The Boys in the Woods
In the days and weeks following the disappearance of Karl Heikell, police spent a lot of time tracking down leads from Calumet-area children. Some claimed that Karl was living in the woods and that other boys were bringing him food in a hidden shelter. Others mention they saw Karl the evening of his disappearance in Calumet, visiting restaurants and bowling alleys. Some children tell police they saw Karl later still in November, in the neighboring village of Lake Linden. Despite police chasing down several of these leads, they couldn’t verify any of them to be true. Two years later, when detectives identified a suspect in Karl’s death, they claimed that many of these early sightings were false leads that caused them to waste countless hours in search of the boy.
There are a string of sightings described by children and teens in the area that I find somewhat compelling because they describe similar circumstances in which Karl was seen in forested areas around Calumet and Centennial Heights. While it seems likely that police made some of these connections during their investigation, their reports do not explore the possible links between the similar witness statements.
On November 1, 1981, shortly after Karl was first reported missing, police spoke with one of his Centennial Heights area neighbors, Gary Olson, who saw Karl walking towards the Langdon home the day before between 4 and 4:30pm. When police follow up with the Langdon family they speak with 16-year old Bill Langdon, who tells police that he did see Karl on Halloween. Bill says that he saw Karl on his trapline around 1:30pm, and does not indicate that Karl visited his home later that afternoon. According to Bill, he told Karl to leave because the boy was not wearing boots. The reports do not indicate exactly where the Langdon boy’s trapline may have been located, but it’s likely that it was somewhere near the Calumet Dam pond or the nearby Centennial No. 6 Mine’s Tailing Dam.
Towards the end of November, 1981, police spoke with Bill Langdon again, after rumors circulated among other children that Bill was bringing sandwiches to Karl somewhere in the nearby woods. Bill denied these allegations, but police wanted to question him further, and sought permission from his father to polygraph the boy and his brother, Jerry Langdon. Their father agreed, and the Langdon family traveled to Negaunee for the polygraph exam on December 4. Documentation from the state police indicated that Bill passed the polygraph test. While police express interest in polygraphing both Langdon brothers, there is no information in the reports about Jerry also taking the exam. After Bill’s polygraph exam, no further investigatory work is detailed in police reports regarding the boy as a person of interest.
Seven months later, in the summer of 1982, then 17-year old Bill Langdon died by suicide in his Centennial Heights home. Just a few months after Bill’s death, Karl’s partial remains were discovered by a bird hunter in a forested area near the No. 6 Tailing Dam. Bill’s sudden suicide caused speculation among locals that he may have been involved in Karl’s death, which is reflected in the police reports during an interview with a local transmission shop owner, John Hella. In the September, 1984 interview, John wonders aloud if there is some connection between the Langdon boy’s suicide and Karl’s death. In my experience researching Karl’s case and speaking with Calumet locals, I’ve learned that this speculation is still present today.
-
In the spring of 1982, police heard another story that placed Karl in the woods with other boys on the day of his disappearance. In April of that year, Karl’s sister Lisa ran into one of Karl’s friends, Dale Karvola, at Miller’s Bar and bowling alley in Laurium. Dale told Lisa that on the night Karl went missing, Dale was drinking with a boy named Terry Reilly on the old dam patch (this location most likely refers to the Calumet Dam area) when Karl showed up. Dale claims he told Karl to “take off”, which Karl did, and that this was the last time Dale saw his friend.
Police spoke with Dale early on in the investigation, when he shared that he last saw Karl as the boy was getting off the school bus on the afternoon of Friday, October 30, 1981. He also said that he was supposed to meet Karl for trick-or-treating, but that Karl did not show up. Police arrange to polygraph Dale, and with his father’s consent, the exam is carried out on November 18. The polygraph examiner, Sergeant Vern Peterson believed Dale was telling the truth, and that Dale had not seen Karl since after school on Halloween. Several months later, when police learn about the story Dale shared with Lisa Heikell, they choose not to follow up with Dale. In their reports, police note that Dale was known to be a practiced liar, and because the polygraph results lead them to believe Dale did not have any further information about Karl, they elected to not contact him again.
Instead, police reach out to Terry Reilly regarding Dale’s story. Terry confirms that most of the story is true, with one important variation - that the interaction in question occurred the week before Karl went missing. Terry tells police he was drinking with Dale near the dam, when Karl came along with two other boys, whom he does not name. Karl and his friends asked Terry and Dale for beer, at which point they were told to “hit the road”, and they left walking in the direction of Calumet. Terry tells police that he is certain this didn’t happen on the day Karl went missing.
Some 40 years after the fact, it’s probably impossible to know which boy - Terry or Dale - was telling the truth, or if one of them simply misremembered the details of their run-in with Karl. It is curious to consider the ways in which Terry and Dale’s stories align with what Bill Langdon tells police, too. All three boys describe meeting Karl (either near the Calumet Dam or the Tailing Pond), and instructing him to leave the area. Bill tells Karl he cannot join him on the trapline without boots, while Terry and Dale state they told Karl to buzz off when he tried to join them for beer. Were some of these boys together in the forest on Halloween when something went wrong for Karl?
