A very interesting documentary and more proof of how the Michigan State Police does business.

A documentary about the murders of six Michigan women and girls from the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area between 1967-1969 has opened to very positive reviews and numerous film festival awards.  1969:  Killers, Freaks and Radicals, was directed by Ferndale independent filmmaker Andrew Templeton.

https://www.1969doc.com/

It screened last Friday at The Senate Theater in Detroit, and has two screenings at The Park Theater in Holland in early January.

Here’s a good write up of the film and Templeton’s six-year project in Hour Detroit:

‘1969: Killers, Freaks, and Radicals’ Explores a Series of Ann Arbor Murders & How the Counterculture Impacted the Investigation

John Norman Collins is the nephew of Michigan State Police Sgt. David Leik (d. 2019) and those of us who are old enough remember the press coverage of alleged blood stains covered with black spray paint in the Leiks’ basement.  Collins was house and dog sitting for the Leiks while they were on vacation.  Upon their return, in addition to noticing the spray paint job, Leik’s wife noted that a bottle of ammonia, a box of laundry soap and a canister of black spray paint were missing.

When told of Collins’ imminent arrest and the evidence against him, Leik did not disclose the paint job in the basement or the missing items.  The next day he scraped off some of the black spray paint and found red stains that appeared to be blood.  Leik immediately contacted the authorities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Murders

1969 is described as a nuanced film that addresses the turbulent times as a backdrop to the crimes.  The Michigan Daily observed the film’s success in capturing and engaging its audience without “profiting from the victims’ suffering or the killer’s cruelty,” a common pitfall of the true-crime genre. 

That is a triumph in this genre.  However, what really caught my eye was this part of the Hour Detroit article:

[Because he was clean-cut and not a “hippie”] Collins wasn’t seriously considered as a suspect until late in the game. Templeton calls it “hard to believe” that the investigation would’ve played out the same way “had [Collins] been a hippie with long hair and a guitar.” Collins was 23 and studying to become a teacher when he was arrested; he has spent his life in prison, though he has maintained his innocence. And while the murders attributed to Collins are disturbing enough on their own, the secondary horrors of Templeton’s film have to do with gaps left by the police investigation.

Collins’s uncle David Leik was a member of the state police; at least one of Collins’s victims appears to have been murdered in Leik’s basement. How much Leik knew or didn’t know about Collins’s activities is unclear: He claimed not to know anything, but he also had his own reputation to protect. (Leik died in 2019, before Templeton had a chance to interview him.) Whether police stalled the investigation once it became clear one of their own was involved is also uncertain, since Templeton’s last FOIA request was met with a steep bill he couldn’t pay. That information remains unseen.

“There are certain things the state police haven’t been very forthcoming with,” says Larry Mathewson, an Eastern Michigan University policeman who helped find and charge Collins, in the film. “Maybe it’s time to let loose a little bit and let people know what went on.”

(Emphasis added.)

There it is.  The MSP playbook.  Use cost to thwart FOIA laws.  Never be forthcoming when it involves transparency about the agency.  Don’t say a word about Leik, don’t say a word about the connection of a son of a MSP trooper to the Bonneville owned by pedophile Arch Sloan (OCCK case).  Don’t give an update on these ancient cases, don’t say a word.

The only time I’ve seen the state police open up about an ancient, unsolved cold case–and provide a shit ton of documents and bend over backwards to help an author, is in the case of the massacre of the Robison family in Good Hart, Michigan.  As I recall, in that case releasing information and many documents helped demonstrate how full of shit Oakland County and L. Brooks Patterson were.  The MSP could get behind that.  Years ago I wrote about their shapeshifting when dealing with this author compared to people trying to figure out WTH was going on with the OCCK investigation.

Robison murders in Good Hart still haunt 55 years later

Someone should write a book . . .

The gaslighting, stonewalling and complete lack of transparency displayed by the MSP with their FOIA games and failure to respond to any press inquiries in cases like Michigan Murders and the OCCK crimes are not the hallmarks of an elite agency.  They compound the high profile difficulties the agency is experiencing with votes of “no confidence” in the wake of  allegations of internal misconduct, discrimination, rigged promotions, and lawsuits.  Somebody, whether it be the legislature or the Michigan AG needs to force a clean up and major upgrade to this fossilized agency.

More simply, as the former EMU police officer said:

“Maybe it’s time to let loose a little bit and let people know what went on.”  

Maybe just play fair with FOIA laws and be transparent with your constituents in these stone cold, ancient cases.