From celebration to sinister

The Glen Arbor Sun’s role in the Bill Bricker saga

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Nearly 10 years ago, in August 2005, this community newspaper published a celebratory feature story titled “Old Cowboy, New Tricks”, about the late Bill Bricker, a World War II veteran, horse lover and longtime teacher who had retired to Glen Arbor in his golden years. Bricker died on Friday, Jan. 9.

The tone of the story was common for us. The Glen Arbor Sun is known largely as a publication that celebrates our community and the residents who choose to live here. To the extent that’s true, we’re different from many media outlets, which earn their keep by illuminating warts and scars. “If it bleeds, it leads” is common parlance in journalism.

Our feature on Bill Bricker chronicled his heroism at Okinawa, his love of teaching children to ride horses at Wyoming’s Teton Valley Ranch, his 50 years as a Boy Scout leader, his teaching career in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, and his favorite pursuits after settling in beautiful Glen Arbor.

But our Bill Bricker story took a sinister turn after its publication. Several months after the piece appeared on our website, an anonymous reader posted comments that questioned the authenticity of Bricker’s war stories. In 2009, the vitriolic comments resumed, prompting a rebuttal from Josephine Arrowood, the author of our story on Bricker. Unable to verify the identities of those making the comments (their return email addresses were bogus), I “unpublished” many of them. However, comments in support of Bricker from his time at Teton Valley Ranch, the Boy Scouts and Winnetka would also occasionally appear on our website.

Then in 2011, online commenters using anonymous email addresses suddenly began to allege that Bricker had sexually molested them and other underage boys. The accusations of pedophilia became more and more serious, and seemed to coincide with the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. Sandusky was a celebrated assistant football coach at Penn State University now in prison for sexual molestation.

In October 2012, an anonymous commenter asked anyone with concerns or information about Bricker to contact Chicago attorney Marc Pearlman. Our Glen Arbor Sun feature story had inadvertently become a rallying point for criminal complaints against Bricker. This would eventually lead to charges and attempt to extradite him to Wyoming to stand trial. It also led to prominent stories in such major newspapers as the Chicago Tribune and the Detroit News, both of which mentioned our original story in the Sun. Bricker’s death this month prevented the extradition from taking place.

In November 2012, Arrowood and I agreed that we should remove the story from our website, and eventually from cyberspace. We had no idea whether the allegations against Bricker were true or false: we just knew that this wasn’t a game we were equipped to play. We checked facts that we were able to: Bricker’s military service, his years as a Scout leader and teacher, his war injury, for example. And in 2012, we looked through the newly released, so-called “perversion files” that the Boy Scouts of America had compiled as a private blacklist against sexual predators. Bricker’s name was not among them.

Before it was pulled, a blog titled “Mrs. Linklater’s Guide to the Universe” copied and republished our original story, as well as the incendiary comments, with the knowledge that the story might disappear.

We unpublished the story in 2012 because the online accusers would not reveal their identities, which brought up the specter of “trolling” — anonymous people attacking someone online, in ways that the person cannot answer to or rebut. In the American justice system, accused persons have the right to face their accusers — and just as important, victims have the right and also the responsibility to face their tormentors in a court of law. Neither the Sun, nor any publication, was the appropriate venue for this process.

The decision to remove the story was an agonizing one for me, as editor and publisher of the Glen Arbor Sun. On one hand, I believe in the power of this newspaper, and all forms of media, to inform and educate, not just our local audience but anyone who stumbles upon this publication. Similarly, I believe the Internet can be the world’s most democratizing tool when it is indiscriminately transparent and open.

Here’s an example: those of you who follow the Sun know that we frequently cover the Sugar Loaf resort debacle and attempt to reveal the mystery of who actually controls the long-shuttered ski resort in the heart of Leelanau County. My past reporting on shady characters such as Sugar Loaf suitor Liko Smith has attracted thousands of views, and occasional phone calls from private investigators on the West Coast. I’d like to think that our archive of stories on Smith has enlightened and dissuaded would-be investors or collaborators from saddling up with him. Whether it’s here in Leelanau, or in sunny California, I’d like to think that this publication has an impact.

On the other hand, the Bill Bricker story that the Glen Arbor Sun birthed had gotten too big, too complex, and too ugly. We were wholly unprepared for this small-town newspaper in Northern Michigan becoming embroiled in a child sexual abuse saga that crossed three states, spanned decades and drew nationwide attention. We didn’t have the resources to check all the facts, track down witnesses, and ultimately “convict” or exonerate Bricker from the charges he faced online. Plus, a serious lawsuit potentially loomed.

(Now that Bricker is gone, we have re-publishing Arrowood’s original story and the comments, which you can find here.)

So it goes in journalism in today’s uncertain digital age. Publish a feature story on an interesting local character, and you might invite a maelstrom of accusations and pain from that person’s past.

Or worse. Publish satirical cartoons that are intended for your immediate reading audience, and you may invite murder into your newsroom. Like many publications worldwide, we published the words “Je Suis Charlie” on our website in solidarity with the fallen journalists at Paris’ Charlie Hebdo magazine. That sentiment was appropriate. It was clearly the right thing to do.

What’s unclear is the consequences our work may have once we hit the “publish” button. Should that stop us? Should we use more discretion? Should the Sun have held steady and left our Bill Bricker story online? Or were we right to bring down the curtain?

Your thoughts are welcome. Please email them to editorial@glenarborsun.com.