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

(page 4 of 4)

In Good Hart, Carolyn Sutherland says: “People around here know who did the killings, but they politely keep their lips zipped.”
Which is more than Monnie Bliss, the man who helped build the Robisons’ cottage and discovered their bodies, ever did. “Bliss was an oddball,” Link says. “He was a motor-mouth, constantly talking to himself, and he had a quick temper. A lot of people were afraid of him.” Bliss and his father, who built scores of distinctly styled cabins beginning in the 1930s, were famous for their craftsmanship. The “Bliss homes,” still highly coveted today, feature lacquered logs on a stone foundation and such artistic touches as hand-forged hardware.

Bliss died in 1980 at age 69. Family members still live in the area, making longtime residents reluctant to talk. However, one person who arrived shortly after the murders agrees to be quoted pseudonymously. “You think Good Hart is rugged now, you should have seen it 40 years ago,” says “Pat,” a big-city transplant. “I couldn’t believe the mentality of this place — guns, superstitions, vigilante justice.”

According to local lore, Bliss inexplicably held the Robisons responsible for his 18-year-old son’s death. Norman Bliss, a friend of the Robison boys, crashed his motorcycle while driving home drunk one night from the Legs Inn in Cross Village. Bliss found his son’s lifeless body crumpled at the base of a tree. On the day before the funeral, Dick Robison stopped by to offer condolences and regrets that his family could not attend. He gave Bliss’ wife $20 for flowers. Bliss supposedly was insulted by the gesture. The following evening, the Robisons were murdered.
Pat points to the overkill of the two female victims. “To me, that says this was someone who was half-crazy, that it was some kind of revenge-style murder.” While conceding the brutality could have been a ploy to make police think they were dealing with a psychotic, Pat mentions the claw hammer — just the type of weapon a builder would have handy. Talk circulated after the killings that one of Bliss’ hammers was missing from his tool chest, though police eventually decided it was a rumor hatched by some locals over beers at the Legs Inn.
Bliss was cleared as a suspect. Afterward, his behavior grew more bizarre. He wandered the woods at night, chatting nonstop with equally restless Indian spirits and his dead son. “He had the keys to all the houses he built,” Pat says. “You’d get up at four in the morning and find him in your kitchen, frying eggs.” Locals suspected Bliss of setting several fires, including a mysterious blaze where unlucky Wilbur Gross was found tied to the bed, roasted. Some defended Bliss as a harmless eccentric, but he didn’t help his cause by occasionally blurting out, “The Robisons had it coming,” or saying he had killed the family during one of his rambling monologues.

Despite the compelling small-town gossip, few outsiders pin the killings on Bliss. “That poor ‘sumbitch’ was a nut case,” Koski says. “But he wasn’t a murderer.”

Stearns once told Scolaro: “You killed the Robisons. And if you didn’t, then you know who pulled the trigger.” That remains the position of the state police and Emmet County Sheriff’s Department to this day, though proving it to the satisfaction of a court is another matter.

In 2003, evidence was brought out of storage and underwent DNA analysis. There were hopes that a match could be made with a known suspect or someone cataloged in national criminal databases. However, the evidence was too degraded to yield any conclusive results. With the 40th anniversary of the murders at hand, there is talk of a renewed effort to have prosecutors finally put cold case No. 7471 to rest. “We owe it to the memory of the victims,” Mair says.

Today, outside of some stray chimney stones, nothing remains of Summerset. The lingering stench caused the cottage to be leveled and burned a year or so after the murders. “It was impossible to clean the wood,” Koski says. “It was saturated with body fluids.” Even the top foot of sand beneath the foundation had to be replaced. Pines were planted on the spot.

To the dismay of subsequent owners, strangers occasionally traipse through the property. They are drawn by the site’s macabre history and struck by the timeless tranquility. Lake Michigan laps the rocky shore as languidly as a puppy cleaning its paw. Birdsong fills the scented air. Trespassers who dare to linger are chased off — like the Robisons, premature departures from the blessed calm.

THE COLLINS CONNECTION
John Norman Collins, the infamous “Co-ed Killer,” is thought to be responsible for brutally torturing and murdering as many as 15 young women in Michigan and California between 1967 and 1969. His spree stopped after he raised the suspicions of his uncle, David Leik, a state police corporal. Collins used Leik’s Ypsilanti home to kill 18-year-old Karen Sue Beineman, a student at Eastern Michigan University, while Leik was vacationing in Canada.

Coincidentally, Collins and the Robisons’ oldest son, Richie, attended EMU together. There were rumors the two had even belonged to the same fraternity. Police investigating the Robison murders kept their eyes on Collins, but eventually eliminated him as a suspect in their case.
The most persistent advocate of a possible Collins connection is Tom Mair of Traverse City. He knew the Robisons and has long been active in various crime-stopper programs. He insists Collins met Richie Robison during a week of orientation at EMU — a scenario police rejected, but which true-crime author Mardi Link now says is very likely, considering the small size of the student group. Mair suggests Collins may have visited the cottage before the murders. But, Link says, “There’s no proof anywhere of that.”

Mair also hints that Leik, who later commanded the state police post in Petoskey, may have impeded any subsequent investigation of ties between his nephew and the Robisons. “That really doesn’t make sense,” Link argues. “Why would Leik turn in Collins for Beineman’s murder, but then obstruct a look into any possible involvement with the Robisons?”

A few years ago, a CNN report featuring Mair gave the dubious Collins theory a certain legitimacy. It also gained more traction with the publication in 2004 of Judith Guest’s fictionalized account of the murders, The Tarnished Eye. Guest, a former Royal Oak schoolteacher best known for her breakout novel, Ordinary People, took tremendous liberties with the lives of some of the principal characters, going so far as to describe an affair between Collins and Shirley Robison.

Veteran crime reporter Al Koski, who covered both the Collins and Robison cases, is galled by this kind of creative license. He even confronted Guest during a chance meeting in Oscoda, Mich., where the Minnesota-based novelist maintains a summer cottage. “She told me, ‘It’s fiction, Al.’ But this is how the public starts believing such bull----. They get their ‘facts’ from people like her and Mair, and it just muddies the water.”

Mair maintains he’s not necessarily saying Collins committed the Robison murders, only that authorities shouldn’t be so quick to reject the possibility. “They’ve never even interviewed him about it,” he says. Collins, who changed his name to John Chapman in prison, is now 62 and serving a life sentence in Marquette. He steadfastly maintains his innocence. (In fact, four years ago, DNA evidence cleared Collins of one of the murders long attributed to him.) In his last public interview, he admitted it was bothersome being called a serial killer. “It’s bad enough being convicted of one thing,” he said in 1988, “without being labeled for other things you haven’t done.”

Like what you've read? Subscribe to Hour Detroit »