Upon his return from Atlanta, Cory Williams decided to make a career move. For over a year, Kym Worthy had been campaigning to bring the Livonia detective on board at the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. She was impressed by his work on the OCCK case and she wanted him on her hand-picked team downtown. But Williams had to wait until he had 27 years on the Livonia force before he could be eligible for retirement. By August 2009, the stars had aligned. The prosecutor’s office had an opening for a detective position in the Criminal Investigative Division and Williams was fully vested.
In September 2009, a retirement party was held at a banquet room at George Murphy’s at the Creek, a large, casual American bar and restaurant in Livonia. Worthy and Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Tim Kenny were in attendance, as were Williams’ extended family, friends, relatives and co-workers. As the most decorated officer in the Livonia Police Department to date, Williams had earned a great deal of respect. Michelle was one of the first to step up to the microphone to toast her husband.
She told how she first learned her then-boyfriend was a “bit of a kooky thrill seeker.” When Williams was working undercover narcotics in the inner city, he would call her at 4 a.m. and give her the play-by-play as he was getting ready to “do a door,” cop lingo for raiding a drug house. Dates with Cory at the wheel involved reenacted car chases, back when cops were “allowed” to ram cars.
“At the time, I thought it was really hot,” Michelle said to laughter from the crowd. “Now I know it was just plain nuts.”
In the last five years, she said, “all Cory has thought about is the Oakland County Child Killings case. He is determined to close it. It has been difficult for our family at times. Taylor often says we should superglue the cell phone to his head.”
“Mysteries are not an option in his world,” she said. “Even at home, if somebody wears muddy shoes into his garage, in a matter of minutes Cory will find out who did it, when they did it and where they got the mud from!”
She raised a toast, expressing the collective wishes of the loved ones of police officers everywhere: “May your phone fall in the ocean and may your new job at Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office be really, really boring!”28
But the new job, which would begin in January 1, 2010, would be anything but boring. In October 2009, a month after his retirement from Livonia, a meeting was held at Michigan State Police Second District Headquarters in Northville that Kym Worthy would later single out—and not in a good way. “That was when things started to go south,” she said ruefully.29
Since August and into the fall that year, Helen Dagner had been boasting on her website that Williams had phoned her before his trip to Atlanta to interview her “star” suspect, and that she had lent her expertise to advance the investigation. Not surprisingly, she omitted her confession about spreading untruths about Hastings and the made-up evidence. But the fact that the lead detective had indeed called her heightened her credibility with her followers.
Dagner’s brag had the opposite effect on Det. Garry Gray. When he read that Williams had called his nemesis without telling him, he went straight to his superiors. He told them he had just cause to remove Williams from the Task Force: his conversation with Dagner constituted a confidentiality breach and thus he could not be trusted. Williams was “a leak” Gray said—despite the fact that Williams had not “leaked” anything and Dagner was hardly the media. And yet, Williams was about to face a firing squad.
In attendance at the meeting were Williams’ bosses from Livonia, Deputy Chief Curt Caid and Captain Mark Laberge; Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office Chief of Investigations James Bivens, MSP Captain Harold Love; Garry Gray; and a young FBI agent newly assigned to the case, Sean Callaghan. Callaghan was replacing Agent John Ouellet, who received a promotion in June 2009.
Gray seemed to be very impressed with Callaghan. And because Callaghan was once an assistant prosecuting attorney in Oakland County, Jessica Cooper had also taken a shine to him. At this meeting and in meetings to follow, Callaghan made no secret he was only too happy to be part of a team effort that would freeze out the one detective that had done more than anyone to advance the OCCK case.
