The original Epstein? FBI is holding thousands of files on Detroit millionaire and his sinister island

North Fox Island looks idyllic from the air – shaped like a teardrop, dense with forest and edged with sandy shores. It’s surrounded by the cold blue waters of Lake Michigan and located 19 miles off the coast of the Leelanau Peninsula.

In the 1970s, the uninhabited island belonged to Francis “Frank” Shelden, a Detroit millionaire with a Yale degree, a prestigious family name, and a reputation as a philanthropist.

Shelden bought the island from a widow for $20,000 and carved out an airstrip, dug miles of dirt trails, and built cabins deep into the woods. Transportation to and from the island was, and still is to this day, limited. The island - just two miles wide and one mile long - could have been considered paradise.

But investigators later uncovered the island’s disturbing purpose – an elaborate child sexual abuse ring operating behind the front of a summer camp for disadvantaged boys.

The only arrest was of Shelden’s co-conspirator, Gerald Richards. Richards was a gym teacher who moonlighted as a magician. The operation on the island was exposed when one of his students told their mother about inappropriate conduct by Richards in gym class.

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Richards pleaded guilty to charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. But Shelden, who reportedly got word from another co-conspirator that the police were investigating, fled the country. He was never caught.

The secret operation, disguised as Brother Paul’s Children’s Mission, was promoted as a retreat or summer camp for boys. But an investigation later uncovered evidence that these boys were transported to the island by private plane for depraved sex acts. The number of victims is unknown, but authorities believe there are at least dozens, if not hundreds.

The case has haunting similarities to the Jeffrey Epstein saga, which has come under renewed public scrutiny this year. The Trump administration has released millions of files on the late financier’s sex trafficking operations of underage girls and women, entangling dozens of rich and powerful people.

Like Shelden, Epstein had an island of his own - Little St. James, which locals nicknamed “Pedophile Island,” is a private paradise in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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And similar to Shelden’s case, only Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been convicted of a crime. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison on sex trafficking charges. Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial.

The similarities are not lost on Colin Browen, a documentary filmmaker and podcast host who is working on an investigative docuseries with author and investigative journalist J Ruben Appleman about Shelden’s operation. It’s set to be released later this year.

“Essentially, Frank Shelden was the Jeffrey Epstein of the 1970s,” Browen told The Independent. “It’s as simple as that.”

Browen, who launched The Paranormal Files and Murder in America, began to look into the North Fox Island saga when he noticed there was a lack of coverage on organized pedophilia.

“Somewhere along the way, when we were doing these stories, I started noticing that there was a certain type of crime that wasn’t being covered – and that was organized pedophilia,” Browen said.

“I found the story one day,” he said about Shelden’s case. “And I couldn’t believe what I was reading, and I just went on TikTok, made a video... and two years later, I found myself on North Fox Island actually investigating the crimes for myself.”

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Browen’s investigation has taken him outside of Michigan, as far as the Netherlands, Amsterdam, Germany and India, places where it’s believed Shelden continued to commit pedophilia crimes. He claims to have spoken to new victims of Shelden, along with alleged perpetrators.

The project “challenges how wealth, power, and institutional protection have historically shielded perpetrators from accountability and why these patterns continue today,” he said.

But Browen believes there is more information about Shelden’s case that officials have not released. After multiple requests with the FBI and other agencies, he is now suing the FBI for access to more than 1,047 unreleased files in the Shelden case, after the bureau claimed that it would take more than six years to redact the documents.

When Browen visited North Fox Island in 2024, he was reminded how eerily silent it was.

Some of the cabins that were built for Shelden’s camp were still standing, the same structures described by the boys in the files he had been examining for months.

“They described CSAM being recorded, torturous sexual abuse, horrific things happening on the Island,” Browen said about what he had read in the files.

CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is a term now used by Law enforcement and child protection organizations to accurately reflect crimes against children.

Shelden was born into Michigan royalty – a descendant of Russell Alger, a lumber baron and the state’s 20th governor who later served as President William McKinley’s secretary of war.

