David Ashenfelter of the Free Press reviewed three decades of news coverage, hundreds of pages of Child Killer Task Force investigative reports and talked with victims' family members and some investigators who worked the case.
What emerged from the interviews, he writes, are feelings of anger and disappointment.
Retired detectives said they are upset because a combination of missed opportunities, a failure to the connect dots and bad luck may have prevented them from catching the killer. The families, in their frustration, have filled in the information void with conspiracy theories.
They wonder if investigators are refusing to talk because they are covering up for their mistakes or concealing a killer who may be a member of law enforcement, or is well-connected.
They can't help but wonder whether one key suspect -- Christopher Busch -- got a pass because he was the son of a top General Motors executive. Busch and a codefendant in a sex assault case involving young boys passed State Police polygraph tests that cleared them as child killer suspects in 1977. But the results of those tests have since been put in doubt.
