True-Crime Stories Continued…

by pjmcbride

But first, a word from our sponsors….Saw an ad at Thornton’s, special price on “roller items”! That would be those cylindrical macerated-protein tubes that roll around next to the soda trough. They are not food as we know it. I have never dared to consume one.

 

CRIMES I ENCOUNTERED IN THIS FAIR CITY

—When we lived downtown:

–Brother-in-law’s bicycle stolen from in front of our building

–Our new sheets stolen out of a dryer at the laundromat. Only one other person was in there at the same time I was, but this is not sufficient evidence to issue a search warrant. Or so I assume, since I didn’t call the police.

I did call the police about a guy looking into our apartment window one night while Rom was at work. All the more disquieting because we lived on the 2nd floor. There was an outside staircase going up to the 3rd floor, and this guy was on the landing looking in our living room. I called my colleagues at 911, and they sent Officer Patrick Bradford. You might remember him, and if not, Google will reward your curiosity. Anyway, he investigated. The guy was drunk and from Kentucky, and claimed he climbed the staircase to the 2nd floor to sit down and rest.

I also called 911 about a mysterious sound in/near our apartment, which turned out to be our cats playing with/under an umbrella I’d left in the bathtub to dry out. Yeah, I’m real proud of that one.

—Once we moved to the West Side: Again, I think of it as a quiet neighborhood (well, quiet–there’s a high school in the front and a trainyard in the back, so you be the judge), but look!

— K9 Officer N.H. searching for a suspect in our back yard. We could have told him we weren’t harboring any miscreants, say, under the table in Rom’s workshop, but he seemed to want to find out for himself.

–The Railroad Rapist/Murderer. Those living near the railroad were told not to hang out laundry (as we did at that time) if it revealed that a woman lived at that house. It was then that I realized I didn’t own any clothing that would reveal that fact.

–The Torture House: A house down the street from us was home to a guy who plotted to abduct, torture, rape and murder his ex-wife in his basement. This came to light through some sort of sting operation. (I always think it would be fun to be the undercover officer in a case like this. “Abduct and torture? Dude, you got it! Now write me a check.” I mean, how do you connect with independent contractors like this? Craigslist?) So Rom and I call it the Torture House to this day (as in, “Did you see that rosebush in bloom? Down the street from the Torture House?”). I wonder if the current resident knows.

That plan was foiled, but sadly, there was no way to save the person who died in a wreck at the end of our block. I guess that’s not a crime, exactly, except in the existential sense.

I know I’m forgetting something. It wasn’t an additional crime; it was some type of digression I planned to tack on to the end of this. It’s now driving me nuts trying to think of it, so I’ll post a P.S. if I remember.

Torture Museum (Photo credit: Travis S.)