Gibbs City Murders
Location: Gibbs City, Iron County, Michigan
Weapon: .38 caliber revolver
Victims: 4
Deaths: 3
Perpetrator: Unidentified for 82 years and 5 months
The Gibbs City maniac, also known as the Iron County Killer, the Raghead Rapist and the Ottawa Hills Killer, refers to the unidentified perpetrator of two closely-related incidents in the now-extinct lumber community of Gibbs City, Michigan that occurred between late April and early May of 1941, late into the town's life. These incidents were credited to an unidentified female Anthro of canine descent who attacked two human couples on two separate occasions, killing three and injuring one. Although the identity of the attacker pertaining to the first pair of victims has never been identified due to the lack of witnesses, it has been thoroughly agreed by law enforcement and locals that both cases are attributed to the same individual.
On April 25th, 1941 at around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Leonard Metison and Laura Bates, a young couple from Crystal Falls, departed from Metison's home for a scheduled picnic near the western banks of the Paint River, which ran through the small woodland hamlet of Gibbs City, a former logging town that had drifted into decline following a sawmill fire in 1921. They eventually arrived at the North Branch bridge along Gibbs City Road where a three-way terminus of the Paint River breaks and then drove southward off the trail into a wooded clearing near the riverside.
Bates, age 20, was found lying on her side atop a tapestry laid out by the pair for their picnic, her legs positioned in a way that indicated she was unaware of, or unbothered by the presence of her killer and shot execution-style without alert. A single gunshot wound owed to a .38 caliber handgun entered horizontally to the right side of her left temple, exiting cleanly and into the ground five feet away, and was thus recovered in optimal condition for evidence.
Metison, age 22, was found face-down around forty yards away from the picnic site severely bludgeoned with his pants pulled down to his ankles and evidence of sexual assault from a female assailant. He had been struck in the head by the handle of the attacker's handgun over twenty times, four from the front and at least sixteen from the back, severely fracturing his skull in over a dozen places, leaving wood splintering from the weapon embedded in his scalp and leading to a fatal hematoma in at least three spots. Medical authorities suspect Metison was conscious during his assault and it is unknown if he was raped immediately following Bates' murder or if it occurred post-relocation to the site of his body. The assailant had pulled at Metison's pants so violently that the inner margins of his waistband left minor abrasions along his thighs.
Neither of the victims were discovered until the morning of May 29th, and it was indicated that they had been dead for no less than a month. The families of both victims stated to police that the pair were fond of driving out of state, and it was not considered unusual for them to be away longer than projected even for such remote outings. Because of this, coupled with the lack of eyewitness testimony for Metison's 1939 DeSoto, it is impossible to provide an exact date for the murders, officially falling between approximately April 25th and May 1st.
On May 28th at around 11 P.M., a woman was heard screaming by local Thomas Shoemaker and his teenage son, who investigated and found Dolores White, age 19, bleeding from her face and arm and running northeast up Gold Mine Road in hysterics yelling that there was killer in the woods. White had been shot in the cheek, miraculously receiving only superficial injury. Thomas and his son then drove White ten miles south to the city of Iron River, where it was reported to authorities that she and her spouse Maxwell were lost driving through the woods northward up Gold Mine Road when a dark-colored truck pulled in front of them from an adjoining trail further down the way, blocking their vehicle. The suspect then exited through the passenger door of the truck and approached their driver's side window, knocking on it three times. Dolores scrutinized the suspect as a "brutish", brown-to-dark-furred canine woman with a burlap sack tied over her head which obscured her ears with three poorly-cut holes in the front for her eyes and long snout and was wearing denim coveralls with a dirty white undershirt. She was adamant that the individual was female. When the couple decided against rolling the window down, the Anthro woman then raised a revolver and shot into the car, shattering the window and injuring Dolores' face. The attacker, who spoke with a heavy accent deemed not native to the Upper Peninsula region by authorities, demanded at gunpoint that Maxwell remove the keys and exit the vehicle, which he did. Dolores, who was leaned over against the passenger door mistakenly fearing she had been more critically shot through the mouth, heard an altercation ensue between her husband and the unidentified subject. When the woman yelled that Maxwell "pull down his drawers", a loud grunt was heard from her, followed by a gunshot, terrifying Dolores, who then exited their truck and silently ran north up the dirt road in almost pitch-black lighting. She reported hearing a second gunshot less than ten seconds later, fearing the assailant was firing towards her, this was when White began screaming.
It was not evident if White was stalked by the assailant in any capacity, but by the time she was found by the Shoemakers, it was determined that nobody else was present in the immediate vicinity.
Approximately an hour later, a posse consisting of two squad cars with two officers each followed by Mr. Shoemaker, all armed, sped to the scene. When they located the Whites' vehicle, there was no truck present, although fresh tire marks were noted going southward down Gold Mine Road. There, they discovered the body of Maxwell White, age 23, lying less than ten yards behind his vehicle, fatally shot once in the head and chest and severely beaten across the face. His pants were unbuttoned and the zipper pulled down, but there was no further evidence to molestation of his person. Traces of dark, tawny fur were present on his clothes, deemed to belong to an unknown breed of canine Anthro, corroborating Dolores White's report. Nothing was taken from their vehicle.
A search zone spanning over sixty miles was conducted by constabulary and civilian volunteers from the neighboring communities of Iron River, Mineral Hills and Stambaugh over a period of two days with Gibbs City at its center casing the southern-to-eastern inner banks of Paint River. It was then that police discovered the bodies of Leonard Metison and Laura Bates along with their vehicle only three-quarters of a mile through the woods from the site of the White case. As with the previous victims, Metison's car was not deemed disturbed by the perpetrator. Gibbs City would be temporarily cordoned by the Michigan Army National Guard until August 13th and expanding the search zone as far west as Ermine Creek, during which more than five hundred persons of interest would be interviewed. In the following weeks, ballistic analysis determined that the three bullets recovered from both scenes provided a direct match, while the lack of casings present indicated the usage of a revolver.
More than 80 years after the slayings, the community of Gibbs City has fallen into national park status within the Ottawa National Forest following the town's official disintegration in 1952, the killer having never been positively identified despite more than two hundred reported tips over the following decades. The killings are widely attributed to expediating the death of the town, with six of the remaining fourteen residents relocating further south by 1942. Despite intense police and media scrutiny on alternating angles of the case lasting more than nine months, no suspect was ever formally charged.
With the passing of Dolores White in 1989, the Gibbs City murders remains one of the most well-recognized unsolved cases of an Anthro serial killer in American history, inspiring numerous films, documentaries and publications. Social perspective towards Anthros was negatively impacted at all levels around the United States for the remainder of the decade. In 2001, a plaque was dedicated by the city of Iron River to commemorate the four victims and can be located across from the Paint River Fork Campground info board, located directly off Gibbs City Road, north of the abandoned townsite less than five hundred feet from where Laura Bates was fatally shot.