Frances Shelden was an extremely wealthy Michigan businessman who was involved in an international pedophile ring. He was allowed to flee the country, because law enforcement looked the other way and was apparently too busy to investigate him and his pedophile connections regarding North Fox Island. He decided to disappear when he realized he was going to be questioned regarding these crimes.
He was protected at the very highest levels of the government, most likely the CIA type level.
“Another of the many confidential sources with whom I had contact was Trenton Parker who played a key role in CIA activities in the Caribbean.
To qualify Parker for use in financial operations, the CIA obtained employment for him with New York Stock Exchange brokerage firms from 1971 until 1974 in California and Colorado. While in those positions, he supplied confidential information to the CIA on customers’ accounts and transactions. Eventually he opened his own brokerage firm as a front for the CIA through the SEC and NASD.
This is similar to the operation described to me by CIA operative Gunther Russbacher in which Russbacher received training at Mutual Life Insurance Company and then incorporated and operated a number of CIA financial institutions headquartered in Missouri. These institutions had offices throughout the United States including Denver, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Traverse City, Michigan.”
Why Traverse City? Traverse City is a small community on Lake Michigan (the area has grown extensively.) This small influential community appears to be a hub for various illicit things. Like perhaps acting as financial conduit for things going on in the immediate area. The Petoskey/Charlevoix area, where Shelden owned a home, is a stone’s throw away from Traverse City.
“I keep forgetting that these crimes and the N. Fox Island crimes took place under the watch of not only L. Brooks Patterson and Oakland County local law enforcement, but also on the watch of Michigan A.G. Frank Kelley and Governor William Milliken (native of Traverse City).“
It is a interesting to note that there is/was a huge psychiatric hospital in Traverse City (its since been turned into stores, offices, etc.) that employed many people in the town back in the day.
Then there is the curious fact that James Dudley Ramsey, father of John Ramsey, and grandfather to JonBenet Ramsey, was head of the Michigan Aeronautics Commission from 1957 until 1979. This was the period that Shelden had the airstrip constructed and was flying both children and pedophile clients to North Fox Island.
Detective Robertson decided that the task force should turn to a psychic for help to help solve the OCCK case. They contacted CIA/DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) asset Dr Russell Targ of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) for help. Pioneering work in psychic research had been done by Targ, Hal Puthoff, and Andrija (Henry) Puharich. These men were largely making the occult and all things psychic mainstream, much to the delight of corporate America.
As written in the report it states that Targ advised them they should contact Mr Karliss Ogis of the American Society for Psychological Research. Perhaps this a Freudian slip in the notes, but it should be stated that it is the American Society for Psychical Research.
They decided to use Philip Jordan of New York, who was a special deputy sheriff with the Tioga County Sheriffs Department, New York and had had some success in solving cases for them. During this time, the Daily News had requested he work on the Son of Sam case, and he was waiting to hear back from them on this venture.
Philip Jordan tapped into some very intriguing information that would correlate with various facets of the case; in particular, the rope art work Helen Dagner described on John Hasting’s wall.
They dubbed it ‘Operation ESP’ just like a military type op. At the end of this ‘operation’ Detective Robertson felt it was all about ‘feelings’ and ‘innuendos.’ He noted that, “After a complete review of Operation ESP, it is felt that nothing further can be gained by spending additional time on information that cannot be pinpointed.”
Why they decided to use a psychic and never follow up on any of these very pertinent leads is anyone’s guess. Perhaps because he was the point man for the military industrial complex Detective Robert Robinson knew it was all a show.
Psychic Philip Jordan stressed that he felt it was very important to investigate details and evidence surrounding the first victim, Mark Stebbins. He felt that this particular abduction was very well thought out.
Most likely there were connections to people associated with the American Legion Hall, the last place victim Mark Stebbins was seen. These same people may be associated with the other three children’s abductions and murders. The comings and goings of the people associated with that hall should be investigated, along with their inter-relationships.
How did the tangled weavings really begin? Can we ever really know? We can choose a thread and begin to unravel it.
Perhaps it started with Ian Hornak, the beautiful gay artist with luscious blond hair and equally florid paintings; who is credited with being one of the founders of the Hyperrealist and Photorealist fine art movements.
Artist Ian Hornak at Work
During a visit to his house for an interview, the writer thus described the interior: “Formidably flamboyant paintings blazed from the dark walls: a vase of riotously unsettling flowers, a portrait of a preening macaw, a bowl of demented-looking tulips. Combined with some chaotically gesturing potted plants and his two pet parrots, they deepened the exotic spell, evoking a kind of wild kingdom.”¹
Hornak’s partner was Julius Rosenthal Wolf, the vice president of General Amusement Corporation, which was at one time the second largest talent management agency in the world. When Wolf died on June 11, 1976, John G. Heimann, who was Comptroller of the Currency under President Jimmy Carter, served as executor of Wolf’s estate.²
Hornak palled around with many of the famous avant-garde art crowd. He was friends with Andy Warhol.
