Hey everybody welcome back to Cole Case Murder Mysteries.

I'm your host Ryan Kraus returning for another installment of madness as be examined one of the more

notorious open investigations on record the Oakland County child killer

from February 1976 through March 1977, someone or perhaps a team of people terrorized a suburban community

outside of Detroit, Michigan by kidnapping at least four kids between the ages of 10 and 12.

Each was held captive somewhere and subsequently murdered before being dumped nearby.

Similarities in the cases led authorities to believe this was the work of a serial killer,

but a closer look proved the situation was a bit more complicated.

What begins as the search for a homicidal pedophile soon reveals the dark underbelly of a network of people

committed to assisting one another in the trafficking and sexual abuse of minors.

And the conduit between each of them is one element,

child pornography.

There is no internet in 1976 or 77, and there are no magazines on store shelves advertising

to sexual corruption of minors for your personal pleasure.

You can't groom children from the comfort of your home, all of which is to say that if you're a pedophile in that era, whether one who simply wants to purchase and view the porn or even the opposite end of the spectrum, as someone who acquires

children and produces photos and films, you have to know people.

It's like anything else.

If I wanted to meet other writers in 1977, I couldn't join social media and start making

friends. I have to go out into the world and network. I have to locate places where these people

congregate. and then introduce myself hoping those people

will introduce me to others like them. Soon enough, you can rely on each other to have

meetups to critique each other's work or anything else you want to do that might be beneficial to the cause.

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