Post by WOLVERETT on Apr 18, 2015 11:06:06 GMT -5
The story begins on a cool Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1955 when three boys from the northwest side of the city head downtown to catch a matinee performance of a movie at a Loop Theater. The boys made the trip with their parent’s consent because in those days, parent’s thought little of their responsible children going off on trips by themselves. The boys had always proven dependable in the past and this time would have been no exception... if tragedy had not occurred.
With $4 between them, John and Anton Schuessler and Bobby Peterson ventured into the Chicago Loop to seen a move that Bobby’s mother had chosen for them. Around 6:00 pm that night, long after the matinee had ended, the boys were reported in the lobby of the Garland Building at 111 North Wabash. There was no explanation for what they might have been doing there, other than that Peterson’s eye doctor was located in the building. It seems unlikely that he would have been visiting the optometrist on a Sunday afternoon.
Many years later, according to author Richard Linberg, a Chicago police detective named John Sarnowski came up with the theory that the boys may have been at the building attempting to meet an older boy named John Wayne Gacy. Gacy often hung out at the Garland building as the lobby was reputed to be a meeting place for gay men and prostitutes. Strangely, Gacy did leave a few blocks away from the Schuessler brothers at 4505 North Marmora Avenue at that time... but it’s unknown if they were connected in any other way. Regardless, the boys were in the Garland Building for less than five minutes that evening.
Around 7:45 pm, the three entered the Monte Cristo Bowling Alley on West Montrose. The parlor was a neighborhood eating place and the proprietor later recalled to the police that he recalled the boys and that a “fifty-ish” looking man was showing an “abnormal interest” in several younger boys who were bowling. He was unable to say if the man made contact with the trio. They left the bowling alley and walked down Montrose to another bowling alley, then thumbed a ride at the intersection of Lawrence and Milwaukee Avenue. They were out of money by this time, but not quite ready to go home. It was now 9:05 in the evening and their parents were beginning to get worried.
They had reason to be.... for the boys were never seen alive again.
Two days later, the boy’s naked and bound bodies were discovered in a shallow ditch about 100 feet east of the Des Plaines River. A salesman, who had stopped to eat his lunch at the Robinson Wood’s Indian Burial Grounds spotted them and called the police. Coroner Walter McCarron stated that the cause of death was “asphyxiation by suffocation”. The three boys had been dead about 36 hours when they were discovered.
Bobby Peterson had been struck repeatedly and had been strangled with a rope or a necktie. The killer had used adhesive tape to cover the eyes of all three victims. They had then been thrown from a vehicle. Their clothing was never discovered.
The city of Chicago was thrown into a panic. Police officials reported that they had never seen such a horrible crime. The fears of parents all over the city were summed up by the grief-stricken Anton Schuessler Sr. who said, “When you get to the point that children cannot go to the movies in the afternoon and get home safely, something is wrong with this country.”
Police officers combed the area, conducting door-to-door searches and neighborhood interrogations. Search teams combed Robinson’s Woods, looking for clues or items of clothing. The killer (or killers) had gone to great length to get rid of any signs of fingerprints or traces of evidence. By this time, various city and suburban police departments had descended on the scene, running into each other and further hampering the search for clues. There was little or no cooperation between the separate agencies and if anything had been discovered, it would have most likely been lost in the confusion.
While investigators were coming up empty, a honor guard of Boy Scouts carried the coffins of the three boys from the St. Tarcissus Roman Catholic Church to a hearse that would take them to St. Joseph Cemetery. The church was filled to capacity with an estimated 1,200 mourners. This marked the end of innocence in Chicago.... and with the death of the Grimes sisters a few years later... it was apparent to all that America had changed for the worse.
Years passed. As there is no statute of limitations for murder, the case officially remained open but there was little chance that it would ever be solved. The families involved saw there hopes for closure in the case slowly fading away. At best, the murders provided parents with a cautionary lesson about the perils of “talking to strangers”. Then, decades later, the impossible happened! In a bizarre turn of events, a government informant named William Wemette accused one Kenneth Hansen of the murders during a police investigation into the 1977 disappearance of candy heiress Helen Vorhees Brach.
www.prairieghosts.com/spmurders.html
Also read the book 3 Boys Missing by one of the original detectives on the case in 1955,James A. Jack.
