Sheriff Cole Whips Out Johnson to Explain Attacks on This Website

This article will attempt to make some sense of what happened this last week following the discovery of a body at the disc golf course inside the school's forest, the sheriff's notifications and lack of notifications to the family of the deceased and the media, and the sheriff's subsequent statements attacking this website and in defense of his actions, by reviewing the record.

The Discovery and First Notifications by the Sheriff's Office

A golfer searching for a lost disc found a body around 6:15 p.m. on the evening of September 24.  According to early reports, the body had been at the location for up to two days.  The COLDNews obituary published after the autopsy had been performed listed the death as occurring on September 23.  

Despite the passage of time during unseasonably warm conditions, the sheriff's office was able to somehow determine the identity of the body.  Walkley had been arrested numerous times in his short life for drug offenses, apparently resisting enough one time to get the extra charge of assaulting/obstructing an officer, the latest sentencing for his crimes was delineated in the Nov 11, 2016 MCP:

I can actually attest firsthand to his offense, having visited people I know in the upstairs apartment at that address and smelling the acrid smell that accompanies meth production during 2016, and seeing a suspicious group of visitors going to and from his apartment.  To be sure, that activity was reported to a sometimes indifferent-seeming local police, and this poison-making felon was taken off the streets eventually.

Had the justice system kept James Walkley behind bars for the minimal 3 years he was sentenced for, he would likely be breathing today.  His supervision conditions state that he was on a tether with GPS and likely had to be within a specific location at specific times every day, so why did it take up to two days and non-police disc golfers to finally find him, as per Sheriff Cole's admissions? 

Sometime that night they made a positive ID and seem to have notified his estranged wife, who shared her grief on Facebook.  Her initial post was just after midnight on the night he was found:

As you can see many people reacted within that morning and later.  As you can guess, the news quickly spread among her acquaintances and their friends and family, so that after twelve hours passed and the COLDNews printed the story of a body at the disc golf course, at least one donation can had already been placed, and responders saying the wife was telling people.  

Now, this woman was informed of his death by what one must assume is the investigating authorities, which is often one of the first things done by responsible agencies.  They may have even used her to verify the identity.  Nobody from the sheriff's office since that time has said that she was sworn to secrecy about the death of Walkley.  It is quite rare to do so, since once the notification process has begun, there's really no putting the genie back in the bottle once it's released, and once it hits the social media.  

The Ludington Torch Runs with the Identity

September 25th was the night of a city council meeting, and on these days I am usually writing or fine-tuning my public comments in preparation for the meeting when I'm not occupied with doing other things.  I had noticed the story and was interested in the details that never seem to come from Sheriff Cole's office except in enigmatic snippets, but the story effectively found me.  I had been contacted by somebody that had read the Facebook posts and did their research, they alerted me to who it was and some other facts; the story found me.

After double checking the material and doing a bit of additional searches, including the finding of the obituary of James Walkley (as seen before) and personal corroboration with reliable sources, I did a rush job to get the information out.  I did not do this without some trepidation, I noticed the COLDNews had said that afternoon that the MCSO had not released the information, neither had the concurrent MCP article.  

Yet I could not figure out why it was not being put out, because what you had was a young and healthy, tethered felon who turned up dead in a school forest, where kids go to play disc golf, ride bikes, and wander about.  The sheriff and other departments, fire and police, were conducting searches that night, nobody said what they were searching for.  The sheriff says it's suspicious then changes his mind and says the public should not be concerned, even though somebody who was found guilty of maintaining a drug house and maintaining a meth lab (separate offenses in 2011 and 2016) and who should have been in prison was dead without a publicly-known cause.  

I see potentially many dangers to the public which should have been individually addressed, which has only been increased following the release of more sketchy details, concerning Walkley's missing bike and that his clothes had been found in areas away from his body.  This mounting evidence doesn't suggest he died of a simple self-administered overdose.  

When I wrote and published Identity of Disc Golf Death is James Walkley that night at 11:05 PM, it should be noted that the sheriff had publicly disclosed the identity of the deceased to other family members at least 23 hours before, and they then put it out on Facebook and made donation cans shortly thereafter.  Yet, the sheriff would spend the next day writing a press release that would vilify this website and myself, while patting the local media that complied with his keeping the public in the dark, and commending Walkley's family for also maintaining secrecy-- just one of his first fabrications of the truth.

