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For the first time that librarian Barbara Cook can remember, she had to turn people away from a library event. Not because the event was cancelled, not because it was by invitation only, but rather because she has a healthy respect for fire codes.

The old Petoskey library building, across Mitchell Street from the city’s new library, bulged past capacity Monday night at a public forum to address Michigan’s most notorious cold case - the murder of all six members of the Richard Robison family in 1968. The family was from the Detroit area but vacationed at their cottage in Good Hart, just north of Petoskey and the unlikely scene of the forty-year-old crime.

Nearly 200 people crowded inside the library’s meeting room, first filling up chairs, then sitting on the floor, and finally standing for the duration of the two and a half hour program. They all shared the same basic questions: Who killed the Robison family and why was the perpetrator never arrested?

Because the case remained officially open, theories about the identity of the killer, based only on gossip, conjectures, and legend, have been allowed to build. Monday night those were put to rest by the evidence. A panel consisting of local researcher Rick Wiles, retired Emmet County judge and prosecutor Dick Smith, myself, [Mardi Link] and surprise guest retired state police polygraph examiner Ed “EJ” Goss attempted to answer those questions with the facts available.

The consensus of panel was this: the Emmet County Sheriff’s Office and the Michigan State Police solved the case four decades ago when they named Robison’s employee, Joseph Scolaro, as their chief suspect. He had the means (his missing guns were the suspected murder weapons), the motive (embezzlement), and the opportunity (his alibi was bunk) to commit the crime. He wasn’t immediately arrested both because the evidence was circumstantial and because, although only one set of bloody footprints were found inside the cottage, there was some question amongst law enforcement as to whether or not he acted alone.

The result of the forum was not an official closure of the case, but rather a de-bunking of long-held myths and an acceptance of a dubious and heartbreaking event in Michigan’s history. By 1973, Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Ron Covault was prepared to issue the warrant for Joe Scolaro that Emmet County would not. He never got the chance because Scolaro committed suicide. Covault is long retired now, but in an effort to aid the resolution of this case, he recently re-visited his memories of the investigation and wrote a ten page “Letter of Evidence” that was read aloud last night. (The entire document can be downloaded from my blog, Rusty Gun, at www.mardilink.typepad.com)

“The truth of this case is there to be seen,” Covault concludes. “The forensic evidence and the attendant circumstances of the case are substantial...they can withstand dissection and analysis
because they mark out the truth...and the truth is patient...and very stubborn. Absent the prosecution that should have ensued, the matter will be decided in the court of public opinion in which the perpetrator, Joseph R. Scolaro III, stands charged with six counts of first degree murder. The verdict that is compelled by the evidence is but one: guilty as charged on all counts.”

Mardi Link
When Evil Came to Good Hart
(Univ. Mich. Press, July '08)

Read more about When Evil Came to Good Hart HERE

Isadore's Secret
(Univ. Mich. Press, Summer '09)

Read more about Isadore's Secret HERE
www.mardilink.com