With $4 between them, John and Anton Schuessler and Bobby Peterson ventured into the Chicago Loop to seen a move that Bobby’s mother had chosen for them. Around 6:00 pm that night, long after the matinee had ended, the boys were reported in the lobby of the Garland Building at 111 North Wabash. There was no explanation for what they might have been doing there, other than that Peterson’s eye doctor was located in the building. It seems unlikely that he would have been visiting the optometrist on a Sunday afternoon.
Many years later, according to author Richard Linberg, a Chicago police detective named John Sarnowski came up with the theory that the boys may have been at the building attempting to meet an older boy named John Wayne Gacy. Gacy often hung out at the Garland building as the lobby was reputed to be a meeting place for gay men and prostitutes. Strangely, Gacy did leave a few blocks away from the Schuessler brothers at 4505 North Marmora Avenue at that time... but it’s unknown if they were connected in any other way. Regardless, the boys were in the Garland Building for less than five minutes that evening.
Around 7:45 pm, the three entered the Monte Cristo Bowling Alley on West Montrose. The parlor was a neighborhood eating place and the proprietor later recalled to the police that he recalled the boys and that a “fifty-ish” looking man was showing an “abnormal interest” in several younger boys who were bowling. He was unable to say if the man made contact with the trio. They left the bowling alley and walked down Montrose to another bowling alley, then thumbed a ride at the intersection of Lawrence and Milwaukee Avenue. They were out of money by this time, but not quite ready to go home. It was now 9:05 in the evening and their parents were beginning to get worried.
They had reason to be.... for the boys were never seen alive again.
Two days later, the boy’s naked and bound bodies were discovered in a shallow ditch about 100 feet east of the Des Plaines River. A salesman, who had stopped to eat his lunch at the Robinson Wood’s Indian Burial Grounds spotted them and called the police. Coroner Walter McCarron stated that the cause of death was “asphyxiation by suffocation”. The three boys had been dead about 36 hours when they were discovered.
Bobby Peterson had been struck repeatedly and had been strangled with a rope or a necktie. The killer had used adhesive tape to cover the eyes of all three victims. They had then been thrown from a vehicle. Their clothing was never discovered.
The city of Chicago was thrown into a panic. Police officials reported that they had never seen such a horrible crime. The fears of parents all over the city were summed up by the grief-stricken Anton Schuessler Sr. who said, “When you get to the point that children cannot go to the movies in the afternoon and get home safely, something is wrong with this country.”
Police officers combed the area, conducting door-to-door searches and neighborhood interrogations. Search teams combed Robinson’s Woods, looking for clues or items of clothing. The killer (or killers) had gone to great length to get rid of any signs of fingerprints or traces of evidence. By this time, various city and suburban police departments had descended on the scene, running into each other and further hampering the search for clues. There was little or no cooperation between the separate agencies and if anything had been discovered, it would have most likely been lost in the confusion.
While investigators were coming up empty, a honor guard of Boy Scouts carried the coffins of the three boys from the St. Tarcissus Roman Catholic Church to a hearse that would take them to St. Joseph Cemetery. The church was filled to capacity with an estimated 1,200 mourners. This marked the end of innocence in Chicago.... and with the death of the Grimes sisters a few years later... it was apparent to all that America had changed for the worse.
Years passed. As there is no statute of limitations for murder, the case officially remained open but there was little chance that it would ever be solved. The families involved saw there hopes for closure in the case slowly fading away. At best, the murders provided parents with a cautionary lesson about the perils of “talking to strangers”. Then, decades later, the impossible happened! In a bizarre turn of events, a government informant named William Wemette accused one Kenneth Hansen of the murders during a police investigation into the 1977 disappearance of candy heiress Helen Vorhees Brach.
www.prairieghosts.com/spmurders.html
Also read the book 3 Boys Missing by one of the original detectives on the case in 1955,James A. Jack.