True Crime Series

Instead of leaving all the wonderful stories of serial killers, dramatic shootings of high school students, or police chases that would put John Woo to shame in the pages of my notebooks from my City News Days, these stories will become part of the Picayune beginning today.

Sheridan Road Serial Killer

I was nearing the end of my mid-shift coverage of the North Side while camped out at Area 3 headquarters (also known as the 19th District of the Chicago Police Department) at the corner of Belmont and Western.

The overnight editor paged me, and I called him back to hear, “You better not screw this up. We got a tip from the ME’s (Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office) that there’s a death investigation in the apartment building where someone else was killed only a month earlier.”

This was an actual tip that a creative reporter had to weed out of people to make a story out of. I couldn’t just show up at some address with my pen, tablet and digital recorder in hand. I had to corroborate the tip through beating the street and shooting the shit with cops who were working that night. This is where I figured out how good a reporter I was.

The apartment building was around 7000 N. Sheridan Rd., placing the crime scene in the Rogers Park District (24). Luckily, a grandpa-like captain was working that night that I had a good relationship with. He would tell me anything that he had in front of him and he always made my job easier. So I call him up and act like I’m making a routine check on his neck of the woods for the typical murder and mayhem that night.

“So what’s going on tonight?” I ask after the usual introductions and pleasantries. “Any robberies, any…investigations?” Investigation was the key word, as homicides are often classified as death investigations until it can be determined that they are suspicious.

“Well, yeah,” said the captain. “They got a death investigation up on Sheridan. And looks like they sent a crime lab van up there.” I could tell he was reading to me right off the paper in front of him.

"Oh yeah?” I ask, trying to hide my excitement. “Where’s that at?” And then the captain confirmed the address.

Bingo.

That was what I needed: confirmation of the address and that something suspicious enough to need a crime lab van had happened there. So my editor sent me to the scene around 1 a.m.

I parked behind a building near the scene, not knowing that it was the building in question, and that cops were already wandering around inside with flashlights. I came around the corner of the building onto Sheridan Road and then realized that it might be smart to wear my press badge. It would probably prevent me from being arrested for appearing out of nowhere at the scene of the crime in the middle of the night.

A group of men I guessed to be detectives were standing in a group near the entrance of the building. As I approached, I noticed that there were three squad cars, two unmarked police cars and the crime scene van at the scene. The odd thing was that not a single light from any of the cars was flashing. There was no police tape roping off the area, no onlookers gawking at the scene, no noise other than the normal silence of the night. People didn’t seem to know that a serial killer had struck the same building twice in a month’s time and the police wanted to keep it that way.

…

Due to a shortage of column space on the page and people’s need to not spend all day reading blogs, the rest of the story will be continued next week.