Posting again. No one will ever go near this. How did society allow this pig and his enablers to succeed?
Cathy-
It should be understood there WAS a another cunning power broker working to manipulate outcomes at the time of the OCCK.
L. Brooks Patterson.
In November of 1975, the underground newspaper The Ann Arbor Sun published a well researched and very public take down of the then Oakland County Prosecutor. The article is titled “Naked Came the Prosecutor”. https://aadl.org/node/200230
Looking back over the decades, the opening line written by reporter Maureen McDonald rings like an urgent alarm on the disasters that lay ahead:
“The darling of the media and leading Young Republican protege, L. Brooks Patterson has parlayed the “evils” of welfare, parole, drunk-driving, drugs and “obscenity” into the most saleable political package the suburban county has ever seen. While Patterson gets great press for his attacks on people who are easily prosecuted and often can’t afford the cost of a trial lawyer. The SUN’s sources indicate that the charismatic young leader may be looking the other way on tougher challenges like organized crime and political corruption in his jurisdiction.”
2 months after this article ran, Mark Stebbins was murdered.
Patterson found his political voice in latching on to useful idiots he could play like a Stradivarius. In the early 1970’s he rose to prominence exploiting the racial tensions over things like busing and chasing down welfare cheats. He didn’t just play the race card, he spoiled the whole deck. He catered to that elite slice of Oakland County, the Bloomfield’s and the Cranbrook’s. The rounds of golf at Oakland Hills. The happy hours. Patterson was able to cultivate that cult of personality because of his hold on and ability to manipulate the Detroit media. Patterson would conduct a masterclass of beguiling reporters with his camera ready looks, couched in the style of a wise-cracking tough guy who wasn’t afraid of a microphone or television camera. Outside of reporters like Maureen McDonald, Patterson enjoyed a fawning media apparatus which in 1976 and 1977 essentially created a safe space for the prosecutor to operate well outside of conventional boundaries, including constitutional limits.
Patterson’s hands were ALL OVER the OCCK investigation.
Notably, Patterson was influential in allowing “psychic sleuth” Bruce Danto to “collaborate” with the task force, a colossal error which essentially ended all chances of solving the entire case. Patterson would even admit in the following years that the series of traffic stops initiated in ’77 on Squirrel Rd, set up under the direction of Bruce Danto’s “subliminal” messages to the killer in the hopes he would take the bait, were unconstitutional. He chuckled when relaying that tidbit, as if to suggest he couldn’t quite believe it himself.
It is important to note that during this time, instead of running his office as prosecutor, Patterson was running for higher office. He was barnstorming the state in 77 and 78 in an attempt to win the US Senate seat in Michigan. The only usefulness for Patterson in regards to the OCCK investigation was to perpetuate it, in order to affect more media attention. The goal wasn’t to catch the killer, the goal was to make everyone AFRAID of the killer, ostensibly so Patterson could swoop in and crack the case.
Until they didn’t.
When they found Busch dead after his “suicide” in 1978 you know that their blood ran cold. They had this guy. He had been on the radar the whole time. For crying out loud, Patterson’s #2 Dick Thompson went up to Flint in the middle of a blizzard to interview these guys.
While the scene at Morningside was a little “too” tidy with evidence screaming “I DID IT”, and certainly suggests something off and staged, the conspiracy starts to show some cracks because Patterson would not have missed an opportunity to crack the case and declare they that found the killer, GM and H. Lee Busch be damned. The problem was that Brooksy, Dick Thompson, Cabot and the MSP apparatus knew they missed the ball and a little boy was dead because of it. They covered it up to protect and maintain their own careers. If the truth had been exposed in 1978, L Brooks Patterson’s career, and that of a few others would have been demolished. Forget the Senate, forget running for Governor.
Who can orchestrate a cover up better than the man in charge of actually pressing the charges? Who requests the warrants? No evidence – no case. No killer – no problem.
“Maybe he’s dead” they said in ’78. “Maybe he’s locked up” It’s all just a bad dream. Have another drink. Go back to bed.
And how quickly the task force folded after Busch’s death.
After losing the Senate race in ’78, Patterson remained the county prosecutor, occasionally taking on cases himself, crusading against strip clubs and advocating for capital punishment. Hollow crusades only intended to placate the base. All while organized crime, child pornography rings and a child killing monster(s) were allowed to roam free.
Patterson has the dubious distinction of presiding over the county prosecutors office at a time where both the Jimmy Hoffa and the OCCK crimes occurred. While not necessarily connected, both have obvious ties to different layers of organized crime. Hoffa’s disappearance traded in the same currency as those with interested in profiteering from child pornography. And it was all going down in Oakland County. And L. Brooks chose to look the other way.
It wasn’t just Cass. It was Cass Lake. It was scumbags in suits trading kids like playing cards. And they had the freedom because they must have known on some level they were protected.
