Northern Michigan, Part I–Montmorency

Lifelong pedophile Arch Sloan, 83, is living out his life sentence for the 1983 rape of a little boy at the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian, Michigan. He was sentenced in Wayne County on January 29, 1985.

Longtime readers of my blog know that Sloan was in the spotlight in 2012 after it was made public that hair evidence from his 1966 Bonneville, obtained soon after Mark Stebbins was murdered, was retested for DNA. His sketchy life and disgusting criminal past is detailed in The Snow Killings by Marney Keenan, along with his brushes with the OCCK task force. He has long been in the background of the child killings.

Sloan apparently told a cellmate he was in the same exclusive club as other prolific killers, that he was the OCCK and that he would never be caught because he covered his tracks so well. Later he had less to say to OCCK investigators.

I’m not going to circle back around to this POS’s claims or the evidence of his involvement in a child sex ring with other scumbags (not directly with the “elites” we know were also involved), or his probable involvement in Mark Stebbin’s abduction; rather I am going to discuss the odds of this freak knowing Chris Busch.

Busch loved to visit his family’s cottage on Ess Lake in Montmorency, Michigan. Preferably only with minor boys.

**A reader made the valid point that those not familiar with northern Michigan might not realize how remote these areas were in the late 70s, and still are.

Arch Sloan was friends with Detroit Police Sgt. Richard Clayton, who frequented his family compound, “El-Rancho Farm” in Montmorency. In fact, Clayton’s relatives told investigators that “Archie” was often at El-Rancho hunting and fishing in the 1970s. He would show up in his old blue pick-up truck with a white camper in the back (which we now know was a torture chamber).

In 1984, Sloan was on the run “until the heat died down” in the wake of the 1983 rape charges. Good buddy Clayton (15 years his senior) was digging around the investigation at DPD. One of his superiors believed that Clayton may have given Sloan a key to the El-Rancho Farm when Sloan’s attorney advised him to “go up north until the heat dies down.”

Clayton’s obstruction seemed so obvious that he was subjected to a Garrity interview and advised that compelled statements made during this internal investigation could not be used against him in a subsequent criminal prosecution.  (Garrity v. New Jersey (1967)). He was none too happy about this, and the investigating officer described Clayton as defensive, arrogant, argumentative; that he continued to pry for information about Sloan and that he had little concern about locking up the fugitive rapist Sloan.

Decades later, Clayton’s attorney did not recall representing him but listened to the tape of the Garrity interview. His observation to the OCCK task force members was that Clayton sure sounded like a person with more to hide than simply helping out a family friend.

Clayton died at age 80 on December 28, 2006. In a videotaped interview dated September 1, 2010, Sloan describes Dick Clayton as being his “good friend.”

It’s unclear what Clayton and Sloan got up to aside from hunting and fishing until Sloan took up residence in the Big House. What is clear is that El-Rancho Farm, described as a compound with numerous buildings being constructed on it over the years, was approximately 8.3 miles/15 minutes from the Busch cottage on Ess Lake.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Ess+Lake,+Michigan+49746/15663+Co+Rd+628,+Hillman,+MI+49746/@45.1207948,-84.0667097,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x4d34c247e21798cf:0x17884afe2d4385e2!2m2!1d-83.9831641!2d45.1118139!1m5!1m1!1s0x4d34dd62c4fa461f:0x3e22b506aaf0d6bc!2m2!1d-84.071243!2d45.144108!3e0?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDQxNi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw==

So it really doesn’t matter if Sloan’s relatives were renting on Ess Lake near the Busch cottage before 1978. Sloan was close enough up at El-Rancho with his camper many times before Busch wound up dead in late November 1978. Clayton sounds like he wasn’t exactly an upstanding cop. And he was right there, too. Eight miles from the Busch cottage. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, right? Maybe he dug around the OCCK investigation back in the day, just for kicks.

According to his obituary, he was with the DPD for 31 years and a “lifelong member” of Masonic Lodge #89 of Belleville, MI. And a good friend to a lifelong pedophile, Arch Sloan.

Source:


Cold case solved over 50 years after a young mom was killed, her 3-year-old daughter left alive beside her

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.”



Former President of the Village of Clarkston Historic District Commission, James Lawrence Meloche, 81, charged with CSAM offenses.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2025/04/17/president-of-oakland-county-group-left-child-porn-in-stack-of-meeting-notes-police-say

Thanks to a reader for sending this link. These criminals are everywhere, at every level of society. Meloche left behind a stack of his papers after a meeting of the historic district–including images of child sexual abuse material.

This guy is 81 years old. Once again proving that these freaks never age out of their crimes and deserve no consideration at sentencing for their elderly status. All their age means is that they have gotten away with these and other sex crimes for decades and/or that they are so old that they leave their CSAM behind with the meeting agenda. I guess he needed his CSAM in case he got bored at the meeting of the historic society.

Rot in prison, old man.