The Oakland County Child Killer

WordPress is a free blogging tool and obviously the platform for my blog.  It has some cool web software.  As I mentioned, it shows number of views by country.  It also shows “referrers,” such as FaceBook and search engines used to access the blog.  Most of the views are via FaceBook, because I simultaneously post blog entries to my FB newsfeed.  Thirty-four people have subscribed to this blog via email.

When a viewer is referred to my blog via a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, WordPress software shows the words and phrases users find me with when they search.  A handful of readers accessed my blog via search terms as opposed to a direct link.  The five search phrases used so far are:

catherine broad word press (Makes sense someone would find my blog this way.) (1 search)

catherine broad oakland county child killer blog (Same deal.) (3 searches)

oakland county child killer barry king favorite memories of Tim (What the hell?) (1 search)

occk chris flynn (earlier this week) (4 searches)

christopher flynn berkley pd suicide 1978 (this afternoon) (1 search)

The last two search phrases kind of stand out, especially if you reread my blog entry called Predatory Crime.  Weird, huh?

WordPress stats show a blogger what countries readers are in.  Yesterday and today my little map showed me I have a viewer in the Netherlands.  Around the time of the OCCK murders, the FBI and the Michigan State Police were investigating a child-sex ring run by Ann Arbor multi-millionaire Francis D. Shelden.  Shelden fled to Amsterdam after Gerald Richards, who ran a boys “nature camp” on North Fox Island, MI, for Shelden was arrested for child sex abuse.  Shelden was never extradited and died in the Netherlands in 1996.  Authorities never found Shelden’s wealthy partner, Dyer Grossman of New York.   I’m sure authorities didn’t get much out of Shelden’s attorney, L.Bennett Young of Bloomfield Hills, MI.

When the Netherlands passed a bill outlawing child pornography in 1985, it was the only country in Western Europe that had not outlawed child pornography.  In addition, it had a strict law on postal privacy, making it perfect clearing house for child porn.  There was no extradition treaty with the US when Shelden fled there in 1976.

So, I have a viewer in the Netherlands, despite the fact that I have done very little to publicize my blog.  I guess it makes sense.  But if I get readers from Thailand, I am going to be seriously bummed.