I too grew up in the middle of that invisible milieu, invisible right up until the bodies started piling up and fear leeched into the bedrooms and bus stops as children were bombarded with confusing and contradictory messages about strangers and trusting adults.
The corruption, or lack of will was already baked in.
Yes, this case stands as a textbook example of facts falling through the cracks because of infighting among different jurisdictions. Yes, all of this happens against the backdrop of the late 1970’s, an age where the detective work required to solve these crimes was still in its infancy. Multiple mistakes were made. There was a woeful lack of coordination and cooperation. from the start and continued for two years as the investigation unfolded. But Patterson was in that very unique position of one being able to disseminate evidence and information as he saw fit – always looking at how it would benefit him. No deals. Until there is a deal.
I was astonished to read that during that time Patterson refused to reach out to your family in person. It makes sense. While he might be able to help you, you couldn’t do anything for him. That, to Brooks Patterson, amounted to a waste of time. And four families suffered horribly for it. An an entire generation of (then) children in Metro Detroit remain traumatized to this day.
Chillingly, shortly before his death, Patterson gave an interview in which he said his “biggest disappointment was that of the Oakland County Child Killer, was never identified.”
What a choice of words. He took his secrets to the grave, but subconsciously implicated himself in the process.
I will continue to follow this along with so many others. Thank you for the courage in sharing your family’s personal story.
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— I would add that the “Bloody Ligatures” photographed and taken into evidence from the Bush supposed suicide scene seem to just disappear at the very time improvements were coming about in DNA, which could have shown any of the Child Victims blood on them, or other unknown victims not yet attributed to the OCCK perpetrators. Most all of the other evidence such as the drawing clearly resembling V#1 Mark Stebbins, remained intact, but that any such evidence that could have yielded DNA either was claimed to have been “Lost”, or remained untested and sitting on a shelf.
Imagine the fear Patterson and his once-BFF, Thompson, had as they watched DNA developments unfold in criminal cases. I’ve written about how the evidence was spectacularly mishandled in this case (kids’ clothing taken up north so a pathologist could evaluate the condition of the clothing–he expresses concern about touching the clothing but a lab scientist assures him it’s ok; a psychic is given my brother’s jacket to handle as they visit the place his body was dumped), but I am quite sure LBP made sure the evidence in this case was messed with. We have heard rumors over the years that the OCCK evidence was used in POST training by the MSP.
DNA was on the radar in criminal cases in a big way in 1986–https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/07/killer-dna-evidence-genetic-profiling-criminal-investigation. It would not be until 1999 that the David Norberg tip would be used for more smoke and mirrors. Look at how they again continued to control their bullshit narrative. This is the best suspect we’ve got! We suspect him in these and other crimes! We’re digging him up on our own dime to compare the DNA to the one–only one!–piece of evidence in this case, a single hair found on victim Tim King. It’s a long shot, but goddamn it, we’ve got to try!! They were completely prepared to close the entire case based on a DNA hit involving one of the victims (only one man killed all four of these kids and he acted alone!). They had a year before the FBI returned the results they were no doubt expecting–no match. End of story.
We know there was more than one hair. If the evidence had not been tampered with, improperly and negligently stored and filed by the time they claimed to have only one hair to test against Norberg’s DNA in 1999, it certainly was afterward. I recently posted one of the FOIA documents where Garry Gray explains that at some very late date the lab mounts a serious search of all of the evidence in the OCCK case. WTF? Looky here–where did this come from?! Do you think for a minute the state lab, with its history in this case, can be trusted? It doesn’t matter if the office has turned over many times since the days of David Metzger and Charlotte Day. All they should/have to be trusted for at this stage of the “game” is in preparing all of the evidence in the OCCK case according to chain-of-custody protocol for handing over to a third-party lab.
And the evidence in the Busch “suicide”? That probably got ditched long before 1986. Especially given who might have murdered him.
Reader: AS THE THREAT FROM INDIVIDUAL EVIDENCE RELEVANCY EMERGED, IT WAS THAT EVIDENCE THAT DISAPPEARED, DESPITE COMING FROM THE SAME CRIME SCENE AND BEING STORED TOGETHER. The drawing of Stebbins had plausible deniability, but DNA Not so.
Me: Similar to the evidence in Troy, MI murder of Gail Webster.
I believe Patterson’s daughter is running for a position in Oakland County next year.
I read about that. She’s probably not nearly as mob-adjacent as her daddy, but Oakland County loves them some incestuous family job placements in law enforcement and government.
I sure wish someone strong willed could come along and try to correct for all the wrong doing and corruption this case as had and has the power to do something about it. Provide the resources for a crew to go back and do some old fashion investigation but with the power of today’s forensic technology. Get some universities behind it as well.