Robison family murders

Richard Carl Robison was born in Wayne County, Michigan, in November 1925. He had met his fiancée, Shirley Fulton, in the mid-1940s while both attended college. The couple wed in 1947 and had four children: Richard Jr. (b. 1948); Gary (b. 1951); Randall (b. 1955); and Susan (b. 1960). Robison had founded and operated a small advertisement agency named R. C. Robison & Associates in the mid-1950s. The firm strategized advertisement campaigns for businesses with the Detroit region; he also worked as a commercial artist, executive and publisher for Impresario magazine, which focused on cultural issues such as the arts, theatricals and music and was also based within his one-story Southfield office. The markedly wealthy family owned a private Learjet, and lived in the affluent Detroit suburb of Lathrup Village. By 1968, Richard Jr. attended Eastern Michigan University, Gary was a student at Southfield-Lathrup High School, Randall was a middle school student, and Susan—described as a "pony mad" child—a first grade student. The family regularly attended church services, and neither parent drank, smoked or gambled. The family planned to spend three weeks of their vacation at Summerset, the seasonal log-and-stone holiday cottage they had purchased in the 1950s for $15,000. The five-room cottage itself was situated at the end of a long private driveway within a heavily-wooded area and which at one section runs alongside a 100-foot bluff close to the Lake Michigan shoreline. The vacation began on Sunday, June 16, with the family traveling in two cars to the destination. They were accompanied by several traveling companions, who would stay in their own rented holiday homes. These individuals included friends of the Robison boys, some business acquaintances, and personal friends of Richard Sr. and Shirley. Among those to know about the vacation and the location of the Robisons' secluded holiday home were several senior employees of Impresario magazine. On June 23, one of the Robisons' traveling companions, 18-year-old Norman James Bliss (the son of the caretaker of Blisswood Resort and a close friend of Richard Jr.), was killed in a motorcycling accident while returning to Good Hart from nearby Cross Village, reportedly while intoxicated. An autopsy revealed his cause of death to be cerebral hemorrhage. The accident occurred sometime after 1:30 a.m., and the Robison family did not learn of the accident until that evening. Upon receipt of this news, Richard Sr. paid personal condolences to Bliss's parents at their Good Hart holiday home, offering to pay for the teenager's grave marker and flowers or a wreath. He also explained the family would be unable to attend the funeral as they were due to fly from Pellston Regional Airport to Kentucky, then Florida, with view to purchasing real estate and would "not be back [to their cottage] for a couple of weeks." He added the earliest date they would likely return would be July 15. June 25, 1968 On the morning of June 25, Richard Robison Sr. telephoned his personal banker at the National Bank of Detroit, Frank Joity, to discuss business pertaining to an expected recent deposit to his account of $200,000, only to be informed that the deposit had not been made, of financial irregularities within his business account within recent weeks, and that his current business balance was just $15,000. These revelations infuriated Robison, who telephoned his receptionist, demanding to speak to a senior employee of his named Joseph Scolaro III—the only employee of his with direct access to company accounts The final confirmed sighting of the Robisons occurred at approximately 4:30 p.m. on June 25, when two individuals tasked to trim trees within the grounds of Summerset left the property. ==Murders==

Investigators would later determine the most likely time the Robison family were murdered was in the early evening of June 25, 1968. The murders evidently began when the assailant was outside the property, as five .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle gunshots were fired through a rear window of Summerset Cottage at Richard Robison Sr. as he sat in a chair. Susan and Richard Sr. were also bludgeoned with a claw hammer found at the murder scene, although there were few signs of a struggle within the cottage. A single bloody footprint on the floor would lead investigators to conclude that one person had committed the murders, and this individual had most likely closed all the curtains to the cottage and crudely attempted to cover the bullet holes in the window from his initial salvo with a piece of cardboard before turning on the heating within the property, then locking the door to the premises before leaving the scene. Fifteen spent shell casings—eleven .22-caliber and four .25-caliber—were left at the premises. Their bodies were found by the owner and caretaker of the resort, Chauncey Bliss, following a complaint from a neighbor of the family of a pungent odor emanating from the cottage she had noted while playing a card game with friends on the grounds of her own property some from the Robison cottage that afternoon. he pried open the molding to gain entry to the cottage only to discover the crime scene. Bliss immediately notified authorities. Investigators would determine Richard Sr. had been shot in the chest with a .22-caliber firearm and once in the head with a .25-caliber pistol. He had also received a skull fracture; his body lay in the hallway to the property beneath the body of his youngest son, Randall, who had been shot once in the head by a firearm of unknown caliber. Susan lay alongside her father and brother; she had received a single .25-caliber gunshot to the face in addition to a skull fracture. Shirley Robison's body lay on her stomach in the living room; she had received a single .25-caliber gunshot wound to the head and a red-and-black plaid blanket had been placed over her body after death. Richard Jr. lay midway between the hallway and northwest bedroom of the property; he had received several gunshots to the head from a .25-caliber pistol. Gary was discovered lying parallel to the east wall of the northwest bedroom; he had been shot once in the back with a .22-caliber firearm and twice in the head with a .25-caliber firearm. Playing cards scattered upon a table indicated two or more family members had been playing a game of solitaire at the time of the shootings. undersheriff examines bullet holes in the windows of Summerset Cottage. July 22, 1968. The time-lapse between the homicides and their discovery in addition to the perpetrator having turned the heating on within the property had resulted in the decedents' bodies being in an advanced state of decomposition, thus destroying potential physical evidence. Questioning of the sole family whose seasonal home had been close to the Robison cottage revealed they had not been present in their cabin on June 24 or 25; however, another couple informed investigators that sometime in the late afternoon of June 25, they had heard two men and a woman shouting, followed by the sound of gunfire—all emanating from the direction of Summerset. They had chosen not to investigate, believing the Robisons to be "shooting gulls on the beach." ==Initial investigation==

