The Robison Family Murders featuring TYCHIUS

The annihilation of an entire family, the Robison Family from Lathrop Village and were staying at their summer of '68 cottage in Good Hart, Michigan.

Absolutely crazy story!

We leave you with a happy ending and on a good note as promised with:

TYCHIUS

song title: Krushed

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Transcript

Good Hart in 1968 was so tiny a general store and a gas station are the only things that existed in town.

While the town had its year-round residents, they also had plenty of cottages owned or rented by flatlanders and fudgies.

The Robison family were what northerners like to call flatlanders.  

Dad Richard 42 years of age

Mom Shirley was 40

Their kids :  Richard  19

                    Gary 16

                    Randall 12 

                    and Susan just 7 years old

Mr & Mrs Robison were just shy of their 20 year wedding anniversary and the couple were by all means successful in many ways.  The couple and their family resided in Lathrup Village.

Lathrup Village was also a cute little town in the late 60’s and early 70’s. The ‘town’ buildings appear very colonial, but it stops there.  

Many homes there are coveted today for their retro 70 vibe.  The town has a cool history, a woman founded it and basically built it up.  Louise Lathrop Kelly.  Although married, she was the one who was the driving force.

Head of the Robison house and father, Richard Robison ran an advertising agency and published a cultural magazine “Impressario.”  

1961-1976 communication and information sciences.

He was doing well for himself and his family.  He was successful, even owning a personal aeroplane and a luxury cottage up north.

In the summer of 1968 their family plans were to spend the summer in Good Hart at their stone and log cottage, enjoying Michigan’s summer life.

The cottage isn’t as most of us would envision a cottage.  Again, it was luxurious for the cottage industry.  It wasn’t huge by any means it had just two bedrooms but still….it’s on the waters of lake Michigan just south of Petosky.

It had a large living area, two bedrooms, the kitchen and a bathroom with a utility room.  So for a cottage, it wasn’t too shabby.

The cottage community that they lived in had been developed by 

He would be referred to as the caretaker but let’s be real, he and his father are developers.  

The cottage community was family built and located directly on Lake Michigan.  

The Robison’s purchased their cottage and the lot next to them for privacy reasons.  Another show of financial stability.

They had a side trip planned for Kentucky then down to Florida for a long weekend June 25 through July 7-8th.   Other than that, they were going to be frolicking on the shores of lake Michigan all summer long.

According to an article from 1968, the family members had been in the local store and that is that last time anyone had seen the family on June 24 (1968) the 6 family members.

The Caretaker did come back in July to check up on the cottage and take care of the maintenance of the property.   

He noted that there were holes in the windows but he just chucked it up to the kids playing pellet guns.  

I guess with 3 boys running around, I would assume that also.  One of my kids may or may not have done something similar when they were young.

He also smelled a funky order and he checked under the cottage for dead animals, and saw none…. So he simply didn’t investigate any further.   

It's 1968 your brain isn’t going to go to murder like ours do now.

The start of summer quickly rolls into the end of July.  

On July 22 the smell at the cottage became so rank that the neighboring cottage complained to the caretaker.

They discovered that day that the family had been inside the cottage, purposely placed throughout the cottage.

Sadly, they had been there for about a month, the decomposition of their bodies was brutal.

The police quickly descended upon the cottage on the lakeshore.  Doing everything they could to find evidence.   

The bullet holes in the window actually had casings outside of it.

There was no obvious forced entry into the cottage.

It also did not appear that the motive was robbery.  A bunch of cameras were found out in the open and nothing seemed to be disturbed in a robbery type of way.

The bodies were throughout the house but not where they died.

Shirley was found in front of the fireplace covered with a rug.

Richard was found with his daughter and one of his sons.

The other two boys had been dragged into a bedroom.

According to the flint journal, the family had been shot in the living room and then moved to different areas of the cottage.  The Ann Arbor Press later reported that at least one of the victims was bludgeoned.

It was noted that two different types of guns were used.   Although the weapons have not been recovered.  The first shots appeared to be from a distance through the windows, once in the house a pistol was used.

State and local police combed the area for clues and came up empty.  

The prosecutor for Emmett County at the time, W. Richarch Smith stated that the crime was an act of premeditation.

The case made major news all over the state.  Unheard of that an entire family is just annihilated like that.  Let alone in such a small, quaint beach town in Michigan.

The 15 month investigation began.  Unless you are the internet…then it’s still not solved.

Numerous witnesses were questioned from Good Hart all the way down to Lathrup.  Going through the company he works for…co workers,  neighbors, friends.   

Two pages worth of witnesses would be questioned regarding the Robison Family.

The detectives learned that Richard's secretary told him that there was a significant amount of money missing from the business account.

Mr. Robison started looking into the  situation even though he was at the cottage, his work was never walked away from.  

He literally was investigating the embezzling situation himself at the time that he was murdered.

The day of Richard's murder, there were 17 calls that he had made to his office demanding to speak to Joseph.  

One news reel the sheriff stated that Richard did  in fact talk to Joseph during one of these calls and that there was a lot of yelling going on.

Once they dug into Richard’s company and his employees.  It was discovered that it was one of his senior level executives that was embezzling money from him.  

Investigators could prove that Joseph had embezzled $60,000 from Richard's company.  That is a lot of dough.  $500,00 plus today!

Somehow, they still did not have enough evidence to charge Joseph. It’s crazy.  

So the largest, most gruesome murder that Michan had seen probably since the Crouch Family Murders in 1883 (unsolved)   went cold.

Five years later the case was reopened in March of 1973 new people in office, new evidence all the good stuff.

Due to this new evidence that they found they finally had enough to charge and arrest  Joseph  Raymond Scolaro the Third.

That would be ballistics evidence.  The .22 shells that they found on the scene had obviously been kept in evidence and now they were able to compare them to shells from Joseph's shooting range and they matched.

On top of that, it wasn’t your average K Mart gun shell.  They were a Finish brand, as in from Finland called SAKO 

Apparently he also used an AR -7 armalite rifle that was never recovered.

Joseph had purchased two Beretta’s earlier in the year but claimed that he gave them to Richard.  That turned out to be false.

Also, he had been given a few lie detector tests during the original investigation and failed them all.

There’s a book written by Marty Link  “When Evil Came to Good Hart”  she discovered that Joseph had plenty of motive he:

was an excellent marksman,

he had money problems,  

no alibi, 

he lied about his alibi.

FIVE years later they wrapped up their investigation, sure that they had plenty of circumstantial evidence to arrest Joseph Rayhmond Scolaro the Third and planned to charge him.

March 8, 1973 before he could be arrested Joseph took his own life.  He was just 34 years old.  

He had caught wind that they were coming to arrest him and charge him with the murder and he offed himself instead of allowing himself to be caught for what he did.

He left a note behind stating that he did in fact embezzle the money but he did not commit the murders of the six family members.  It read, “I am a cheat but I am not a murderer.”

This case was kind of still open, leading to oodles of online theories.  However, there was SO MUCH evidence that pointed to Joseph Raymond Scolaro III that in an unprecedented move to stop rumors and internet sleuths, the Emmett County Sheriff Department held a conference.  

2018 the Robison Family Murder Case was closed.

June 25, 1968 the day of the homicides