A 1975 Detroit Free Press profile described Shelden as a wealthy bachelor who had graduated from Yale University with a master’s degree in geology from Wayne State University. He also served in the Michigan Air Guard and volunteered with the Big Brothers club. Shelden never married.

In 1975, Shelden opened Brother Paul’s Nature Camp, a tax-exempt charitable trust and a mission that promised tutoring, counseling, and outdoor experiences for troubled boys.

His partner, Gerald Richards, was a Catholic school gym teacher and traveling magician who recruited children to the camp – often his own students. Shelden was the “figurehead in this operation,” but he also had co-conspirators, Browen explained. And one of those was Richards.

“He was actually caught for this. He's kind of like Ghislaine Maxwell in this story in a way,” Browen said. “He would help get children.”

Mike Dunsmore, a fire chief in Greenwood Township, Michigan, was a former student of Richards. He told During a Click On Detroit interview in 2019, Dunsmore recalled a number of horrific stories from his time at the camp. Including a time in which Richards ordered other boys to bury him in the sand while he was naked.

Shelden and Richards were not the only ones linked to the horrific crimes. Dyer Grossman and Adam Starchild were also named in both Detroit police reports and case files with the FBI.

But when the investigation into the camp began in 1976, and Richards was arrested, both Shelden and Grossman evaded capture by fleeing the United States.

“Somehow, he was given enough time to go through all of his properties and destroy all the evidence, every file, everything, and that’s officially where the trail ends on Sheldon,” Browen claims about Shelden.

Starchild was questioned about his alleged involvement in Shelden’s operation, but there was not sufficient evidence to charge him.

The US Attorney’s Office in Detroit issued an arrest warrant charging Shelden with criminal sexual conduct, a felony in Michigan, involving the procurement and sexual activities involving young boys ages 8-14 in the Port Huron and Traverse City areas.

Both Shelden and Grossman were declared fugitives of justice. Shelden fled to the Netherlands, eventually married a French woman to obtain citizenship, and reportedly continued abusing boys across Europe, according to Browen, who plans to chronicle the new findings in his docuseries.

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There are reports that Shelden died in Amsterdam in 1996, but details are limited.

“There’s a marriage certificate for him,” Browen said. “And he’s got a death certificate in Amsterdam, and that's it.”

Richards pleaded guilty to charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. On September 13, 1976, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, according to a Michigan State Police report.

He testified about his role in the pedophile ring at a congressional hearing on child abuse in 1977, stating that Brother Paul Nature Camp was designed to victimize children and evade taxes. Richards is reported to have died in 1998 by suicide.

There is little information about Grossman and Starchild in the years after the ring was busted. It’s unclear if either man is still alive.

The abuse at North Fox Island was taking place at the same time as another notorious Michigan crime - the Oakland County child murders.

Between February 1976 and March 1977, four children were abducted and murdered in Oakland County. Their killer, or killers, have never been arrested for their murders.

The victims were Mark Stebbins, 12; Jill Robinson, 12; Kristine Mihelich, 10; and Timothy King, 11. Police believe only the boys had been sexually assaulted. The cause of death in three of the cases is listed as suffocation, but Jill Robinson was murdered with a shotgun.

But there has been persistent speculation that the killings were linked to the child pornography ring on North Fox Island, which was investigated by police in 1977.

Investigators do not believe Shelden or Richards could have been the Oakland County Child Killer, but one theory suggests the killer could be someone they victimized on the island, Click on Detroit reported.

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“We were the first to look at pornography and pornography rings and pedophilia as being a motive in this (Oakland County Child Killer) case,” former Wayne County Detective Cory Williams told The Shattered podcast as reported by Click on Detroit. “We put quite a bit of time and effort into that. Were these kids filmed? Pictures taken? Were they passed around? We don’t know at this point, but we did put a lot of time and effort into that.”

Over the years, investigators had persons of interest in the case, many of whom were linked to or had been charged with crimes involving pedophilia.

One of those individuals was Christopher Busch. He was a convicted pedophile who lived in Bloomfield Hills and came onto police radar in 1977. But in 2012, police said there was no evidence suggesting Busch was the killer. His DNA does not match the physical evidence investigators have. He died in 1978 in what was ruled a suicide.