In the conference room, the meeting started professionally enough but quickly turned contentious. Gray and Callaghan charged that Williams should be removed from the case because he was a “leak.” The Livonia chiefs backed Williams, calling the “leak” claim ridiculous.30
Chief Caid accused the MSP of railroading Williams, insisting his detective was following proper investigative protocol by gathering as much information on a suspect (John Hastings) as possible before conducting an interview. In a statement that would prove prophetic, Caid said: “This is bullshit. You’re just cutting him loose so that you could run the ball into the end zone on your own.”31
Williams reasserted that the Kings felt they were being stonewalled in their many attempts to meet with the Task Force so they could be updated “on the information that they supplied two years ago that had brought us to this point in the investigation.” He reminded the assembled officers that the Busch lead likely would have never surfaced if not for the Kings.
Williams said the investigation should not get locked into “the old state police mentality that treats the victims’ families like suspects,” and warned them that the Kings were going to the media if they didn’t get some answers soon.
“Sorry, Cory,” Callaghan said dismissively. “Around here, we don’t let the tail wag the dog.”32
Williams almost jumped across the table. “Who the fuck is we?” he said.
Capt. Love called for order and Williams sat back down. Regaining his composure, Williams said: “You are not thinking outside the box. It will come back to bite you if you keep treating the victims’ families this way.” Nonetheless, when the meeting concluded, Williams had been sidelined from the Task Force.
A few days later, in a bizarre about-face, Garry Gray, who had vowed “not to tell (the families) anything,” decided to meet with the family of Kristine Mihelich. In the vestibule of MSP headquarters, Gray warmly greeted Kristine’s mother Debbie Jarvis, and her half-sister Erica McAvoy (Erica was four when Kristine went missing). When they sat down, he laid out three fat files labelled in block letters “BUSCH,” “GREENE” and “GUNNELS.” It was the first Jarvis and McAvoy had ever heard of these suspects. When they were shown photos of Busch’s suicide in his bedroom, McAvoy quickly concluded the scene looked staged. “Was Busch’s suicide ever investigated as a homicide?” she asked.33 She did not get a definitive answer. She asked about the ropes and Gray told her there were blood stains on them. Where were they now? she asked. Livonia police tossed them, he told her. Later, McAvoy would learn that Livonia was never in possession of them.
Williams was baffled. For the second time, he had been removed from the Task Force. The first boot, in May 2007, came after the complaint that Livonia PD had put too much pressure on the MSP to process DNA evidence. This time, the ousting was for a “leak” that was not a leak and because he had pushed too hard to keep the families informed about the investigation. And now Gray took it upon himself to do precisely what he had advised Williams not to do.
After the meeting with Gray, Erica McAvoy said, she felt overwhelmed. She was still processing the enormous failures of the investigation: how was it that a four-time convicted pedophile who lived in Birmingham had never been investigated or named as a suspect? She phoned Barry King—it would be the first time any members of the victims’ families had spoken to each other in over three decades.
McAvoy told King the reason they had never reached out was because her mother found it too upsetting to be involved in the investigation. Barry said he understood—Marion had been the same way. But, like so many curiously timed events in the case, McAvoy said her mother had called her out of the blue and said she wanted to meet with the Michigan State Police. So, McAvoy went with her, never expecting the enormous
amount of evidence that would be laid out before them.
When McAvoy told King all that she and her mother had been told about Busch, Greene and Gunnels, he found it particularly insulting. “We’d been asking for a similar meeting for the better part of a year.”
Barry King was done waiting.
* * *
1. Montmorency County Sheriff’s Officer Charlotte Pelham written supplemental report, March 24, 1977.
2. Montmorency County Sheriff Department, Supplementary Investigation Report, March 3, 1977.
3. Retired Montmorency Detective Junior Brandenburg, in phone interview with Det. Cory Williams, City of Livonia Narrative report: OCCK Investigation. Incident # 77–0006883, February 12, 2008.
4. Brent Busch to Det. Williams and Gray, at MSP post in Newaygo, Michigan, Ttranscript of interview, March 3, 2008.
5. MSP Det. Sgt. Richard C. Miller, Supplemental Incident Report #065–00025640–01 re: Medical Examiner Dr. Richard Peters, July 23, 2001.