We can return to the November, 1981 police reports for another possible connection or coincidence in this direction. Sometime between early- and mid-November, Karl’s father Lawrence Heikell shares a new piece of information with police. His daughter Lauri, Karl’s sister, spoke with the boy just moments before he left the house on Halloween, and told her that he was going to a drinking party. Is it possible that Dale was correct in stating that his beer drinking meet-up with Karl occurred on Halloween? If Lawrence’s reporting of Lauri’s story is correct, it seems Karl told his own sister that his evening plans included a party and alcohol. Oddly enough, the possibility that Karl may have attended a party in the nearby woods that night is not explored in police reports. In fact, police reports make no mention of any underage Halloween parties in their investigation into Karl’s disappearance and death.
-
I’m familiar with one other sighting of Karl that shares some details with the above witness statements, but you won’t find it in the original police reports. Shortly after this website went live in October, 2022, I heard from one of Karl’s old friends, who shared what he remembered about the last time he saw Karl and the days following the boy’s disappearance. I feel comfortable sharing the details of this person’s story because I’ve verified with the Heikell family that he was in fact a friend of Karl’s.
At the time of Karl’s disappearance, Todd Junot was 14 years-old, and a friend to both Karl and Dale. While his name doesn’t appear in any of the Heikell case reports, he’s certain he spoke with police shortly after Karl was reported missing. The morning after Halloween, Todd remembers an officer visiting his home with Karl’s mother, Patricia Heikell. The officer and Mrs. Heikell asked Todd if he knew anything about Karl’s whereabouts. If Todd’s memory is correct, he may have been one of the last people to see Karl alive.
Todd tells police that the day before, on October 31, 1981, he spent time with both Karl and Dale Karvola at Dale’s home on 10th street in Calumet. By his recollection, as evening approached, Karl wanted to leave and head home. The boys knew that Karl was afraid of the dark (Karl’s parents and detectives make this clear in the police reports, too), and he asked Dale and Todd to walk him partway home so he didn’t have to make the trip alone. The boy’s agree to help, and they walk with Karl all the way to the head of the Dam trail in Calumet. This trail head is still located just north of Spruce Street off of Centennial Heights Road, which connects Calumet to neighboring Centennial Heights.
Todd and Dale leave Karl at the trail head that evening. As Todd tells it, this was the last time he saw the boy, and Karl walked in the direction of Centennial Heights on the Calumet Dam trails. Todd remembers telling police these details, but he is not contacted by them again, and the story is not documented in the surviving Heikell police reports.
Like the sightings reported by Dale and Terry, Todd’s story places Karl in the general area of Calumet Dam on Halloween. We can’t be sure of the location of Bill Langdon’s trapline, but it may have been near the Calumet Dam area or the No. 6 Tailing Pond, and Bill places Karl in the general vicinity of those locations. Todd also remembers occasions in which he was drinking near the Calumet Dam or on the dam trails when Karl would show up. They might offer him a beer, but because Karl was a few years younger than them, they’d tell him to get lost after giving him just one. You might recall that in Terry Reilly’s telling, Karl was with two other boys when he showed up and asked for beer. Todd believes he may have been one of those other boys, although this also lends credence to Terry’s certainty that the interaction did not happen on Halloween. Todd only remembers leaving Karl at the head of the trail that evening, not drinking with him on the dam patch.
During the few years in which police were actively investigating Karl’s case, detectives believed that John Hella’s spotting of Karl at Harter’s Party Store was the most credible sighting on record. Harter’s Party Store, located on the corner of Pine and 6th Streets in Calumet, is only about 1,000 feet from the trail head where Todd last sees Karl, or a one-minute walk. Todd doesn’t remember if the boys stopped at Harter’s with Karl that night, but notes that they frequented the store very often, so it’s possible.
Todd’s description of being with Karl that evening at the trail head is also interesting because it fits squarely in the timeline of some of the other most likely sightings of Karl. We know Karl left home that day between and 4 and 4:30pm, as his family reports this, and their neighbor Gary Olsen sees the boy walking near his home at about the same time. John Hella reports seeing the boy in Harter’s at about 6pm the same day, at which time the evening sky would be rapidly approaching darkness after a 5:38pm sunset. If Karl, Dale and Todd all left Dale’s home shortly before sunset, they would have walked directly in front of Harter’s Store around 6pm on their way to the trail head.
If we entertain Todd’s memory and his evening sighting of Karl, we have to wonder: Did Karl make it to the other side of the Calumet Dam trails? A trail head at the other end of the dam begins where Second Street in Centennial Heights dead-ends. The trail head is just 1,000 feet from the Heikell family home, also located on Second Street at that time. If Karl made it out of the woods, what happened to him on the remaining one-minute walk home?
-
The stories we hear from young boys about Karl’s disappearance highlight something else about the original police investigation, even if we can’t be certain that their stories are true or connected. Todd Junot’s story is part of a trend I’ve noticed in information missing from past police reports. John Hella’s sighting of Karl, for example, is only mentioned in police reports because a detective decides to re-interview the man, after they remember a story from John about seeing Karl at Harter’s. John’s story is only solidified in a police report in 1984, nearly three year’s after John probably first reported it to police. In the 1984 police reports that state plainly that Alan Palovaara is a suspect in the Heikell case, detectives mention that, “At early stages in the investigation, several subjects were considered as possible suspects in Karl’s disappearance, mainly due to their homosexual tendencies”, but none of this police work is detailed in the reports. Like Todd’s story, these incidents indicate information is missing from official reports.