A suspect is not currently named in the Oakland County Child Killer case.

When Browen began investigating Shelden, it was an interview with Appelman that would shed new light on the case and bring Browen face-to-face with some of the victims.

Appelman’s book, The Kill Jar, chronicles both the North Fox Island sex trafficking ring and the Oakland County child murders after years of studying thousands of pages of local, state, and FBI case documents, including previously private witness statements, autopsy reports, catalogs of evidence, crime scene photos, interrogation transcription, polygraph results, and personal correspondences and interviews highlighted within piles of bankers boxers obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, according to his bio.

He wrote that the North Fox Island operation “functioned essentially as a subscription service centered on the production of child pornography and the sexual abuse of boys ages 7 to 16. In exchange for their contributions, the camp’s ‘sponsors’ could receive pornography that police said was produced on the island, or even visit the island themselves.”

But it’s what happened after the book’s release that inspired Browen to team up with Appelman for further investigation.

Appelman told Browen that hundreds, if not thousands, of messages had been sent to him from people who claimed they were molested by Shelden after he fled to Europe.

“We have spoken with victims of his over there, and we also tracked him all the way to India… We have photographs of him with children in an orphanage in the 1990s.” Browen said.

“Like, this guy is single-handedly responsible for all these children who were molested or used for the production of the CSAM material, and what's shocking to me is, you know, in doing a series like this, not only do we want to track the crimes of Shelden and figure out who he victimized and where he was, because it's never been done,” he added.

The upcoming docuseries will also take a closer look at the crimes that Shelden reportedly committed in Europe and Asia.

“From the underbelly of the Netherlands, to orphanages in India, to the glitzy hills of Hollywood, and back to the place where it all started in North Fox Island,” Browen said.

Browen pointed out that this investigation feels particularly timely amid the ongoing release of the Epstein files. He added that he’s hoping to raise awareness of the Shelden case and show what happens when “the pressure is not applied.”

Shelden “had a network of pedophiles he was sending that material to,” Browen explained. “Thousands of pedophiles on his mailing lists, thousands of pedophiles that were receiving CSAM materials through the mail, none of them ever arrested, none of the people that were producing the materials, none of them investigated or anything, and it all just went away.”

“We're seeing the same thing with Epstein,” he added.

Browen says his focus is on the survivors.

“If you actually look at these stories, and you read the facts and you go beyond the headlines and you watch interviews with survivors, and for me, you sit in a room with them, and you cry with them, and you hear stories that they've never been comfortable enough to share before," he said.

“It becomes so real that it consumes you, and for me, there's nothing else that I can even think about at this point other than trying to raise the alarm surrounding these historic rings because this is what happened.”

He recalled meeting a man in Amsterdam who said he had been sex trafficked to Shelden by his own grandfather.

“He had some absolutely horrific stories, and I mean, everybody's crying,” Browen said. “Like, there's a lot of crying and tears from our all-male production team, you know, it's really powerful stuff.”

Browen warned that without accountability, history repeats itself.

“If we don’t do something about Epstein and find some sort of justice for all of the survivors and victims, the story is just going to die and go away.”

Like Epstein, Shelden was a bachelor who used his wealth, philanthropy and society connections to shield his crimes in plain sight. Thousands of men on Shelden’s mailing lists were never charged. Names remain unknown.

Browen has filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI with the aim of obtaining thousands of unreleased files on the case.

But the FBI has told him it could take more than six years to redact and release the documents, he said.

“With my requests to the FBI… they’ve told me it’s going to take six plus years to send over a thousand,” he said. “Which makes no sense.”

The FBI did not respond to The Independent’s questions about the Shelden files.

North Fox Island was bought by the state of Michigan in 2000. It sits quietly abandoned. But Browen refuses to let the horrific crimes that happened there fade into the past.

His team has since returned to the island with cadaver dogs - and what they found was shocking, he said. Browen wouldn’t reveal details, but said they are planning to go back and that they will continue to push for answers.

“You can see what happens when everything fails,” he said. “When people aren't brought to justice, and either someone escapes, someone dies ... well, the stories just fade away. We can’t let that happen.”