Another Fascinating Wednes Factoid:

[wednes]

Occasionally, people ask me why I am so interested in horror, murder, abnormal psychology, and serial killers. On the surface, I'd suggest that there's no real reason people are interested in this or that...that it just kind of happens. Realistically though, that's not very true. If you want to read the grisly reasons, they are detailed below.

My interest in such things begins right about here, with the mysterious man or men called The Oakland County Child Killer or alternately The Babysitter. I was a little kid in the 70's in Oakland County MI when all that craziness was going on. Parents flipped the hell out over it too. I'm sure that it affected me profoundly to be taught to be afraid of serial killers at such a young age. It was the beginning of a pervasive "Don't go with strangers" campaign on Tv and radio. Plus, he took four kids in a relatively short time; this leads to insane, urgent press coverage.

The craziest thing about The Oakland County Child Killer is that they never caught him. He might even have moved around and killed in other states. They don't know. I even have a Serial Killer (true crime) trading card of him as the shadowy Babysitter. But since I don't have a scanner, you'll just have to take my word for it.
So today I hear that one of the guys they questioned in the 1970's is being questioned again about some shenanegans he got up to in Washtenaw County (which is where I live now, incidentally). In the 70's, my Mom told me that Walt was one of the suspects in the case and that we had to be extra careful in case he came to get us. yeah...

Comments

[thehula.livejournal.com]

I remember having to go to a school seminar with my parents where they taught us to use secret code words and made us "role play" with pretend kidnappers. It was AWFUL. But that was in the early 80s so it wasn't specifically related. Although Royal Oak was a sketchy place back then, not the swank yuppie town it is now.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

I was in Hazel Park at the time, which is even more ghetto now than it was then. I forgot about the code words though, that was huge for a time. My family didn't move to Royal Oak until I was in high school.

[thehula.livejournal.com]

But which SCHOOL did you go to? That makes a HUGE difference when calculating cool punk kid points, you know... ;)

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Let's see:

Longfellow elementary grade 2-6
St Mary Magdalene grade 7 and 8
Webb Jr High grade 9
Hazel Park High grade 10
Kimball HS grade 11-12