More documents. I want to preface these with the following, especially in view of a comment from a reader, basically pissing and moaning about agency secrecy. Let’s get something straight right now. This is a 45-year-old case, which cannot, under any circumstances, be described as “open.” It is uncleared for reasons that do not foreclose the necessity of a FOIA response. All of the information in these documents is distilled in The Snow Killings: Inside the Oakland County Child Killer Investigation (2020). That I did not have to pay for these documents, which I could obtain via FOIA, is irrelevant.

I also point out that the current Oakland County Prosecutor’s office did not charge me for the documents they provided to me in response to my FOIA request. I think, given the prosecutor’s predecessors’ behaviors in this case, that this was fair. I also had to wait a long time for the documents and did not press statutory time restrictions.

The Birmingham Police Department (post-the Don Studt-era) was very cooperative and kind to our family. Remarkably, they told us they could not change the past, but would help in any way possible, as they considered themselves our hometown police department. They allowed one of my brothers to come in and review the documents they found from the OCCK case–the only documents that remained with that agency. There wasn’t much there, but it was still quite helpful and the openness was appreciated.

The Freedom of Information Act is a means for the citizens to know what their government is up to. https://www.justice.gov/archives/open/foia#:~:text. With limited statutory exemptions, FOIA “encourages accountability through transparency.” “The United States Supreme Court has explained that the, ‘basic purpose of FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.'” Id.

FOIA documents and other documents legally obtained have been read and used by authors, documentarians and podcasters in the OCCK case many times over. If the authorities ever advance the ball through advanced DNA testing and genetic genealogy and can clear the case, or if they conclude DNA testing is futile in this case, due to their faulty evidence retention methods, nothing can be said to be “secret” in this case ever again.

My most hard-core trolls surfaced when I started posting the FOIA documents on my blog in the spring of 2020. I have read everything. Don’t worry, the biggest secret of all in this case, why it has never been solved, has been taken to a few graves. Those still alive who know, and feel like they “did good” because the killings stopped for reasons only they know for sure, are self-interested cowards who will never talk.

The plan involves keeping this case “open” forever so that the MSP and the OCS can be safeguarded from full disclosure in this case. We all know documents were destroyed in this case. Tapes erased. DVDs gone missing. So don’t anyone dare complain that after pulling teeth, begging and paying a lot of FOIA fees, we have documents (almost all redacted) and I am posting them here. If you love agency secrecy, love on U.S. secret service agents loyal to trump. Or warm up to the FBI, who never adequately adheres to FOIA rules or even Senate committee questioning. Maybe you are against the use of body cameras, too, and feel like there is no need to ever question any action by law enforcement. If so, you are in the minority. And history shows you should be.

Sorry, I was going to try to just bang out the rest of the notes described in the previous post, but this news from yesterday warrants a post. Yesterday, in a shocking announcement, the FBI declared it found no evidence of the remains of Jimmy Hoffa during a search under a New Jersey Bridge. Hoffa went missing in 1975 after a lunch at the Machus Red Fox in Bloomfield Township with some good old boys in good old Oakland County. His body was never found.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/no-sign-jimmy-hoffa-new-jersey-bridge-fbi-says-rcna39451

An FBI spokesperson said “While we do not currently anticipate any additional activity at the site, the FBI will continue to pursue any viable lead in our efforts to locate Mr. Hoffa.” I won’t even waste your time with the litany of news articles and links covering the various massive digs and other investigative manpower spent in this case since 1975. I’m guessing if his death was at the hands of the mob, it was a much more humane and quick death than those suffered by the kids in the OCCK case.

Also, Dan Moldea, a journalist who has written extensively about the Hoffa saga, said he was personally briefed by the FBI in a video conference call Thursday.

We will pursue any viable lead. We brief journalists on the case. Never fucking heard that once in the OCCK case.

