ProPublica won access to search warrants showing a child pornography investigation of South Dakota’s richest man, confirming our reporting from last year.
— Read on www.propublica.org/article/court-records-show-that-emails-and-phone-data-were-searched-in-child-porn-probe-of-billionaire-denny-sanford
A prosecutor in Pennsylvania makes good on campaign promise to review cold cases and use DNA evidence.
Warren County, PA Prosecuting Attorney Jim Pfeiffer announced that the victim of a 1991 homicide had been identified after his office collaborated with the New Jersey State Police Cold Case Unit, the state police Office of Forensic Sciences, the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, BODE Technologies (a private company) and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Pfeiffer has made it a priority to use DNA technology to help solve cold case homicides since he took office last year.
Imagine if there was this kind of collaboration in the OCCK case. It is crystal clear to me why there never has been and probably never will be. The OCP office of L.B. Patterson and Richard Thompson was all too happy to leave this festering file of corruption and incompetence parked with the Michigan State Police, an agency with a massive chip on its shoulder and a penchant for pushing food around the “forever open investigation” plate. Now that all who remain from the initial investigation days can apparently not remember what they had for breakfast today, let alone what they did in the biggest serial murder case in Michigan history over forty years ago, and no one new has the appetite or courage to take this on, it appears Brooksie’s ignoble strategy was solid.
Procession
The documentary Procession examines sexual abuse by predatory Roman Catholic priests and their complicit enablers in a very profound way. https://www.netflix.com/title/81513706. It began streaming on Netflix today. The documentary “is a collaboration made with six men who work together to find the truth and healing they ought to have been afforded by the church.” https://www.vox.com/22745194/procession-review-netflix.
The critics’ consensus on Rotten Tomatoes is that the film is “[h]arrowing yet essential viewing,” and probes “the lasting legacy of trauma with heart-wrenching grace.” https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/procession_2021. Grace that is ironically absent from the Catholic church’s response to victims of pedophile priests and its constant battle to keep statutes of limitations in place to deny victims recourse. The church affords victims nothing unless forced to do so. It is outrageous.
Outrageous and harrowing. The critics are right–it is difficult but essential viewing.