Randall Raar found a few minutes to check in from the Robert A. Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan.
Randall is a frustrated man; seventeen years have been taken from him for a crime he insists he did not commit.
“I’ve been molested, beat up, jacked, my face has been slapped,” Raar said of the things which have happened to him in prison.
Randall is considered the lowest of the low in prison: convicted of child molestation.
I picked up the story because Raar was convicted when a twenty-one-year-old testified to things which happened when she was five. Here is part of an appeal.
The 59-year-old defendant was convicted of sexually assaulting his then five-year-old neighbor in the summer of 1989 or 1990. In April 2006, the police received information that caused them to investigate defendant and canvass his former neighborhoods. At that time, they had contact with the victim, who alleged that defendant had sexually assaulted her when she was four or five years old by digitally penetrating her vagina. At trial, the 21-year-old victim testified that defendant and his roommate, Robert Higgins, lived next door to her family’s home. Defendant and Higgins encouraged the neighborhood children to come to their home and use their above-ground pool. The victim indicated that she and her neighbor, AB, were among the children who spent time at defendant’s house. The victim explained that defendant and Higgins, both dressed in swimsuits, would be in the pool and catch the children as they came down an attached slide. The victim stated that defendant would “catch [them] between [their] legs and put his hands—or try to put his hands up [them].”
Randall insists that everything which is happening is in retaliation for investigations he started while working for the Detroit News.
He was investigating the Oakland County Child Killer case, when he received the response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in April 2006.
By May 2006, his home was raided.
“The timeline would show that the FOIA that I did led to the raid of my home in 2006,” Raar told me, “In April 2006- April 15- I got a call from Robin B. Brooks of the Detroit Police- investigator the FOIA coordinator- and she asked me ‘do I still want the second FOIA that I submitted like nine months before’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’
“Then, my home was raided on May 4. The first thing that the {Michigan} State Police told me- his name was Walker, Kenneth Walker- said, ‘The Attorney General has a special interest in you.’ Then, he started asking me about the Oakland County Child Killer.”
Randall was prosecuted by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office.
{Check out my interview with Marney Keenan who wrote the definitive book on the Oakland County Child Killer}
While Randall insists that his investigation made him a target, he also did far less investigating than many others: including Detective Cory Williams, who was the main detective to investigate when OCCK turned into a cold case.
Even if there was a coverup- and if you read Marney’s book there definitely was-it’s hard to believe he was targeted when Williams was doing significant investigation at the same time.
What’s not in doubt is that the prosecutors leaked to the media that he was a suspect in OCCK.
Michigan State Police raided a Lincoln Park home last week after receiving a tip from a federal inmate.
A task force is working to bring evidence against the owner of the home, Randall Raar, 59, who they said may be linked to the Oakland County child killer case.
Inside the home, police found letters written to serial killers, child pornography, 8 mm film dating back to the 1970s, computer files and a sex slave dungeon equipped with shackles and a jail-like door that locked from the outside, Local 4 reported.
Raar is considered a link in the case, and a task force is currently collecting evidence to eliminate him as a suspect in the slaying.
Something is going on.
Randall told me that he was also investigating another murder: that of Donna Gomez. This, unlike OCCK, has received scant attention, but here is one story from a local news station.
A Lincoln Park woman was brutally murdered and sexually assaulted in her home 37 years ago. Her killer still hasn’t been caught.
Donna Potas Gomez, 22, was found murdered in her home at 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 2, 1985. Her husband, Dan Gomez, was the one who found her. The two were high school sweethearts. They got married when she was 18 years old.
The Gomez and Potas families told Local 4 in 2009 that the two were a happy couple.
“They were always together. You know, whatever he did and whatever she did, that was just the type of people they were. They just did everything together,” Dan Gomez’s sister, Delma Ventrello, told Local 4 in 2009.
Dan Gomez was working nights when Donna Potas Gomez was murdered. She would sleep alone at night. Dan Gomez came home the night she was killed and found his wife dead in their living room.
Dan Gomez was questioned extensively and cleared of any wrongdoing, according to police.
Police said there were no signs of forced entry and no signs of a fight. Police believe Donna Potas Gomez knew her attacker. The family dog was locked in the bathroom.
The investigation did not reveal any suspicious people in her life.
Randall told me he knows who did it.
Here is where it gets frustrating for me and the audience.
Randall won’t say what he knows but wants to speak with a family member of the Gomez family.
That’s not likely to happen.
Randall said the Michigan State Police (MSP)- which led the investigation into him- is not done with him.
They have shown up at prison in February and March 2023. They’ve asked him, he said, about OCCK and the Gomez murders.
He said he told them how he was mistreated in prison, but he refused to divulge any information about the murders.
This is something Randall has told me before and when I reached the MSP, they said, “This is not something that we would either confirm or deny.”
Of the murders, Randall would only suggest law enforcement did it.
Postscript
Check out the previous free articles in this series. Find the first, second , third , fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, and ninth article.
Check out the fundraiser on wrongful convictions.
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