Ian Hornak foreground, Andy Warhol background
Robert Mapplethorpe was also part of this crowd. Mapplethorpe has been tied by multiple sources to the “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz, The Process Church, and the unsolved murder of photographer Ronald Sisman. A convicted banker robber, Jesse Turner, who had once lived with Mapplethorpe, told author Maury Terry that Mapplethorpe had asked him to arrange the killing of Ronald Sisman, who had a snuff film of one of the Son of Sam murders.³ Mapplethorpe’s lovers included Jack Fritscher, ex-priest and exorcist, who served on the board of directors of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA)4 and Sam Wagstaff, curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA).5
In 1974 DIA Director Fred Cummings, said of Hornak’s art: “The exotic landscapes he began to paint were evocations of a world partly inside the mind but also with a very real existence outside…I was deeply interested in the implications of these paintings.”6
Ian Hornak. Sorcerer Series: Beast Head, Spider Web, Photorealism, circle of Chuck Close 1969
Photorealist painter Ian Hornak photographed in his studio on March 11, 1971. (Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty Images)
Ian Hornak. Sorcerer Series: Floating Women and children, 1969.
Indeed.
DIA Director Fred Cummings came to the institute in 1964, receiving recommendations from Ellis Waterhouse, an English art historian and lifelong friend of Anthony Blunt, who was Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, a specialist in Poussin, buggerer of boys and an accused murderer.7,8
Anthony Blunt. “Poussin has always remained my first love.”
DIA Director Fred Cummings was described as a man who enjoyed chatting up Fortune 500 moguls and dining with European royalty, and he become increasingly resented by DIA employees for his “Hollywood Connection.” He was accused of running an imperial directorship based on a palace guard of pals in California, dubbed “The Valley Boys.”11
These two “Valley Boy” friends Ron Winokur, an art dealer and former museum employee, and filmmaker Dennis Bogorad, moved to Los Angeles, California in 1978. Winokur, described as brilliant with a wicked sense of humor, could well work the wheels of the art world. When offered a collection of nineteenth century French paintings he sent a client to Christie’s Auction House, where he received twenty times what he was originally asking.12At the DIA he was under scrutiny for his purchase of a sculpture by Paul Manship, “The Moods of Time: Evening” for Mrs Allen Shelden 3rd, effectively undercutting the then museum’s curator of modern art, Jay Bellioli, because he was replaced with Winokur by Cummings. Winokur would not disclose how much he received as a finder’s fee for the piece. Bogorad also undercut another employee under DIA contract, Hermann Tauchert, to do an educational film that was to accompany a museum exhibition called “From a Mighty Fortress: Prints and Drawings from the Veste Coburg Collection.” Tauchert’s budget called for $60,000, while the ten minute film by Bogorad cost around $90,000.13
Eventually there was a state senate committee that looked into the way the museum and the city were handling public funds. The city held up funds going to the Founders Society (a group of wealthy DIA benefactors) waiting on conditions of a new contract stipulating exact administrative procedures the society was to follow. State Senator Jack Faxon, composer of the bill establishing the Michigan Council for the Arts and supporter of Fred Cummings chastised the city of Detroit stating that, “If the city is going to try to exact these kinds of conditions in order to gain a contractual relationship to their satisfaction they might expect the state to do the same to the city.”14
Senator Jack Faxon was an artist and avid art collector. After he died his collection came up for auction at Du Mouchelles.15Faxon was also under scrutiny during the Oakland County Child Killer (OCCK) investigation. He was friends with Kent Shultz, a man who wound up serving three 20-40 year sentences for multiple Child Sexual Conduct-1 (CSC-1, child rape). He was also friends with Frances Shelden, owner of North Fox Island, who was also wanted for questioning pertaining to the OCCK, and who escaped to the Netherlands. The North Fox Island client list was heavily redacted. Faxon may have been on it. Faxon was never questioned by the FBI.16,17
Sources Cited:
1) Patsy Southgate, Ian Hornak: Creating an Art Apart, The East Hampton Star, https://easthamptonstar.com/Archive/1/Ian-Hornak-Creating-Art-Apart.
2) Julius Rosenthal Wolf, Wikipedia/WordDisk, https://worddisk.com/wiki/Julius Rosenthal Wolf/.
3) Torchy Blane, Robert Mapplethorpe: Promoting Cultural Degeneracy, Weaponizing Modern Art, The Renegade Tribune, https://www.renegadetribune.com/robert-mapplethorpe-promoting-cultural-degeneracy-weaponizing-modern-art/.
4) Jack Fritscher, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Fritscher.
5) Deborah Solomon, ‘Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe,’ by Philip Gefter, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/books/review/wagstaff-before-and-after-mapplethorpe-by-philip-gefter.html.
6) Ian Hornak: definition of Ian_Hornak and synonyms of Ian_Hornak (English), https://dictionary.sensagent.com/Ian_Hornak/en-en.
8) JIMMY SAVILE; ROTHSCHILD; ANTHONY BLUNT; MI5, Aangirfan, https://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/10/jimmy-savile-rothschild-anthony-blunt.html
9) Oral history interview with Frederick James Cummings, 1982 July 22, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-frederick-james-cummings-12572.
10) Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781, https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/nightmare-45573.
11) Michael Brenson, Troubles at the Detroit Museum Raise a Plethora of Issues, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/23/arts/troubles-at-the-detroit-museum-raise-a-plethora-of-issues.html.
12) Ron Winokur d.2/25/2006 in Los Angeles, Tribes of the Cass Corridor & Forum, http://corridortribe.com/obits/ron_winokur.htm.
17) Catherine Broad, Ex-Michigan Senator Jack Faxon, What the Hell is the Deal with the Oakland County Child Killer Investigation? https://catherinebroad.blog/2020/08/24/ex-michigan-senator-jack-faxon/.
