Right.

I soon learned that there was no Oakland County Child Killer singular entity that the news had been pitching all through the '70s and whatever.

That while there may have been one person responsible for the death, let's say, of the individual children that had been abducted, um, this was very clearly tied to a reign of sex, sexual predators of children at the time in the Detroit area, and in the, and in, and in Oakland County.

And, um, a lot of it tied to Cass Corridor.

Um, guys like, um, uh, Richard Lawson, who, who was a, a CI in the Cass Corridor for the, for the peop- for vice and the, the, the, um, [smacks lips] chief of police and shit who were trying to crack down on child predators and stuff.

He was a known child predator who they basically gave a badge to and said, you know, "Let us know what you find, uh, in your exploits," 'cause they were trying to use him to get to bigger things.

Meanwhile, he walked around Cass Corridor fucking little kids, you know, raping them.

Right.

Once J. Reuben Appleman decides to write a book, he knows he too will need to speak with the families, because his goal in writing While Idaho Slept, he says, is to elevate public memory of the victims.

I spent a lot of time trying to get details of, of the victims' lives from people who knew them closely.

And basically what that means is that you're trying to get information from people who are in the, the deepest, darkest spots in their lives, in their, the tumult of mourning and chaos and heartbreak.

And we're talking about parents who had, who not only lost their children, but lost their children in such a violent way that, um, it became relatively impossible to get any of them to talk to me for s- for a very long time, and for good reason.

Also for good reason, since I was writing the book, it was important that I try to talk to them, if for no other reason than to give them the opportunity to say whatever they wanted to say about their children.

But he spends a lot of time in the neighborhood, and he notices something eerie.

The back of the house has this little wooded area, and beyond that little wooded area, there is a parking platform, and I parked up there many times on that little, that little raised parking bluff.

And through, from that platform, you could easily look through that small wooded area, which is only about 30 or 40 or 50 feet of woods, uh, directly into the second floor of King Road, where the kitchen and living ro- living area were, as well as directly into the, the windows of the third floor, uh, where Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, two of the victims, lived.