The man decided to not stop at the girls’ destination, so they tried to get out of the station wagon, but were unable to.
— Read on wibc.com/234709/how-investigators-solved-an-indiana-cold-case-from-1975/

American Nightmare is a three-part series now streaming on Netflix that chronicles law enforcement’s mishandling of a California woman’s abduction, captivity and rape in March 2015. https://m.imdb.com/news/ni64403195/?ref_=nm_nwr_1 . You may remember this case from the news, but the initial media coverage was a far cry from the real story. 

There is a monster in the story, of course, but the bad guys here are the Vallejo, CA, police department and the FBI. Some of these officers/agents seem straight out of central casting, but it is a true story and the interviews/polygraph you see are from official videotape. 

Police initially suspect the boyfriend of making his story up to hide her murder. He understood the level of interrogation initially and says he “foolishly thought they would follow evidence.” https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/american-nightmare-denise-huskins-aaron-quinn .

The breathtakingly ignorant detective interviewing the abducted woman’s boyfriend (who had been drugged and terrorized) is a stupid, myopic, misogynistic, flabby thug. When he interviews the missing woman’s mother, who tells him her daughter might have been molested as a child, he responds “I just want you to know that in our experience, women who have been sexually assaulted before often pretend that it is happening again to get attention and relive the excitement and thrill of that experience.” It’s on tape, it’s right there. 

You will see a Special Agent for the FBI (a Special brand of Asshole) demonstrating how police polygraphers use their magic show/voodoo/verbal intimidation to try to coerce a false confession from the boyfriend. It’s on tape, it’s right there. 

The police spokesman, hamming it up for the press at the direction of the integrity-deficient police chief, is a true, compliant pig. You have to see it to believe it. It’s on tape, it’s right there.

Another FBI SA is allowed to continue on the case even after it is learned that he had dated one of the peripheral people to the investigation (the boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, who was later said to be the intended victim). The FBI tells the victim’s attorney that it isn’t a problem; no big deal. And of course the FBI doesn’t release the video of their interrogation of the victim after she is released. 

After the woman is blindfolded and dropped off by her abductor, Vallejo police accuse her and the boyfriend of perpetrating a hoax. They stopped searching for the man who committed the crime. So much for Detective “Puzzle Maker.” The couple believed more than one perpetrator was involved and they remained fearful due to threats made during and after the abduction. But for the work of Dublin, CA PD Det. Misty Carausu, who connected evidence found at the home of an arrestee to that of the Vallejo abduction, the Vallejo PD would probably still be defaming this couple. Detective Puzzle Maker would probably still be reliving the thrill and excitement of his various interrogations. 

The couple filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Vallejo and its police department for defamation. In rejecting the defendants’ motion to dismiss, the judge explained that the conduct alleged in the complaint “goes beyond defendants being skeptical, investigating alternate theories, and expressing skepticism,” and that “[a] reasonable jury could find that defendants engaged in conduct that was extreme and outrageous.” The case later settled for $2.5 million. https://globalnews.ca/news/4088930/california-couple-police-faking-abduction-settlement/ . That seems light to me, but dealing with these assholes any longer than necessary seems worse. 

Vallejo police and the FBI were asked to comment for the series, but declined. ”There’s a real missed opportunity here for law enforcement to be humble, and admit that they made mistakes and share with us how they’re trying to remedy these kinds of errors so that they don’t happen again,” said one of the filmmakers. 

Meaningful change? Responsible change? The same year the Puzzle Maker was fucking up this case and laying the ground work for a $2.5 million dollar settlement and this Netflix series, he was named Detective of the Year. It appears that aside from the city having to write a check, there has been no accountability and no examination of how it came to this or will be avoided in the future. https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/american-nightmare-denise-huskins-aaron-quinn .

The couple regained their reputations, went on to marry and have two daughters. I’m willing to bet the Vallejo police department is still filled with shitbags. Just hope you never “need” the police.

Almost five years ago a reader sent me an email after viewing the documentary Children of the Snow. Having been a young kid in Oakland County during the OCCK reign of terror, at first he resisted watching but then decided he owed it to his own two sons to watch. He said: 

The ineptitude and avarice and corruption in the MSP and Oakland County and many players in LE and the judicial system isn’t surprising…but their time will run out.

Some five years later it feels like their time–their long borrowed time, bought on the backs of at least four dead kids–will never run out. Three books, a documentary, podcasts and video blogs, and in the wake of all of this: Nothing. Tip lines that were never really manned after the documentary and are now long dead (not that calls were returned anyway). Information that resulted after people saw the faces of Chris Busch, Greg Greene, Vince Gunnels, Arch Sloan and Ted Lamborine staring out at them from an Investigative Discovery documentary many decades later–ignored or downplayed to insignificance. Just ride it out, MSP and OCP–the tide will settle back down and people will again give up. Just wait for another few years for another book, a screen play, another documentary. And then ride it out again. Rinse and repeat.

