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In what is being touted as a "significant breakthrough," Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper announced Tuesday afternoon that hairs found on two children in the Oakland County child killings matched, and they also matched a hair found in a 1966 Bonneville that belonged to a man now serving a life sentence in a state prison in Muskegon for sexual criminal misconduct.
But Cooper said the hairs, which were matched using mitochondrial DNA, did not match the owner of the car, inmate Arch Sloan, 70.
But she suggested that someone who had access to Sloan's Bonneville or other vehicles -- a 1969 black Chevy pickup and a 1971 blue Ford pickup -- may in fact be the killer of the two children, Mark Stebbins and Tim King, who died in mid-1970s.
"We are asking for any assistance the public can give to locate Sloan's associates and friends from that period," Cooper said, adding that investigators had eliminated some suspects through the hairs.
Sloan was living with his parents in Southfield at the time and was a mechanic in Farmington Hills. Four children were abducted and murdered in the mid-1970s in Oakland County.
Sloan, who was sentenced in 1985, is serving two life sentences out of Wayne County for first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He had previous convictions for sexually assaulting male minors.
Cooper said a hotline has been established, and that anyone who has information about Sloan's associates and who might have had access to his vehicles should call: 1-800-422-7766.
In 36 years, Cooper said there have been over 20,000 tips, a half million pages of documents and reports and thousands of interviews.