6. Interview 21–1787–08 with Scott Busch, by Detectives Garry Gray and Cory Williams at MSP post in Newaygo, Michigan, August 6, 2009.
7. Valerie Basheda and James A. McClear, “Oakland’s Judge Cooper brushes off her detractors,” The Detroit News, February 12, 1991.
8. Oakland Press Editorial Board, “Prosecutor Must Explain Her Actions,” The Oakland Press, January 16, 2009.
9. https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/juvenile-life-without-parole/.
10. The Editorial Board, “Michigan Prosecutors Defy the Supreme Court,” New York Times, September 10, 2016.
11. Brian Dickerson, “Justice Delayed, Maybe Forever,” Detroit Free Press, August 26, 2016, A 15–6.
12. www.jessicacooper2020.com
13. Elisha Anderson, “25 Years Ago, Malice Green Became the Face If Police Brutality in Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, November 5, 2017.
14. Coleman Young (no byline), “Larry Nevers, Detroit Cop Who Went to Prison in Malice Green Incident, Has Died,” www.deadlinedetroit.com, February 4, 2013.
15. Anderson, “25 years.”
16. Rochelle Riley, “Detroit Owes Debt to ’08 Renaissance Heroes,” Detroit Free Press, January 1, 2009, 3.
17. Abigail Pesta, “Kym Worthy’s Mission: Solve 11,000 Rapes,” Newsweek, April 9, 2012.
18. Kristen Jordan Shamus, “Michigan's New Rape Hit Tracking System: What It Means for Survivors,” Detroit Free Press, December 5, 2018.
19. Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Rob Moran, in interview with author, September 2010.
20. Det. Cory Williams, City of Livonia Narrative report: OCCK Investigation. Incident # 77–0006883, March 26, 2009.
21. Transcript of Karen Zaspel phone call to her brother, James Vincent Gunnels, in county jail in Butte, Montana, March 27, 2009.
22. Transcript, Karen Zaspel.
23. MSP Det. Sgt. Robert Dykstra, Det. Cory Williams: City of Livonia Narrative report: OCCK Investigation. Incident # 77–0006883 Entry date: July 29, 2009.
24. Correspondence from Barry King to OCP Jessica Cooper, June 24, 2009.
25. John Walsh’s six-year-old son Adam Walsh was abducted from a Hollywood, FL, mall on July 27, 1981. His head was found two weeks later in a ditch in Indian River County. Adam’s murder captured national media attention. The case officially closed December 16, 2008, without a convicted suspect. Walsh went on to fame as the host of America’s Most Wanted. Also notable from Williams’ note on this point: “The Walshes long ago derided the investigation [into Adam’s death] as botched. Still, [John] praised the Hollywood police department for closing the case. ‘This is not to look back and point fingers, but it is to let it rest,’ he said.” Det. Cory Williams, City of Livonia Narrative report: OCCK Investigation. Incident # 77–0006883, June 19, 2009.
26. Helen Dagner, www.cloakndagner.proboards.com
27. John Hastings to Det. Cory Williams, City of Livonia Narrative report: OCCK Investigation. Incident # 77–0006883, August 10, 2009.
28. Michelle Williams, draft of speech, September 17, 2009.
29. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy interview with author, September 2010.
30. Garry Gray, “Child Killing Timeline, Wayne Co. Pros. Office/Livonia PD. 2004 through 2010, 15.
31. Livonia Deputy Chief Caid, “Child Killing Timeline, Wayne Co. Pros. Office/Livonia PD.” 2004 through 2010, 15.
32. FBI Agent Sean Callaghan, “Child Killing Timeline, Wayne Co. Pros. Office/Livonia PD.” 2004 through 2010, 15.
33. Erica McAvoy, interview with author, October 23, 2009.
12
Brother Paul’s Children’s Mission
In August 1977, five months after Timothy King was laid to rest, Redbook magazine printed an article, “What Pornographers Are Doing to Children: A Shocking Report,” by Judianne Densen-Gerber. Densen-Gerber was a lawyer, psychiatrist and outspoken advocate for children.
