Turns out the MSP does use full on genetic genealogy in cases where it suits them.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/12/us/baby-garnet-cold-case-michigan/index.html

https://www.abc12.com/news/saginaw-man-arrested-in-connection-with-2003-cold-case-homicide-of-birch-run-woman/article_762b3926-b742-11ef-a47d-9f5a36b57ee2.html

There is resistance, apparently, to digitizing the OCCK case files at the MSP because THERE COULD BE EVIDENCE IN THE FILES and therefore college students affiliated with their cold case “programs” can’t be trusted to scan and digitize the files. So who is ever going to go through these files looking for EVIDENCE? If Hell freezes over and the Michigan State Lab works with a third party lab like Othram or genetic genealogists, how is whatever detective that is handling these four homicides going to be able to work with a surname and figure out known associates?

If you saw the state of the OCCK “files” in Children of the Snow (I can’t believe they allowed filming of that area–it is so shameful), you know that is a big fucking haystack.

And, contrary to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office’s FOIA response to me that they have not a single document in these cases and “to check with the state police,” I have heard from two sources that the office may have been withholding evidence in these cases for decades. That office has a “cold case team” of retirees working specifically on the OCCK case. I’m told the average age is 80. I have nothing against oldsters–I will be there myself in 15 years. But how do you make progress if you have “no documents” and no working relationship with whoever is babysitting this case at the MSP? Just where are any suggestions going? To the state lab? (Hey oldsters–start by reading Guarded by Jackals, you can get it on Amazon and begin there.)

In the meantime, take a listen to this clip and ask yourselves how in the biggest manhunt the country had ever seen at the time, the evidence in this case was never properly filed, stored or maintained when the decision was made to shelve this case in December 1978, and why the two cases linked above can be solved and the OCCK case is just a stew of fuckery.

https://www.razibkhan.com/p/david-mittelman-pushing-the-genomic

And just a head’s up. If you won’t test the “Allen” letter and envelope for DNA, I will be asking for a copy of it. Someone would have recognized that handwriting and your predecessors knew it. Which is why it was never tested or shown to the public.

Still enjoying that cake and keeping it in the file cabinet, too.

And quit dragging your always-profit-over-people feet.

In this YouTube video podcast about the murder of the United Healthcare CEO on December 4, a retired federal prosecutor discusses the early involvement of prosecutors in high profile cases.

Thanks to a reader for this send. It dovetails with information I received from another reader.

First, I point out that the retired prosecutor explained that there is no doubt at least one prosecutor is “totally assigned and devoted to this case,” even as it is in the initial manhunt phase. He explained that prosecutors are often on the ground in high profile cases, and that he had himself gone to crime scenes to make sure there was a proper evidentiary trail in order to succeed at any future trial.

Prosecutors always are the first to tell you that they are not the investigating agency; that’s on the cops. Police are supposed to investigate the crime and present a chargeable case to the prosecutor, who then exercises prosecutorial discretion about charging and taking the case forward. As convenient as that dichotomy is, it ignores what this retired federal prosecutor explains. There has to be someone at the prosecutor’s office who is assigned and devoted to a high profile case to prepare search warrants, arrest warrants, and advise on interrogations and constitutional and evidentiary concerns.

In Oakland County, just four days before 12-year-old Mark Stebbins was abducted on a Sunday afternoon in Ferndale, the caped crusader L. Brooks Patterson bellowed that he would seek the maximum life sentence for two Black men who kidnapped GM executive Bob Stempel’s son from Bloomfield Hills and made ransom demands.

This, he said, would serve as “a deterrent to other people driving into my county, or your county, for that matter, and selecting some little child at random.”

Four days later Mark Stebbins was abducted (and probably not by someone who drove into YOUR county, Brooks, but from within) and four days after that, he was murdered. And a few days after that, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum attended Mark’s funeral service:

Within the next 13 months, a total of four Oakland County kids were believed to be victims of serial murder. And even though Oakland County couldn’t push these cases off fast enough to the Michigan State Police, you’re damn right there were a few people in the prosecutor’s office who were monitoring these crimes, as well as Chris Busch’s pedophilia cases and his subsequent “suicide.”

In addition to Patterson and his #2, Thompson, two assistant prosecutors were apparently trusted enough to touch these files. One was Ed Sosnick, who made arrangements for and attended Kristine’s autopsy.

How many people knew or should have known something was not right with Patterson’s handling of the OCCK investigation?

Edward Sosnick and Laurence Burgess graduated from Wayne State University Law School in 1967.

Click to access WSULaw_1967_Yearbook.pdf

Laurence Burgess married Jane Kerr (Mary Jane Kerr of Grosse Pointe), seen below in this photo from the Wayne State University Law School Yearbook of 1966, on December 13, 1969.

Jane Burgess, you will recall, took Chris Busch’s sex crime cases because her husband/law partner Laurence was too busy at the time to represent this pedophile son of a high ranking GM executive.

The Oakland County assistant prosecutor whose name is on the sign out sheet for Busch’s CSC case in Oakland County was Leonard Gilman.

Gilman was also a graduate of Wayne State University Law School, Class of 1966, so he was there when Jane Kerr, Laurence Burgess and Ed Sosnick were attending.

Click to access WSULaw_1966_Yearbook.pdf

Gilman left the OCP office in 1978, joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office as chief of the criminal division. He later became a well respected U.S. Attorney in Detroit in 1981. He took on organized crime, https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/statement-leonard-r-gilman-united-states-attorney-eastern-district, as well as child pornographers by using an undercover postal worker. He died February 12, 1985, during a hospitalization for an unknown condition or virus, at age 43.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/detroit-free-press-leonard-gilman/17480247

I think it’s safe to say that all of these graduates of Wayne State University Law School were relieved when Chris Busch wound up dead in his parents’ Bloomfield Village home in late November, 1978. Perhaps most especially 1964 Wayne State University Law School graduate Richard Thompson and his boss.