Sheriff Kim Cole Takes the Bully Pulpit

Very early the day after, The MCP released Sheriff Cole's official statement as to the identity of the dead.  This was anticlimactic, with the Ludington Torch and Pitchfork leading the way 36 hours earlier, everybody paying attention knew the identity.  The sheriff's message turned spiteful against the agency that spoiled his command over the release of information:  

 

“Our hope is to be able to answer any questions the family may have and to get to the bottom of what caused his death,” Cole said.  “Sometimes we need to hold some information close to our vest, and in holding onto his name, we hoped to get closer to a cause.  Unfortunately, our detectives have had to make adjustments in their approach to this investigation due to circumstances outside our control.

“We appreciate the cooperation of Mr. Walkley’s family and we also appreciate the cooperation of the legitimate media which has been patient in waiting for us to officially release Mr. Walkley’s name. I know the media have a responsibility to keep the public informed and we have a responsibility of keeping the public safe. Sometimes those two areas have to find a balance.

“With that said, there was at least one local blog, the Ludington Torch, that felt it was necessary to release the name of the victim prematurely and try to convince its readers that there was a cover up on behalf of law enforcement. I believe that was an irresponsible action on the part of the blog’s administrator and most likely hindered the investigation and our efforts to fight the local drug problem, and that’s a real shame.”

Walkley had a history of drug use and has been in and out of prison since he was 20-years-old. In November 2016 Walkley was sentenced to a three to 20 years prison sentence in Mason County’s 51st Circuit Court after he pleaded guilty to operating/maintaining a methamphetamine laboratory and also a three to 10 years sentence for possession of methamphetamine. He was paroled in March of this year.

This contains several odd bits of false propaganda.  First, he said that I released the name of the victim prematurely when the name was already spread across social media after the wife was notified of his death by his office.  If anybody had released the name too early, it was the sheriff.  But even that is false in itself, as the sheriff had the duty to notify the next of kin once they determined, or needed to verify, the identity.  Once a name is released to one, a sheriff cannot then 'officially unrelease' it to all a full day later and be acting in a lawful and ethical manner.

Second, there indeed was a cover up on behalf of law enforcement as to the identity, drug involvement of the deceased, and details that would filter out through the week that could have been released early.  Such cover-ups are not new to the sheriff's office, as exemplified by the following three examples:

1)  the case of Kimberly Septrion, where the sheriff reported that a woman rider of a stopped vehicle was arrested on attempted Malicious Destruction of Property (MDOP) charges and resisting/opposing a police officer after allegedly trying to kick out the back window of the sheriff's car.  What was suspiciously missing was the reason why this rider of the vehicle was in the backseat in the first place, in a case where a legitimate arrest was never performed by Deputy Mike Fort-- a fact conveniently left out of the initial reports.

2)  the case of Joseph McAdam, another passenger who, if you read the initial sheriff reports, was guilty of multiple accounts of resisting/assaulting an officer, but in actuality was a victim of the most brutish police violence inflicted by three current members of the MCSO, including the tasing of McAdam while chained to a hospital bed just for refusing treatment he didn't want.  The violence was captured by LPD's in-car camera, but not noted in any of the deputy's reports.

3)  the case of Todd Johnson where Sheriff Cole announced without quantifiers on the cover of the COLDNews that Coach Johnson carried on sexual relations "for several years and started when the player was 13.  It did not take place at the school or involve any school activities.  It took place in a home in Amber Township".  The woman fully recanted her story when it went to trial.  As noted in the link, the sheriff would not release any records of his investigation through FOIA saying it would taint the jury pool, as if his slander didn't.

It is not inconceivable, and it becomes even more plausible when you consider the scattered response by the MCSO and the directed attacks on 'illegitimate' media, that this death could have resulted from Walkley's interaction with law enforcement, considering the violation of his tether for up to two days and their ability to track him down.  Only after several news cycles did the sheriff release that two disc golfers found the body, it begs the question:  why hadn't the law already did that?  Maybe they had.

Lastly, I am blamed for hindering the investigation and being irresponsible even after releasing only factual information about the deceased 24 hours after the sheriff released that information to at least one other person who spread the news and an effort was already in progress for over 12 hours to help raise money for Walkley's funeral through publicly displayed donation cans in stores.  The sheriff never issued an edict to others that the info had to be suppressed, I surely never got the memo. 

