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One night in 1974, fifteen-year-old Robin Adams and her “foster sister” mischievously consulted a Ouija board. Robin asked the board how long she would live. The board “told her” she would die before her 17th birthday.

About two years later, Robin disappeared from the Caro, Michigan, home where she worked as a live-in baby sitter. Local police thought she had run away. Her friends knew better. Robin was having problems with her former boyfriend, who, two weeks earlier, had beaten her. 

State Police questioned the nineteen-year-old ex-boyfriend about her disappearance. He produced a letter signed, “Love, Robin,”  as evidence she had run away to California. Police suspected a forgery. However, with no eyewitnesses, no evidence of forced entry or struggle at the house and no body, the case went cold. 

In 1982, the case was reopened and assigned to a rookie detective. A “psychic” began assisting the detective. The psychic predicted that a “surprise witness” would come forward and identified another suspect who later failed a polygraph test. A break in the case came when the prime suspect’s younger sister told a boyfriend that she helped commit the crime. She and her brother were charged with murder. A Roman Catholic priest represented the ex-boyfriend. 

T
he story might have ended after the trial, but it didn’t. The sister’s boyfriend suffered a series of injuries, which a medium blamed on “black magic.” Two trial witnesses died a year apart (same date) and several others connected to the case or members of their families were struck by tragedy. 

Was some dark force extracting vengeance for the shame brought on the killer’s family? Murder in the Thumb is a powerful true story written by Richard W. Carson, a seasoned journalist who spent two decades poring over trial transcripts and interviewing more than 200 people in nine states and two prisons. Carson retired as editorial page editor of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch in 2003.

About the Author

Richard W. Carson was editorial page editor of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch before retiring in 2003 to work full time on this book. Prior to that, he attended Ferris State College and the University of Michigan and worked as a reporter and editor for the Huron Daily Tribune, where he received numerous awards for excellence in editorial, feature and news writing and for sports and feature photography. Carson, a widower, lives in Gahanna, Ohio, near his three grown children and six grandchildren.

About the Book

Murder in the Thumb by Richard W. Carson

628 pp / Copyright 2009 / 15 photographs / ISBN: 978-0-922993-77-2 (paper) / $29.95


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