Gerald Richards, full name Gerald Stewart Richards, was a high school gym teacher in Port Huron, Michigan, who also worked as a masseuse, magician, hypnotist, and Republican candidate for local government. He operated a naturopathy clinic in a commercial basement where he molested boys during massage therapy sessions, including a 12-year-old neighbor he used as an assistant in his magic shows. Richards drove an orange Pinto marked "Jerry the Magician" and had previously set up Brother Paul’s Educational Entertainment Missions in 1970 as a non-profit for safety instruction and religious education through magic and arts. In 1975, he placed an advertisement for his magic show in the pedophile newsletter Better Life Monthly, leading to his contact with [[Francis Shelden]]. Richards described himself as peripheral to a nationwide child pornography operation but confessed to extensive involvement after his arrest.[^1] ### Criminal Activities On July 12, 1976, Richards took four students aged 8 to 14 to a private airstrip where [[Francis Shelden]] flew them to [[North Fox Island]] for two nights at [[Brother Paul's Children's Mission]], where Shelden performed sex acts on at least one boy and photographed him naked. Upon return, the boy reported the abuse, leading to Richards's arrest on July 23, 1976, after police found naked photos of boys and a letter to Shelden in his glove compartment warning him to move files to [[North Fox Island]]. Richards confessed to molesting boys in exchange for partial immunity and provided details on producing and distributing child pornography, including processing films from [[Father Bud's Boys Farm]] in Monteagle, Tennessee, and mailing them via Mail-O-Matic in North Carolina to F&S Distributors in California. In August 1976, he handed over a letter from [[Dyer Grossman]] dated July 19, 1976, outlining plans for foster homes in Michigan to house runaways for government payments and mentioning a 12-year-old boy procured through a Big Brother program for camping trips. Richards was sentenced on September 13, 1976, to 2 to 20 years in Southern Michigan Prison in Jackson after pleading guilty to criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, and from prison he sketched a network diagram in September 1976 detailing a coast-to-coast child pornography operation.[^1] ### Connections Richards met [[Francis Shelden]] in 1975 through Better Life Monthly, corresponded by mail, met at hotels and Shelden's Ann Arbor estate to abuse boys together, and Shelden recruited him to direct a summer camp on [[North Fox Island]] for child pornography production. Shelden connected Richards to [[Dyer Grossman]] of The [[The Church of New Revelation]] in New Jersey, a fake church used to incorporate [[Brother Paul's Children's Mission]] as a non-profit subsidiary for tax-exempt status, allowing the camp to receive court-ordered juvenile delinquents for abuse and filming. Grossman, a science teacher from a wealthy Long Island family working at an exclusive New York boys’ boarding school, traveled to Michigan to draft the charter and planned foster homes for runaways, with a letter mentioning a 12-year-old boy for sexual use. [[Adam Starchild]] ([[Malcolm Willis McConahy]]) incorporated [[Brother Paul's Children's Mission]] and The [[Ocean Living Institute]], fronts for Shelden's operations; Starchild faked his death in 1975. Richards identified [[Cladius Vermilye]], an Episcopal priest running [[Father Bud's Boys Farm]] in Tennessee, as sending child pornography films for processing, where juveniles were drugged, filmed in orgies, and offered to sponsors for visits, with the farm raided in November 1976 and linked to The [[The Church of New Revelation]]. He named [[Richard Halvorsen]], a New Orleans scoutmaster arrested in September 1976 for a boy prostitution ring using [[Troop 137]], whose files connected to Vermilye's farm and [[John David Norman]]'s [[Delta Project]] via index cards on boys’ sexual preferences. Richards linked the operation to [[John David Norman]]’s [[Odyssey Network]], referring to boy exchanges as a "Cadet racket" and "fellows" supplied to sponsors, with Norman’s [[Delta Project]] using newsletters like [[Hermes]] for prostitution and pornography distribution.[^1] ### Footnotes [^1]: Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar.