As tragic as this entire case is, there have been many serendipitous, right-place, right-time aspects of it for which I’m very grateful.
A year ago, my manuscript just happened to land on the desk of Dylan Lightfoot, an editor at McFarland Publishing/Exposit Books. I soon knew my book had found its home.
Dylan wasn’t just a strong, scrupulous editor; he knew the case backwards and forwards. Growing up in Pontiac, Michigan, Dylan experienced the pervasive sense of fear first-hand. As a former newspaper journalist and a true-crime book editor, Dylan said then he’d never been “more keen to work on a project, nor felt more uniquely suited to one.”
A connoisseur of facts, Dylan started working on a time line of the case I think as soon as I signed my contract. A year later, he has now produced the most comprehensive, sequential, as-it-transpired accounting of the Oakland County Child Killings case ever.
To say this project is long overdue is an understatement. To know that it took a civilian (albeit a guy with a certain passion for synthesizing information) to do this and not a member of law enforcement is yet another shameful hallmark of this case.
There’s a reason Dylan says this timeline is “not exhaustive." There’s an implied imperative here: get the word out far and wide.
Share this amazing timeline anywhere and everywhere.
And then get ready. The truth will out.