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“Something appeared unusual.”

Something clicked in the memory of former Conservation Officer Gerald Battle while reading stories published in the Leelanau Enterprise that recounted allegations of a child pornography ring being run on North Fox Island in the 1960’s and 70’s.

One story was written by Kathleen Firestone, noted historian, recalling conversations with the island’s owner that were previously not published. The other story discussed possible connections between the island and a series of downstate child murders.

A detailed man, Battle referred to his long-kept diary of daily activities while working for the former Michigan Conservation Department to place the date of his second and last visit to North Fox. It was Aug. 18, 1964.

His diary for that day reads only, “I accompanied pilot Van Weiren to North Fox Island, and made a game census for a game breeders license application.”

But it was the unidentified woman and young boy who still stand out in Battle’s memory of that day.

He and Van Weiren, who died four years later in a plane crash near Hart with three other Conservation Department workers, first came upon the woman and boy after landing on the island. Battle estimates the boy’s age as 9-10 years old.

Soon after meeting them, Battle and Weiren were whisked away by North Fox Island owner Francis Shelden, who in the 1970’s was charged with running a child pornography ring aimed specifically at forcing young boys into engaging in sexual acts on the island.

“(The boy) looked very scared. Now I don’t know if he was scared because I was in uniform,” Battle said.

“Now this was a hunch, just a hunch, that the woman was not the mother. There was something in her manner, and the manner of the kid, that there was quite a bit of tension there. But at the time I thought, ‘That’s not what I’m here for. I’m here for a game breeders license.’” Still, the setting left a nearly lifelong impression on Battle, who is now 85.

Detroit Free Press https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/98229891/

'North Fox: One Man's Rare Dot on the Universe' DECEMBER 28, 1975 by JIM NEUBACHER photography by AL KAMUDA

Quickly, let's acknowledge there are plenty of interesting things about Frank Shelden. He's a rich, 47-year-old bachelor who flys his own plane, invests in the market, dabbles in oil and studies geology. His family's history is entwined with the Duffields, the Algers and the Buhls, with Rosedale Park and Grosse Pointe, with presidents and governors and merchant princes. We'll get back to all that later. But right now, look down below at the absolutely most fascinating thing about Frank Shelden. It's there on the horizon, over the wing of his Piper Seneca II as we come in at 900 feet toward a green splotch, outlined neatly in white and surrounded by the blue waters of Lake Michigan. North Fox Island.

Frank Shelden owns the whole thing. Here, 26 miles northwest of Charlevoix, on an island in the Great Lakes, is one of the most private and exclusive hideaways imaginable, an 839-acre, thickly forested preserve which Shelden shares only with his deer herd, the birds and a few close friends. Spread in the midst of Lake Michigan like a giant manta ray sunning Itself, Frank Shelden's little piece of untrammeled greenery (except for a burgeoning deer population,) and uninhabited beach Is far from the shores of a hectic world. Shelden paid $20,000 for the two mile-long Island In 1960. Today It's assessed at $312,000.

'I've found the new environmental movement disappointing. It's become a religious type thing, and some of the people are pretty narrow. They speak in a cant. Dams, per se, are bad. Pipelines, per se, are bad. All developments are bad. All swamps are good. There are too many lawyers involved, and not enough scientists and outdoorsmen. "A lot of people call themselves ecologists because they get a pitter-patter in their heart when they see a sunset" Shelden serves on the board of directors of Cranbrook, and devotes much of his free time to Big Brother, the organization under which volunteers act as big brothers to children.

Many weekends he takes young friends along to North Fox Island, as well as his adult friends. He rarely goes to the island alone, despite the fact that he says, "I guess you could call me a semi-recluse." He says he goes to Fox Island "more than I should, and not as much as I'd like to."

Several months of the year, when deep snow covers the airstrip at North Fox, he does not visit the island at all. He's never been married. "I don't have any reason why. I was close to being married once. I'm not what you'd call a woman hater. It's lonely sometimes, but I think a lot of married people have lonely periods, too. And a man has a pretty good shake being single, more so than a woman."

