Jennifer vanished sometime in the overnight hours.

Right now there is no trace.

Investigators say evidence lead them to believe that she's dead.

Stick my nose back on the trail. That's all I can do.

This is already gone.

Already gone.

Already.

All ready. All right.

Today we are speaking with the author of Guarded by Jackals.

This anonymous author wrote a detailed account of the Oakland County child killings.

Not a look at the crimes themselves, which have been covered in numerous books and podcasts, including My Long Form Podcasts, Don't Talk to Strangers,

which released back in 2018. What makes guarded by Jackals different is that the book isn't

another rehashing of the crimes, but a look inside the investigation, or lack thereof,

into a series of child murders that shook Metro Detroit in the 1970s.

Before we get started, I need to mention that we are recording

at the Podcast Your Voice Studio on Greenfield Road in Southfield.

This puts us at the geographic heart of where these crimes took place almost 50 years ago.

We are so close to where Christine Mahalik lived and to the 7-Eleven store where she was last seen.

We are similarly close to the office building where the

body of Mark Stebbins was found in 1976. We are also about a mile from the Berkeley home I was living in

with my grandparents when these murders took place. Even though I was a toddler at the time,

some of my earliest memories involve stern warnings about not playing in the front yard,

...