After these kids’ cases subsidized a couple of police pensions, the case once again faded into the background. It became just one more case passed on at least twice since then to MSP detectives whose caseload prevents them from even glancing at this case. It gets “inherited” by a new prosecuting attorney in truncated form because documents were destroyed during the transition and the sheriff is dirty. And then of course the monstrous deeds of Ethan Crumbley intervene to entirely overwhelm the resources of that office for the past two-plus years. A 48-year-old cold case? You must be joking. 

That’s one of the reasons this case should be digitized and a legally redacted version made easily available to the public. There are probably 20 readers of this blog who could digest the information and draw legit conclusions (even in the absence of many documents that I am sure never made it into any file) within a month. The MSP remains unable to cross-reference anything in this case. It is basically as low tech as it was in 1977, when tips were being written on napkins and scrap paper. Sorry, one excel spread sheet doesn’t elevate this investigation to a serious investigation. 

L. Brooks Patterson, Richard Thompson, the Busch family, and all of their enablers, as well as clients of the child sex ring from that era continue to “win.” Patterson and Thompson knew time and the public’s short attention span would eventually work in their favor. The MSP has no motivation to do anything in this case. And everyone who knew, knows, suspects or should have known–none has ever come forward. I’m not talking about family members or associates of the killers and child rapists or the child sex ring clients. I’m talking about men on the public payroll who were present at Kristine Mihelich’s autopsy; men involved in the Greene and Busch arrests, interrogations and polygraphs in Flint in January 1977; men and women who then greased the skids for Busch in his four CSC cases around Michigan, the people who processed Chris Busch’s death scene at 3310 Morningview Terrace in Bloomfield Village; the various people along the way who were asked to do something in this investigation that didn’t seem quite right; the cops who lied to my dad’s face over decades and pretended to be his friend. And every single person who had the chance to tell the truth decades later and just doubled down. 

While it feels like moving a sand dune (a corrupt sand dune) with a teaspoon, help me make time run out one way or the other for these agencies who shirk their duty in this serial homicide case. Don’t waste your time writing Dana Nessel or Karen McDonald. They won’t reply. But if you have a suspect name, for example, I urge you to file a FOIA request online with the MSP to ask for any and all files related to that person. If you turned someone in, there should be a record, right? The local agencies all say they pass everything on to the MSP. So where is it and why can’t you access it? Start demanding access to files that should be open to the public because this case is no longer active. Time is long up. Transparency is called for. You can’t lock this down forever. 

I would love to see multiple FOIA requests made for any and all information about James Vincent Gunnels. We’ve read transcripts of his worthless interviews; let’s see what they had before that to elevate him from victim to person of interest. The MSP might try to argue the case is still “active” or “open” but that is complete bullshit. And a number of people have written to me suggesting Gunnels has died. Dead suspects can’t be charged, open investigation or not. Anyone can file a FOIA request. 

1. Does anyone have a date of death for Chris Busch attorney Jane Burgess? (1996?) I remember when we first learned her name in late 2007 that we found something in a Michigan Bar Journal or an obituary for her. It may be that all of this has been scrubbed from the internet since then. Surely someone who merited a news write up for practicing law and sharing child rearing responsibilities in 1976, had an obit written about her.**
2. Date of death for John Busch, brother of Chris Busch and father of Brent and Scott? (2001?)
3. Is Ken Bowman still alive?
4. Is Vince Gunnels still alive?
5. A reader asked what the link is between “up north” and the crimes against children that seems to be an underlying theme here. For example, Busch cottage at Ess Lake, nearby “El Rancho” (property owned by Claytons, where Arch Sloan hid while he was evading arrest for child sex crimes), Alpena (where John Hastings ends up), N. Fox Island (Frank Shelden, Gerald Richards and others), and other locations. Someone helped me understand that “up north” worked out well because it was much more remote. Obviously a lot of shit went down at the Busch cottage and N. Fox Island. But those locations were also perhaps way stations for child rapists who could afford the fees charged by child predators who linked kids with wealthy, powerful and sick people willing to travel. This wouldn’t even show up on the Montmorency sheriff’s radar, just like it didn’t in March of 1977 while my brother was missing, when “Susie” at the A-frame store called and left a message for Junior Brandenburg begging him to go to the Busch cabin because he had boys with him. Junior couldn’t be bothered until after Tim was found dead. I guess a better question is why people like us have to ponder what such a link would be when the FBI and the “task force ” apparently never did, or if they did, they didn’t do shit about it. Michigan– protecting politicians and pedophiles for almost 50 years. Quite the track record. 

**