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Intelligence Operation | The Delta Project was the operational name for John David Norman's child trafficking and prostitution network, also referred to as the Odyssey Network. | 2026-10-14 |
The Delta Project was the operational name for John David Norman's child trafficking and prostitution network, also referred to as the Odyssey Network. Norman came to the Chicago area in mid-1973 from Dallas, Texas, where the Odyssey Foundation had operated, and the Chicago Tribune reported that the Delta Project began in Cook County Jail in 1976 and was run from a Chicago post office box afterward.1 The Delta Project operated through a system of "sponsors" connected via coded communications in the Hermes newsletter and front organizations including the Odyssey Foundation and Educational Foundation for Youth. The writer S. Dovey wrote that an FBI memo from February 1977 confirmed the Delta Project's connection to Troop 137 in New Orleans and noted that Norman's conviction in December 1976 had ended an ongoing investigation that had continued under Phillip Paske. The Delta Project was linked to Francis Shelden's North Fox Island operation, Father Bud's Boys Farm in Tennessee, and John Wayne Gacy's network in Chicago through shared participants.2
An October 19, 1976, memorandum of the FBI Chicago office (file 166-2548) records information from an investigator for the Cook County state's attorney's office that Norman, John Shanks and Phillip Paske ran "The Delta Project" as a business transporting young males interstate to paying customers, some of whom may be federal employees.3
Footnotes
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Chicago Tribune, May 16, 1977, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Sexual Exploitation of Children, Serial No. 12 (1977), pp. 433-434. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041 ↩︎
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Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar. ↩︎
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Federal Bureau of Investigation, memorandum, SAC Chicago (166-NEW), dated October 19, 1976, file 166-2548, FOIPA release 1352511-001 (Philip Paske file). https://vault.fbi.gov/philip-paske/philip-paske-part-01 ↩︎