Here’s an interesting “cartoon” by “Joe Tazelaar” in The Grand Rapids Press, August 8, 1959. “Sigsbee SE” is a street in Grand Rapids.
Tazelaar was a dedicated choral singer who spent the last 30 years of his life with the Fort Street Presbyterian Chorale in Detroit. Perhaps he spent time at Interlochen pursuing his singing talent when he was much younger.
He graduated from U of M and pursued a teaching career. In 1965 he was a counselor for the Hi-Y program, open to all young men from Muskegon High School. The program was based on “clean living.”
And from February 10, 1970:
In February 1977, Tazelaar was arrested on charges of criminal sexual conduct with four 13-year-old boys he knew in connection with his ties to the St. Clair Wilderness Campgrounds.
He was arrested by MSP Det/Sgt Joel Gorzen, who was the investigator on the Shelden/Richards/N. Fox Island allegations some 18 months earlier. Gorzen knew all about these men. These types. Gorzen was in communication with convicted pedophile and Frank Shelden associate Gerald Richards during his incarceration, as well as with reporter Marilyn Wright of the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Wright wrote extensively about the monstrous N. Fox Island and Shelden, Richards, Grossman and Starchild (McConahy).
There is no stand-alone obituary online for Joel Gorzen, but it appears from postings on Facebook that he may have died in 2022. That none of the investigators on the OCCK task force post-2005 spoke live to Gorzen is unbelievable. Gorzen knew what was up. I bet he knew why the dogs got called off of Shelden, Richards, Grossman, Starchild and Busch.
Records from Tazelaar’s 1977 preliminary hearings confirmed he was indigent and he was held in state custody from February 2 to April 19, 1977. Therefore he could not have participated in any of the steps taken in my brother’s abduction and murder. He was ruled out as the OCCK (because of course the cops wanted to believe this was a solo crime by one deranged maniac). Any suspect who had an alibi for one of the four murders was good to go.
Here’s how the internet describes Tazelaar’s treatment in what was a regional investigation of child exploitation: “Unlike other major targets of that specific regional investigation—some of whom received life sentences—Tazelaar was not handed a lengthy prison term. Following his legal entanglements in the late 1970s, he lived as a free citizen in Metro Detroit for the remainder of his life.” He sung it up in the church choir and was a resident of Royal Oak until he died in March 2022.
In the wake of the 2006 arrests of pedophiles Ted Lamborgine and Richard Lawson, Detective Cory Williams circled back to Joe Tazelaar and his brother Willem, a long, longtime resident of Birmingham who lived with his family less than a mile from our family. They didn’t say jackshit, and lawyered up. Their pal former Sen. Jack Faxon died in 2020, but no one ever asked him anything about his days running with the Tazelaars. I’m sure it was all just good fun.
While we can’t tarnish others based on mere association with JT, this brief newspaper scrapbook on him (thank you to a reader) shows he used all the goddamn plays from the Book of Pedos. He didn’t have a fraction of the assets or power some of the other “players” from Oakland County had, but he got the easy treatment. Maybe he cleaned up his act after he got busted in February 1977. What are the odds?
Wayne County was an especially easy place to be a pedophile in the 1970s. Oakland County appears to have been even easier.