A reader found the following Report to the Legislature on “parolable lifers” in the Michigan prison system. See page 28, top of page.
The reader also points out that his MDOC entry does not list any supervision requirements. I guess people are on their own to see if they are living in the same hood as a registered sex offender, same as always. Harmless old man, right?
One thing I forgot to write about concerning the December 1992 article mentioning a possible link between Kaplan’s CSC cases and the OCCK murders. That was in 1992. In 1978 there is not one word uttered in public about the “suicide” of Chris Busch and the diorama of evidence surrounding his dead body that screamed “I am the child killer.” Whether he was or why someone might try to pin these crimes on him was never investigated.
We all know a man like H. Lee Busch could pick up the phone and call Bloomfield Township PD and Prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson and keep this quiet. Maybe Motown VP John Kaplan (also an Oakland County resident) didn’t have the requisite pull to keep this speculation about a link to the OCCK case out of the press in his son’s case.
I don’t know if police ever ran Howard Kaplan’s name and photo by the parents of Mark, Jill, Kristine and Tim. He was 21 at the time of the murders. Did they have any connection to this guy? Did he look familiar?
I do know nobody ran the name Chris Busch or his photo by any of the families. Even after finding that freaky scene in his bedroom alongside his rotting corpse. It was a lot more than police uniforms that could be worn to trick kids. People who attended the Busch death scene were instructed to say nothing, “to be cool,” and that was that. Very uncool. And when his name resurfaced decades later, police did not ask the public to come forward with any information about Chris Busch. “Open investigation–can’t talk.” But why wouldn’t they ask for the public’s help once he was back on the killer roster?
He should have died in prison for the crimes we know he did commit. But instead he cruised around Michigan and on his final night, got wasted on vodka and tucked into bed for his last rights-between-the-eyes.