Here is the last little gasp of the recent “50th anniversary” acknowledgments in the OCCK case:
https://www.alreadygonepodcast.com/dont-talk-to-strangers-v-7/
With everything going on in the world, and law enforcement dealing with current homicides, it’s no surprise that the OCCK case will once again be tucked away after a few more minutes of reheated “fame.”
Maybe we’ll hear more in December, January and March, as Jill, Kristine and Tim join the “50 year club” and law enforcement pats itself on the back for all of their work back in the day and continues to gaslight and betray. The duplicity and ridiculousness is off-the-charts.
It really makes you wonder WTF was going on at the MSP when the task force was “rejuvenated” in 2005 and continued for years with no answers. I have my own opinions, of course, and I will boil it down thusly and once again.
The MSP was experiencing a reduction in force around 2005 or 2006. Garry Gray was close to retirement and rather than fuck him over, they had him moved to head the new and far-from-improved OCCK task force. When I called Birmingham PD Commander Don Studt (later police chief) to ask him about this “development,” he told me not to get my hopes up and that Gray was “being put out to pasture” on this case–a fascinating, unanswerable case (those are my adjectives based on what he told me) that could keep anybody enthralled/wheel-spinning. In hindsight, it was Studt’s continued pattern with my family to keep our expectations rock-bottom, and this position is defensible. I suspect he, along with every other cop at BPD, knew why the case would never be solved and it had nothing to do with the killer’s diabolical and clever methods.
As police chief, he later became what my dad described as “an errand boy” to Prosecutor Jessica Cooper as she sought to protect her old friends Larry Wasser and Jane Burgess, as well as avoid the possibility of civil suits that should have bankrupted that corrupt county. My dad considered Don a friend after all those years and he was always loyal to him. It did not go both ways. “Errand boy” means my Dad acknowledged that fact in his last years. Some day I’ll write about the breakfast my dad arranged with Studt when I was back home in 2007 on the eve of the testimony in the fight over the investigative subpoena filed against Wasser. It is hilarious if you don’t overthink it too much, although it really still makes me sick.
The task force headed by Gray was coincidentally being rejuvenated as Livonia Det. Cory Williams was investigating leads in the OCCK case after the arrest of pedophile Richard Lawson for murder. Just a coincidence, I’m sure. The MSP was allegedly already investigating some fuck Gray had gone to high school with and who had killed himself decades before. Not that anyone ever followed that lead to any conclusion.
And, to put a cherry on the top, Gray’s coworker/assistant on the case would be Dave Robertson, son of the original OCCK task force commander from 1977-1978. Nothing says “we will start at the beginning and look at every possible oversight and failure in this case” like assigning the original fail-master’s son to the new task force.
I completely acknowledge that the work of Det. Williams–an outsider working with a weirdly thin-skinned agency that was, in my opinion, mostly concerned about watching over Williams–was in many ways meticulous. He was doing what should have been done three decades earlier, following leads that had been sadly ignored. I believe the record reflects he was being hindered by the state police with the help of a POS FBI SA.
As Williams was tracking down the people and leads that were either ignored or overlooked by the poor, beleaguered task force of yesteryear, or buried by the then prosecutor’s office, why wasn’t the MSP treating this case like an actual cold case? Digitizing the records as they told my dad and brother they would in 2006. Pulling together all of the evidence in the case without waiting for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy to raise hell about their foot-dragging and failure to account for the evidence. Investigating and staying on top of developments in DNA testing for decades’-old evidence. Making sure evidence came back from various labs and was housed properly in the off-chance that there would be an actual arrest.
Indeed, as it still sits today the files are still essentially inaccessible. Some work has begun on digitizing (more on that later) but current investigators (such as they are) estimate that will take two years. Wonder what could have been done if you liars had started the project in 2006? Ever wonder why the MSP wants to charge six figures for FOIA requests in this case? One of the reasons is because they can’t find shit in that clusterfuck masquerading as an OCCK “file room.”
I still continue to hear regularly from people who have contacted the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, the MSP and the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office with information and have not received a call back. All these agencies are all just waiting for a possible DNA match to land in their laps. Don’t hold your breath and don’t ever expect an update.
I again repeat: The state lab is steadfastly refusing to retest the kids’ clothing and will not account for the Y-str sample in Kristine’s case. They are steadfastly fighting against review of this particular evidence by a third-party lab. I’m sure cost is a factor, but so is shame. How to account for the failure to properly store this evidence in the biggest unsolved serial crime in Michigan history?
