Other $10,000 questions.

Last weekend I received an email from someone who grew up in Oakland County and was very young when the OCCK crimes occurred. After recently reading about these crimes, the reader immediately honed in on the following.

The most striking thing to me is; how could I as a 50 year old that grew up in [Oakland County] and lived most of my life in southeast Michigan [. . .], have never heard the OCCK or north fox island stories?

In a broader sense, how could the North Fox Island story not be known widely as a national tragedy?

Against the backdrop of the Epstein/Maxwell human trafficking and pedophile ring, these are especially important questions. Here is my take on how and why these crimes were kept under the radar or on the back burner over the past many decades, or at least how they were easy enough to miss if you were very young when, or born after, they happened. It’s long-winded. Sorry.

Before I had my eyes opened, I believed that “back in the day,” maybe sex crimes against kids were just too much for law enforcement to handle mentally and emotionally. That’s why they didn’t go there, if they believed the crimes took place at all. Ridiculous, I know, but if you would never even think to rape a child, it’s hard to wrap your head around such a crime. It’s hard to wrap your head around someone with a wife, family and a good job who would pay for a child or a teen to do god-knows-what to. It’s hard to wrap your head around a family member raping a young relative. It’s hard to wrap your head around someone watching, let alone creating, CSAM that sometimes involves infants. It is so depraved it can seem almost impossible. But it is sadly anything but impossible and don’t kid yourself: These sex crimes can easily escalate to murder.

If it’s the mid-1970s in Birmingham, Michigan (let alone the 1960s and 1970s on N. Fox Island), “kid-diddling” wasn’t a big deal. Property crimes? Traffic control? Or, god forbid–marijuana; now you’re talking. So Chris Busch exposed himself to your daughter. Nobody got hurt, right? He’s harmless! The thought of organized pedophilia in Bloomfield Village? No one would believe it except the survivors. Fly to N. Fox Island to rape boys? Why, those men went there to hunt for deer and discuss charitable contributions with Frank! The survivor was rarely believed over the word of an even half-way presentable pedophile.

But it was much more than ignoring or downplaying sex crimes in Suburbia. If you want to be charitable in your evaluation, it’s L. Brooks Patterson refusing to let the cat out of the bag that raping kids was just as big a business north of Eight Mile Road as it was in the land of Richard Lawson, Ted Lamborgine and Bobby Moore in the Cass Corridor. As a reader commented years ago–it wasn’t just the Cass Corridor. It was also Cass Lake. This was very, very bad for Patterson’s brand.

Even in Detroit, it appears that pedophile Richard Lawson was a confidential informant for Ike McKinnon at Detroit PD not to arrest child rapists, but to find drug dealers. I know it seems hard to fathom today, but it was far worse back then to sell marijuana than to sell a child.

Back in Oakland County, during the reign of the OCCK(s), Patterson was laser-focused on using the prosecutor’s office as a stepping stone to much higher office. This kid-killing shit was bad enough for business; there was never going to be a close examination of the pedophiles in suits and ties in Oakland County, or claims of a “child porn” and sex ring operating out of GM corporate. After all, there were fundraisers to attend and campaign stops to make around Michigan. See Guarded by Jackals.

Based on what I’ve seen and read, I don’t choose the charitable evaluation. I believe Brooks Patterson closely controlled the media coverage of the OCCK crimes even after he and his cunning #2 foisted the case off on the Michigan State Police, and that it was he who ultimately controlled the narrative about those crimes basically until the day he died. It is he who made sure these crimes faded into oblivion, unless it was something he tightly managed as needed. The failures on his watch were not to be discussed, let alone dug into.

Nothing to see here; it was a lone, maniacal killer who really just wanted to hang out with the kids before returning them to God or Satan, where they would be better off. I have written this before–a friend whose dad was a counselor in the Birmingham Public Schools told her that after Tim’s murder they were all instructed NOT to talk about these murders. Imagine that. The impact on the community was basically ignored after a brief period of high-pitched panic. The victims? Their names were rarely uttered or their memories honored. This was not in any way Austin, Texas post-the 1991 Yogurt Shop Murders.

After a relatively short time, no one talked about the crimes. No one demanded answers. The sheeple, my family included, fell into line. Many murders are never solved. Tough break. Move on. It’s still a great place to raise the kids!

I further believe Patterson knew to some degree what was going on with these pedophiles in his county and that he was taking campaign donations from them whether he knew it or not. I believe he cut Chris Busch loose in January 1977 as a favor to or on behalf of H. Lee Busch, who may well have been an even bigger pedophile than his youngest son. What Patterson, his chief deputy Richard Thompson and investigator Gary Hawkins knew at that point will remain forever unknown. But at a minimum, after my brother was abducted on March 16, 1977, I am quite sure these brilliant wheeler-dealers suspected or damn well knew that they had screwed the pooch.