At a social gathering some time ago, Shelden ran into an old girlfriend. They talked, and the subject of North Fox Island came up. He told her about the island, about the beauty and the isolation. "She looked at me as if I was absolutely mad, as if to say, 'Thank God, I didn't marry Shelden.'"

Island life is not for everyone. But sitting in the calm of the east, lee shore of North Fox Island, it is hard to conceive of any better way to exist. The east beach is less sandy than the west. It is lined with round, smooth golf-ball sized stones, arranged in a long row by the waves and the tide. They sit undisturbed until a larger wave on a stormier day rearranges them.

Here, sitting on the sun-warmed stones, the view to the right is along the wide shoreline, back to the south tip. This is the white outline that surrounds the green splotch and makes it look so tidy from the air. Across the water it should be possible to see Charlevoix, but a slight haze on an otherwise clear day is in the way. "On a calm day here," says Shelden, "you really learn what silence is. And at night, darkness."

It is lunchtime. At the house, the hunters have returned empty-handed. Neither they, nor we, would see a deer all day. In the afternoon, Shelden works, cutting up an immense tree that has fallen across one of the dirt roads. He performs his chores with a calm sort of pleasure, and it is clear that Shelden is happy.

He is no youngster proving himself. He is not a nouveau riche executive creating a life where others do his chores while he escapes. Frank Shelden is in touch with his island, its plants and animals, and one would venture, himself. Leaving this island comes too soon, but one has peeked in the window long enough.

Recently, salvage divers dynamited the wreck, and now loose timbers wash ashore on North Fox with regularity. It helps add credibility to the ghost stories told late at night about the skipper of the Sunnyside who restlessly roams the island. At the south tip, the beach turns rocky, the water laps close to the bank, and progress requires climbing under and over the fallen trunks of trees whose roots have been undermined by the waves. Turning inland at the south end, on one of the several narrow dirt roads on the island, there is a sudden silence. The constant crashing of the waves is gone. A few birds. Quiet footsteps on ground covered by leaves that were drenched in a rainstorm the night before. In the brush, a small animal darts away.

North Fox has foxes (a few.) Chipmunks. Nocturnal rabbits. An eagle's nest (occupied.) And the deer. Shelden says he took seven deer to the island when he bought it The late DNR director Ralph MacMullan said they would thrive. He was more than right. By 1970, the herd had multiplied incredibly, feeding well on the lush underbrush on the island. "See that hemlock," said Shelden, pointing to the low growing evergreen that covers much of the island. "To a deer, that's steak dinner and caviar appetizers. It sure makes for great tasting deer."

But the hemlock has been nibbled away in many sections of the island now, and today, the deer herd is one of Shelden's only regrets about North Fox Island. He began allowing hunting a few years ago to control the herd.

In 1974, his friends took 150 does and bucks one buck with a 22-point rack. This fall, they've taken over 50, and Shelden still estimates the remaining herd at 75. And while Shelden enjoys letting his friends visit his island to hunt, and gets great pleasure out of venison stew, he doesn't like to hunt "I just personally don't enjoy it," he said. "I guess I'm the world's biggest hypocrite. I plan their destruction."

Shelden, an amateur botanist who wrote a scholarly article on the vegetation of North Fox for the Michigan Botanist, admits candidly that he prefers the flora to the fauna "green, growing things over the furry things, the hemlock over the deer that feed on it" If he could remove the deer herd today, he would.

In the south, center part of the island, the roughly cut road winds up the side of a 200-foot dune. This was the highest part of the island until Shelden and his brother flattened the tip in the 60's. It was to be the site of their "community center," the focal point of a community of cottagers the brothers envisioned on the island.

The island was platted, and subdivided. A portion of the roadway was dedicated to the public, and the lots were offered for sale. "We had a lot of interested persons, but we didn't get one firm commitment on any of the lots. The men liked them. But the women saw themselves stuck here with the kids all summer while the husband worked all week. What if Johnny got sick? Where do you go shopping?"

Island hideaways are not always resorts.

At North Fox, Robinson Crusoe is more like it. "The island? Oh, it makes me feel very kinglike," laughs Shelden. '