The smell was overwhelming one July day in 1968 as Chauncey Bliss approached the cabin he had built years earlier near the community of Good Hart, on the northwest coast of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Bliss was a carpenter who had constructed many vacation homes along the glistening shore of Lake Michigan. Now he served as caretaker of those homes, which he had collectively named “Blisswood.” Among their number was a residence occupied by the Robisons, a wealthy family from the Detroit suburb of Lathrup Village.
Drawn to the Robison home by a woman who lived near the family, and who had called him to complain about an ungodly smell, Bliss stepped up to the log-cabin-style residence. No one had seen the Robisons for several weeks, but the family had told acquaintances they were planning a trip out of town, so their absences hadn’t alarmed anyone. The smell probably came from a dead raccoon in the crawl space, thought Bliss, steeling himself to face the odor he knew would be more pungent inside.
Bliss knocked at the front door, but got no response. He entered the house. Immediately, he saw a woman’s body sprawled in the entryway, her clothing in disarray. Behind her, Bliss caught a glimpse of several other bodies lying on the floor in pools of congealed blood. Bliss hurried away and called the police.
An initial investigation revealed that the cabin contained six bodies, which accounted for every member of the Robison family, from 42-year-old father Richard to 7-year-old daughter Susan. Both Richard and Susan had been bludgeoned with a hammer as well as shot with a pistol. The other family members—40-year-old mother Shirley, and sons Richie, 19, Gary, 16, and Randy, 12—had been shot with the same weapon that had been used on Richard and Susan; however, this latter group had not been struck with the hammer. Due to the condition of the bodies, which were heavily decomposed, officers estimated the murders had taken place about a month before the Robisons were found. Authorities placed the date and time of death as the late afternoon or early evening of Tuesday, June 25, 1968.
Initially, facing the devastating scene in front of them, the police were at a loss. The Robisons were an upstanding family that attended church regularly and had no known enemies. Richard was an advertising executive and published an arts magazine called “Impresario,” while Shirley took care of the family’s home. Richie, the eldest son, attended Eastern Michigan University. The younger Robisons did well in their studies, and family acquaintances said they were smart and polite children. Why would someone have killed the family in such a violent manner, then left their bodies to decay in the northwest Michigan woods?
However, as officers dug into Richard Robison’s business dealings, they came up with a lead. Though Robison presented himself as a prosperous executive, his companies were actually in trouble. Robison had been engaging in some not-altogether-ethical activities in terms of the finances for “Impresario,” and had told colleagues and family members about various deals he had in the works, though no one knew much about them. One of the most revealing discoveries was that, while in Good Hart, Robison had left his business in the hands of 30-year-old Joseph Scolaro III, an employee who had been embezzling money from Robison. (The amount was later revealed to be about $60,000.) Police theorized that, during a phone call between Robison and Scolaro hours before the murder, Robison revealed that he had found out about the embezzlement. At that point, according to police, a panicked Scolaro took off from Detroit, drove several hours north to Good Hart, and killed the family before Richard Robison could come forward with details about Scolaro’s crime.
Circumstantial evidence supported this conclusion. Scolaro had been out of contact with friends, business associates, and family members for twelve hours on the day of the murder, and police couldn’t find anyone to support Scolaro’s alibis as to where he had been. Officers also discovered that shell casings found at a shooting range Scolaro frequented matched casings that police found at the scene of the crime. In addition, Scolaro failed two polygraph tests and delivered inconclusive results on a third. To officers, Scolaro became a prime suspect.
However, because police couldn’t find the murder weapons, nor any eyewitnesses to the crime, the prosecutor in Emmet County, where the Robison’s cabin was located, didn’t press charges. Frustrated, state police officers worked with prosecutors in Oakland County, where the Robisons lived, to continue the investigation. In 1973, Oakland County Prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson was ready to charge Scolaro with conspiracy to commit murder. However, before officers could apprehend their suspect, Scolaro shot himself in the head, effectively ending Brooks’ attempt to prosecute him. Scolaro left behind a suicide note in which he said he did not kill the family. However, many students of the case, as well as the state police and the Emmet County Sheriff’s Department, still consider him the prime suspect.
That’s not to say Scolaro is the only person who has been accused of killing Richard Robison and his family. Critics of the “Scolaro as killer” theory say that Scolaro couldn’t have driven to Good Hart, shot the Robison family, and driven back to the Detroit area in the amount of time for which he didn’t have an alibi. Some people suspect that John Norman Collins, who was convicted in 1970 of killing a female college student in Ypsilanti (and who is a suspect in the killings of several other co-eds, a series of crimes that has become known as “The Michigan Murders”), was somehow involved in the Robison murders. Collins attended Eastern Michigan University at the same time Richie Robison did, and is even said to have possibly roomed with Robison during orientation week.
Another proposed suspect is Blisswood’s caretaker, Chauncey Bliss, who had found the bodies. Bliss was known as a bit of an eccentric and some Good Hart locals believe he committed the murders after his son, who was friends with the Robison boys, died in a motorcycle accident shortly before the Robison murders. According to this theory, Bliss felt slighted by Richard Robison in the days following the younger Bliss’s death and took his revenge by killing the family. (Police didn’t regard Bliss as a suspect in the Robison murders.)
Other suspects have been suggested and discarded, and the case is officially unsolved. Nearly 50 years after the murders, the community of Good Hart remains a popular vacation destination for tourists looking to get away from it all. Unfortunately, for the Robisons, their attempt to “get away from it all” ended during a violent encounter after which they would never return.
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I’m from Michigan (very near where the Robison family home was), and I turned 13 that summer, so I should remember this (I do have vivid memories of the Manson Family killings about a month later). Then I realized that my family was on vacation on Lake Huron when these killings were discovered (on the other side of the state). My parents wee very much into getting away from it all. We had no TV at our cabin, and my parents would have avoided radio and newspapers.
I was fascinated to read about this case a few years ago, and horrified to discover that I drove to work every morning right past the field where Scolaro target practiced and shell casings were found.