They knew on March 16, 1977 that Chris Busch drove a blue Chevy Vega with a white hockey stripe, a car closely resembling a blue Gremlin with a white hockey stripe. They knew the older woman who described the car to police said it “may” be a Gremlin, not that it WAS a Gremlin. Old women, and I am now one of them, don’t tend to keep brain space for makes and models of cars. Patterson and Thompson probably correctly surmised that the disgusting and very identifiable bearded fat ass, Chris Busch, was sitting in the Hunter Maple parking lot in his Vega, observing the abduction of Tim and facilitating what happened next. As pointed out in Guarded by Jackals, no one swung by Morningview Terrace, 2.5 miles from the abduction site, to see what Chris Busch was up to the week my brother was being held captive.

And they knew for sure that they would be fucked if it ever got out that Chris Busch was suicided in his bedroom at H. Lee’s house in November 1978 and the room converted to a scene that screamed “I am the OCCK!” So they managed to keep that shit under the radar until some seams cracked in Hell and Larry Wasser spilled the beans in 2006 about his attorney pals’ pedophile client, who turned out to be Chris Busch.

There was occasional mention in the news of the OCCK crimes between December 1978 and 2005, but not much more beyond the pathetic “anniversary” coverage by the area networks. That’s a long, long time for a story to calcify into a couple of rote and basically meaningless sound bites.

I want to highlight that at no time after 1978 did anyone in law enforcement or the prosecutor’s office say: We will never give up. We will never forget these four preteens whose lives were snuffed out. If you find such a quote, either on the news or in print, please send it to me. They mostly just tossed quotes about how hard they had worked or were working and how they just didn’t get the tip they needed. Unlike almost every other cold case you hear about that is solved, they never said: We will continue this work on behalf of these four little kids who cannot speak for themselves. They were more concerned about avoiding “useless” tips. They didn’t say “we will never give up,” because they knew they did just that in December 1978.

All the good old boys knew or suspected this investigation got decapitated and then shut down because the decision was made that these crimes would never be solved. Best not to ask or comment. By the time a task force was “rejuvenated” decades later in 2005, one detective would begin the painstaking efforts of doing the work that should have been done right after Mark Stebbins was abducted and murdered in February 1976. That’s a lot of water under the bridge between 1976 and 2005. I believe this detective was thwarted by two Michigan State Police detectives for reasons that range from professional jealousy, to fucked up agency culture, to protecting those who participated in the failure to solve these crimes. In so doing, these two also betrayed the child victims.

Why didn’t you hear much about the case between 2005 and 2019 when the investigation went from life support to once again freezing cold? Because the one reporter who wrote a big story on the case in 2009 for The Detroit News then embedded with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and one of the detectives in order to write a book. The 2020 book was an excellent recap of parts of the investigation post-2005 that the public benefitted from knowing. However, there would be next to no print reporting by that paper after 2009. The reporter turned author and later retired from the paper. No one pressed law enforcement for answers in real time that would be published in the paper to keep the case in the public eye.

The one reporter who wrote a two-day series for the Detroit Free Press in 2012 left the paper soon afterward, allegedly with (but apparently not because of) complaints about the editing on his work on the OCCK investigation. No one really picked up the case in a big way at either major newspaper in the Detroit area ever again. No one even has asked about DNA testing in the wake of so many DNA solves in very old cases around the country since 2019. Crickets. Seems to me like a worthy line of questioning the public might be interested in.

I stress that L. Brooks Patterson was very much alive and still the Oakland County Executive when these two big stories were printed by the two biggest Detroit newspapers. There is no way this man was not all over all of that reporting and shitting his pants. Also, know that the MSP contacted the News after the 2009 reporting, complaining that “their” crime reporter hadn’t written the article. I believe both agencies were pressuring the newspapers. Whatever the reasons, there was never any real follow up. This allowed the public to assume the cops had it under control and that the Busch lead had been properly and thoroughly investigated.

Surely someone would investigate any connection between Busch and Shelden or N. Fox Island, right? Surely someone in law enforcement would listen to survivors of Chris Busch or H. Lee Busch? Wrong and wrong again.

