The Oakland County Child Killer
What the Hell is the Deal with the Oakland County Child Killer Investigation?
The next few posts will be more documents from the “investigation.” Some files seem to be duplicative of earlier files/links. Not how I would keep records, but we have to take them as they send them.
Many more files on the Rukkila family, and a few other files that seem quite worthless, to be continued.
Thanks to a reader for word on yet another fiction book based on the OCCK crimes. The cover even carries the composite photo and the blue Gremlin.
*From one of America’s most renowned storytellers comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a backdrop of child murders in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.
In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together, with tragic consequences. There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on an unexpected mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit. As Babysitter continues his rampage of killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways.
Suspenseful, brilliantly orchestrated, and engrossing, Babysitter is a starkly narrated exploration of the riskiness of pursuing alternate lives, calling into question how far we are willing to go to protect those whom we cherish most. In its scathing indictment of corrupt politics, unexamined racism, and the enabling of sexual predation in America, Babysitter is a thrilling work of contemporary fiction.
Contributor Bio(s)
| JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and has been nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde; and the New York Times best seller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. In 2020 she was awarded the Cino Del Duca World Prize for Literature. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities emerita at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. |
The renowned author and her late first husband lived in Detroit from 1962 to 1968, teaching at U of D and Wayne State, respectively, before moving to Windsor, Canada.
The reader expressed hope that when this book is released this summer that additional attention may be brought to the OCCK case. I suppose that’s fair, but I for one will not be buying the book. I am sick of “story telling” using this ready-made, real life horror story as the bones for a writer’s fiction book. Although the author is known for her deep research for her books, anything this book contains will no doubt pale in comparison to what really happened in this case–both the crimes themselves and the corrupt cover up. Perhaps the book will open readers’ minds on the subjects of corrupt politics, unexamined racism and the enabling of sexual predation in America, and for that I would be grateful. Many people can’t handle the truth in this very real case anyway.
For some “real life” read this next batch of FOIA documents in the next few posts.