Such accusations from the sheriff are irresponsible and the erratic dissemination to the public not only likely hindered the investigation, but also hindered the safety of the public, another false narrative from his statement that his duty was to keep the public safe.  Considering his rash statements in his release, he took to the airwaves to try and further his point that it was in the public's best interest to suppress the release of Walkley's name.

Sheriff Cole's Other Johnson

Last Wednesday, Sheriff Cole was on the airwaves.  I was listening to a Synergy Group radio station and heard him talking of a previous case where they withheld the name of someone who died from drugs because they were able to make other arrest of people who were unaware of the death.  The guy's name was Adam Johnson.  Though I do not have the recordings of that interchange, the sheriff went on WMOM the next morning and spouted the same story.  I have transcribed the relevant conversation he had with the morning crew that day concerning Johnson, courtesy of WMOM providing me with that clip:

AJ:  "How can interference happen and what would happen, if the information was to be released.  I mean, what bad can happen?"

Sheriff Kim Cole:  "People ask that, and we talked before we went on the radio with Adam Johnson.  He was a young man in our community that died of a drug overdose, and we were able to get the person who supplied him with his drugs, and I'm not saying that this case is parallel to that but I am saying in the Adam Johnson case, when we did catch up with the drug dealer, he had Adam Johnson's cell phone on him and he had no clue Adam was gone, so one would have to question: would you keep a dead person's property with you if you knew they were deceased, and probably not.  You would want to distance yourself from that case, understandably so, and in this case with Mr. Johnson, it was a pretty compelling piece of evidence, that we had Adam's cell phone in the possession of a drug dealer."

Here's some relevant facts about Adam Johnson, he died around 5:03 AM on the morning of January 22, 2016 and his identity was known throughout social media by that afternoon, from his timeline shared just after noon the day he died:

Concurrently the following post made by a notified relative also showed up receiving over 100 likes and many dozens of responses concerning Adam over the course of that same day:

If you knew Adam or any of his friends and relatives and were connected to social media, you probably were aware of his demise at the end of that first day, a Friday.  His obituary was made and printed in the COLDNews on the following Monday.  It is unclear as to why Johnson's cell phone was in possession of the suspect charged with delivery of a controlled substance (heroin) causing death, perhaps there could have been stronger charges filed had they looked at the previous locations of that phone near the time of death, as they could do with a warrant.

But it took two weeks (to February 5) to track the Muskegon villain down even after they could have figured out his cell phone was missing that first day if they investigated with due diligence; this was two weeks after news of his death exploded on social media, eleven days after the obituary was printed in the local paper. 

Fourteen days this guy had allegedly carried the cell phone of a dead man and we are to believe that he received no calls alerting him to the grisly fact. Isn't it more likely that he was in possession of Adam's phone because he was there the morning of his death and took it to hide material on the phone that could incriminate him for his part in it?

Due to Sheriff Cole's lack of accountability in these cases and others, we may just never know, but we should.   He evidently believes a drug dealer when they say they have no idea why they have a dead man's phone, but doesn't believe that an unsolved homicide with a lot of questions with few and tardy answers from his investigation doesn't pose a threat to our community's safety and sense of well-being.  For him, keeping the public safe is keeping them ignorant.  I respectfully disagree with that notion and his methodology.

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Very good analysis X.

The way the sheriff has responded makes me believe that they or the SSCENT drug task force may have been using James Walkley as a pawn to locate and entrap other drug users and/or dealers.  This seems to be the only way to make sense out of a system that charged him with two separate three year minimum felonies in November 2016 but saw him freely operating (without a tether if we believe his wife) in this community less than 10 months later.

I know from others that this is how SSCENT conducts itself:  catch a small time user, offer them up a deal on their actual sentencing and probation conditions, to use them as bait for a bigger fish.  Sometimes the bait gets snatched off the hook, it's a dangerous gig. 

If he was doing this and got caught by the wrong people, it makes sense that those baddies may kill and ditch him in such an area, making it look like a drug overdose, just like what may have happened in the Adam Johnson case, then dump his bicycle and other effects elsewhere.  

This best explains the set of facts we are currently working with, but we're never likely to get close to the truth with SSCENT and the MCSO not being square and transparent with us. 

Who knows... there were probably lives saved by getting the word out.Even if true, the sheriff would never thank anyone other than his goons.

