Watching the Detectives

That’s all we’ve got for now, but it seems like good news.

Today, the search for two mass murderers continues—one at least a century older than the other.
 
The Tribune reports that in Indiana, researchers have exhumed the body of the most nefarious female serial killer of all time—Belle Gunness, the “Lady Bluebeard” who many believe killed at least 25 to 30 people. Several of her victims were Norwegian bachelors, lured to her home with promises of romance.
 
She was believed to have died in 1908, after setting her farmhouse on fire, but now, researchers have started to wonder if Gunness faked her own death. DNA tests on her exhumed body will reveal the truth.
 
Back in Illinois, the search continues for the Tinley Park killer. The Tribune reports that seven electronic billboards showing the sketch of the gunman have gone up near East Hazel Crest, Crestwood, Hodgkins, Maywood, Northlake and Addison. Another will go up in Palatine soon.
 
Somehow we always seem to be at least two steps behind destruction. All that’s left to do, it seems, is pick at bones and flash our messages into the night. Do we ever stop destruction–evil–in its tracks? Or do near misses just not make the news?

Photo by Just-Us-3
 
It’s the Chicago Crime Scene. Apparently, when you order online on Domino’s Pizza’s Web site you can name your own pizza. Other hungry folk may then order said pizza.
 
Enter the Chicago Crime Scene, a deep dish pie with black olives, cheese, green peppers and Italian sausage.
 
I guess the toppings are supposed to reflect Chi-Town’s mob connections. But I think it would be more accurate if Al Capone followed the delivery guy in and asked for his slice of the pie.

 
Reproduced here with permission from the Tinley Park Police Department

The Chicago Sun-Times ran an interesting profile of the Tinley Park killer recently. The paper quotes Greg McCrary, a Florida professor of forensic psychology and former FBI profiler, as saying, “He doesn’t want to go back [to jail], but instead of leading a law-abiding life, he’s decided the way to stay out of jail is to leave no witnesses.”
 
People like this, McCrary says, “don’t think they deserve to be locked up for the things they have done, and they hold it against society when they are - they think only of themselves and are incapable of considering others… They think they’ve been mistreated by society.”
 
A couple of months ago I saw the Oscar-nominated film, No Country For Old Men. I thought that the killer in the film, Anton Chigurh, was the most horrifying movie monster I had ever seen. The moment that terrified me most was when Chigurh was about to kill the main character’s wife, Carla Jean:
 
Carla Jean Moss: You don’t have to do this.
Anton Chigurh: [smiles] Everybody says that.
 
I comforted myself that this was just a movie. But every day, every paper that I read, convinces me that real life is a whole lot more terrifying than celluloid.

Today, Sara Paretsky opened up an interesting discussion on the blog, The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers.
 
Last month, the Chicago Tribune reported on a case of mistaken identity that robbed one man of more than a quarter of a century. Back in 1982, a pair of robbers entered a South Side McDonalds and killed security guard Lloyd Wickliffe.
 
One of the men, Edgar Hope, was arrested and sentenced to death. Alton Logan was also arrested, sentenced to life in prison. Too bad he was innocent.
 
Witnesses identified Logan as Hope’s accessory, but in reality the second man was Andrew Wilson. Hope even told his attorney that it was so.
 
Wilson was no stranger to the dark side at this point; he was already in trouble with the law, arrested for the murder of two Chicago cops. Now it seemed that he had killed Wickliffe too.
 
After Hope’s attorney told Wilson’s lawyers– Dale Coventry and Jamie Kunz– of this new development, the lawyers asked Wilson if he was in fact Wickliffe’s killer. He responded, “That was me.”
 
The truth was out, but Coventry and Kunz couldn’t tell it. They were bound to secrecy by attorney-client privilege. Only when Wilson died did the truth come to light.
 
On her blog, Paretsky asks, “What possible steps can Coventry and Kunz take now to make Logan’s life–let’s not say whole–it can never be that–but less pain-filled and diminished than it is now?”
 
I don’t know Sara. Perhaps they could dedicate themselves to the Innocence Project at my alma mater? This is a project that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. Visit their Web site if you want to get involved.
 
Other than that I have no answers. The legal system basically painted Coventry and Kunz into a corner, and unfortunately they can’t take back the past; they can only think about what they’ve done.

Sing the blues with Johnny. Here’s Folsom Prison Blues, by Johnny Cash.
 

Ok, last chance to request a song for tomorrow… Unlike the Democratic primary, the polls are closing.

Ok, usually it’s all doom and gloom over here at Watching the Detectives, but I thought that today (while we all cower under the looming jaws of Chicago winter) I’d bring some happy news.
 
Congratulations CPD, it’s a boy! For once, the CPD made the Trib for something positive. At 2:30 am, Sgt. Stacey Smith helped deliver a baby boy in a South Side basement bathroom. Sarge even supplied balloons, bibs and diapers.
 
I hope she used the siren on the way to the hospital. Kids love that.
 

The Tinley Park killer needs a better stylist. Maybe then could have avoided providing police with such a telltale identifying mark: his thick braids, one of which was bedecked with four green beads.
 
The Chicago Tribune reports that investigators are currently reaching out to barbershops and hair salons, on the lookout for anyone who recognizes the killer’s distinctive ‘do. It’s a headhunt—literally.
 
Many people are out for the man’s blood as more and more details emerge about the case—how he made sexual advances on at least one of the victims, and how he may have posed as a deliveryman to gain access to the store. Some even speculate that he picked a women’s store to avoid confrontation with men.
 
Here would be the perfect place to say “Be a man” to this coiffed criminal, but, in truth, the situation at this point has divulged past masculinity into inhumanity.
 
Let’s see what other bloggers are saying:
 
In his blog, Buckhorn Road, Chanman ruminates, “Although I know it to be true, I still sometimes have trouble coming to grips with the fact that there are people in this world who can be that evil.”
 
Scott Janz mentions on his blog that he used to live by the strip mall. “I just hope the catch this guy,” he says.
 
On her blog, Shapely Prose, Kate Harding says, “I know a lot of our readers have been (or are) LB employees and many more are customers; this hits awfully close to home. Our hearts go out to the women’s family and friends.”
 
Her blog even got the attention of Richard Roeper, who, in Monday’s Chicago Sun-Times discussed the possibility that the shooter targeted plus-sized women.
 
Whatever their stance, all bloggers came to the same conclusion: They want this man behind bars.
 
Perhaps a barber will be the one to put him there.