I was talking this week with two old friends who grew up alongside our family in Birmingham–same junior high, same high school, same church.  One commented on how many kids and teens were murdered in and around Oakland County when we were kids and teens ourselves.  This was not normal.  It was, at least then, an aberration.  It was deeply traumatizing to entire communities.  And most of these crimes remain unsolved.  One has to ask:  What the fuck was going on there?

People in Oakland County were happy to avoid getting mugged in Detroit or having their car stolen there.  But kids and teens were being abducted, raped and murdered in and around Oakland County at an alarming rate for such a county.   This was not normal.   Walter Cronkite wasn’t talking about counties like Oakland very often.  (Was it just ahead of its time?)

It was not normal to have a chart of dead kids in the local newspaper with seven smiling faces across the top and a “Y-axis” for:  physical description of victim; when/where last seen; last seen wearing; where found/how long missing; condition of body; cause of death; sexually assaulted?; family data; personality traits.  And this was just for the years 1976 and 1977.

As other writers have observed, these types of murders in the area date back well before that time and include other victims not considered “confirmed” OCCK victims.  In addition, Nadine Jean O’Dell, 16, disappeared in Inkster in 1974 and has never been found.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae40kWmTqlk.  And indeed, there are many other crimes against young people in Michigan that predate the 1960s, some described in the below noted website.  The vast majority–unsolved.  No answers.

A reader sent me a link to this Russian website that has a very comprehensive overview of such crimes and very perceptive observations about “Murders of Children,”  “Michigan History.”

https://murders.ru/mi4_hist_1.html

While there are many factual inaccuracies, it is pretty comprehensive and there are some very interesting observations about Michigan’s sad history in this regard.  It appears to have been written in 2015.

Ten years later, no questions have been answered, nothing has moved the needle in any of these cases.