Sex crimes against children at a campground south of Port Huron in June 1975

Readers have asked over the years about the campground south of Port Huron, MI, the site of sex crimes against children. Thanks to a reader for sending this July 26, 1976 article from The Argus-Press, Owosso, MI:

The article describes the sentencing of Josiah Tazelaar for sexual offenses against children for a three-day period in June 1975 “at a campground south of Port Huron in St. Clair Twp. 8.” I am not sure if the described campground is or was known as St. Clair Wilderness Campground.

You might recall that Josiah Tazelaar’s brother Willem lived with his wife and family not two miles from our family home, and that Josiah was pals with convicted child sex predator Kent Shultz and the late Senator Jack Faxon.

Consider the following regarding the overlap of the scope of the child sex trafficking and pornography rings that flourished in Southeastern Michigan in the 1970s (in addition Frank Shelden’s camp of horrors on N. Fox Island and apparently a “satellite” operation in Ontonagon County in the Upper Peninsula):

Also, see or reread the 2011 book, Portraits in the Snow: The Oakland County Child Killings . . . Scandals and Small Conspiracies. There were many separate but connected crimes against children and related enterprises in Michigan during the OCCK era. They were never pieced together and had they been, the OCCK murders and hundreds if not thousands of other sex crimes against kids might well have been solved or prevented.