From These Cases to the Federal Bench: The Officials in the Michigan Murders Record
By Rita Williams | Clutch Justice | July 5, 2026
- Article 01: The Foundation Was Junk
- Article 02: The Uninvestigated Six
- Article 03: From These Cases to the Federal Bench (current)
- Article 04: The Lab That Failed Twice
All official roles and career positions in this article are drawn from the public record: court documents, the Federal Judicial Center’s biographical database, published obituaries, and named investigative journalism. Where documentation is incomplete, it is stated as such. This article documents institutional positions. It does not attribute misconduct to any named individual.
Seven officials held documented roles in the Michigan Murders prosecution or the adjacent OCCK investigation. Two presided over or conducted the 1970 Collins trial. Others held offices whose documented jurisdictions intersected with the North Fox Island case and the OCCK investigation. Several moved into or through the federal judicial and prosecutorial infrastructure in the years that followed. This article maps what the public record shows about each, and states explicitly where documentation runs out.
The Trial Officials
The Collins prosecution produced a documented trial record. Two officials are named in it: the judge who presided and the prosecutor who charged.
Conlin presided over the August 1970 Collins trial and made the evidentiary rulings that admitted Neutron Activation Analysis testimony and microscopic hair comparison evidence. As Article 01 of this series documented, both methods have since been repudiated by the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Justice. The admissibility rulings were judicially standard for 1970: neither method had been formally challenged at that point. Conlin imposed the life sentence following the guilty verdict.
The public record documents his trial role in full. His subsequent career is not documented in the sources available for this article.
Delhey made the charging decision documented in Article 02 of this series: he tried Collins for the Karen Beineman murder only, leaving six attributed cases without prosecution. That decision secured a life sentence while leaving no trial record on six attributed murders. His role in the Beineman prosecution is fully documented. His subsequent career is not documented in the sources available for this article.
The trial record for People v. Collins is the primary source for both officials’ documented roles. Subsequent career trajectories for Conlin and Delhey require access to Washtenaw County court archives and local bar records not available for this publication. Readers with documentary access to those records are encouraged to contact Clutch Justice.
The Genesee County Network
The OCCK investigation generated its own institutional record in Genesee County, separate from the Washtenaw County Collins prosecution but running through the same period and the same Michigan judicial hierarchy.
Stewart Newblatt served on the Genesee County Circuit Court through 1970, the same year as the Collins conviction. He was subsequently appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, where he served from 1979 to 2004. His career moved from the state circuit bench through a decade of private practice and into a federal appointment that spanned a quarter century.
His brother, Harry Newblatt, is documented in the OCCK investigative record as the Genesee County judge who reduced Christopher Busch’s bond from $75,000 to $1,000. That bond reduction, documented through FOIA records compiled by OCCK researcher Cathy Broad, is a documented point in the institutional handling of the Busch case. The record does not establish whether Stewart Newblatt had any role in or knowledge of matters involving his brother’s judicial conduct.
Harry Newblatt is documented as the Genesee County judge who reduced Christopher Busch’s bond from $75,000 to $1,000 in an OCCK-adjacent proceeding. Busch, who died in 1978 in what was ruled a suicide, has been identified in subsequent reporting as a person of significant investigative interest in the OCCK case. The bond reduction is documented in FOIA records. Harry Newblatt is included here as documentary context for Stewart Newblatt’s institutional position, not as a separate member of the seven-official pipeline.
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View Services and Tracks ?St. Clair County and the North Fox Island Connection
The North Fox Island case, which involved the documented child exploitation operation run by Francis Shelden and Gerald Richards, intersected with the OCCK investigation through Busch and Richards’ documented relationship. St. Clair County held jurisdictional proximity to the Shelden network’s operational geography.
Robert Cleland held a documented prosecutorial role in St. Clair County during the period when the North Fox Island network operated within or adjacent to that jurisdiction. He subsequently served as a federal judge for the Eastern District of Michigan. The public record documents his career trajectory. It does not document the exercise of any specific prosecutorial judgment he may have made regarding matters connected to the Shelden network or the OCCK investigation.