In May, Densen-Gerber had testified before a congressional committee that there were at least 264 monthly publications devoted to child pornography, helping to persuade the House of Representatives to unanimously pass a bill to regulate it. (At the time, there was no federal statute that specifically regulated or restricted pornographic material involving children.)
Densen-Gerber wrote:
I have personally purchased magazines carrying the titles Nudist Moppets, Chicken Delight, Lust for Children Schoolgirls, Naughty Horny Imps, Chicken Love and Child Discipline and seen such films as Children Love and Lollipops #10. I found them in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, New Orleans, Detroit, Flint, Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles, and even in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Australia. And I have become angered beyond description…
Common sense and maternal instinct tell me that these abuses are not a question of freedom of speech and press. Children are not consenting adults; they are victims whose spirits are mutilated as their bodies are violated. This is a matter of child abuse and should be dealt with through child-abuse laws. … It is outrageous for someone to publish a primer instructing a sex molester on how to pick up a child in the park and subsequently assault her sexually.1
In the late seventies, Redbook was a popular women’s magazine, a mainstay for housewives sitting under the hair dryer at the beauty salon. So, it was not surprising that Marion King would have had the magazine at home or read the article.
But when Cathy King Broad stumbled upon the old issue of Redbook while looking through some of her mother’s things, the photos accompanying the article jumped out at her. “I remember in some photos the child’s eyes and body parts were covered with black ‘bars,’” Broad recalled in a September 2010 email.
The one photo that has always haunted me was the middle one of a boy who looked like Tim. In the photo, the boy’s face was not covered because it was just a photo from the waist up. It’s been decades, obviously, but I know the boy did not have a shirt on and it looked like he had on pants. The photo was the most innocuous of them all, so the child’s face was not covered. But it resembled Tim and it made me sick. So, I closed the magazine and threw it on the floor. It was my Mom’s magazine, so I figured she had seen it.
At the time, we were under the cop-induced impression that the OCCK was one very sophisticated, diabolical person and that child pornography had nothing to do with the abductions. That’s why I didn’t pursue it then. Back then, it was just a disgusting reminder of Tim’s abduction. “Thank God, it wasn’t a porno deal.” (Right.)
So many years later, that misguided thinking would become ruefully apparent. There is no satisfactory answer to why no one in law enforcement investigated a possible link between a nationwide
pedophile/child pornography ring, operating on a small island in Lake Michigan owned by a Grosse Pointe multi-millionaire, and the serial abduction and murder of children down-state.
Not that attempts to connect the dots weren’t made. But those investigations, for a myriad of now suspect reasons, would fall by the wayside, serving to further cement the time-worn mantra of the victims’ families: money and power can make a lot of things disappear.
If Christopher Busch was involved in a nationwide, multi-million-dollar child pornography ring, that might link to the four victims in the OCCK case. It could explain Christopher Busch’s questionable suicide/deathbed scene. It could explain why the children were held for days before they were killed. And it could lend credence to the theory that someone, or some group, conspired to conceal the evidence against Busch forever—were it not for a purely happenstance meeting between a boyhood friend of Tim King’s and a fellow polygrapher.
Thanks to a four-month investigation by journalist Marilyn Wright of the Traverse City Record-Eagle, a series of articles published in 1977 and 1978 exposed the so-called Brother Paul’s Children’s Mission on North Fox Island as a front for an underground pornography network. Wright uncovered how children were coerced into sexual acts and then photographed for use in porn magazines. She reported that Michigan State Police examined the backgrounds in the photos found in several child porn magazines and identified them as buildings and terrain on North Fox Island.
The Snow Killings Page 23