There was an interesting tweet thread today by Xeni Jardin. Jardin is a media commentator, tech culture journalist, and founder/contributor to the website Boing Boing. She also played a major role in “the forefront of investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile who famously funded dubious scientific research and died in prison under suspicious circumstances.” https://shows.acast.com/light-culture/episodes/xeni-jardin

Child sex crime money. Transnational organized crime. Yeah. Human trafficking. Did you know that Congress first passed child pornography legislation in 1977? The Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation Act of 1977 made it a crime to knowingly use a minor under 16 years of age in obscene depictions of sexually explicit conduct.

Up until that time, I’m guessing it was a free-for-all. We have a much bigger picture today of how big the problem of pedophelia is and of how the internet has allowed child pornography to flourish. And we have a much better sense of how big the demand was for this shit in and around Oakland County, Michigan. This shit is still happening on a large scale all over the world. History repeated over and over. Silence kept this machine running and kept perpetrators operating in society instead of rotting in jail.

An interesting thing about the tip sheet regarding John Hastings from back in 1977. The tip was from a woman who knew him, knew he had quit his restaurant job some two months prior but that he still always had plenty of money. Turns out Volume 2 of the the FOIA documents is also filled with documents about the investigation into Hastings (name unredacted) and specifically work done by the late Det/Sgt Ray Anger on this lead. Some of those documents are the same ones I posted yesterday, but are better copies and easier to read.

That line about “plenty of money,” seems like a throw-away. Unless you consider that trafficking kids was probably very lucrative in 1976 and 1977. Less dangerous than selling drugs. Drug laws were very harsh back then. Laws protecting kids? Yeah, well up until the summer of 1977, not so much.

“Vengeance is coming. Justice is coming. Sleep tight.”

I hope so.

So on August 10, 2009, Det./Sgt. Cory Williams and MSP Det./Sgt. Garry Gray went to Atlanta, Georgia to meet with John Hastings. He voluntarily provided a DNA sample. It was later determined that there was no match with the hair evidence in the OCCK case. It is helpful to read this part of the FOIA file because it shows law enforcement did follow up on John Hastings. The questions are actually quite pointed at times. Mostly, Hastings denies ever knowing or seeing Chris Busch and complains about the witch hunt against him. Witch hunt. Poor guy.

As part of the interview, Hastings agreed to another polygraph. The three of them discuss what will be involved in that polygraph. I have not found any documentation that this polygraph ever took place. I continue to search the records for this. If he agreed to and then never took the polygraph, there are open questions about him as the investigators make plain in their discussions with him. If I find any documentation that he in fact showed up for this polygraph, I will post on my blog. Here are the FOIA documents covering the 2009 investigation into Hastings.

This first batch of document here begins with information about Vince Gunnels and then starts with Hastings about 12 pages in:

BLK BINDER 02_blk 00693-713 DAGNER AND HASTINGS

See also:

BLK BINDER 02_blk 00714-735 HASTINGS INTERVIEW PART 2

BLK BINDER 02_blk 00736-755 HASTINGS PART 3

This last section goes into an interview of one of Busch’s nephews, more on that later:

BLK BINDER 02_blk 00756-777

Where I live we are on lock down to try to flatten the curve in the COVID-19 pandemic. Sad to say, I hope you are, too. This is not a drill.

I thought I was above binging on Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, but turns out I’m clearly not. These venues are replete with shows about heinous unsolved crimes, some true and some based on true stories. Recurring themes: police don’t take witnesses and family members seriously or are quick to discount people. When the case can’t be quickly or easily solved, police move on to the next crime. Mistakes happen and then get compounded. Cover ups are relatively routine, to cover misfeasance, malfeasance and/or criminals who are “high value” (also read: It can’t be him, he’s a ___!!) in society.

The same names keep cropping up in the OCCK case. That’s because virtually none of the suspects have been fully ruled out. Apparently, no one on the list of 14 or so top tier suspects is a DNA match to the evidence the MSP has. That’s what everyone wants–the needle in the haystack DNA match. This case, which occurred long before the advent of DNA testing, has in essence been elevated to a DNA-only case. Remember when you read the FOIA documents dating back to pre-DNA testing and solid evidence collection days, that this case should have been solved by careful investigation, not dismissing tips out of hand and not giving a pass to people who lived on the right side of the tracks. It’s almost as though because no one could believe this shit was happening in the suburbs, that no one–including police–could believe it was a suburban resident or residents who was/were behind these crimes.

When my Dad filed his FOIA case against the MSP his attorney asked for documents relating to Christopher Brian Busch and Greg Green. I had pushed for a much-wider request, but my position was rejected. And, at a cost of over $11,000 for 3,000-plus documents (not including attorney fees and court costs), it’s easy to see how quickly the tab would have gone up if we had asked for any more. So what we have is the tip of the iceberg. I will reiterate again that never, not once, did any media outlet in the Detroit area make the kind of FOIA request that could have supported real investigative journalism here. Their attorneys are well-versed in FOIA law and would have backed some of those Oakland County judges into their law libraries to actually consider case law and craft a resolution that would have involved some real sunshine. Too costly and not enough interest, I guess. It was left to a murdered kid’s father to make the FOIA request, pony up the dough, and then share the documents with the media. It is totally fucked.

The MSP went for the “open investigation” exception (here, perpetually open)in denying my Dad’s FOIA request. So then he had to file a lawsuit against them, as provided by statute. They eventually relented short of going to trial and sent the response letter telling him that for the low, low price of $11K he could have some documents. I really believe they thought this would make him go away. It didn’t. They provided redacted documents.

Although my Dad did not mention the name “John Hastings” in his FOIA request, or any request regarding potential co-conspirators of Busch and Green, the initial part of the response (the first couple hundred pages) concerned the investigation into Hastings. A reader who is very well versed in the case asked me a few months ago why I thought this was the case. Were they proving a point–that they did investigate Hastings? It is too hard to evaluate the motivation of anything the MSP has or has not done in this case. You can read these documents and see what you think. Again, they were the first stack of documents in the response.

These pages include notes and your guess is as good as mine as to who wrote some of them. All of you who followed Helen’s story will see how her interactions with John resulted in her going to police. I don’t know how anyone could read these pages, especially knowing what we know now, and think for even one minute that John was just a bum who was reeling-in an older woman in to tell her tales so she would buy him coffee and a sandwich here and there.

As of 1992, when there was very little about this case on the internet, you would have to believe that this man was so well-versed in the media coverage of the OCCK case from back in the day that some 15 years later, he was still spouting off chapter and verse about the case. While there are sick people who are like that, isn’t sickness a given part of the deal here? Hasting’s name was not fully redacted in the FOIA documents we received. No way I am going to redact them. As I have always maintained, this man was either involved or a sick fuck. He got re-investigated in 1992 and around 2008 because HE fucked up, not because the woman he told all these “tales” to went to police. Apparently some of the shit he said did not match up with the evidence and he passed a polygraph back in the day. We know how that goes, don’t we?

Why does his name keep cropping up? Read this and you tell me. I can’t answer your questions and the police won’t even try. They have tripled-down on this one. No way they are going to look back at this one.

There is a lot here. A lot. If you are not familiar with the Helen/John story, a lot of this won’t make sense. At a minimum, if this is all a “tall tale,” this is a very sick man. Still alive and in society. Raised in upscale Bloomfield Village, Michigan. Read it and weep.

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00001-50

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00051-100

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00101-125

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00126-150

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00151-175

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00176-200

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00201-225

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00226-250

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00251-275

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00276-300

BLK BINDER 01_blk 00301-327, 350-354