Well, you sure made a very convincing and legal argument on your own behalf X, congratulations on another well said and written article. The kind of article that none of the "real so-called media" figures can fathom, due to negligence, and mostly, incompetence. Now anyone whom can't see the complicity in the local media to hold back information, intentionally, to benefit some clueless and invisible agenda, is simply dreaming and a fool. And our very own small-town Sheriff uses any and all cases at his desk to diminish his own lack of good law enforcement skills. Since Kim doesn't know anything about all the social media posted here from past cases, how does he have the time to know about The Torches exploits of the current events and news about Walkley? Easy, a good part of his salary is being paid to spy here, for another fixed agenda of closing this forum down, even if it's unethical and illegal. Keep up the good work X, you are facing a huge task and duty from many on their fixed agendas of deceit. 

What's sad is that the sheriff divulged the death to family members with no expectation of them keeping the death secret, days afterwards they still wouldn't release the names publicly themselves and apparently told the local corporate media to not broadcast the name.  Ask yourself why?

When you're reflecting on that consider why he would have been paroled after just four months when serving a 6-30 year sentence.  This could not have been done by the parole board, who could not be considering parole until his minimal sentence is met.  Yet, he was out and had a list of restrictions including completing a tether program, which is ran by the county sheriff and generally extends for the duration of parole/probation.  The widow contends he had no tether after a mere 6 months, the sheriff never mentions any in his press junkets.  

The early parole, the lack of an electronic monitoring system as required, the odd facts of the death, and the sheriff's comprehensive behavior, all points to James Walkley being used as a confidential informant, young drug offenders who are recruited by law enforcement to wear a wire and make undercover drug buys in exchange for having their charges reduced or dropped altogether.  Consider the case of Rachel Hoffman, as told on the 60 Minutes CBS TV Show:

She was caught by the Tallahassee Police Department and told that if she didn't become a confidential informant, she was looking at four years in prison.  She signed up, and a few weeks later was sent out to make her first undercover drug buy. It was to be one of the biggest in Tallahassee's recent history -- 1,500 ecstasy pills, an ounce and a half of cocaine, and a gun.  Beyond the ecstasy pills, she had never used any of the other things.

Rachel drove her car alone to meet the dealers in this park with $13,000 cash from the police and a wire in her purse. She was to be monitored by some 20 officers. But then the dealers changed the location of the deal, so Rachel drove away from the police staging area, and that's when things went terribly wrong.  They lose the cops, take her to a secluded location, find the police wire, then shoot her.

The City of Tallahassee was sued by her parents, and they won a $2.8 million lawsuit, but never got to see their daughter alive again.   

I know I am going out on a limb, but I just don't see anything more likely than that happening here.  Minus the lawsuit, since our SSCENT task force would never admit to it, and James Walkley's survivors seem more intent on denying reality for now.

That certainly makes sense. I hope Ludington isn't being over run with drugs. If there are that many dealers that SSCENT must be involeved then there must also be a problem with drugs in the school system. I wonder just how deep this would go.

Just published today, this Detroit News article Family of slain police informant gets $1M settlement, recounts what happened down in that neighborhood to a transgender 'confidential informant' who was outed by a policeman:

Detroit — Oakland county has agreed to pay $1.07 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of a woman who was killed and dismembered after a Detroit-area police officer exposed her as an informant in a drug bust... Hilliard, 19, quickly agreed to help police when she was caught with marijuana at a suburban Detroit motel in 2011. Her supplier was arrested within hours, but she was killed a few days later — her body burned and dismembered.

During the arrest, Officer Chad Wolowiec, a member of a regional drug unit, gave enough details to the drug dealer’s companion to reveal that Hilliard had provided critical information.

I know a guy from Ludington that got caught with some weed. He was sent up by the cops.  Yes he was selling .  He told me that he went to prison for a number of years because he wouldn't tell the  scent team who his supplier was.  Reason? he'd end up dead.   Thats life in the drug world in Ludington.  

"Confidential informant" aka "snitch". Well used tactic by law enforcement these days and in the past, sometimes it works, but, if it's big time drugs, it is a loser, for the snitch, the family, and society. X, your evaluation is not only plausible, it's very convincing and true as far as I can see now. That's the only way Walkley got early release, no tether, & ended up the way he did. No other explanation is now realistic.

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