A reader reminded me of the 48th anniversary this month of the following occurrences, all dated April 11, 1977.

**April 11, 1977 was the date that the meeting amongst Michigan prosecutors regarding child sexual abuse & exploitation of children was supposed to take place. Set up by Genesee County Prosecuting Attorney Robert F. Leonard, the meeting never occurred.

The scuttling of this meeting is covered in great detail in Chapter 27 of Guarded by Jackals: Predators, the Public Officials Who Protected Them and Resolution of Michigan’s Most Notorious Cold Case (July 2024). The chapter is fittingly called “Cesspool.”

Leonard was telling the public that pedophiles and child pornographers were not all dirty old men, but wealthy, mobile, educated, important members of the community. This wasn’t gonna work for L. Brooks Patterson or his wealthy constituents and it wasn’t gonna work after he and Richard Thompson took a “pass” on Chris Busch and Greg Greene some two months earlier. Patterson, Thompson and the husband/wife team in the Genesee County Prosecutor’s office, Ward Chapman and Judith Fullerton, could pull together to make sure Chris Busch stayed out of prison. But they couldn’t be bothered to meet to exchange information on current investigations of sexual abuse and commercial exploitation of children.

As described in GBJ, Robert Leonard was scrutinizing organizations like the Boy Scouts of America and talking about the scrutiny required to protect kids in the foster care system in fucking 1977. As I posted yesterday, a recent audit found 150 deaths of kids in Michigan foster care between January 2023 and June 2024 were not properly investigated. Still pulling a version of the same shit, Michigan style. Maybe while your governor is recovering from her White House photo shoot, she or AG Dana Nessel can comment on how these kids fell through the cracks. They all love to campaign on protecting kids and then . . . yeah, not so much.

**April 11, 1977 was the date set for a meeting between the author of the “Allen letter,” Dr. Bruce Danto and Southfield PD Officer Jerry Tobias at the Gas Station Bar, 19106 Woodward Ave., Detroit (7 Mile and Woodward).

What this journal entry does not reflect is that a man tried to engage Jerry Tobias, who blew him off while he pretended to grade papers from the criminal justice class he was teaching. If you want a little “laugh,” you can read about this encounter in The Snow Killings by Marney Keenan and in Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, by Tommy McIntyre.

**Finally, April 11 was the date a tip is called in on Berkley Police Officer Chris Flynn by secret witness 13-10-7-33. This is only 1 of 15 tips called in on Officer Flynn.  As the reader asked, were these tips valid, or was he being thrown under the bus?  We will never know. Flynn allegedly died by suicide the same week Chris Busch allegedly did the same.

Thanks again to this reader. I am working on posting work done by another reader concerning the DNA in this case. I am digging for FOIA documents that tend to indicate Arch Sloan knew Chris Busch. This important fact (much like any connection between H. Lee Busch, Chris Busch and Frank Shelden) was never conclusively established in the record I have, but I believe it is reasonable to argue these two monsters knew each other. More tomorrow.