BILL PROCTOR
REPORTER
WXYZ – TV7
After 33 years of serving the people of Detroit as a television journalist, Bill Proctor said farewell to viewers of WXYZ-TV’s 7 Action News in May of this year. He had been a familiar face since the spring of 1980, as the trusted, versatile street reporter known for letting the facts…not his emotions or opinion… tell the story. He could be seen wearing that fuzzy Russian rabbit hat on the coldest of days. He could make room for a smile or funny line when appropriate…but then get quickly, respectfully to the straight story when reporting the most horrible human tragedy.
Proctor has received many awards for his reporting in nearly 39 years while working in television stations in four different states. His last years with WXYZ were spent as an award winning investigator. He’s a former police officer from his hometown of Washington, D.C….but he says, “make no mistake, Detroit is my home and will be until the end.”
He was the reporter who twice stepped out of his journalist role to answer a call to help others when he could, including a dangerous life and death event in Inkster in 1987. Proctor acted as hostage negotiator when three Inkster police officers were captured by Alberta Easter and her heavily armed sons at the Bungalow Motel. Proctor secured a cease-fire that ended the danger, but his efforts were too late to save the officers who’d been murdered just moments after being taken hostage.
In March of 2007, he took an unpaid leave of absence from Channel 7 to pursue the truth in the wrongful conviction of Temujin Kensu who is serving a life sentence for the 1986 murder of Scott Macklem in Port Huron. Kensu insists he was in bed with his girlfriend just outside Escanaba when the college student was gunned down on campus. Proctor’s work on the case lead him to found Proving Innocence, a 501©3 non-profit that provides investigators in cases of wrongful conviction and actual innocence.
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