March 9, 1977

On this date, 47 years ago, Officer Tom Waldron of the Flint MI PD, wrote the chief of police in Alma MI about child predator Chris Busch. Busch had moved to Alma a few months prior after his father, H. Lee Busch, bought his pedophile son a restaurant (The Scotsman) to run. The further from Bloomfield Village, the better. Waldron, having learned what this monster and his prolific sexual sadist pedophile partner, Greg Greene, had been up to in Michigan in late January 1977, knew a guy like Busch would victimize wherever he was. And no one seemed very keen to slow his progress.

On or about February 1, Busch had bonded out of the Flint jail for $1,000, in spite of the litany of hair-raising, criminal shit he told cops, prosecutors and investigators about. Here it was over a month later and this fuck was still a ticking child-raping time bomb, just living his restaurant life in Alma. Probably getting ready to seek out another Big Brother agency he could “volunteer” for.

In the letter, Waldron puts Chief Killingsworth on notice. “At present, Christopher Busch is free on Bond on all charges, and it appears he is willing to enter into intra County Plea-Bargaining, if the 1st degree charge is dropped.”

This is how it goes. They drop 1st degree in these cases. First degree involves sexual penetration and is a very serious felony. Even in Michigan. https://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(35alhnbmigwyz0ejk3y5ozee))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname=mcl-750-520b . Of course the defendant wants 1st degree off the table and it’s amazing how often it is dropped. By the time it is reported in the news, readers see lesser charges and the myth that these freaks don’t actually rape kids–that they just engage in sexual touching–lives on. It can be seen as “less harmful” or “not that bad.” “Molest” sounds much more tame than “rape.”

Officer Waldron explains to Chief Killingsworth that Busch “had made full statements and confessions regarding these pending charges.” He goes on to make the erroneous assumption and statement that Busch had hired one of the best attorneys to defend him in both Genesee and Oakland County. Jane Burgess? Seriously?

We can forgive Officer Waldron for making another erroneous assumption when he points out that the “best cases are the Oakland and Midland charges, where the probable sentences would be the most severe, due to the fact he utilized the Big Brothers to gain involvement with the young boys, with whom he developed a sexual relationship.”

Busch’s lack of a severe sentence in any of the Michigan counties would have nothing to do with the legal prowess of one Jane Burgess and more to her stepping out of the way as the court system was prostituted in Busch’s cases.

To my knowledge, not a single cop or investigator examined Busch’s files with the Big Brother organizations in Oakland County or Midland. Not a single one. At least Waldron wrote this letter to Alma PD. In Birmingham, where our family sadly landed because my parents were in search of a good school system, the police were telling people whose kids had the misfortune of having been “flashed” and other weird shit perpetrated by Busch, just to not to send their kids alone to Pembroke Park. Or telling a parent that they knew who this guy was–he was the son of a big GM exec, and “we can’t touch him.” In a Karmic situation worthy of study, this parent left the PD without filing charges because he worked at GM corporate. Feed your family and pay the mortgage on your home by Poppleton Park, or press charges against a man flashing your daughter? These, it turns out, were fundamental life lessons in Birmingham, Michigan.

And then there was a next door neighbor of the esteemed Busch family on Morningview Terrace Drive in Bloomfield Village, whose kid found nasty Polaroids on the sidewalk. She told her kids to stay away from the Busch home because “bad things are going on over there.” Worse than you think, lady. But be sure and keep that shit to yourself so that it escalates as described in Officer Waldron’s letter.

The copy of this letter bears the Bates stamp numbering from the Michigan State Police FOIA response provided to my dad after he had to file litigation to get records he (and anybody) was entitled to, even under worthless Michigan FOIA laws. So it had made it into state police files.

Luckily for the City of Alma, Busch moved back home to Morningview Terrace to deal with his “legal issues” and later “comply” with the terms of his probation. He should have been in a jail cell, not on Morningview Terrace or at his parents’ cottage at Ess Lake. He thought he was bullet proof and for a very long, dangerous time, he was. Until late November 1978 when he took one right between the eyes.