Ocean Living Institute

The Ocean Living Institute was a sea-steading foundation incorporated in New Jersey by Adam Starchild, who also served as the incorporating agent for Brother Paul's Children's Mission on North Fox Island. In August 1976, Gerald Richards handed over a letter he received from Dyer Grossman postmarked 19 July 1976, which had a return address for the Ocean Living Institute. In the letter, Grossman detailed plans to set up a series of foster homes in Michigan, citing the profitability in receiving monthly payments from the government for taking in runaways and problem kids. The letter also mentioned a twelve-year-old boy Grossman said he had procured through a Big Brother program who he described as innocent but that some camping trips may change that.¹

Adam Starchild was actually a man named Malcolm Willis McConahy, an offshore tax attorney who appeared to have faked his own death in 1975. Starchild had been a scout master in Minneapolis kicked out of the organization in 1965 after he expressed a desire to engage in sex with boys there. The Ocean Living Institute served as one of Starchild's corporate vehicles, alongside his role in incorporating Brother Paul's Children's Mission, which operated the summer camp on North Fox Island used by Francis Shelden for child exploitation.¹