Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields at a 2019 press conference held by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announcing the reopening of the investigation (such as it was) into the horrific murders of some 30 black children and young adults in Atlanta from 1979-1981. Watch the first episode of Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children” on HBO. https://www.hbo.com/atlantas-missing-and-murdered-the-lost-children.
News anchor Monica Kaufman Pearson (1975-2012) says about these cases: “Do what should have been done in 1979, 1980, 1981. Do the police work. Solve the cases.” The footage is powerful.
“We need to own it.” “Do the police work. Solve the cases.” Three sentences you will never hear from officials regarding the Oakland County child killer case.
Here’s a 40-year-old homicide case solved recently in Colorado through DNA AND genetic genealogy. Colorado prosecutors obtained a guilty plea from a 62-year-old POS in the murder of 21-year-old Helene Pruszynski in 1980. DNA testing AND genetic genealogy. https://www.foxnews.com/us/trucker-pleads-guilty-cold-case-colorado-murder.
Meanwhile, we can wallow in the FOIA documents in the OCCK case.
All of the chapters of Decades of Deceit, A True Story of the King Family Search for the Oakland County Child Killer (2013) are up on a YouTube channel. Even though this was filmed almost seven years ago, nothing has changed. There are no answers. It is as relevant now as it was then.
It describes how the Michigan State Police and Oakland County do business. Imagine being on the receiving end of this shit after losing a child/brother to serial killers/pedophiles who operated with impunity in Michigan. And no, the Grievance Committee of the Michigan State Bar did not touch this. And the Michigan appellate courts backed their ex-colleague.
The Oakland County playbook is much like trump’s. Lie and keep repeating the lies. Eventually people who don’t think hard, who don’t pay attention, who by the grace of God have not had to cross paths with the dark side of law enforcement or government, eventually construe the lies as facts. Blue Gremlin. Busch, Greene and Hastings passed polygraphs. Wasser doesn’t keep records and remembers everything about the circumstances surrounding Busch’s private polygraph except his name. We just don’t have any evidence. Oh wait–we do, but we can’t test it using the most up-to-date methods because [fill in the blank–money, third-party testing can’t be used even though other states have done so, we didn’t store it properly and it is useless. . . ].
As a reader pointed out, here is another big way the MSP lost control of the narrative in this case, as discussed in Decades of Deceit. Frustrated with getting stonewalled, my Dad called an old friend who was an editor at The Detroit News, Judy Diebolt, in October 2009 to ask how he could go public with this outrageous story. Diebolt brought reporter Marney Keenan with her to meet with my Dad. Keenan ran with the story. Both women were interviewed for the documentary Children of the Snow. Had my Dad just called the News and spoken with their police beat reporter, this story would have gone nowhere. In fact, right after Marney Keenan’s article appeared in the News, we got word that someone from the state police called the paper to ask why their boy wasn’t on the story. Why indeed. Guess you couldn’t take Judy and Marney out to the bar and cajole them into dropping that story or trying to convince them we were full of shit.
FOIA Documents from Volume 3, continued, 3-5 through 3-10. There’s a lot here:
So up to this point, you’ve witnessed the redactions, the gaps, the somewhat arbitrary nature of the FOIA response. And we are just at the beginning. That was a lot of documents about Mr. Hastings, whose name is not Christopher Busch or Greg Greene, wasn’t it?!
Up to this point, we have three issues/situations where the MSP loses control of the narrative.
1. First, the focus on the blue Gremlin to the exclusion of other cars at a time when it would have made a difference. After managing to squelch the info about a LeMans at the body drop of Jill Robinson, the bumper imprints of a LeMans with a trailer hitch in a snowbank where a car turned around after dumping Kristine’s body, and the sighting of a 1973 LeMans, 2-door coupe with a partial plate number of “222” near Tim’s abduction, as reported by Doug Wilson, retired detective Jack Kalbfleisch asks the 2005 task force why not ask the public about it now??? Response: sputter, sputter, sputter.
2. Both Hastings and the MSP lose control of the “Helen is crazy” narrative when a reliable, unbiased witness overhears a conversation between Helen and Hastings and reports this to police.
3. They all lose control of the “Chris Busch is not involved and who cares, he’s dead,” narrative when Larry Wasser slips in front of Patrick Coffey. They really lose control when the information goes to Det. Cory Williams at Livonia PD before it goes to the MSP. For a refresher on how all that went down, watch this video from 2013 about what took place in 2006 and 2007 from my vantage point–
An article is written by Lisa Brody in Downtown Publications:
There’s the background for what you are about to read from the FOIA documents.
What’s up next: “Larry Wasser, Inv. Subpoena, 8-16-07 and “Tab #3, November 30, 2007, Interview with Larry Wasser.” This first part is a separate scan because the documents appear upside down in the file I have. There is an interesting gap for part of the document. That’s how it showed up from the file.
Of course those that want the lid kept on this case regain control by just waiting it out. Bad press? It will blow over. Larry Wasser and Chris Busch?
Well, we have a hair from Arch Sloan’s car that doesn’t match any of our suspects, take that! It took 35 years to test that thing, but who’s counting?? You go to an outside agency or the press? You are going to get punished whenever and however we can manage it.
They have won most of the battles but I believe they will ultimately lose the war. That lid is going to get pried off. Those four little kids will win the war. They have all the time in the world. The Universe wants this shit resolved.