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Detroit Art: A Tangled Web of Illicit Dealings

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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.”

 

Cummings appreciated the talent that Larry Fleischman, president of the Arts Commission, had in procuring paintings. It was Fleischman who acquired the painting “The Nightmare,” by Henry Fuseli. He managed to acquire it with local businessman Bert Smokler for very little.9   Sigmund Freud had a copy in his apartment in Vienna in the 1920s.10

 

The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli

 

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.15  Faxon 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.

7) Ellis Waterhouse, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Waterhouse.

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.

13) Brenson, Troubles at the Detroit Museum.

14) Ibid.

15) DuMouchelles, Press Releases, https://www.dumoart.com/PressReleases.

16) Narrative Police Report, Detective Cory Williams. https://catherinebroad.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/ex-michigan-senator-jack-faxon.pdf.

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/.

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Psychological Operations and the OCCK Case

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The Oakland County Child Killer (OCCK) case. A case on par with the Franklin Cover-up and so many others. It was a case during the 1970s that you did not hear about very much, unless you lived in Michigan and most specifically the Detroit area, where everyone was terrorized. 

You didn’t hear about the OCCK case because the case was successfully covered up.  How did they do it? Well unpacking that is disclosing an almost successful psychological operation, but one that now is unraveling very quickly. And make no mistake, many people are concerned, because it involves peeling the mask off the face of complicity in nothing less than rank evil. Yes, the stench of it is all pervasive.

The grand finale in the case came when Christopher Busch, an OCCK suspect unknown to the victims families, was found allegedly ‘suicided’ in his bed.  The OCCK task force that was in charge of investigating the case was then summarily closed. Many years went by. The families thought the cops were diligently working on this cold case and never thought to question the investigation. It was felt the case was in good hands.

Then, the first crack into their psychological operation was exposed when a family friend of one the victim’s families happened to run into a man at a polygrapher’s conference who said he had polygraphed a suspect of the OCCK case before the last victim, Timothy King, was murdered.

Suddenly a deluge of information came out regarding a certain polygraph of the forementioned suspect Christopher Busch that the victim’s families did not know existed until this information was exposed.

“… someone missed redacting a “Larry,” but I knew as of July 2006, before the cops ever got involved in this, that Larry Wasser is the polygrapher who talked to Patrick Coffey about the OCCK case in July 2006. And we tried for a year to find a way to get some information about what Wasser said without naming him directly or involving the cops early on, who, as you might have figured out by now, are not always that helpful in this case.

The families of the murdered kids found out there was someone named Christopher Busch who was a suspect.  Who was this Christopher Busch?  Why were we not told about him? Did he have information to blow the case wide open? Was this the reason he was ‘suicided’? Was he threatening to talk about what he knew about the Michigan pornography rings and snuff film rackets that he was most likely a part of? Was he becoming an extreme liability and had to be silenced at all costs so the truth wouldn’t come out?

The book Portraits in the Snow gives a good run-down of the Michigan mafia and it’s many guises from someone who was there at the scene—an insider.  The writer also discusses the revelation of the polygraph.

The latest psy-op regarding this case pertains to an statement of the very worst kind by none other than the Michigan State Police.  In regards to a well written and detailed non-fiction book about the case recently written by Detroit News journalist Marney Rich Keenan, a spokesperson for the police said: We don’t comment on fiction. Basically stating that 1. They don’t know the difference between fact and fiction or 2. The whole investigation was a fiction of which they were key players.

Indeed, Michael Hoffman tells us in his book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare:

“This is what simplistic researchers miss: the function of macabre arrogance thumbing its nose at us while we do nothing except spread the tale of their immunity and invincibility further. That is the game plan operant here.

And regarding another polygraph of another suspect, John Hastings, which police said he had passed. But didn’t—it was inconclusive. Begs the question. Is it really possible to be that inept? Or is something more sinister at play here?

A pattern of mismanaged data, thrown away evidence, and leads not properly followed haunts this case.

“I will say this: It took lawsuits, appeals, over $11,000 plus attorney fees to get a pile of redacted documents from the Michigan State Police. A pile of documents wherein they neatly tucked photos of my brother’s dead body.

 

RELATED:

Cars and Gaslighting.

11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting

 

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Doug Wilson and the OCCK Case

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Doug Wilson was hypnotized by the FBI to provide information on Timothy King’s (one of the OCCK victims) abduction scene.  Wilson could remember quite a few details of the abduction scene.  He remembered the individuals involved and provided enough information for composite sketches of two possible suspects.  He  remembered the possible car used for the abduction, a Pontiac Le Mans 2-door coupe and even the last three numbers on the license plate: 222, but he couldn’t remember the proceeding three letters, stating that, “I can only surmise that numbers are stored in a different part of the brain than the phrase would be.”

1973 Le Mans 2-door coupe

After reading this information on father of Tim King, Barry King’s website, A Father’s Story, I thought of a scene in a Finnish crime drama, called Bordertown, my husband and I have been watching at night on Netflix.  At the beginning of the story titled
“The Dolls’ House,” part 1, Detective Kari Sorjonen was touching various parts of his head to access information about a particular case he and his team were working on. His information was very detailed. My husband asked if he was psychic, and I said maybe. I said it reminded me of how Druids probably accessed vast amounts of information in space and time by using specific memory techniques.

After mulling over Doug Wilson’s statement “I can only surmise that numbers are stored in a different part of the brain than the phrase would be — I thought that this is probably correct, at least in his case, and possibly other memory techniques could be used to obtain the entire license plate sequence of numbers and letters if he were to again be hypnotized.  Remembering smells, sensations, or various things that were going on right before this abduction memory might help.

Tim King told his dad that he wouldn’t go off with any strangers when he was warned about the OCCK that was on the loose.  He must have known his abductors. So who could have been the people that Doug Wilson viewed under hypnosis at the abduction scene that Tim King knew? 1. John McKinney? Link information is verbatim from the book Portraits in the Snow. Want kind of car did McKinney drive?  2. John Hastings?  Apparently he liked to play baseball, and could have met Tim through this mutual hobby.  There is very little information on these two suspects, including photos or other visuals. Perhaps its been scrubbed from the Internet. It’s very odd that none of this information hasn’t been painstakingly cross referenced.

To bad that people can’t view the photo composites drawn from Doug Wilson’s hypnosis session.  You would think that investigators would want the public to see that information in order to help solve the case.

RELATED:

A very diligent investigator filed a FOIA with the FBI…

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