The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Francis Shelden.md

category	tags	summary	born	died	location	relations	created	updated
Criminals & Offenders	KeyFigure Person OrganizedCrime ChildTrafficking Michigan	Ann Arbor millionaire, owner of North Fox Island and director of Brother Paul's Children's Mission, who fled Michigan charges of sexual conduct with boys in 1976 and died in Amsterdam.	1928-09-05	1996-07-09	Ann Arbor, Michigan Amsterdam, Netherlands	type with fn owned North Fox Island 1 type with fn director_of Brother Paul's Children's Mission 1 type with role fn funded Father Bud's Boys Farm listed sponsor 1 type with role start fn funded Trust Company of the Virgin Islands settlor of revocable trust, about two million dollars in securities 1976-09 3	2026-04-28	2026-10-09

Francis Duffield Shelden, the bachelor heir of a prominent Detroit-area family, was a part-time university professor, a former director of the Cranbrook Institute of Science, and a board member of Boys Republic, a residential center for troubled boys in Farmington Hills; a 1975 newspaper interview described him as devoting much of his time to Big Brothers, which later denied he had been connected with it. He was the sole owner of North Fox Island, 835 acres in Leelanau County off Grand Traverse Bay, assessed at 312,000 dollars.¹ The writer S. Dovey wrote that his great-grandfather was Russell A. Alger, governor of Michigan and Secretary of War.² In a deposition taken in Amsterdam in 1982 in litigation over his trust, Shelden testified that he was born in Detroit on September 5, 1928, the son of Alger Shelden; that he received a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University, served in the United States Air Force during the Korean War, received a master of science degree in geology from Wayne State University and completed the course work for a doctorate at the University of Michigan without finishing the thesis; and that he inherited considerable wealth from his father and from his grandfathers, Henry D. Shelden and Russell A. Alger.³

Brother Paul's Children's Mission

Brother Paul's Children's Mission, incorporated in 1975 to prevent juvenile delinquency "through the philosophy of naturopathy and naturalism," ran a nature camp on North Fox Island under the auspices of The Church of New Revelation of Kearny, New Jersey. Its president and camp director was Gerald Richards, a Port Huron physical education teacher; its vice president was Dyer Grossman, a New York science teacher; Shelden was a director. The church and the Ocean Living Institute, both incorporated in Delaware in 1974, and the Educational Foundation for Youth of Illinois had been granted tax exemptions by the Internal Revenue Service without investigation; incorporation papers named Adam Starchild, an alias according to New Jersey authorities, as president of the church and the institute, trustee of the foundation and principal incorporator of Brother Paul's. The camp never applied for a state license.¹

After Richards's arrest in July 1976, in possession of pornographic films, he told police that the church, the institute and the foundation were fronts for producing child pornography, and that Shelden was a staff writer for Better Life Monthly, advertised as "a monthly paper serving the interest of pedophiles." Police found a letter attributed to Grossman proposing "child care" sites in eight states and the District of Columbia and noting that counties would pay up to 150 dollars a month per boy, states 400 dollars and federal agencies 700 dollars. State troopers raided Shelden's Ann Arbor home on July 29 and found nothing new; the Traverse City post could not get a warrant for the island. Richards was sentenced to two to ten years in Jackson Prison. Shelden was charged with criminal sexual conduct with a fourteen-year-old boy at Port Huron and with an eight-year-old Port Huron boy on North Fox Island, and Grossman with acts with two Port Huron boys; both became the subjects of federal flight warrants.¹

The Wider Network

Richards's films led Tennessee authorities to raid Boys Farm Inc. near Alto, the Father Bud's Boys Farm of the Episcopal priest Claudius I. "Bud" Claudius Vermilye Jr., who was indicted on sixteen counts; its list of more than 270 "active sponsors" included Shelden.⁴⁵ Vermilye's eldest son had disappeared on July 5, 1974. In New Orleans, the leader of Boy Scout Troop 137, Richard Halverson, and twelve other men, including the Massachusetts industrialist Richard C. Jacobs of Jet Spray Corporation and the realtor Hugh Scott Mellor, were charged with conspiracy; Halverson, a volunteer probation officer, had drawn up applications for state and federal money for homes for boys, and the Louisiana and Tennessee welfare departments had paid for children placed with the groups. "It seems to be like spider webs strung out all over the nation," said the New Orleans juvenile detective Mason Spong. Correspondence and films seized in the raids came "from Australia and Canada and virtually every state in the Union."¹

The Departure and the Virgin Islands Trust

In a deposition taken in Amsterdam in 1982 in litigation over his trust, Shelden testified that in July 1976 he received a telephone call from Dyer Grossman, who told him that Gerald Richards was having severe "difficulties," that Richards might involve Shelden in them, and that Shelden might become the subject of blackmail by Richards. Shelden testified that Grossman "suggested that it might be wise for me to leave the country for awhile ... to await events." Grossman suggested that Shelden contact Adam Starchild, an offshore investment counselor in New Jersey, whom Shelden had never met. Shelden took his securities, which he valued at about two million dollars, from his bank safety deposit box to New Jersey, where they were lodged in a vault at the Mid-Atlantic Bank of New Jersey; a loan was obtained against some of the shares, and two bank accounts of between 30,000 and 40,000 dollars were opened, one in Shelden's name and one in Starchild's, which Shelden said was "so he would have some money for administering my affairs." Shelden then flew to Europe by way of Canada and the Bahamas.³

A meeting at Shelden's house in Antigua was attended by Shelden, his brother Alger Shelden, Jr., L. Bennett Young and Starchild. The trust instrument was signed on September 28, 1976, by Shelden as settlor and by the Trust Company of the Virgin Islands, Ltd., through Starchild, as trustee.³ In December 1976, Shelden testified, Starchild told him by telephone that the State of Michigan had issued criminal warrants for his arrest and that Starchild was coming under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.³

The opinion records the complaint's averment that Shelden was being sought by the FBI under a fugitive warrant and that his whereabouts were unknown to the National Bank of Detroit.³

Amsterdam

Shelden settled in Amsterdam, became a Dutch citizen, and was not extradited. There, under the name Frank Torey, he published PAN Magazine from 1979, and he named the Dutch senator Edward Brongersma trustee of his assets in 1978. Richard Lawson, an informant in the investigation of the Oakland County Child Killer, later alleged that Shelden financed films of abused boys, among them the murdered Timothy King; the allegation has not been corroborated. Shelden died in Amsterdam on July 9, 1996.²

Footnotes

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1. Wright, Marilyn. "Porno Ring Uses Church, Tax Laws," "Porn Ring Finds Gaps in Child Camp Laws" and "Porno Ring Weaves International 'Web'." Traverse City Record-Eagle, 1976-1977, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime. Sexual Exploitation of Children, hearings, 95th Congress, 1st session, Serial No. 12, 1977. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041 ↩︎

2. Dovey, S. Eye of the Chickenhawk. Thehotstar, 2023. ↩︎

3. National Bank of Detroit v. Shelden, 730 F.2d 421 (6th Cir. 1984) (Nos. 82-1737, 82-1905). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/433085/national-bank-of-detroit-v-francis-d-shelden-the-trust-company-of-the/ ↩︎

4. Marilyn Wright, Traverse City Record-Eagle, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, Sexual Exploitation of Children, hearings, 95th Congress, 1st session, Serial No. 12, 1977, p. 88. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041 ↩︎

5. "How Ruses Lure Victims to Child Pornographers," Chicago Tribune, May 17, 1977, Exhibit D-8, reprinted in Sexual Exploitation of Children, Serial No. 12, 1977, p. 440. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041 ↩︎