Investigators rapidly determined the murders were premeditated and most likely committed by an individual or individuals known to one or more members of the family. Although an expensive ring belonging to Shirley was missing, no money or other items of value had been taken from the victims, thus discounting robbery as a motive. Furthermore, although Shirley Robison was nude from the waist down, no family member had been sexually assaulted, and her body had most likely been posed in this manner to deceive investigators into believing a sexual motive existed behind the murders. Prime suspect By the second week of the investigation, the Michigan State Police and the Emmet County authorities strongly suspected that one of Richard Robison's senior employees, 30-year-old Joseph Raymond Scolaro III, had been the perpetrator. Scolaro was a veteran of the United States Army Security Agency and a graduate of Harvard University; he had worked for Robison's advertising and publishing companies since December 1965, and held a senior position within his publishing firm. In addition, although the firearm was still missing, ==Dismissal of findings==

Investigators presented their 700-page case report to the jurisdictional prosecution on December 17, 1969. This detailed report implicated Joseph Scolaro as the sole perpetrator of the crime, with ample circumstantial evidence attesting to his guilt and concluding he had the means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime. As such, he was not charged with the murders, although investigators remained convinced of his guilt. Intervening developments Within four months of the Robisons' murder, Scolaro assumed directorship of R.C. Robison & Associates and Impresario magazine, having purchased the firms from the Robisons' estate. Scolaro managed both firms from Richard Sr.'s office. He would later sell the magazine, and also founded another firm he named Dimensional Research Inc. Upon orders of the National Bank of Detroit, executors of the Robison estate, Summerset Cottage was demolished in the spring of 1969 due to an executive ruling the building was no longer habitable. ==Reopening of investigation==

Four years after the commission of the murders, a newly elected chief prosecutor in Oakland County, Lewis Brooks Patterson—believing the Robison murders had been committed within his jurisdiction—formally reopened the prosecution. Upon reviewing the accrued evidence, Patterson informed Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Ronald Covault: "We are going to charge [Scolaro] with murder." His body was discovered slumped in his high-back chair at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon by two men who entered his office looking to collect an outstanding $730 debt. Two typewritten suicide notes were found at the scene. One note was attached to the door of his office and addressed to his mother, warning her not to enter the office where his body lay; the other—also addressed to his mother—acknowledged the acts of fraud and forgery he had committed in life but ended with a handwritten denial of culpability for the murder of the Robison family. The note Scolaro left in which he maintained his innocence of the Robison murders stated: "Mother, Where do I start ... I am a [liar]—cheat—phony. Any check that any of the people have with your signature isn't any good, because I forged your name to it to get them off my back. I owe everybody you can think of. I have made poor investments, and in some cases, no investments at all. ... I love you dearly, but living only causes you more heartache. I just can't help myself. Please understand. Love, Joe." The letter also listed several individuals whom he had defrauded in multiple business schemes. At the base of this letter, Scolaro had penned a denial of culpability for the Robison family murders. This read: ==Legal ramifications==

Scolaro's suicide resulted in the investigation into the Robison murders becoming largely inactive. He remains the prime suspect in the murders, with past and present investigators convinced that, had he not committed suicide, he would have been tried and convicted of six counts of first-degree murder. ==Aftermath==

The Robison family were laid to rest in Oakland County, Michigan, on July 26, 1968. recollected in 2008 he had once informed Scolaro: "You killed the Robisons, and if you didn't, then you know who pulled the trigger." Forty years after the murders, Stearns maintained this comment reflected the collective mindset of the investigators assigned to the case. The alleged perpetrator's suicide left many questions unanswered pertaining to the actual events surrounding the murders and their actual motive. These include whether the perpetrator acted alone, and whether he was aided and abetted by one or more other individuals. ==See also==

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