About three weeks ago a reader wrote (lashed out?) about the ID documentary, Children of the Snow. The documentary aired in February 2019 and was based on the true crime/memoir written by J. Reuben Appelman, The Kill Jar. I decided to watch it again last night. It continues to air on Hulu and is prominently listed in the True Crime offerings. It’s hard to miss.
https://www.hulu.com/series/children-of-the-snow-e5670464-7adc-4907-80c1-9f38ce17ee82
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10019004/
I have heard a number of times some variation of “yeah/but they got [fill in the blank] wrong.” Perfection is not possible in a case shrouded in police/prosecutor secrecy. We all wanted the world to know how fucked up this case is and how these four kids’ lives literally did not matter. It is the only widely distributed (world wide) video coverage of the OCCK case and investigation. Nothing has changed or been addressed since that series aired. Nothing. Advancements in DNA over the past almost five years are meaningless in the face of continued stonewalling.
Had Patrick Coffey not had a chance encounter with Larry Wasser; had my dad not called his old friend at the Detroit News, Judy Diebolt; had M.F. Cribari, J. Reuben Appelman and Marney Keenan not written books about the OCCK case; had Children of the Snow not aired, this case would have stayed in the vault. No one in law enforcement or the prosecutor’s office said dick about this case for 30 years. It was as if these four murders never occurred. The powers that be just rode this “bad publicity” out. Whistleblowers, if any there be, stayed in the dark where they are most comfortable. People who came forward from the public at large after the documentary aired and books were published were simply ignored. There is only one explanation for this, and it is as dark as it gets.
Try watching Children of the Snow again–since the show aired Mark’s brother, Jill’s dad and Tim’s dad have died. Readers, people with their own suspects, trolls and haters can dispute what is presented in the documentary all they want. I defy you to watch and not be affected by the families of these kids who were murdered and then betrayed by Oakland County. At the conclusion of the documentary it is Det. Cory Williams then with WAYNE COUNTY who asks the public for help. The MSP wouldn’t even deign to ask the public for help (they didn’t want it, anyway).
I had forgotten that then county executive, L. Brooks Patterson, blathers on in the documentary about the blue Gremlin and his charade of abandoning the Fourth Amendment to search blue Gremlins without probable cause while he was prosecutor during the OCCK reign of terror.
As I recall, the filming for the documentary took place in the spring of 2018 and was wrapping up in July of that year. As I said, it aired in February 2019.
About a month later, Patterson announced that he had received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer on March 15. He died on August 3, 2019, still in the county exec drivers seat as he had been since 1992. He spent a nanosecond in private practice after leaving the prosector’s office before claiming the throne in OC for the rest of his life. At the “control panel” for his entire life after the OCCK case.
If Busch was set up to take the fall for the OCCK crimes, you still have to ask why this was dusted under the rug so quickly. Why those present at the “suicide” scene were admonished “not to say anything?” Why there is virtually no document obtained via FOIA showing that this strange death scene was investigated to rule Busch out as an OCCK participant or to investigate who would have set him up like this? It just went away. Poof.
