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The Oakland County Child Killer
What the Hell is the Deal with the Oakland County Child Killer Investigation?
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Issue is they wanted this case solved.
Exactly
When you don’t have anyone in law enforcement who isn’t interested or is told not to pursue an investigation you’re f…d.
Another well told story of how students and scientists are more highly motivated than Sergeants and Special Agents. And I’m sure the students and scientists never threw away any of the evidence they were given, or lost any of the work they completed.
I’d also bet LE had extra people on on the job earning double time while waiting for the perpetrator to surrender and confess.
Othram has a current contract with MSP, they only charge $7500, and they crowdfund on their website. Who in the fuck doesn’t make that an option?
The crowdfunding angle Jamie mentions is the detail that keeps rattling around in my head — the public literally passing a hat to fund DNA work the agencies wouldn’t prioritize. There’s something quietly radical about that: justice as a group project. Othram’s model feels like the 21st-century answer to exactly the institutional inertia G-Man and wr are describing below. Fifty years from now, people are going to be amazed there was ever a window where these cases just sat.
It’s not a matter of money. They are sitting on bad news about the evidence and they won’t come clean to the public. The evidence in this case was so mishandled, so poorly cataloged and stored, ignored for so very long that even with advances in DNA testing and genetic genealogy that could have at one point made up for the lame procedures in 1976 and 1977, the mishandling and deterioration is catastrophic in this case. There is a small chance one piece of evidence still being evaluated can lead to someone with knowledge.
They must evaluate any evidence they find in these god-forsaken paper files that are being digitized, but that is the definition of poor storage. Chain of custody? Forget about it.
They have taken steps in the relatively recent past that should be reported to the public. But they refuse to retest the kids’ clothing not because of cost, but because the evidence is so fucked. They refuse to explain why the Y-str sample developed in Kristine’s case is apparently now considered worthless.
In the largest manhunt of its kind at the time, the evidence trail and history in this case is so shameful, and so indefensible, that no one should expect transparency any time soon.
Here’s something to think about. When Children of the Snow aired in 2019, the big focus was on the hairs found on my brother’s body. On his groin area. In his nose. Why did I have to keep begging them to retest those hairs like a little bitch for five more years? WHY DID YOU WAIT?