james_davis_nicoll

Not that I've found. (Then again, I didn't spend more than 2-3 hours looking. But I'm a pretty fast looker...)

At first glance the oceanography group seemed to be separate, with an actual book and all and write ups in conventional sources (the book shows on google books, but there's no e-book, and it doesn't show up for sale at abebooks or similar, though).

But that article listing Starchild as the contact the oceanography group for it makes that seem unlikely to the point of near impossibility.

Granted he may have intentionally enlisted people for the oceanography group who had no clue about the pedophilia ring and were used to add a veneer of respectability to the name.

But who knows.

Edited 2014-07-22 13:55 (UTC)

MPR WARNING SO MANY TRIGGERS

Gerald Richards named the Ocean Living Institute as a front for homosexual activity with boys / tax dodge in Senate hearings in 1977. Richards was convicted of having sex with a 10-year-old boy, as part of the North Oak Island, Michigan child pornography ring investigation.

Starchild incorporated the OLI in Delaware, but it was based out of his apartment at 31 Davis Avenue in Kearny, New Jersey. The North Arlington address no longer exists, but might have been a commercial office space. Starchild describes the OLI as a mailing list of 2000 people. Starchild had a history of improper relations with children, going back at least to 1965 in Wisconsin Rapids. A convicted felon, Starchild appears to have died, an expat in Latin America.

Dyer Grossman was an officer of OLI. Grossman was a Cornell alumnus and boys' school teacher with an oceanography background. Grossman became a subject of an FBI manhunt after being implicated in the North Oak Island child pornography ring. He was last sighted at a motel in Tacoma, Washington with a "lot of camera equipment", in 1976/7. Grossman planned to create OLI camps for boys in the Pacific Northwest.

Francis D. Shelden was the money backer of the OLI. The great-grandson of a governor of Michigan, he was heir to a large private fortune. He also shuttled boys on his private plane to his private island in Lake Michigan to be filmed in child pornography. Shelden too became the subject of an FBI manhunt. Shelden disappeared in late 1976, turning up in the Netherlands as "Frank Torey", a significant pedophile advocate, publisher and writer in that country, which at that time would not allow the extradition of sex offenders. Shelden / Torey appears to be dead.

Three people have denied being board members of the OLI:

John Ripley Forbes, the founder of many children's natural history museums, who was "very angry" to learn that he had been listed as a member of the board of a child pornography front / tax dodge. Forbes died in 2008.

John Porter, the founder of Camp Kabeyun, who was "shocked" to learn that he had been listed etc. Forbes knew Grossman through Porter, who knew Grossman's wealthy family on Long Island. Grossman had been a camper and later a director at Camp Kabeyun. Porter died in 1978.

Bailey Smith, executive vice-president of Hoppin, Watson. Smith was an oceanography enthusiast who knew Grossman, and both were Cornell alumni from the same period. I cannot find any record of a person who is undeniably Smith after 1977. Hoppin, Watson merged with Janney Montgomery Scott in 1978, but there is no listing of him that I can find in their history.

There is one person I could find who admits to being a board member of OLI: the science fiction writer Jerry Eugene Pournelle. Pournelle admits to significant work as a board member. Advertisements for the OLI were placed in Galaxy Magazine during the same time Pournelle was a columnist.

There is one publication I can find for the OLI, a two-page interview by the future head of the Libertarian Party of Canada, Vince Miller, of Starchild and Grossman, in the pages of Option Magazine. It is available on microfilm, but I have not read it yet.

Edited 2014-07-23 17:24 (UTC)

If Bailey Smith was Cornell class of 1954, he's still around (or was quite recently) and helping organize alumni activities.

Dyer Grossman was class of 1963, though, so that may be the wrong Bailey Smith (though the disparity of dates doesn't rule out their meeting via old boys' network).

Ah! Thank you for the dates. And also for the information that Smith didn't flee to the Netherlands, because I was getting a little sick looking through all this stuff.

I think I have a Cornell Club connection...

The late Marilyn Wright, the reporter for the Traverse City Record-Eagle who covered the investigation into the pedophile ring, talked with the '54 Bailey Smith in 1977, and he confirmed knowing Grossman then, last seeing him in January 1976.

It seems entirely possible that some people were involved (to the extent of having their names dropped and so forth) who didn't know at all what was actually going on, so I wouldn't expect that they'd all need to "fly at once, all is discovered." But you never know which.

After the fact, however, with the FBI manhunt, and Starchild's fraud conviction (he was named trustee of Shelden's "fly at once" stash, several million dollars, and looted it, but Shelden figured out a way to charge him from abroad), and the Senate hearing, and the Pulitzer-nominated investigative newspaper reports, I think it's a little unlikely that anyone involved in OLI would not have known what it actually was, even if they were complete dupes beforehand.

Sure. I'm just saying I expect some of those "Oh, shit, pedophilia? I so did not sign up for this shit" reactions were real.

I sincerely hope that's the case.

I don't know what the hell to make of the person who decided to brazen it out.

BTW, I think you mean North Fox Island.

Whoops. Yes, North Fox Island. What a slip! My subconscious must be linking it to the bizarre mystery around that Nova Scotia island.

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