaulted and released, and they were able to show that Ron Bailey was the perpetrator in that case too, And so in addition to being charged in Kenny Myers abduction and murder, they had an added charge of kidnapping and sexual assault a month before that, and that was the case that was after Ron Bailey was convicted in both Kenny Myers and Seawan
Moore's abductions and murders. They just went ahead and dismissed that earlier charge of kidnapping and sexual assault. It really would serve no purpose because Ron Bailey was sentenced to two life terms.
You're right that he ends up in Leavenworth. Eventually there's death threats against him, so he's not having a good time in prison. But just to end this book, and you talk about the fate of doctor Tombo and the fate of doctor Dreyer.
Yeah, doctor Tombo disappeared to this day, nobody knows if he's alive or dead. They suspect that he may have been concealed in the Filipino population in Detroit during the trial, and that he eventually made it over the border somehow and left the country. Whether he went back to the Philippines or whether he is in Canada somewhere, nobody really knows. Doctor Dreyer he ended up in California and he was arrested for basically writing fake prescriptions, thousands and thousands of them.
And he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to ten years in prison. He is probably in his nineties now, still living in California, but he did ten years in prison for writing prescription drug.
Yeah. Interesting, in just in closing, before I say bid you ado, you say that in all of this there are still questions remaining. What are those questions remaining?
Well, again, this book is not about the Oakland County child killings, but that case was reopened in two thousand and six, the thirtieth anniversary of the first victims kidnapping in that case, and in that case, it's a very
complicated case. But along the way in the two thousands, they were able to track down some hairs that were found on Mark Stebbens's body, a hair found on Mark Stebbens's body, a hair found on Timothy King's body, and a hair found in a suspects vehicle who was interviewed right after Mark Stebbens was kidnapped in nineteen seventy six. Those three hairs all matched each other, though, so they have a profile of the a DNA profile of the killer.
It didn't match the owner of the car, and they have done DNA analysis over several suspects over the years in hopes of finding the killer. Sadly they haven't. And so in one of the books that I referenced and did my research from, called The Snow Killings, about the Oakland County child killings, there's an interviewed chapter devoted to Ron Bailey and how they interviewed Ron Bailey regarding the possibility of his involvement in the Oaken County child killings.
And by that when the case was reopened, Ron Bailey's name was brought up, and everyone always said, well, he was in the mental hospital at that time. He was in the mental hospital, he was locked down. It couldn't have been him, So nobody ever followed up. Well, it turns out that just before Timothy King's abduction and just before Mark Stebben's abduction, Ron Bailey had been released from the psychiatric hospital. And so they went to Ron Bailey and they said, we want your DNA and Rob Bailey
said why. They said, we're going to compare it with the mers of four children in the Detroit area. And Ron Bailey got so flustered that he could barely sign his name. And I've seen Ron Bailey's handwriting and it's beautiful. He's got a very very neat cursive penmanship. They said he could barely write his name when they told him that.
Wow.
And so the DNL I'm not going to tell you what the DNA analysis is, but the suspicion was always that whoever was doing the Oakland County child killing killings, whether it was a single person or a group of people, that they likely had a younger person who would lure the kids over safely to the car. Wow, and.
Before the kids were kidnapped.
And so I asked one of the investigators, as said, I said, do you believe that Ron Bailey still could have had some part in those four murders in the seventies because he was sixteen at the time, riding a bike everywhere getting out of the mental hospital. And he said, there's absolutely no doubt in his mind that he could be involved in some way.
Was he the lure?
Wow?
Very possibly. So it remains to be seen.
Those cases are still unsolved.
Incredible. You'll have to keep us posted, no doubt, I will, I will. I want to thank you so much Rod Sadler for coming on and talking about your extraordinary new book, Depraved Obsession. The gripping true story of law enforcements hunt for a Sadistic serial Killer. For those people that might want to check out more about this story, can you refer us to a website or any social media you do?
Absolutely, i have a website rodsadler dot com. I'm on all the social media. I'm on X's RMS author, I'm on Instagram as RMS author, i am on Lincoln as Rod Sadler, So you can find me all over the social media pages and that's where i do most of my updates. And really I've been traveling over the last oh two or three months across the entire state of Michigan from Lower Michigan through the up doing book talks
about my last book and this upcoming book. So check my website and you can find out where I'll be next and maybe you can take in a book talk.
Sounds fantastic. Thank you so much, Rod Sadler. Depraved Obsession, The gripping true story of law enforcements Hunt for a Sadistic serial Killer. Thank you so much for this interview, and you have a great evening and good night.