A Web of Intrigue

Forty years ago this month, six vacationing members of the Robison family were murdered at their secluded cottage in the northern Michigan village of Good Hart. Although theories and suspects continue to be discussed, no one was ever charged in the crime. To add to the mystery, the father's business dealings turned out to be as dark and inscrutable as the woods surrounding the town

The Robison family.

Courtesy of Richard Bak

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In early 1970, an intriguing lead emerged from Leavenworth penitentiary in Kansas. Alexander Bloxom, a career criminal recently locked up for bank robbery, told detectives that in 1968 he had shared a Detroit halfway house with a fellow parolee named Mark Warren Brock. One day, he drove Brock to a meeting at a Flint restaurant with a dark, heavyset man he remembered as “Scollata.” Brock next went to Toledo to pick up some guns, then headed up north with a man named Robert Matthews in a borrowed blue Dodge. Bloxom was left behind because “there weren’t no colored men up in Good Hart.” Brock returned two days after the murders.

Bloxom’s story was remarkably detailed. He described a briefcase of Robison’s that Brock had brought back and later destroyed, as well as plans for his new venture that few people had ever seen. Brock produced a sealed black suitcase, whose heft suggested the murder weapons were inside, and a manila envelope containing a Robison family photo, canceled checks, and other material to be saved for blackmail purposes. At Brock’s direction, Bloxom disposed of the suitcase at a salvage yard during a trip to Alabama and hid the envelope at the home of an unsuspecting relative. Neither item was ever found.

Bloxom paraphrased Brock’s account of the murders: “We went to the cottage and knocked on the door and I faked a heart attack. While I was lying on the floor and Mr. Robison was trying to help me, Matthews came in and started shooting. The wife was the first one down and then one of the kids tried to run, so we took him down, too. Then, we just kilt ’em all.”

Brock, thin but tough, had spent most of his life behind bars. Back in prison for the same armed heist that put Bloxom away, Brock verified nearly every detail of his ex-partner’s story. He admitted he would consider carrying out a multiple murder if the price was right. But, no, he did not kill the Robisons.

An alibi witness had Matthews, the alleged accomplice, buying guns in Toledo at the time of the murders. Matthews passed his polygraph. Brock, however, refused to be hooked up. “I’m not going to tell you anything I might know about the murder of that family. If I ever change my mind, I’ll let my parole officer know, but it ain’t too likely you’ll be hearing from me.”

Bloxom welcomed his “liar’s test” — and flunked it. Inconsistencies in his story, coupled with the lack of further cooperation from Brock and Matthews, caused the once-promising lead to dry up. However, Link says, Matthews did volunteer that “Brock was ruthless enough to kill the family, and Bloxom was too dumb to make up such a story.”

Behind the scenes, friction developed between Emmet County, which was handling its first homicide case in a decade, and downstate agencies. The county’s professionalism took an early hit when a deputy at the crime scene held up the bloody hammer for a photographer, obliterating any possible fingerprints.

Emmet County had jurisdiction over the case. Despite the mounting evidence against Scolaro, prosecutors resisted filing murder charges in the hope that accomplices, eyewitnesses, or the weapons would turn up. “We could’ve gone to trial and gotten a conviction based on circumstantial evidence alone,” Stearns says. “Most cases, especially murder, are circumstantial. There just was no experience up there.” Oakland County authorities met with frustrated state police detectives and decided to build their own case. By early 1973, Prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson was close to charging Scolaro with conspiracy to commit murder. But someone tipped off Scolaro’s mother that a warrant was imminent, and she in turn told her son.

Scolaro was already chin-deep in woe. He had bought Robison’s business interests and drove them into the ground. He was being hounded by detectives and creditors and reduced to having his mother serve as his unpaid secretary. His new venture, the high-sounding Dimensional Research Inc., was nothing more than a check-kiting scheme. Each day on his way to work, he drove past Acacia Park Cemetery, where the Robisons were buried.

On the afternoon of March 8, 1973, two men entered Scolaro’s office, looking to collect a $730 debt. They discovered Scolaro in his chair, a bullet from his Beretta having sped through his brain before shattering a framed-glass picture on the wall. On his desk was a suicide note:
“Mother — Where do I start … I am a liar-cheat-phony. Any check that any of the people have with your signature isn’t any good, because I forged your name to it to get them off my back … I know I’m sick, but seeking help isn’t going to help the people I’ve hurt.” He added a postscript: “I had nothing to do with the Robisons — I’m a cheat but not a murderer.”

Some point to Scolaro’s note as proof he didn’t commit the murders. Others believe he carried his untruths into the next world. “My personal theory is he was so tied to his mother, he just couldn’t bear to hurt her by admitting that he did it,” Link says. Stearns adds: “Remember, practically the first words in his suicide note were, ‘I am a liar…’ In other words, ‘From this point on, don’t believe anything I’ve written.’” Scolaro, 38, left behind a wife and two young sons, none of whom knew what to believe.

Al Koski has covered the crime beat for various media outlets during his long journalism career. Now semi-retired and living in Royal Oak, the vinegary 80-year-old has spent exactly half his life pondering all aspects of the case. He believes the evidence points to Scolaro. “He had the motive and the weapons, so you have to figure he’s the guy.”

But there are other roads of inquiry Koski likes to meander down. One of Robison’s ex-secretaries later married a rich and powerful manufacturing tycoon with rumored ties to organized crime in Cleveland. About the time of the murders, the woman had a miscarriage, and there were whispers the baby was Robison’s and not her 70-year-old husband’s. Also, the family of one of the companies Robison swindled was thought to be associated with the mob. Had either jealousy or embezzlement led to a bloody reprisal?

Link says the theory of an underworld connection “certainly has some merit.” The AR-7 used in the murders was a “novelty weapon” much preferred by Mafia hit men of the era. In 1968, the press reported an informant saying Robison owed the mob $12,000 a month but was seriously delinquent in his payments. The informant quoted a colleague: “If he hadn’t held back on us like he did, we wouldn’t have wiped out the whole family.”

The case stalled after Scolaro’s death. Then, in February 1974, a state trooper from the Romeo post made a routine search of a blue 1965 Chevrolet with Ohio license plates that had been found deserted by the side of M-14. Inside the glove box was a luggage tag bearing the inscription: “Shirley L. Robison 18790 Dolores, Lathrup Village, Michigan.”

What was such an item doing inside an abandoned car six years after the murders and 200 miles from the crime scene? Detectives combed the car for clues. They found nothing. A title search showed it had been purchased new off a Toledo lot in 1966. Between then and its abandonment several years later, any number of people could have driven it, legally and illegally. Every registered owner was tracked down. Nobody could recall ever seeing the tag or had any idea how it got there. The forsaken Chevy and derelict luggage tag added up to just one more baffling dead end.

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