Source: Chicago Tribune
It was every parent's worst nightmare in an era when people didn't dream those kinds of dreams. The notorious triple homicide, which occurred 52 years ago Tuesday, is ancient history now, the stuff of yellowed newspapers and microfilm, but still elicits a shudder in Chicagoans of a certain age. The bodies of three young boys were discovered in a forest preserve on a cool October morning in 1955. Nothing before or since, not the Leopold-Loeb thrill killing, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Richard Speck or John Wayne Gacy, ever struck more fear into Chicago.
Last month marked the final page in the extended tragedy, when Kenneth Hansen, 74, serving a 200-year sentence for the slayings, died in prison of natural causes.
In a sense, it was the Chicago's first sensational, "breaking" murder story for local television. The new medium had never covered a crime story of this nature before. Pictures of the bodies considered unthinkable for broadcast today were graphically displayed on the local stations, heightening the terror. Parents and relatives of the victims were hounded mercilessly. The father of two of the boys died a month after the crime while receiving electroshock therapy for depression.
The murders occurred during a time the media describe as an age of innocence, perhaps more accurately characterized as an age of naivete.
On a crisp Sunday afternoon, Robert Peterson, 14, and John Schuessler, 13, took the bus from their Jefferson Park neighborhood to a Loop theater. They let John's 11-year-old brother, Anton, tag along.
By dinnertime, they dutifully returned from the Loop but as boys that age are wont to do, they drifted through the neighborhood. It was dark, getting cold and started raining when they made the fateful decision to hitchhike the last mile home. For boys in those days, hitchhiking was a rite of passage. Soon, somebody around Milwaukee Avenue offered them a ride -- the wrong somebody. They were never seen alive again and countless lives were changed forever.
Two days later, their bodies were discovered several miles away with chain-smoking law officers squabbling over jurisdiction and reporters in fedoras trampling the crime scene (the era before yellow police tape). The horrific nature of the crime ensured the entire police force would be mobilized to find the killer. Mayor Richard J. Daley offered a $10,000 reward from the city. His oldest son, Rich, was the same age as John Schuessler.
With popular movies like "Blackboard Jungle" and "Rebel Without a Cause" dramatizing society's growing concern about juvenile delinquency, initial theories on the murders centered on teenage gangs. Experienced homicide detectives soon realized this was unlikely and turned their attention to pedophiles. They didn't catch the murderer, but even veteran police officers were shocked at how many adults they discovered who preyed on children, an area heretofore ignored.
Unfortunately, no distinction was made between pedophiles and homosexuals. Many innocent gay men were questioned, occasionally arrested, and essentially "outed" at a time when the stigma was severe. One innocent man committed suicide in police custody while being questioned.
The massive manhunt was unsuccessful. Gradually, investigators were reassigned, districts reconfigured and priorities redirected.
Then, in 1991, federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents investigating other crimes identified Kenneth Hansen as a suspect.
In 1995, 40 years after the murders, Hansen was brought to trial. Some of his prosecutors weren't even born when the boys were killed. Hansen was convicted, the conviction was overturned and he was reconvicted in a second trial in 2002. The second conviction was under appeal when he died.
The murders have become a passing footnote but remain part of the city's DNA, evident every time a parent cautions a child about a menacing stranger. As William Faulkner said, "The past is not dead. It is not even past."