His inclusion in this series reflects the documented overlap between his prosecutorial jurisdiction and the North Fox Island geographic record, not a finding of any specific action or inaction on his part.
The Federal Layer
The Eastern District of Michigan held federal prosecutorial jurisdiction over matters connected to both the North Fox Island case and the broader investigative network surrounding the OCCK. The officials who held or served in that office during the relevant period are documented below.
Leonard Gilman served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1981, the period during which federal investigative decisions regarding the OCCK and North Fox Island matters were being made. The federal prosecutorial office held jurisdiction over matters that, by 1981, included documented federal investigative interest in the Shelden network. The public record establishes his office and tenure. It does not document any specific charging decisions or declinations he may have made regarding OCCK-adjacent matters.
Peter Deegan is documented in investigative records as holding a Washtenaw County position with connection to matters in the Michigan Murders investigative record. The public record available for this article does not fully document his specific role or the scope of his involvement. This is stated as a documentation gap, not a finding about his conduct. Fuller documentation requires Washtenaw County archive access.
Ed Sosnick is documented in investigative records as holding an Eastern District connection relevant to the institutional record of these cases. As with Deegan, the public record available for this article does not fully document his specific role or the scope of his involvement. This is stated as a documentation gap. Readers with access to Eastern District records from the relevant period are encouraged to contact Clutch Justice.
What the Careers Show and Do Not Show
The seven officials documented in this article held positions across three distinct institutional layers: the state trial courts that produced the Collins conviction, the Genesee County bench that handled OCCK-adjacent proceedings, and the federal Eastern District infrastructure that held jurisdiction over matters neither state prosecution fully resolved.
Career trajectories do not establish misconduct. What they document is institutional access: who held decision-making authority, in what jurisdiction, during what period. In two major connected investigations that produced one conviction and no federal prosecutions on the adjoining matters, the officials who held that authority moved through the same institutional network. The public record documents the architecture. It does not document the judgment exercised within it. That gap is the subject of ongoing investigative work, not a finding in this article.
The companion interactive tool for this article, the Career Pipeline Map, is available at the Michigan Murders Research Reference Library. It documents each official’s role and career trajectory in a clickable format with sourcing for each node. Where the record is incomplete, that is marked in the tool as it is in this article.
No. This article documents official roles and career positions from the public record. The institutional argument is structural: the same network of officials managed prosecutorial and judicial decisions across two major connected investigations, and several moved into federal positions. The record documents the architecture, not the judgment exercised within it.
Harry Newblatt is documented as the Genesee County judge who reduced Christopher Busch’s bond from $75,000 to $1,000 in an OCCK-adjacent proceeding. He is included as contextual documentation for his brother Stewart Newblatt’s institutional position, not as a separate member of the seven-official pipeline.
The public records available for this article do not fully document their specific roles or the scope of their involvement in the relevant investigative record. This is a documentation gap, not a finding. Fuller documentation requires archive access currently outside the scope of this publication.
The Career Pipeline Map is available at the Michigan Murders Research Reference Library: clutchjustice.com/michigan-murders-library/. It documents each official’s position in a clickable diagram format with sourcing for each documented connection.
- People v. Collins, Washtenaw County Circuit Court (1970). Judge John W. Conlin presiding; Prosecutor William F. Delhey.
- Federal Judicial Center Biographical Database of Federal Judges. Stewart Newblatt, U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan (Flint), 1979-2004. fjc.gov.
- Federal Judicial Center Biographical Database of Federal Judges. Robert Cleland, U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan. fjc.gov.
- Broad, Cathy. Oakland County Child Killer Blog. FOIA documentation of Harry Newblatt bond reduction, Christopher Busch, Genesee County Circuit Court. cathy-broad.com.
- Michigan State Police. OCCK investigative files. Referenced in FOIA releases and named investigative journalism.
- Keyes, Edward. The Michigan Murders. Reader’s Digest Press, 1976. Trial personnel documented throughout.
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