Have you noticed it is now more common that cold cases that have been unsolved for 45-50 years are now being solved? This tragic case is from July 1972:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/cold-case-solved-50-years-after-young-mom/story?id=120900549

Young mother Phyllis Bailer was murdered and left in a roadside ditch with her three-year-old daughter left alive beside her. Years later a partial DNA sample was found on Bailer’s clothing, but the case continued to be unsolved for decades.

Somebody in law enforcement stayed on (or circled back to) this case and pushed for more DNA testing, which resulted in a much stronger DNA profile that was then evaluated using genetic genealogy.

Indiana State Police announced  Fred Allen Lienemann was identified as the person who left DNA on Bailer’s clothing, and that if he was alive, prosecutors would charge him with Bailer’s murder. He was killed in Detroit in 1985.

Mark Stebbins and Jill Robinson were murdered in 1976. Kristine Mihelich and Tim King were murdered in 1977. That’s four and five years after Phyllis Bailer was murdered.

Unlike the Indiana State Police, the Michigan State Police really have no interest or the work ethic, after years of questions, in finding any answers about what happened in these four cold cases of a similar “vintage.” I’m sure the circumstances are quite different–mostly because L. Brooks Patterson and his henchman Richard Thompson had their thumbs on the scale in the OCCK case and I’m sure this extended to the evidence. For a compelling explanation of then County Executive Patterson’s desperate reengagement in the OCCK case in 1999 after DNA testing became a reality, read Chapter 25, “Patterson’s Strategy for (Det. Ray) Anger Management” in Guarded by Jackals: Predators, the Public Officials Who Protected Them and Resolution of Michigan’s Most Notorious Cold Case (July 1984).

My limited understanding of the current status of the evidence in this case is that the state lab is only willing to consider retesting the hair evidence (the hair not previously extinguished in testing) and the partial Y-str sample. That this would be a two-part inquiry, as in the Bailer case–attempt to obtain a stronger DNA profile from this evidence and then if possible, employ genetic genealogy. The position of that state lab seems to be that they are under no obligation to explain why the children’s clothing, for example, is not worthy of being retested using more sophisticated testing. How it came to this.

The Oakland County Prosecutor should tell the state lab to report all of their testing efforts from 1976 to the present and provide their conclusions regarding the futility of further testing. This report is necessary so that the prosecutor can announce to the public that we are at the end of the road, unless someone comes forward to tell the truth. The prosecutor should also demand that the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office turn over any evidence in this case that may have been withheld. Enough of this bullshit.

Explain why four sets of clothing, touched by the people who helped dump these kids’ bodies, will not be retested by a third-party lab. A DNA profile may end up being from one of the older teens who may have helped abuse these kids or dump their bodies. Those men may still be alive. They may also be able to connect one of the still living who have been named as possible participants in these crimes–Ted Lamborgine, Arch Sloan, Vince Gunnels, John Hastings.

Every time a case like Phyllis Bailer’s 1972 murder is solved, people should ask why the OCCK murders, subject to an investigation that the entire country was focused on in 1976 and 1977 –by an agency some still believe to be elite–are not considered worthy of the same kind of forensic evaluation. And why no one from this agency ever has to answer for the evidentiary difficulties or failures.

I should not have to circle around this issue of DNA testing like a fly on shit. The OCCK case should have been treated as a real cold case, with the case files digitized many years ago, instead of as a retirement placement for 1.5 of MSP detectives who merely hung on to the coattails of outside Det. Cory Williams who had to try to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s that the previous disgraceful investigation had left unaddressed, some 30 years later.

The case remains in the “Special Investigations” Unit and trust me, there is no special treatment of the OCCK case. If they had digitized the files, as any real cold case team would have, they could hand this case over to a cold case detective who could incisively address the evidence issues in this case and be prepared to address any lead that might result from advanced DNA testing and genetic genealogy. “Special” in this situation means “answer to no one.”