I know evidence procedures were lame back in the day. I know the Oakland County ME was an incompetent drunk who was beholden to then prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson. I know people attempted to revive my brother Tim where he had been dumped because his body was still warm. I know lab scientist Charlotte Day and another MSP employee took Mark, Jill and Kristine’s clothing to some pathologist/criminologist wanna-be to handle, evaluate and opine about. (His conclusion, by the way, after balking at the idea of touching this evidence and told by Day that they had already gotten everything they were gonna get from that clothing, was that you better find this guy because he’s going to kill again. And he did, just a few weeks later.) I know the MSP gave a psychic various articles of the kids’ clothing/belongings to hold on his lap as they drove to the various abduction and dump sites. I suspect rumors are true that the kids’ clothing and belongings were later and for many years used in MSP POST trainings. (Final exam question: Who was the OCCK?)
So at least retest the kids’ underwear. Surely (?) fewer people handled the underwear with their bare hands. Maybe in December if these jokers go back on camera to relive the bad-old-days of the initial hunt for a child killer, somebody can ask WTF is going on with the actual evidence in the case. The people who went on camera this last go-around don’t know and the people who could answer hid safely behind their duplicitous “open investigation” stance.
Account for that Y-str sample. Male DNA found in a girl’s vagina is evidence of rape; there is no other explanation aside from cross-contamination which they could easily rule out. I’ve written many times about the alleged “controversy” in January of 1977 over whether the girls were raped in this case. (And where is the tampon Jill was wearing? With the evidence found at the Busch “suicide” scene?)
We have been saying since 2006 that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Prior to that my family operated under the illusion that police did the best they could. The prosecutor, the MSP and local police agencies relied on the silence of four families devastated beyond belief in communities that were all too happy to forget about it and move on after the killing stopped. No one could answer any questions anyway, right?! The case was so baffling, so hard to crack that no one could be blamed for the lack of answers. Why resurrect such painful memories?
Because silence always protects the predators. And the protectors of predators. Always.
They had a good thing going until polygrapher Larry Wasser screwed the pooch in Las Vegas in 2006. All that fear, worry and angst for nothing, right Larry? No progress will be made in the homicides of four kids who were held captive for days/weeks before their murders. Just a little scare off-and-on between 2007 and 2012, right boys? Pedophiles in Oakland County? In Bloomfield Village? Never! Go look in the Cass Corridor–unless those freaks implicate their counterparts in Oakland County.
There will never be transparency in this case. Never. What we will get are more books, articles and documentaries with plausible suspects and plausible connections. Plenty of fodder for these projects. For what happens when you ignore a Frank Shelden, an H. Lee Busch, or a Jeffrey Epstein, or the next Jeffrey Epstein.
Do you honestly think any pedophile or “helper” in this case is going to come clean? An Arch Sloan, a Ted Lamborgine, a Kent Shultz, a Vince Gunnels, a John Hastings, or any of 20 other possible suspected participants would tell the truth here? That family members of deceased pedos would be helpful?
Do you honestly think anyone still living from L. Brooks Patterson’s dirtiest of dirty inner circles is ever going to speak freely about what took place in January of 1977, before my brother was abducted and murdered or why Chris Busch’s death was never adequately investigated? Do you honestly think the agency that inherited this mess and was in fact responsible for ALL of the evidence in this case–the filing, the storage, the testing, the organization of results–is ever going to come clean about its failures and foot-dragging?
I have more to say about why the OCCK cases will in fact never be solved. That’s what I have been sitting with for the last three months. For right now, and for the record, here is a notation from September 2019 from the investigative notes of Det. Cory Williams on the eve of his retirement. Not one of those “great” detectives to whom this cold case has been passed off to since has done dick on this case. Their situation prevents it; too many other active cases, or an inability to learn the case or problem-solve before they get moved to another post. They haven’t even read Williams’ extensive file notes. Look, we get it. Current homicides and sex crimes take precedence. Which brings me back to WTF was going on at the MSP from 2005 to 2019 with their “cold case rejuvenation” of the OCCK case and the assignment of 1.5 detectives to this case alone. What the literal fuck?
But that is for another post.
Also for the record, the lab I was referring to below in 2019 was Astrea Forensics, and their work involves developing nuclear DNA samples from hair samples without a root mass, sometimes in cases where the evidence is very old and degraded. Sometimes. Here we are almost seven years later. I wonder how much additional degradation occurred in the hair evidence post-2019, and I wonder if the state lab and the FBI followed proper storage procedures for what would (have been) potentially helpful evidence.
It can be crazy-making to be lied to on a regular/chronic basis, but I assure you I am not crazy. The public is being lied to about the status of this outrageous and sickening series of serial murders. Maybe it matters not to your constituents and the media. I have given up on getting answers from these people, but I will never stop calling you out for ignoring pedophilia and organized pedophilia in Oakland County and for the escalation to murder of kids in your god-forsaken county. For stringing us along and lying to the public.
Transparency and the high-road would have served you well here, but these are foreign paths in a place like Oakland County. If you have been reading my blog for years you know what they risk exposing. They will never go there. Ever. They will just string us along like they have for half a century.
Bastards.