r&r cluster, now it won't start, need help

redfish I already tried shifting in all gears and in between gears with not even a peep from the starter.

Its officially a wiring nightmare. I'll upload pics a couple minutes after this posts as I'm going to have to use photobucket. it goes into park and rolls in neutral so I'm guessing the linkage is ok.

I dropped the column and slid out the cluster. I have power on both sides of the ammeter wether on off or at start.

I found a red wire that is a pretty heavy guage coming down the steering column. It has a female connector for a spade on it. It makes ground when set to any position but off including start and acc etc. Will not supply power in any position. It was unplugged and I can not find a spade connector to put it in. I do have the blue wire spade but it is for the accessories and needs power. I plugged the 2 of them in but of course nothing.

I found several other broken wires. I untaped the wires coming down thru the column and the ones in question are all in the pics. The one with the white connector has 3 wires. 1.
green with black stripe. 2 light tan with white stripe and 3 is purple. No idea where these would be plugged into. From what I remember they were never plugged in.

There is a black wire with a maroon stripe but it is just cut off and if I had to guess probably goes to the horn.

There is a black wire with some type of male connector, never plugged in. Lastly the blue wire for the accessories but I've played with that in the past and even with it unplugged, car ran great, just no radio and aftermarket guages.

I tried to look thru the manual but I grew impatient and couldn't find the electrical section. Anybody know what that red wire is for. Its my guess as the culprit.