I don’t run my writing through AI, mostly because I am both too lazy and fundamentally resistant. I used to obsess over every post, making sure I had a citation for every fact, doing my best to attribute thoughts and sentences to others when they helped me, cringing over missed typos. Now if I fuck up and realize it after I hit “publish,” I just edit the post after the fact. If someone has suggestions for additions, I edit and republish.
But I sometimes do use AI to help me wrap my brain and my typing fingers around concepts I have trouble articulating which are the basis for what I want to write. What follows is in response to a few very basic queries I typed in. This plays a part in larger points I want to make here and on Substack about where this case sits and the most likely outcome/result given all that has gone before. I want to be solid in my expectations and have defensible conclusions, because they are going to be met with a shitstorm. And I am done taking shit.
“Real case. Oakland County Child killer investigation where post-2006 focus was on loosely organized pedophiles in Detroit who infiltrated the suburbs.”
The Oakland County Child Killer (OCCK) case provides a harrowing, real-world example of investigative tunnel vision, particularly concerning the post-2006 shift in focus.
{Citations given: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip1L0FXs_Hk; https://www.wxyz.com/news/local-news/investigations/man-who-says-he-shared-cell-with-oakland-county-child-killer-suspect-speaks-out.}
In 2006, the arrest of Ted Lamborgine and Richard Lawson—who ran a notorious 1970s child sex ring in Detroit’s Cass Corridor—caused investigators to heavily fixate on the theory that a loosely organized network of urban pedophiles had systematically infiltrated the wealthy Detroit suburbs to abduct children.
{Citations given: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_County_Child_Killer; https://www.facebook.com/InvestigationDiscovery/videos/children-of-the-snow/756433498083348/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLH6y6A-H4; https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2019/02/14/investigators-believe-oakland-county-child-killer-could-have-been-victimized-by-pedophiles/.}
Applying the principles of investigative psychology to the OCCK case illustrates how this specific macro-focus created systemic issues that derailed the path to justice:
When investigators adopted the theory of a sprawling, interconnected network of pedophiles (tying the Detroit Cass Corridor ring to figures like Arch Sloan and the North Fox Island child exploitation camp), they began viewing every piece of evidence exclusively through this lens. If a suspect had any tangential association with known abusers, it was treated as confirmation that they were part of the OCCK plot. Meanwhile, alternative theories—such as a singular, opportunistic lone-wolf killer who had no ties to organized networks—were aggressively deprioritized.
{Citing, in addition to the above, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ0VcgRMniI&t=114s.}
Fixating on a broad network meant that limited investigative hours and forensic budgets were spent mapping out decades-old relationships, interviewing aging convicts, and chasing historical rumors of pedophile rings. This collective focus meant that other promising physical leads—such as re-examining the DNA and hair evidence associated with primary lone suspects like Christopher Busch (the son of a wealthy GM executive who lived right in the suburbs near the victims)—languished or were not pursued with equal vigor for years.
{Citing, in addition to the above, https://www.aetv.com/articles/oakland-county-child-killer-cold-case.}
By publicly and privately signaling that they were looking for a network or a conspiracy, investigators inadvertently created a market for unreliable data. When Richard Lawson claimed from prison in 2006 that he “knew who the killer was,” investigators poured immense resources into vetting his claims. Because the narrative of an organized ring was so prevalent, jailhouse informants could easily feed investigators what they wanted to hear to gain leverage, leading to years of dead ends.
{Citing, in addition to some of the above, https://www.clickondetroit.com/topic/Oakland_County_Child_Killer/.}
The “Detroit pedophiles infiltrating the suburbs” narrative shifted the psychological profile of the killer outward. It framed the threat as an external, organized force creeping into Oakland County. This structural bias blinded the investigation to the terrifying possibility that the killer was an affluent insider deeply embedded within the very suburbs where the children vanished—someone with the local knowledge and social status to move undetected through Woodward Corridor neighborhoods.
{Citing, along with some of the above: https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/oakland-county-child-killer-50-years-later-murders-up-north-pedophile-ring-unanswered-questions.}
Because the post-2006 era spent so much momentum trying to link the murders to a wider underworld of child exploitation, the critical windows to pin down specific, individual suspects closed. Decades later, key figures like Busch, Sloan, and Lamborgine have passed away. [*Lamborgine is still alive as far as I know, but one of the news pieces listed him as dead, I believe incorrectly. “AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses,” as they say.] The institutional momentum spent trying to prove a massive, interconnected ring ultimately left the families with a highly fragmented web of suspects, plenty of finger-pointing between police agencies, and a case that remains tragically unsolved.
King Internet asked if I wanted to go on. I did.
“Because the case was so massive (four victims) and because the 1976-1978 investigation was so shoddy, there are still many viable suspects the post-2006 group never even considered.”
Response:
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- The Polygraph Trap: In the 1970s, investigators relied heavily on primitive polygraph (lie detector) tests. If a suspect passed a polygraph, they were often permanently cleared and their files were shelved. It is a psychological certainty that psychopaths and highly manipulative people passed these tests, effectively erasing themselves from future suspicion.
- The “Wealth Privilege” Shield: Prominent suspects with high-ranking status or wealthy families (such as Christopher Busch, the son of a wealthy GM executive) were protected by institutional deference. Their alibis were taken at face value. When the post-2006 group looked back, they trusted the old files that labeled these affluent local suspects as “cleared,” assuming the 1970s cops had done their due diligence.
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- Algorithmic Exclusion: If a historical suspect’s file didn’t contain keywords linking them to Arch Sloan, Ted Lamborgine, or Detroit rings, their file was buried at the bottom of the stack.
- The Lone Wolf Blindspot: The narrative shifted so far toward a conspiracy that investigators essentially stopped looking for a lone actor. If a viable suspect was a solitary predator living in Royal Oak, Birmingham, or Berkley with a secure basement, no criminal record, and no ties to Detroit, the post-2006 group never even glanced at them. They were deemed “irrelevant” to the ring hypothesis.
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- They looked for suspects where the data was loudest (the known, documented pedophile networks) rather than where the data was absent (the local, wealthy, or protected suspects whose files had been wiped, minimized, or lost).
The post-2006 investigation fell victim to an analytical trap: they attempted to solve a 30-year-old case by looking only for connections that fit a specific, trendy conspiracy theory. In doing so, they treated the flawed, incomplete, and class-shielded police files of the 1970s as an absolute truth. They failed to realize that the actual killer wasn’t hiding in the shadows of the Detroit ring; the killer was hiding in the massive blind spots created by the 1976 task force’s original incompetence.