It also did not help that the Oakland County Prosecutor during this time period (2008-2020) was Jessica Cooper. She, along with her #2 Paul Walton, further manipulated the press. I believe she was deeply spooked (as well she should have been) by the civil lawsuit filed against Oakland County in 2012 by Kristine’s mother, Debbie Jarvis. I also believe she was all-in for Larry Wasser, the private polygrapher of Chris Busch who worked for Cooper’s old pal attorney Jane Burgess. She and Walton appeared to have no problem lying to the press. No need for the smoother bullshitting skills of LBP. The 2012 press coverage of her b.s. press conference was worthless because she was worthless and using sleight of hand. Just my opinions; feel free to vouch for her in the comments below if you believe otherwise. I believe her reign did much damage to the OCCK investigation and transparency, on top of what had been done by her long-ago predecessors.

The network coverage of the OCCK case was primarily what it almost always is–empty calories, until the eve of the release of the documentary Children of the Snow in early 2019. Then Channel 4 pulled a bunch of its old footage (which they had previously denied to another documentarian) and did a good job interviewing two men who had been taken to N. Fox Island. They created some two-part series they aired the night before COS aired. There hasn’t really been jack shit by these networks since. (Books, podcasts and YouTube videos have filled some big gaps.)

Furthermore, the cops in this case have ALWAYS hid behind the “open case” bullshit or the “nothing’s up” line to evade any substantive comment about what the hell has or has not gone on in these cases. Not easy to put together a story when the cops shut down the conversation in what is now an almost 50-year-old case.

In the Yogurt Shop Murders in Austin, the cold case detective who shepherded the case to a recent solve not only told the families to their faces what was up with the DNA testing as it was in progress, he did so in front of a documentary crew. He didn’t play hide the ball; most communities see through that shit and don’t appreciate it. He told the camera: I want the public to know these murders are going to be solved some day. And then soon afterward, due in large part to him pressing the DNA testing at every level, they were.

In the OCCK case you have to happen upon a documentary, podcast, YouTube video, or read a book to get the bigger picture of these tragic and heinous murders and why they have never been solved. In the case of Frank Shelden and N. Fox Island there is much, much less to fill in the blanks or remind the public of the dark crimes Shelden never paid for and his many, many victims. He was like some other criminals I can think of–an “enigma.”

So it’s no surprise most people living in Michigan today know nothing about the OCCK crimes or N. Fox Island. The news coverage was never adequate and I believe this was due mostly to L. Brooks Patterson’s long shadow, first as prosecutor and then as county exec–a position he held until he died in the saddle in August 2019.

Nobody asked the hard questions or had the difficult conversation as all of the fuckery in this case started to be exposed in 2007. No one pressed the obvious players in the cover up of this case or those who knew or should have known. And, no surprise, some of them have since died before someone could report their “no comment” or “I don’t recall” in the press. These things were not in the news in real time, when the public could have pushed for greater transparency when it maybe would have made a difference. The public thinks it was all ok because the press never circled back!

Another 18 years have passed and believe me when I tell you there are still people living who wish everyone would just shut the fuck up about the OCCK crimes, the four child victims be damned. It worked in the case of Frank Shelden and N. Fox–why not in the OCCK case?

In Southeastern Michigan people still eat up details about the 1975 disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. They discuss the possibility that after he was quickly dispatched (unlike the four kids in the OCCK case) his body was put through a meat grinder. (Again: Who the fuck does that?)

That’s what metro-Detroiters want to hear about or at least what reporters want to discuss. Not four little kids who were held captive for a total of over 30 days, kept alive for reasons you don’t want to even think about, suffocated and dumped on roadsides like garbage. They don’t want to think about the real reasons those murders have never been solved. They don’t want to learn about things they don’t really want to consider.

And just like the federal government in the Epstein/Maxwell case, the State of Michigan was all too happy to keep that pedophile shit about wealthy philanthropist and bon vivant Frank Shelden, and all of the white collar pedos he brought to N. Fox, under the radar. Pulling the thread on that guy and his “clients” would have been an implosion for tourist-loving Northern Michigan as well as the white collar set in he rolled with in and around the Detroit, Port Huron and Ann Arbor areas and even Aspen, Colorado.

GM was probably the biggest paying advertiser in metro Detroit during that era. Who was going to ask about Chris Busch and his daddy, even if the word did get to the media about his “suicide”? If they did ask, who was going to let the story run at the big Detroit papers?

Those are just some of the reasons these sick Michigan crimes come as a surprise to the majority of people who live there and have never heard of them.

It is more by design than neglect.

–You know where to find me: OCCKTruth@protonmail.com. I read every comment but don’t post them all. I read every email, even the double-secret/decoder-ring/beware of the occult/how dare you/do better/do more emails. I am almost, but not quite, hopelessly behind in responding to emails from this summer and fall. I respond to most, but not all, and I’m sorry–not necessarily promptly. I really do appreciate the vast majority of the communications. Thanks for your understanding.