From the February ammunition purchase to the Union Lake firing range to the shell casings at Summerset — an unbroken chain of physical evidence pointing to one man. Watch it build. Hover each node.
The case reached its tragic, if predictable, finale in 1973. When Joseph Scolaro III learned that Oakland County prosecutors were finally bypassing the Emmet County impasse to charge him with conspiracy to commit murder, he made his final choice.
On March 8, 1973, Scolaro was found dead in his chair. He had shot himself with a Beretta pistol. For five years, he had driven past Acacia Park Cemetery — where the Robison family was buried — on his daily commute to work.
His suicide note presented a chilling paradox. It began with a candid admission that he was a "liar-cheat-phony" and a forger. Having established this comprehensive record of dishonesty, his final words were:
"P.S. I had nothing to do with the Robisons — I'm a cheat but not a murderer."
— Postscript to the suicide note of Joseph Scolaro III · March 8, 1973To investigators, the logic was flawed by design. If the note begins with a comprehensive confession of chronic lying and deception, the postscript denying murder carries no weight at all. It was seen as a final, desperate attempt to shield his own family from the stigma of mass murder — a last performance by a man who had been performing for five years.
The suicide weapon — a Beretta pistol — matched the type used at Summerset. Whether this was coincidence, irony, or a last private confession visible only in retrospect, no one alive can say.
The Good Hart murders remain officially open under Michigan law. Yet for the detectives who spent years on the trail, it has long been considered solved. The only mystery was the refusal of the system to say so out loud.— this research series
The Good Hart murders remain officially open under Michigan law. Yet for the detectives who spent years on the trail, it has long been considered solved. The only mystery was the refusal of the system to say so out loud — the peculiar silence of a county that knew what it knew and chose to know it privately.
The physical site of the tragedy was erased shortly after the investigation. The Summerset cottage was demolished and burned in 1969 — the biological saturation of the logs made the structure uninhabitable. Today the property is a vacant waterfront lot at Purgatory Bay: a quiet, unintentional memorial.
A single artifact remains: the Summerset sign that once hung over the fireplace, now residing in the Michigan Room of the Petoskey Public Library. It is the only physical remnant of six lives that ended there in the summer of 1968, and of the five years during which their killer drove past their graves on his way to the office.
When the legal system fails and a suspect chooses his own ending, can there ever be true justice — or does the truth remain forever buried in the sand of Purgatory Bay?
Joseph Scolaro III — dead 1973. Summerset cottage — demolished 1969. Case status — officially open.
THE GOOD HART MURDERS is a documentary and analytical presentation. Nothing in this document asserts guilt beyond what courts have established. The Good Hart case remains officially unsolved. Richard Lindsey died in 1973.