The Oakland County Child Killer | #434
RedHanded
RedHanded
4.5 • 19.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
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Summary
Behind the façade of the white-picket-fence dream and adventurous childhoods of suburban, late-70s Michigan, lay a web of depravity that law enforcement was not remotely prepared for. Over the course of just one tragic year, the town of Oakland was terrorised: four children vanished, only to turn up dead. Chillingly, one had even been fed his favourite food, just before his murder.
Was this the work of a lone killer? Or an organised, murderous child abuse operation involving a network of predators, stretching all the way to the top? After thousands of leads and countless hours of investigation, not one single arrest has ever been made. So what’s the truth? We open up the coldest case in Michigan: the Oakland County Child Killer.
Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/-y8qK_BkeAw
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Suruti. |
| 0:09.8 | And welcome to Red-Handed. |
| 0:13.3 | It's getting weird today. |
| 0:17.4 | Are we prepared for some, just rage about how everyone is a paedophile? |
| 0:23.7 | Oh good. |
| 0:24.6 | That's the moral of this story. |
| 0:27.4 | Everyone is a paedophile. |
| 0:32.9 | Yeah. |
| 0:34.2 | In 1977, I dare you to say anything else when we get to the end of the script. |
| 0:40.7 | Oh, no, I mean, I'm already of the opinion that literally everyone is a paedophile and I'm really happy to be proved right. |
| 0:46.8 | You will be. |
| 0:49.0 | In 1977, in the suburbs around Michigan, families who had left Detroit due to fears of rising crime |
| 0:55.6 | now began locking the doors of their white picket fence houses. For the first time, the children |
| 1:02.2 | of Oakland County were told to stay inside, not talk to strangers, and not to trust even those |
| 1:08.1 | they knew. A serial killer was on the loose. |
| 1:12.2 | Over the course of a year, four children had vanished and then turned up dead. |
| 1:18.6 | Their frozen bodies found dumped in the snow. |
| 1:22.3 | At first, the murders weren't connected. |
| 1:24.6 | After all, the victims were a mix of boys and girls. They didn't look alike. |
| 1:28.8 | They weren't even all killed in the same way. But eventually, the murders culminated in the largest |
| 1:35.7 | and most expensive task force in the US at the time. But despite this, after thousands of leads, hundreds of suspects and countless hours of investigation, |
| 1:48.0 | not one single arrest has ever been made. |
... |
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