I’m sure there is some explanation for why the FBI is the lead agency in the Hoffa case. Organized crime involvement, political-type figure, who knows. I am more interested in how L. Brooks Patterson, who was Oakland County prosecutor when Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and when four preteen kids went missing and were found dead in 1976 and 1977, managed to offload these massive and still unsolved cases on to the FBI (Hoffa) and the MSP (OCCK). I can picture him wiping his hands and breathing a sigh of relief. He could go back to welfare fraud cases, making trouble for his enemies, and getting press by making outrageous statements instead of reporting real prosecutorial success.

A reader commented today: “OCCK evidence has been actively suppressed, distorted and ignored by local, state and federal officials for more than four decades.” This reminded me that episodes of The Forever Children of Oakland County Podcast by Eddie White did a good job covering the evidence shell game played by the MSP in this case. The described current shell game goes back more than 12 years and was merely a continuation of the smoke screen the OCP and the MSP erected in this case in 1978. A smoke screen which was constructed with the authorities’ false narrative (fed to the media and community for 45 years) and the incomprehensible misfiling and slow-walking of evidence in this case–the most heinous serial murder in Michigan history.

If you haven’t listened to The Forever Children of Oakland County from the beginning, you should:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-forever-children-of-oakland-county/id1562180734

White did a good job. The podcast launched in the spring of last year. It feels like it was five years ago. As an initial refresher on the issue of DNA in this case, listen to Episodes 10, 11 and 12:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-10-the-ties-that-blind-us/id1562180734?i=1000521830447 (The Ties that Blind Us)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-11-gamesmanship/id1562180734?i=1000522470230 (Gamesmanship)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-12-the-deal-with-dna/id1562180734?i=1000522988868 (The Deal with DNA)

After you listen to these three episodes (seriously, listen to them first), start reading the installments I will be posting of the 238-pages of notes, dated 2010 through 2019, from Wayne County, documenting the exceptionally hard work of Det. Cory Williams. The information was provided to my dad in 2019 so he could understand what went into the investigation of his son’s murder, despite the fact that the MSP was still stonewalling anyone and everyone. Despite assurances in 2019 from the then-assigned detective from the MSP that he would contact my dad to bring him up-to-speed, he just waited for my dad to die. Cross that phone call off the list. The MSP has consistently continued the fuckery perpetrated by L. Brooks Patterson and Richard Thompson from the OCP, assisted with the help of the maladroit MSP employees Robert Robertson and Joe Krease. Keep everyone in the dark. It works better that way. The playbook has never changed.

That leaves us in the position of having to piece together some semblance of the truth in this case with whatever documents we could obtain. All documents were to be included in a document repository in this case, but for many reasons this has not happened yet. Once these 238 pages are posted here, you will be able to read every single LE document I have on this case. I withheld them from the blog because in January 2020 I forwarded this file, along with Marney Keenan’s book, The Snow Killings, and other written materials, in support of my letter begging newly elected Prosecutor Karen McDonald to take a fresh look at this cold case. She had promised to meet with us. But that was before she took office. My dad died soon after the November election. She never met with us. I sent the same information to Attorney General Dana Nessel. Her office also blew me and Marney Keenan off after spending over an hour on Zoom with one of Nessel’s attorneys and her assistants. We never heard from them again. Totally ghosted.

So guess what? I’m not holding these documents back any longer. I’m going to try to post them seriatim. I have to double-check the redactions, which is always tedious and fraught. I am behind on posting information readers have sent me this summer, but I will catch up after these document drops.

As you read these pages, be sure to check the dates. And then do the math–it’s now 2022. If you are actually a reader of more than tweets and short emails, congratulations. You will see the hard work done in this case was not done by Oakland County or the MSP. You will be enraged, but not surprised. Of course much of this information was covered in The Snow Killings, but I think it helps to see it “as it happened.” Obviously, we have the benefit of hindsight in reading the file. But I can guarantee you, nobody at the MSP or the OCP is ever going to read these pages, so you might as well. Any highlighting or notes were made by me and I did my best to refrain from annotating.