Hi, Crime Junkeys. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and for the next couple of weeks,

it's just me. Brit is going to be taking an extended vacation from recording. She gets to relax

and soak up time with her kids, but I knew if I didn't come back, I would have an army of riding

crime junkies on my hand. So I put together a story for you, a really big story that's going to

take me two weeks to tell. Now, I started with requests from listeners to cover the Oakland

County Child Killer in Michigan. But the more I dug, I realized it was a much bigger conspiracy.

And just a warning for those who want to proceed with this episode, it deals almost exclusively

with crimes against children. I would caution you before moving forward, but if you can handle it,

and I won't be going into any gruesome detail, I encourage you to listen because the families

and law enforcement believe that someone listening could hold the key to break this case wide open.

In the late 1970s, a very wealthy and prominent Michigan man named Francis Sheldon

bought a small island off the northwest coast of Michigan. A tiny piece of land you would miss

on a map if you weren't looking for it. When he originally bought the property, he told people

that he was going to renovate it and add vacation homes. But when all was said and done, paperwork

signed, the deed handed over, plans changed. Francis, whose friends called him Frank, held off on

the luxury homes for a while. Instead, he wanted to connect with his friend Gerald. There might be

something else they could do with the property, something I think Frank intended to do from the time

that he bought it. You see, Gerald was a gym teacher, but not just a gym teacher. He was also a

magician, a naturopath, an armchair photographer, and he actually learned his photography skills by

helping to take mug shots at the police station where his father was employed as an officer.

When he was an adult and married with kids of his own, he took up a job at a pornography store

to make some extra money. But he kept it a secret that even after his time there ended,

...