Michigan State Police, this is what commitment looks like in the OCCK case:
- Pick up the phone and speak with Marney Keenan about the status of the investigation. You have her number.
- Pick up the phone and call Dr. Ashlen Kuersten, Director of Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program and ask if her students can assist in digitizing the case files in the OCCK case. https://wmich.edu/news/2023/10/72963 . You know as well as I do that for any genetic genealogy results to be at all useful, your files must be accessible and usable. They are not and never have been. Your agency already partners with WMU.
- Contact the Michigan State University Cold Case Unit at 833-725-1354 for further assistance in the above project. Your agency partners with MSU to offer internship opportunities in cold case investigations. https://online.cj.msu.edu/cold-case-unit .
- Use some common sense with genetic genealogy results and do not allow the state lab or the FBI to drag this out unnecessarily.
- Tell the families why a third-party lab will not be used in this case.
- Get somebody who won’t back-burner this case up-to-speed so s/he can conduct real interviews if you get viable genetic genealogy results. Have them speak to survivors of the child rape rings in Michigan of the 1970s who have come forward over the past decade and been blown off by law enforcement so you understand the network and can cross-reference names of ring participants and enablers. Hell, have an intern from the MS program at MSU prepare you for such an interview.
- DO YOUR JOB. Stop making civilians try to keep track of your many broken promises and failures to act.
Start with the phone calls. Stop shirking. Of course you are too busy; get help digitizing the files and put in the call before the next semester is in motion.
And stop with this nonsense; this bogus script you use to avoid transparency until you can pass the file off to another desk. It’s sickening.